By this point, there were a few misty eyes in the room and Puppy #2 clasped his paws to his chest.
“To continue,” Bones continued, “in time, the man falls in love with Lucy. Joe Fur really likes the man. The man wants to marry Lucy. Then the man says he must leave for two months.”
“Wait. What?” I made my paw-to-paw timeout sign. “The man falls in love with her, says he wants to marry her … and then disappears for two months?”
“What can I say?” The dog shrugged. “Things were hard back then, in the west. That’s the way it was, with people often having to go to other places to do things for a time.”
He took another helping of spaghetti before continuing. “Of course, Joe Fur was thrilled with this turn of events. The last thing he wanted was for Lucy, who he really did think of as his daughter at this point, to marry anyone from the Group.”
“But why?” Waggins said. “Seems to me, the Group done all right by old Joe Fur. They saved him from death. Gave him new people. Next thing you know, he’s not only alive but wealthy too.”
“Let’s just say he had his reasons,” Bones said, giving a most unsatisfactory answer to what seemed to me a perfectly logical question. “Let’s just say that Joe Fur was very happy at the idea of Lucy marrying someone from outside the Group.”
“Fine,” I said, “let’s just say that. And … ?”
“And,” the dog said, “at this time, there were a group of people who … took care of things … whenever anyone tried to go outside the Group. And, also at this time, the Leader – you do all remember him, don’t you?”
Plenty of nods all around.
“Yes, well, the Leader decided to pay Joe Fur a visit. He told him there’d been much talk among the sub-leaders of the Group and it had been decided that Lucy Fur should marry either, er, John Smith or the Secretary, both of them being sons of the sub-leaders and all grown up now.”
“They decided?” I sputtered, sputtering a considerable amount of spaghetti out of my mouth. “Who were these men to decide who Lucy Fur should marry?”
“My dear Catson,” Bones said, a rare look of sadness combined with sympathy on his face, “I do empathize with your feelings on this matter. But this is how it was at this time and place and with these people. This is what the Leader and the others wanted for Lucy. The Leader gave Joe Fur one month to decide: Would his daughter marry the man who was an outsider to the Group and suffer the consequences or marry one of the two chosen for her by the Group?”
“Seems like no choice at all,” I said. “She should choose the one she wants.”
“And I would agree with you,” Bones said, “only keep in mind: I did tell you there was another group, whose job it was to take care of business for the Group, and this group within the Group was a very bad group indeed. Still, Joe Fur wanted what was best for his child. He did not want, er, John Smith for her. He did not want the Secretary for her. And so, he sent a telegram to the man who’d fallen in love with Lucy, a telegram calling him back.”
I had a tear in my eye. I couldn’t help it – the story was that romantic. Either that, or Mr. Javier had neglected to dust the chandelier in the dining room and my allergies were kicking up.
Then something struck me.
“You keep using ‘the man’ in place of the name for this person Lucy Fur fell in love with,” I said. “And yet, earlier, you said we were going to have some sort of names for the people in this story.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Just who is this ‘the man’?”
“That is most observant of you, my dear Catson,” the dog said, his own eyes twinkling. “Not only that, but you have hit on the most fun and intriguing part of the story. Who do you think the man is?”
“Oh no,” I groaned, “not this again. Another guessing game?”
“No.” The dog’s eyes flashed. “I don’t want you to guess. I want you to use your deductive powers of reasoning. Think, Catson.”
I went through the same process I had before, going through the list of people that the dog knew that I also knew, eliminating people based on impossibilities.
Once I finished, I did it all over again, because it couldn’t possibly be possible, the person I thought it must be … could it?
“No!” I said.
“Yes,” Bones said.
“But it can’t be,” I said.
“Oh, but it is,” the dog said. “Come on, Catson, say it.”
“Jefferson Hope?”
Slowly, the dog nodded.
“But it can’t be,” I said again, dumbfounded. “The man who is ‘the man,’ the man who fell in love with Lucy and she with him, is the Jefferson Hope, the man responsible for the deaths of, er, John Smith and the Secretary?” I paused. “That Jefferson Hope?”
“Ding, ding, ding!” the dog cried, triumphant.
Even though I was the one who put it all together, I still couldn’t believe it, even with Bones’s cheery and congratulatory “Ding! Ding! Ding!”
“But how is that possible?” I said. “You mean to tell me that Jefferson Hope wasn’t always a murderer, but rather was once a young man in love?”
“And why should that surprise you so, my dear Catson? We are all changing all the time. None of us end up exactly as we have begun, not unless we are to remain babies or puppies or kittens all of our lives.”
“Or hatchlings,” Mr. Javier put in, somewhat angrily.
“Pardon me?” said Bones.
“Hatchlings,” Mr. Javier said. “You named all the others but you did not mention baby turtles. When we turtles are babies, we are called hatchlings.”
“Ah, yes!” Bones said. “And thank you so much for correcting me!”
Even though Bones normally hated to be corrected, he thanked Mr. Javier with such a soothing voice, I could only guess that he had no desire to raise the turtle’s ire further. Well, who could blame him?
“And thank you also, Mr. Javier,” Bones continued, indicating the remains of our supper, “for gathering this amazing spread for us. I cannot imagine that anyone in the land negotiates the intricacies of ordering and then collecting takeout with the same extraordinary skills that you exhibit.”
OK, that was laying it on a bit thick. Surely, the turtle would see through this and realize the dog was only trying to stay on his good side?
And yet, the turtle didn’t. Rather, he gave a slight bow of his reptile head in a display of humble pride.
Oh, brother. If Bones kept this up, the turtle would grow so full of himself, he’d be expecting all sorts of praise on a regular basis. Never mind praise, he’d probably demand a raise!
“Good,” Bones said, “now that everyone is happy again, I shall continue with the story of our young man in love, the man we all know as Jefferson Hope.”
“That’s an excellent idea, Boss,” Mr. Javier said, back to his usual pleasingly eager self. “But first, why don’t you all retreat to the drawing room and I’ll bring in dessert.”
“What are we having?” I asked casually, as if this idea didn’t appeal to me greatly. I must confess: I do have a sweet tooth.
“A new recipe I made this morning,” Mr. Javier said, more eager still. “It’s a pineapple upside-down cake. Something went a little wrong in the preparation, so instead it is a pineapple right-side-up cake, but I’m almost certain it will be good just the same.”
Sometimes, the best cliffhanger one can come up with is a dessert coming out the opposite of the way it should. Despite that, Mr. Javier was right: His right-side-up pineapple upside-down cake was delicious if not what one would ever expect from an upside-down cake. And yet, I realized as I pawed up the last crumbs, weren’t mysteries and even life itself like that too? You go into a thing expecting one thing and you wind up getting something else entirely. That sentence I just wrote – in some ways, it expresses perfectly my whole relationship with Bones.
“And back to our story,” Bones said. “When last we left it, Joe Fur, having be
en told by the Leader that he had one month, thirty days, to decide who Lucy Fur would marry, had sent a message to Jefferson Hope calling for him to come back. A very interesting thing happened next.”
He paused.
We waited.
“I hope,” I said, “you’re not expecting us to guess what that interesting thing was.”
“Not at all,” the dog said, forking up a mouthful of cake. “I was simply reflecting on how good this cake is and how glad I am that it does not contain chocolate, for that might kill me.” He shrugged. “And the puppies.” He set the plate aside. “In any event, Joe Fur returned home the next day to find two young gentlemen – and I use that word loosely – waiting for him inside.”
“Had Hope returned so quickly?” Waggins asked. “Was he some kind of magician?”
“Neither,” Bones said. “Besides, I did say there were two young men, did I not?”
“I suppose they couldn’t have both been him,” Waggins said, disappointed.
Thankfully, Bones chose not to respond to this idiotic comment. Instead, he said, “The two young gentlemen were – of course – the Secretary and, er, John Smith.”
“What did those two want?” asked Puppy #5. “Does it have anything to do with murder?”
“Not quite,” Bones said. “They wanted to make their individual cases as to why each of them respectively should be the one to marry Lucy Fur.”
“Like she’s some sort of prize?” I was outraged at this. “Like she herself should have no say in who she marries?”
“My dear Catson,” Bones said, “that is exactly what Joe Fur said to them when they arrived. Furthermore, he told them that who Lucy married should be entirely up to her and that neither of them should return until and unless she called for one of them specifically.”
“Well,” I harrumphed, satisfied, “I should think so.”
“There’s just one problem,” Bones said.
“Hmm?” from me.
“Joe Fur’s method of dealing with things?” Bones gave a grim nod at his own words. “It had disastrous results.”
“The two young gentlemen left angrily,” Bones continued, jumping down and heading for the living room, before anyone could ask what he had meant by “disastrous results.” The rest of us followed. “It is not always wise to provoke bad people, for it is impossible to guess what they might do with their anger.”
“And what did they do?” asked Puppy #4, breathlessly from the position he had taken on the floor.
By this point, any idea of the military seating of the puppies lined up with backs straight on the couch had completely deteriorated. Now they were all on the floor with Bones, so wrapped up in his story that their heads were propped up on paws as they clustered together in a comfortable puppy pile. They were like human children listening to a parent at bedtime – I’ve read of such things. Next, they’d be expecting Mr. Javier to serve them cookies and milk to go with the tale. But Mr. Javier wouldn’t be doing that. He was too busy pretending to dust as he listened raptly to the story too. And since he was pretending to be busy, I was able to take back my comfy window seat. Although it felt somewhat less comfy now that I felt as though a squirrel of questionable character might be peeking in at me at any moment. The very idea made my hair stand slightly on end.
“Initially?” The dog shrugged. “Nothing. In the immediate aftermath of their departure, Joe Fur and Lucy were left to wait, hoping for the man she really loved to return in time.”
Something struck me. “They were hoping for Hope,” I said with wonder.
“Just so, Catson,” Bones said. “They were hoping for Hope! Sadly, hope did not bring Hope that day or that night. Instead, the next morning, having had to go to sleep at some point, Joe Fur woke to find that a note written in the Leader’s hand had somehow found its way into his home.”
He paused.
I hoped he wasn’t going to ask me the contents of the note. Sure, I had already guessed the identities of a couple of the people in his story, but I couldn’t guess the contents of an entire note, much less one written decades before!
But no, the dog was merely milking the drama, completing the air of urgency as he leaned forward to say:
“The note said, in essence, that Joe Fur must comply with the wishes of the Group … or else … ”
“Or else what?” Puppy #3 cried urgently. “Or else what?”
“That is the point, is it not?” Bones said coolly, relaxing backward on his haunches. After his cliffhanging “or else,” he had sauntered over to one of the wing chairs, turned it to face the room, and leapt up on it.
“What point?” I said, exasperated. “What point could you possibly be going on about?”
“Is there anything worse,” the dog said, looking quite satisfied with himself, “than a vague, open-ended ‘or else’? Is there anything more ominous than the blank space following an ‘or else,’ a space that the mind can only fill with all manner of horrible guesses based on fear?”
Well, when he put it like that …
“I can think of worse things!” Mr. Javier piped up, raising a turtle arm in the air to call for attention.
“You can?” the dog said, incredulous. Then he waited.
“I only said I ‘can,’” the turtle said, looking embarrassed, “meaning that I am sure I have the potential. I did not say that I am actually thinking of anything specific right this minute.”
“That is quite all right,” Bones said, “because I can.”
“You can?” I said. “Then why did you rhetorically ask us? Now look what you’ve done. You’ve confused and upset Mr. Javier!”
“He’ll get over it,” the dog said, reverting back to his usual dismissive ways when it came to anyone else’s feelings; or, really, feelings at all.
“The thing is,” Bones continued, “there was a worse thing!”
I stared back at him. Well, I certainly wasn’t about to give him a verbal prompt, not after he’d upset the turtle.
Actually, the turtle looked perfectly fine. Sometimes I like to at least try to rein the dog in so he doesn’t get too carried away thinking he can run roughshod over everybody.
“As bad as that ‘or else’ was,” the dog said, “poor Joe Fur was left to wonder: how did the note get inside his home? Someone must have been there while he slept. And if someone, or some ones, could get in once while he slept, was it not possible that it could happen again?”
The puppies, Mr. Javier and even I squirmed at this. What an awful thought!
An even more horrible thought occurred to me. Earlier, the squirrel had appeared on the ledge outside my bay window. That had been bad enough. But what if one day he were to gain entry? What if one day, at night, while I was sleeping, Professor Moriarty broke in here and –
“You’re doing it again, aren’t you?” Bones said.
“Hmm?” I said.
“You’re thinking of squirrels,” he said.
I nodded.
“Specifically,” he said, “you’re thinking of Professor Moriarty.”
I nodded, more vehemently this time.
“Well, cut it out,” he said.
Then he turned to the others, continuing with his tale as though he’d never interrupted it to talk to me about the squirrel.
“And as bad as all of that was,” Bones said, “there was still worse to come. In addition to the threatening words, the note bore the number … 29.”
Wait. What?
“After all of this,” I said, confused, “receiving a threatening note, an ominous ‘or else,’ the idea of someone sneaking into your home while you sleep – how can a simple number be still worse?”
“Oh, but it was!” Bones said. “Why, it is all elementary. Do you not remember me saying that the Leader had given Joe Fur one month – 30 days – to decide whom Lucy should marry?”
“Of course I remember!” Then: “You mean … ”
“Yes. The clock was
already ticking. The Leader was informing Joe Fur that he now had a mere 29 days left, or else. Even worse than that – ”
“Worse!”
“Each day thereafter, another slip of paper would appear, only these slips of paper no longer contained words, just the numbers in decreasing order, one decrease per day: 28, 27, 26, 25 – ”
“Stop!” I cried, covering my ears with my paws. I couldn’t stop imagining how horrible those notes must have been for Joe Fur and Lucy.
But even through my paws, I could hear Bones say, “That’s right, it was awful for the Furs. Soon, there were just two days left. But here is a wonderful thing: They still hoped for Hope.”
“They didn’t give up hope!” I said, happy on their behalf.
“They did not,” Bones said, “which is why it was doubly wonderful when, with just those two days left, Jefferson Hope returned.”
“Hope has arrived!” I said.
“He did!” Bones said. “And then he and Joe Fur made their plans to escape with Lucy before time ran out. They snuck out that very night, taking only what was necessary. At one point they hid in the shadows, overhearing two members of the Group talking – obviously about them; stuff about needing to keep a close lookout lest Lucy escape – and ending their conversation with a cryptic password. It meant nothing to our hopeful travelers. It did, however, come in handy when, almost safely away, they came across a sentry on the outskirts of town. They were able to get away by employing this cryptic password.”
He stopped abruptly there.
“So, they escaped!” I said, clapping my paws. “What a happy, Hope-y ending!”
“Well,” the dog added dryly, “not exactly.”
I didn’t even want to think about what he meant by “not exactly.”
But it didn’t matter what I wanted. Like a pineapple upside-down cake somehow coming out right-side up, it seemed that whatever I wanted Bones to do, he was sure to do the exact opposite.
Sherlock Bones 2: Dog Not Gone! Page 5
