The House of the Wolf

by Basil Copper

  ‘So I see,’ Homolky muttered drily.

  He turned to Coleridge, his manner suddenly brisker, and the three started to walk toward the door in the wall which led back to the colonnade flanking the inner courtyard.

  ‘Hot coffee and brandy await us, Professor.’

  He gave his guest a somewhat wolfish smile, the latter thought.

  ‘It will fortify us for the excursion before us.’

  He looked at Coleridge anxiously.

  ‘Unless you find the conditions too severe this morning . . .”

  Coleridge experienced faint confusion again, though there was no reason he should not have been walking the boundary walls with his host’s daughter. He wondered if the Count had noticed the tracks in the snow. Coleridge knew Homolky wanted to keep all worries about the wolf-pack and the deaths in the village from his family. He felt he might have inadvertently breached the host’s conception of good manners in a guest and was anxious to make amends.

  But he need not have worried, for it was shortly obvious that the Count was in good spirits when he smilingly commenced a dissertation on the history of his ancestral home. Emboldened by this, Coleridge felt encouraged to ask him something which had been on his mind for the past hour or so.

  ‘It is a remarkable place,’ he said in answer to a proffered remark by the tall man with the white hair, making a startling contrast to his black fur hat.

  ‘I was interested to learn that the village people called it The House of the Wolf. And I noticed the wolf-motif in the firedogs. I presume it is also in your family coat of arms.’

  The Count smiled politely, and once again Coleridge noticed the sharpness of his teeth.

  ‘That really relates to an ancestor of mine,’ he said. ‘The armorial bearings originated from his exploits.’

  He shot an amused glance at his daughter as they regained the door in the wall. Coleridge waited for his host to precede him but was ushered firmly in to the darkness of the colonnade.

  ‘It is a longish story, and I will reserve it for this evening, with your permission.’

  Coleridge felt a quickening of interest, and he mentally decided that he would return to the subject if Homolky showed no inclination to do so. In the meantime he had the girl’s problem and the fragments of fur and flesh in the envelope in his pocket. He must have a discreet word with Menlow; perhaps there would be an opportunity on their walk.

  They were halfway along the shadowy arcade now, and it was somewhat warmer in here, sheltered from the wind. Coleridge had lagged behind, and he hurried to catch up with his companions, his footsteps echoing sepulchrally on the flagstones.

  ‘Have you made arrangements about the wolf-hunt, Father,’ the girl was saying.

  ‘There has been no time,’ said Homolky somewhat curtly. ‘But I hope to have a word with Colonel Anton later in the day.’

  He turned back to Coleridge.

  ‘Our local Chief of Police,’ he explained over his shoulder. ‘It is not strictly a police matter, but he likes to be kept informed of all that goes on in the area.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Coleridge blandly, his mind elsewhere for the moment.

  They had regained the house now, and Homolky led the way with quick, nervous steps to the hall where the same mute majordomo took their outdoor clothing. Coleridge moved over to the fire, aware that his fingers were frozen to the bone. He held them out to the healing warmth, conscious of the Count’s somewhat mocking expression.

  Too late, he realised he had left the gloves in the pockets of the coat. He should have worn them, of course; it was dangerous in this climate. There was always a distinct possibility of frostbite if one did not take extreme care.

  The girl moved over near Coleridge; her eyes spelt out a mute warning to him. Coleridge found the message difficult to read. He was not sure whether she was asking his discretion regarding their conversation over the supposed wolf outside her room, or whether she was trying to alert him about something else.

  A few moments later the tall form of Dr. Raglan moved into view. There was a puzzled, resentful look on his face, and Coleridge edged toward him, offering a reassuring smile.

  ‘I am sorry about that just now,’ he said in a low voice that the Count could not possibly have heard. ‘Miss Homolky was rather concerned about something. I am sure she will tell you all about it in due course.’

  Raglan’s face assumed its normal frank, open expression, and he smiled too, all the tension and restraint dropping away from him.

  ‘I did not mean to intrude, Professor, but I was anxious to discuss something with Miss Homolky. I was rather surprised to find you there.’

  ‘It was a surprise to myself,’ Coleridge assured him. ‘However, you will no doubt have ample time to discuss these matters at coffee.’

  The Count was standing rather impatiently, and as the two men and his daughter joined him he led the way back at a fast pace to the Armoury, where his wife presided at a silver coffee urn and a black-bearded servant dispensed glasses of spirits.

  The room was full of brightness and conversation from the people gathered there, and Coleridge’s spirits lightened as he and the other members of the small group hurried forward to join them.

  The air burned like fire as Coleridge took it deeply into his lungs, and his boots crunched with brittle punctuations in the icy snow as he followed the black crocodile of figures down the forest trail between the pine trees. They had come through the village in a procession of horse-drawn vehicles which were now returning to the Castle, the hoofbeats sending back reverberating echoes from the house-fronts.

  He looked idly at the slim figure of the girl, in her stout boots and fur garments, who walked lithely ahead in the middle of the procession. She was now deep in conversation with Raglan, and her light laughter, metallic in the rising wind, was flung back fragmentarily toward him. Engrossed as she seemed in the young man’s banter, he knew she was absorbed in the problems they had earlier been discussing, and he thought again of the samples of flesh and fur reposing in the envelope in his inner pocket.

  He hoped to find a moment to confer with his colleague, but the man he wanted was far ahead at the moment, walking with their host. The Count’s wife was also present, her tall, graceful figure the absolute mould of her daughter’s as she strode at the side of her husband. Coleridge was content to remain in the background for the time being, absorbing the strange atmosphere of this extraordinary land and quietly observing his companions.

  He was conscious too that the gathering should have been truly an international one, but two French savants whom he had invited had to decline for personal reasons and a distinguished Hungarian folklorist, whose name was a household word in his native land, had had to return to his remote province because of a family illness.

  Therefore, as he had already noted, the English-speaking community which had gathered at Castle Homolky was not strictly the party he had wished for, and one or two of its members were unknown quantities so far as their personalities and the depth of their scholarship were concerned.

  It did not really matter, though, because the colleagues Coleridge could personally vouch for and whose work was known to him represented a quality that would make the private Congress due to start in the morning well worthwhile.

  His thoughts were proceeding in this mundane fashion when they were interrupted by a harsh roaring noise, and his eye was drawn to the ridge above them on which the village stood and from which drifted great clouds of smoke billowing above the rooftops. He glanced inquiringly at a black-bearded man, almost abreast of him, who appeared to be one of the senior house-servants from the Castle. He broke into a flood of harsh, guttural sentences, which Coleridge could not make out. The tall, emaciated Englishman called Shaw, who was walking just ahead on the path, had dropped back, and now he listened attentively
.

  ‘He says that the gypsies are encamped in the village, Professor,’ he explained in a soft voice. ‘They are preparing for their Winter Fair.’

  Coleridge was surprised, though he tried to keep it out of his voice.

  ‘You speak Hungarian, Shaw? I did not know you were so gifted.’

  The silver-haired man shrugged, his teeth gleaming beneath the drooping moustache.

  ‘It is nothing, Professor. I am able to pick out phrases here and there.’

  He laughed shortly.

  ‘But friends who know such things tell me my accent is abominable when I try to speak.’

  They were proceeding lower now, and even the rooftops of the village had sunk beneath the darkness of the trees, as though the last of civilisation was being submerged in their savage and barbaric surroundings.

  The image of the great bear he had seen in the wooden slatted cage as they passed the gypsies on their way to the Castle the previous night floated unsummoned into the professor’s mind and somehow filled him with sadness. He had said nothing to his host of his feelings on the matter, but he abhorred the shooting of animals and birds except on matters exclusively concerned with food-gathering or survival.

  But he had lived in remote parts of the world from time to time where expertise at firearms as a protection against humans as well as animals would appear to be prudent, and so he had taken pains to ensure that he was expert at their use.

  Most of his shooting had been, in fact, at nothing more vulnerable than targets, but he was certainly an expert shot and he knew he could give a good account of himself against a man-eating wolf on open snowy ground, conditions under which both trained huntsmen and the troops of Rakosi’s detachment had failed.

  Shaw had gone ahead again now, slipping and slithering on the icy path, and Coleridge turned aside, walking on the ridges of frozen snow where the footing was more secure. The village had abruptly disappeared from sight as though it had never been, and it was again borne in on the American that a few yards off the path in this country could mean long hours of fruitless wandering and an agonising death for a so-called civilised European.

  Even the peasants were better equipped for life here, and he resolved to remember that and take his host’s advice in all things related to this rugged country into which they had hardly begun to penetrate. He turned to look back for an instant: only the farthest pinnacle of the Castle was now visible, and a second later it too had disappeared beneath the green-and-white ice-covered foliage of the topmost tree-branches.

  The savage roaring again came loud and clear from the direction of Lugos; Coleridge was not startled now. He knew it was probably the bear he had seen on the gypsy cart; possibly the poor brute was signalling for its midday meal or perhaps being prepared unwillingly for some rustic circus turn.

  Walking at the side of the path at a faster pace, he had already overtaken some of the party and was now somewhere toward the middle of the column. The Count was up at the head, but almost at once Coleridge found himself behind the gaunt figure of Dr. Menlow. He was deep in conversation with the Count’s wife, and once again Coleridge admired the heavy voluptuousness of her figure moving beneath her thick fur garments. He kept a yard or two behind, and after a little while longer she excused herself and went off at a faster pace down the path, moving with quick, lithe movements to rejoin her husband.

  Menlow had glanced around and, noticing Coleridge, waited for him to come up, stepping aside to join his colleague on the rough snow at the side of the track. This was the man Coleridge wanted to see without arousing any attention from the others, and he could not have planned it better. Menlow stared at him with red eyes from pinched features. He glanced around with a shiver.

  ‘This is a wild place, Coleridge. I shall be glad to get back indoors again.’

  The professor shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. It gives one an appetite for lunch.’

  Menlow grinned wryly, falling into step with his colleague as they crunched slowly along.

  ‘You are better covered than I,’ he murmured. ‘And I fancy my blood is thinner than yours.’

  They had come down into a steep valley, and the trees were falling away; a stream debouched at their right in long, curving sweeps that bisected the whiteness of the snow. It was completely frozen and gleamed like gun-metal in the clear light. Below them, almost in the centre of the valley, was a spectacular waterfall where the stream fell about eighty feet to a pool; it too was frozen and descended in a series of stalagmites that sparkled like some bizarre confectionery in a patisserie window.

  The Count had obviously brought his guests to admire this extraordinary place, and already there were polite murmurs of astonishment from guests and household staff as they went in single file down toward a heavy wooden bridge which spanned the pool at the foot of the petrified fall.

  Coleridge was alone with Menlow now beneath the shadows of the trees.

  ‘I have something I would like you to analyse, Doctor,’ he said softly, looking sharply about him. ‘I would prefer no-one to know about it but we two.’

  Menlow raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Coleridge thought he could rely on his discretion if his reputation was anything to go by.

  ‘I have only simple apparatus . . .’ the other began, but the professor stopped him.

  He took out the envelope from his inner pocket and passed it over.

  ‘It is a very mundane matter. Merely a sample of hair and skin. I would be grateful if you could let me have your valued opinion by this evening.’

  Menlow nodded slowly, his sandy moustache looking as though it were carved from ice, so cold did he appear. He took the small brown envelope in his gloved hand and put it into his pocket.

  ‘Would it be indiscreet to ask why you want this done and what you expect me to find?’

  ‘It would,’ Coleridge said with a smile. ‘But we shall discuss it again this evening when you have your findings.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Menlow affably. ‘I will respect your confidence.’

  ‘I understand the Count has a well-equipped laboratory which can be made available if you need to do any elaborate tests,’ Coleridge said.

  Menlow opened his mouth to reply, but the sentence was never uttered.

  A dark shadow passed at the edge of the trees, and at the same moment a loud explosion startled the ears and reverberated with hideous suddenness across the icy landscape.

  CHAPTER 11: ENTER THE COLONEL

  Coleridge became aware of flame and a puff of smoke as another crash awoke the echoes. The great grey-black wolf went by very fast about a hundred feet away, a blurred impression between the dark tree boles, splinters of ice thrown up in long plumes from its claws.

  The party on the bridge spanning the pool beneath the waterfall were as still and solid as the frozen water suspended in a composition of hoary spray. The wolf was in the far distance now. It moved with incredible speed, and Coleridge realised, as a big man in a fur coat came out in a clearing below them, that it was putting the tree-boles between itself and the menace of the rifle. The man swore in a heavy guttural accent and flung up his unoccupied hand in a gesture of disgust.

  The scattered groups were breaking up as though they had thawed and liquefied, and the murmur of startled conversation came up to the two men by the spiralling path. Coleridge stood stock-still, his heart pounding slightly, watching the faint grey image which imperceptibly merged with the darkness of the tree-line.

  The paw-marks clawed in the snow were clear-printed on the slope and widely spaced. The brute had been immense and of high intelligence because it had taken the only angle in its upward flight at which the man below had been unable to use his weapon. Somehow it knew this, and Coleridge was impressed more than he cared to admit with its reasoning power.

 
He had a sudden, absurd idea that the scrap of fur in the envelope in Menlow’s pocket had come from the same great beast. It was ridiculous, of course. His host had said, and the sledge-driver’s earlier conversation confirmed, that there were many wolves in these parts.

  The girl’s story had affected him more than he realised, and he thrust the thought impatiently back in his mind as he and Menlow hurried down the path to where the man with the rifle stood as though in solemn thought.

  Coleridge felt in his bones that the beast they had just seen was the one the whole village had been talking about, but he kept silent, putting his gloved hands deep into his capacious pockets, listening to the bewildered voices as the other members of the party converged on the big man as though he were some magnetic source of attraction. He stood with easy confidence, his legs in the heavy leather riding boots thrust widely apart.

  He wore a military-looking cap on his head, which bore some tarnished badge which glinted dully in the low winter light, and there were scarlet epaulettes on the shoulders of his heavy fur coat where pieces of leather had been specially let into them.

  There was a black belt buckled round his waist, and the butt of a revolver protruded from a leather matching holster, the white lanyard from the metal ring in the butt leading to one of the heavy metal buttons of his coat. He turned as the two men came up.

  They were the first on the scene, and he rested the rifle barrel against a nearby tree and straightened himself. Coleridge had the impression of a great, watchful face with hooded eyes and a heavy black moustache. The lips were thick beneath the moustache but not unhumorous. He gave a stiff half-bow and briefly touched the peak of his cap in a military salute.

  ‘Ezredes Anton!’ he said in a clear, clipped voice that was used to command.

  ‘Colonel Anton,’ Menlow translated. ‘The gentleman the Count was telling us about. He is the Chief of Police hereabouts.’