Across the street was the modest frame dwelling of Robby and his shrewish mother. The child had been playing on the sidewalk. Now he saw his idol and deliverer and started across the street at a lurching toddle. “Nice woof-woof!” he kept calling. “Wait for Robby!
Wolf kept on. This was no time for playing games with even the most delightful of cubs. And then he saw the car. It was an ancient jalopy, plastered with wisecracks even older than itself; and the high school youth driving was obviously showing his girl friend how it could make time on this deserted residential street. The girl was a cute dish, and who could be bothered watching out for children?
Robby was directly in front of the car. Wolf leaped straight as a bullet. His trajectory carried him so close to the car that he could feel the heat of the radiator on his flank. His forepaws struck Robby and thrust him out of danger. They fell to the ground together, just as the car ground over the last of Wolfs caudal vertebrae.
The cute dish screamed. “Homer! Did we hit them?”
Robby’s screams were louder. “You hurt me! You hurt me! Baaaaad woof-woof!”
His mother appeared on the porch and joined in with her own howls of rage. The cacophony was terrific. Wolf let out one wailing yelp of his own, to make it perfect and to lament his crushed tail, and dashed on. This was no time to clear up misunderstandings.
But the two delays had been enough. Robby and the policeman had proved the perfect unwitting tools of Oscar Fearing. As Wolf approached Emily’s little bungalow, he saw a gray sedan drive off. In the rear was a small, slim girl, and she was struggling.
Even a werewolf’s lithe speed cannot equal that of a motor car. After a block of pursuit, Wolf gave up and sat back on his haunches panting. It felt funny, he thought even in that tense moment, not to be able to sweat, to have to open your mouth and stick out your tongue and …
“Trouble?” inquired a solicitous voice.
This time Wolf recognized the cat. “Heavens, yes,” he assented wholeheartedly. “More than you ever dreamed of.”
“Food shortage?” the cat asked. “But that toddler back there is nice and plump.”
“Shut up,” Wolf snarled.
“Sorry; I was just judging from what Confucius told me about werewolves. You don’t mean to tell me that you’re an altruistic were?”
“I guess I am. I know werewolves are supposed to go around slaughtering, but right now I’ve got to save a life.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Ah,” the cat reflected philosophically. “Truth is a dark and deceitful thing.”
Wolfe Wolf was on his feet. “Thanks,” he barked. “You’ve done it.”
“Done what?”
“See you later.” And Wolf was off at top speed for the Temple of the Dark Truth.
That was the best chance. That was Fearing’s headquarters. The odds were at least even that when it wasn’t being used for services it was the hangout of his ring, especially since the consulate had been closed in San Francisco. Again the wild running and leaping, the narrow escapes; and where Wolf had not taken these too seriously before, he knew now that he might be immune to bullets, but certainly not to being run over. His tail still stung and ached tormentingly. But he had to get there. He had to clear his own reputation, he kept reminding himself; but what he really thought was, I have to save Emily.
A block from the Temple he heard the crackle of gunfire. Pistol shots and, he’d swear, machine guns, too. He couldn’t figure what it meant, but he pressed on. Then a bright-yellow roadster passed him and a vivid flash came from its window. Instinctively he ducked. You might be immune to bullets, but you still didn’t just stand still for them.
The roadster was gone and he was about to follow when a glint of bright metal caught his eye. The bullet that had missed him had hit a brick wall and ricocheted back onto the sidewalk. It glittered there in front of him—pure silver!
This, he realized abruptly, meant the end of his immunity. Fearing had believed Gloria’s story, and with his smattering of occult lore he had known the successful counterweapon. A bullet, from now on, might mean no more needle sting, but instant death.
And so Wolfe Wolf went straight on.
He approached the Temple cautiously, lurking behind shrubbery. And he was not the only lurker. Before the Temple, crouching in the shelter of a car every window of which was shattered, were Fergus O’Breen and a moonfaced giant. Each held an automatic, and they were taking pot shots at the steeple.
Wolf’s keen lupine hearing could catch their words above the firing. “Gabe’s around back,” Moonface was explaining. “But it’s no use. Know what that damned steeple is? It’s a revolving machine-gun turret They’ve been ready for something like this. Only two men in there, far as we can tell, but that turret covers all the approaches.”
“Only two?” Fergus muttered.
“And the girl. They brought a girl here with them. If she’s still alive.”
Fergus took careful aim at the steeple, fired, and ducked back behind the car as a bullet missed him by millimeters. “Missed him again! By all the kings that ever ruled Tara, Moon, there’s got to be a way in there. How about tear gas?”
Moon snorted. “Think you can reach the firing gap in that armored turret at this angle?”
“That girl …” said Fergus.
Wolf waited no longer. As he sprang forward, the gunner noticed him and shifted his fire. It was like a needle shower in which all the spray is solid steel. Wolf’s nerves ached with the pain of reknitting. But at least machine guns apparently didn’t fire silver.
The front door was locked, but the force of his drive carried him through and added a throbbing ache in his shoulder to his other comforts. The lower-floor guard, a pasty-faced individual with a jutting Adam’s apple, sprang up, pistol in hand. Behind him, in the midst of the litter of the cult, ceremonial robes, incense burners, curious books, even a Ouija board, lay Emily.
Pasty-face fired. The bullet struck Wolf full in the chest and for an instant he expected death. But this, too, was lead, and he jumped forward. It was not his usual powerful leap. His strength was almost spent by now. He needed to lie on cool earth and let his nerves knit. And this spring was only enough to grapple with his foe, not to throw him.
The man reversed his useless automatic and brought its butt thudding down on the beast’s skull. Wolf reeled back, lost his balance, and fell to the floor. For a moment he could not rise. The tempation was so strong just to lie there …
The girl moved. Her bound hands grasped a corner of the Ouija board. Somehow, she stumbled to her rope-tied feet and raised her arms. Just as Pasty-face rushed for the prostrate wolf, she brought the heavy board down.
Wolf was on his feet now. There was an instant of temptation. His eyes fixed themselves to the jut of that Adam’s apple, and his long tongue licked his jowls. Then he heard the machine-gun fire from the turret, and tore himself from Pasty-face’s unconscious form.
Ladders are hard on a wolf, damned near impossible. But if you use your jaws to grasp the rung above you and pull up, it can be done. He was halfway up the ladder when the gunner heard him. The firing stopped, and Wolf heard a rich German oath in what he automatically recognized as an East Prussian dialect with possible Lithuanian influences. Then he saw the man himself, a broken-nosed blond, staring down the ladder well.
The other man’s bullets had been lead. So this must be the one with the silver. But it was too late to turn back now. Wolf bit the next rung and hauled up as the bullet struck his snout and stung through. The blond’s eyes widened as he fired again and Wolf climbed another rung. After the third shot he withdrew precipitately from the opening.
Shots still sounded from below, but the gunner did not return them. He stood frozen against the wall of the turret watching in horror as the wolf emerged from the well. Wolf halted and tried to get his breath. He was dead with fatigue and stress, but this man must be vanquished.
&
nbsp; The blond raised his pistol, sighted carefully, and fired once more. He stood for one terrible instant, gazing at this deathless wolf and knowing from his grandmother’s stories what it must be. Then deliberately he clamped his teeth on the muzzle of the automatic and fired again.
Wolf had not yet eaten in his wolf’s body, but food must have been transferred from the human stomach to the lupine. There was at least enough for him to be extensively sick.
Getting down the ladder was impossible. He jumped. He had never heard anything about a wolf’s landing on its feet, but it seemed to work. He dragged his weary and bruised body along to where Emily sat by the still unconscious Pasty-face, his discarded pistol in her hand. She wavered as the wolf approached her, as though uncertain yet as to whether he was friend or foe.
Time was short. With the machine gun silenced, Fergus and his companions would be invading the Temple at any minute. Wolf hurriedly nosed about and found the planchette of the Ouija board. He pushed the heart-shaped bit of wood onto the board and began to shove it around with his paw.
Emily watched, intent and puzzled. “A,” she said aloud. “B—S—”
Wolf finished the word and edged round so that he stood directly beside one of the ceremonial robes. “Are you trying to say something?” Emily frowned.
Wolf wagged his tail in vehement affirmation and began again.
“A—” Emily repeated. “B—S—A—R—”
He could already hear approaching footsteps.
K—A— What on earth does that mean? Absarka—”
Ex-professor Wolfe Wolf hastily wrapped his naked human body in the cloak of the Dark Truth. Before either he or Emily knew quite what was happening, he had folded her in his arms, kissed her in a most thorough expression of gratitude, and fainted.
Even Wolf’s human nose could tell, when he awakened, that he was in a hospital. His body was still limp and exhausted. The bare patch on his neck, where the policeman had pulled out the hair, still stung, and there was a lump where the butt of the automatic had connected. His tail, or where his tail had been, sent twinges through him if he moved. But the sheets were cool and he was at rest and Emily was safe.
“I don’t know how you got in there, Mr. Wolf, or what you did; but I want you to know you’ve done your country a signal service.” It was the moonfaced giant speaking.
Fergus O’Breen was sitting beside the bed too. “Congratulations, Wolf. And I don’t know if the doctor would approve but here.”
Wolfe Wolf drank the whiskey gratefully and looked a question at the huge man.
“This is Moon Lafferty,” said Fergus. “FBI man. He’s been helping me track down this ring of spies ever since I first got wind of them.”
“You got them—all?” Wolf asked.
“Picked up Fearing and Garton at the hotel,” Lafferty rumbled.
“But how— I thought—”
“You thought we were out for you?” Fergus answered. “That was the Garton’s idea, but I didn’t quite tumble. You see, I’d already talked to your secretary. I knew it was Fearing she’d wanted to see. And when I asked around about Fearing, and learned of the Temple and the defense researches of some of its members, the whole picture cleared up.”
“Wonderful work, Mr. Wolf,” said Lafferty. “Any time we can do anything for you— And how you got into that machinegun turret— Well, O’Breen, I’ll see you later. Got to check up on the rest of this roundup. Pleasant convalescence to you, Wolf.”
Fergus waited until the G-man had left the room. Then he leaned over the bed and asked confidentially, “How about it, Wolf? Going back to your acting career?”
Wolf gasped. “What acting career?”
“Still going to play Tookah? If Metropolis makes Fangs with Miss Garton in a Federal prison.”
Wolf fumbled for words. “What sort of nonsense—”
“Come on, Wolf. It’s pretty clear I know that much. Might as well tell me the whole story.”
Still dazed, Wolf told it. “But how in heaven’s name did you know it?” he concluded.
Fergus grinned. “Look. Dorothy Sayers said somenlace that in a detective story the supernatural may be introduced only to be dispelled. Sure, that’s swell. Only in real life there come times when it won’t be dispelled. And this was one. There was too damned much. There were your eyebrows and fingers, there were the obviously real magical powers of your friend, there were the tricks which no dog could possibly do without signals, there was the way the other dogs whimpered and cringed— I’m pretty hardheaded, Wolf, but I’m Irish. I’ll string along only so far with the materialistic, but too much coincidence is too much.”
“Fearing believed it too,” Wolf reflected. “But one thing that worries me: if they used a silver bullet on me once, why were all the rest of them lead? Why was I safe from then on?”
“Well,” said Fergus, “I’ll tell you. Because it wasn’t ‘they’ who fired the silver bullet. You see, Wolf, up till the last minute I thought you were on ‘their’ side. I somehow didn’t associate good will with a werewolf. So I got a mold from a gunsmith and paid a visit to a jeweler and— I’m damned glad I missed,” he added sincerely.
“You’re glad!”
“But look. Previous question stands. Are you going back to acting? Because if not, I’ve got a suggestion.”
“Which is?”
“You say you fretted about how to be a practical, commercial werewolf. All right. You’re strong and fast. You can terrify people even to commit suicide. You can overhear conversations that no human being could get in on. You’re invulnerable to bullets. Can you tell me better qualifications for a G-man?”
Wolf goggled. “Me? A G-man?”
“Moon’s been telling me how badly they need new men. They’ve changed the qualifications lately so that your language knowledge’ll do instead of the law or accounting they used to require. And after what you did today, there won’t be any trouble about a little academic scandal in your past. Moon’s pretty sold on you.”
Wolf was speechless. Only three days ago he had been in torment because he was not an actor or a G-man. Now—
“Think it over,” said Fergus.
“I will. Indeed I will. Oh, and one other thing. Has there been any trace of Ozzy?”
“Nary a sign.”
“I like that man. I’ve got to try to find him and—”
“If he’s the magician I think he is, he’s staying up there only because he’s decided he likes it.”
“I don’t know. Magic’s tricky. Heavens knows I’ve learned that. I’m going to try to do my damnedest for that fringe-bearded old colleague.”
“Wish you luck. Shall I send in your other guest?”
“Who’s that?”
“Your secretary. Here on business, no doubt.”
Fergus disappeared discreetly as he admitted Emily. She walked over to the bed and took Wolf’s hand. His eyes drank in her quiet, charming simplicity, and his mind wondered what freak of belated adolescence had made him succumb to the blatant glamour of Gloria.
They were silent for a long time. Then at once they both said, “How can I thank you? You saved my life.”
Wolf laughed. “Let’s not argue. Let’s say we saved our life.”
“You mean that?” Emily asked gravely.
Wolf pressed her hand. “Aren’t you tired of being an office wife?”
In the bazaar of Darjeeling, Chulundra Lingasuta stared at his rope in numb amazement. Young Ali had climbed up only five minutes ago, but now as he descended he was a hundred pounds heavier and wore a curious fringe of beard.
The Pink Caterpillar
“And their medicine men can do time travel, too,” Norm Harker said. “At least, that’s the firm belief everywhere on the island: a tualala can go forward in time and bring you back any single item you specify, for a price. We used to spend the night watches speculating on what would be the one best thing to order.”
Norman hadn’t told us the name of the island. The strip
e and a half on his sleeve lent him discretion, and Tokyo hadn’t learned yet what secret installations the Navy had been busy with on that minute portion of the South Pacific. He couldn’t talk about the installations, of course; but the island had provided him with plenty of other matters to keep us entertained, sitting up there in the Top of the Mark.
“What would you order, Tony,” he asked, “with a carte blanche like that on the future?”
“How far future?”
“They say a tualala goes to one hundred years from date: no more, no less.”
“Money wouldn’t work,” I mused. “Jewels maybe. Or a gadget—any gadget—and you could invent it as of now and make a fortune. But then it might depend on principles not yet worked out. … Or the Gone with the Wind of the twenty-first century—but publish it now and it might lay an egg. Can you imagine today’s best sellers trying to compete with Dickens? No … it’s a tricky question. What did you try?”
“We finally settled on Hitler’s tombstone. Think of the admission tickets we could sell to see that!”
“And—?”
“And nothing. We couldn’t pay the tualala’s price. For each article fetched through time he wanted one virgin from the neighboring island. We felt the staff somehow might not understand if we went collecting them. There’s always a catch to magic,” Norman concluded lightly.
Fergus said “Uh-huh” and nodded gravely. He hadn’t been saying much all evening—just sitting there and looking out over the panorama of the bay by night, a glistening joy now that the dimout was over, and listening. I still don’t know the sort of work he’s been doing, but it’s changing him, toning him down.
But even a toned-down Irishman can stand only so much silence, and there was obviously a story on his lips. Norm asked, “You’ve been running into magic too?”
“Not lately.” He held his glass up to the light and watched his drink. “Damned if I know why writers call a highball an amber liquid,” he observed. “Start a cliché and it sticks. … Like about detectives being hardheaded realists. Didn’t you ever stop to think that there’s hardly another profession outside the clergy that’s so apt to run up against the things beyond realism? Why do you call in a detective? Because something screwy’s going on and you need an explanation. And if there isn’t an explanation …
The Compleat Werewolf Page 6
