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 even 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 temptation was so strong just to lie there and . . .
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 Pastyface’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.
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,” Fafferty rumbled.
“But how— I thought—”
“You thought we were out for you?” Fergus answered. “That was 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 Fafferty. “Any time we can do anything for you— And how you got into that machine-gun 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. ‘Took. Dorothy Sayers said someplace 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.
Elsewhen
“My dear Agatha,” Mr. Partridge announced at the breakfast table, “I have invented the world’s first successful time machine.”
His sister showed no signs of being impressed. “I suppose this will run the electric bill up even higher,” she observed.
Mr. Partridge listened meekly to the inevitable lecture. When it was over, he protested, “But, my dear, you have just listened to an announcement that no woman on earth has ever heard before. Never before in human history has anyone produced an actual working model of a time-traveling machine.”
“Hm-m-m,” said Agatha Partridge. “What good is it?”
“Its possibilities are untold.” Mr. Partridge’s pale little eyes lit up. “We can observe our pasts and perhaps even correct their errors. We can learn the secrets of the ancients. We can plot the uncharted course of the future—new conquistadors invading brave new continents of unmapped time. We can—”
“Will anyone pay money for that?”
“They will flock to me to pay it,” said Mr. Partridge smugly.
His sister began to look impressed. “And how far can you travel with your time machine?”
Mr. Partridge buttered a piece of toast with absorbed concentration, but it was no use. His sister repeated the question: “How far can you go?”
“Not very far,” Mr. Partridge admitted reluctantly. “In fact,” he added hastily as he saw a more specific question forming, “hardly at all. And only one way. But remember,” he went on, gathering courage, “the Wright brothers did not cross the Atlantic in their first model. Marconi did not launch radio with—”
Agatha’s brief interest had completely subsided. “I thought so,” she said. “You’d still better watch the electric bill.”
It would be that way, Mr. Partridge thought, wherever he went, whomever he saw. “How far can you go?”
“Hardly at all.”
“Good day, sir.” People cannot be made to see that to move along the time line with free volitional motion for even one fraction of a second is as great a miracle as to zoom spectacularly ahead to 5900 A.D. He had, he could remember, felt disappointed at first himself—
The discovery had been made by accident. An experiment which he was working on—part of his long and fruitless attempt to re-create by modern scientific method the supposed results described in ancient alchemical works—had necessitated the setting up of a powerful magnetic field. And part of the apparatus within this field was a chronometer.
Mr. Partridge noted the time when he began his experiment. It was exactly fourteen seconds after nine thirty. And it was precisely at that moment that the tremor came. It was not a serious shock. To one who, like Mr. Partridge, had spent the past twenty years in southern California it was hardly noticeable. But when he looked back at the chronometer, the dial read ten thirteen.
Time can pass quickly when you are absorbed in your work, but not so quickly as all that. Mr. Partridge looked at his pocket watch. It said nine thirty-one. Suddenly, in a space of seconds, the best chronometer available had gained forty-two minutes.
The more Mr. Partridge considered the matter, the more irresistibly one chain of logic forced itself upon him. The chronometer was accurate; therefore it had registered those forty-two minutes correctly. It had not registered them here and now; therefore the shock had jarred it to where it could register them. It had not moved in any of the three dimensions of space; therefore—
The chronometer had gone back in time forty-two minutes, and had registered those minutes in reaching the present again. Or was it only a matter of minutes? The chronometer was an eight-day one. Might it have been twelve hours and forty-two minutes? Forty-eight hours? Ninety-six? A hundred and ninety-two?
And why and how and—the dominant question in Mr. Partridge’s mind—could the same device be made to work with a living being?
It would be fruitless to relate in detail the many experiments which Mr. Partridge eagerly performed to verify and check his discovery. They were purely empirical in nature, for Mr. Partridge was that type of inventor who is short on theory but long on gadgetry. He did frame a very rough working hypothesis—that the sudden shock had caused the magnetic field to rotate into the temporal dimension, where it set up a certain—he groped for words—a certain negative potential of entropy, which drew things backward in time. But he would leave the doubtless highly debatable theory to the academicians. What he must do was perfect the machine, render it generally usable, and then burst forth upon an astonished world as Harrison Partridge, the first time traveler. His dry little ego glowed and expan
ded at the prospect.
There were the experiments in artificial shock which produced synthetically the earthquake effect. There were the experiments with the white mice which proved that the journey through time was harmless to life. There were the experiments with the chronometer which established that the time traversed varied directly as the square of the power expended on the electromagnet.
But these experiments also established that the time elapsed had not been twelve hours nor any multiple thereof, but simply forty-two minutes. And with the equipment at his disposal, it was impossible for Mr. Partridge to stretch that period any further than a trifle under two hours.
This, Mr. Partridge told himself, was ridiculous. Time travel at such short range, and only to the past, entailed no possible advantages. Oh, perhaps some piddling ones—once, after the mice had convinced him that he could safely venture himself, he had a lengthy piece of calculation which he wished to finish before dinner. An hour was simply not time enough for it; so at six o’clock he moved himself back to five again, and by working two hours in the space from five to six finished his task easily by dinner time. And one evening when, in his preoccupation, he had forgotten his favorite radio quiz program until it was ending, it was simplicity itself to go back to the beginning and comfortably hear it through.
But though such trifling uses as this might be an important part of the work of the time machine once it was established—possibly the strongest commercial selling point for inexpensive home sets—they were not spectacular or startling enough to make the reputation of the machine and—more important—the reputation of Harrison Partridge.
The Great Harrison Partridge would have untold wealth. He could pension off his sister Agatha and never have to see her again. He would have untold prestige and glamor, despite his fat and his baldness, and the beautiful and aloof Faith Preston would fall into his arms like a ripe plum. He would—
It was while he was indulging in one of these dreams of power that Faith Preston herself entered his workshop. She was wearing a white sports dress and looking so fresh and immaculate that the whole room seemed to glow with her presence.
The Compleat Boucher Page 9
