The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 42
Soldier responded with the swiftness of a perfectly controlled automaton. Muzzle forward, ears back, eyes fixed on the object of his attention with almost hypnotic intensity, he slid forward belly-low in the grass. The dog was far too old a hand to rush forward barking. The proper way is to slide wolfishly around and intimidate. Soldier proceeded to hand out some suitable intimidation.
The sheep said, "Bah!"
Soldier stopped his forward snaking. His ruff stood up as a furry collar. He stared straight into eyes that were not like the inane eyes of the flock and saw therein a certain something that had been seen by nothing on Earth excepting one helpless rabbit. He commenced to back away, his beseeching whine reaching Old Josh in canine protest.
"Dang it!" swore Old Josh. "Everything's just plain cussed this day!" Thrusting two fingers into his mouth, he tried to drive the dog into action by sheer power of his commanding whistle.
The shrill, authoritative sound screamed across the hill and wailed away down the valley. Soldier half yelped, half whined. His body hunched curiously as his rear portion obediently tried to slink forward while his front insisted on going back. The distant flock bawled and mewed and shuffled agitatedly. The single sheep stood its ground and glare.
Old Josh took one impatient step forward. The lone sheep took three. Then Old Josh decided he really did need those glasses he'd been thinking of getting for the last ten years. The danged animal wasn't a sheep at all. It was a dog, a strange dog, and the very twin of Soldier. No wonder the latter had behaved so queerly.
But Soldier's sharp mind worked differently. He'd been about to discipline something posing as a sheep when the thing had changed into the likeness of another dog—and both had eyes of fire drawn from a source unthinkable. Soldier waited not upon the order of his going. He departed with extreme alacrity, his frantic feet touching the ground at three-yard intervals. A hole in the fence marked his exit.
Old Josh gaped at the hole. The hole gaped back at Old Josh. Then he did something he'd never done these sixty years, whether Thanksgiving were coming or not—he deserted his jittery sheep. Taking one horrified look at the dreadful eyes, he turned and ran.
The thing followed him. He looked back, saw it loping out through the gate and along the road. Cold perspiration ran down his spine as he pelted along at the best pace his old legs could make. His breath came in wheezy gasps while in his mind still stood those vampire eyes which seemed to thirst for the substance of his very soul. He took another wild glance over his shoulder, saw his tracker maintaining its distance. Doglike, the thing lolled its tongue, but the crimson organ licked out with the length and brilliance of a devouring flame.
Squirming and yelping in his frantic eagerness to get inside, Soldier was waiting at the cottage door. When Old Josh reached and opened it, Soldier dived through the gap, sought the farthest and darkest corner of the room, tried to imbed himself in the wall. From somewhere out back, Tinker and Tailor moaned in horrid chorus.
The dog that wasn't a dog now stood in the gateway staring toward the open door. Old Josh decided there was no time to get around the back and unleash Tinker and Tailor. With his rheumy eyes intent upon the thing in the path, Old Josh cautiously felt behind the door, got his shaking hand on cold metal.
In one swift movement, he stuck his shotgun through the gap of the doorway and let go with both barrels. The heavy charges of buckshot went down the path on a wave of thunder that drowned the slam of the door and the noise of hurriedly thrust bolts. He hadn't done himself any good; in that brief instant after he'd fired he'd seen that the path and the gateway were empty and that there wasn't anything at all where there had ought to have been the body of a dead dog.
With the reloaded gun in his hand, he went around and made sure that all the windows were fastened securely on the inside. Then he poked up the fire, treated himself to a stiff shot of corn, sat down to think things over. He'd been thinking them over for half an hour when, out back, Tinker and Tailor screamed together. He'd never heard a dog scream before. It was a godawful sound. He had to take Soldier in his lap and nurse him back to sanity.
Tinker and Tailor were quiet after that. Old Josh wondered why they were so silent. He sniffed, fancied he could smell scorched hair. Something padded softly past the nearest window, below the level of the sill, where he couldn't see it. Soldier went nuts again.
THE FIRE was still blazing, and the corn half consumed, when daylight faded. Old Josh picked up the gun, went to a window, gazed into gathering twilight. He was slightly drunk and mumbled steadily to himself in a dull monotone. He saw nothing weaving in the evening mists outside; no shape of menace, no formless fantasm lusting to add his divine spark to its own diabolical fire. He pulled the shades, lit the oil-lamp, had a good drag at the corn jug.
Three hours of silence and much potent alcohol had eased his fears to some extent. He was, he solemnly reflected, getting old. He'd lived by himself too long and had become queer. Maybe if he'd married the Widow Jenson he'd not have been chased around by figments of his own imagination. He dozed before the bright, warm fire. At one moment, Soldier groaned and Old Josh automatically snatched at his gun. But he was only half awake, and his hand soon relaxed its hold. Outside, a ghastly moon climbed into the ragged sky.
He was sound asleep when a thin line of peculiar, flickering light seeped through the narrow gap between the bottom of the door and the stone step. The light waxed stronger, glowing and fattening as if it were creeping in with the silent, secretive flow of some phosphorescent liquid.
The invading luminescence had become a purple puddle, humping itself toward globulousness, when Soldier opened an eye and saw it. He moaned softly, tried to move, failed. The fearsome globule flicked out an immaterial tentacle and silenced him forever. The dog rolled onto its side, all four legs twitching spasmodically, a thin whiff of burned hair rising from its carcase.
Old Josh knew nothing of this. He had always been a noisy sleeper and now was excelling himself. With eyes closed and mouth open, he gasped, swallowed, mumbled and snorted before the fire whose crackling embers had lulled him into unconsciousness. Now and again his legs jerked, his hands gestured, as if such futile motions served to emphasize the unspoken sentiments of his dreams.
It was a bad dream he was having. And a startlingly vivid dream. A veritable nightmare that beaded his back with sweat. In the depth of his slumbers it seemed to him that something had occupied the opposite chair. He wasn't sure whether it was Soldier, a sheep, or a rabbit. Now it shone blindingly, shifted identities, and became a caricature of himself.
Whatever the thing was, it settled in the chair, laughed in a chilly, pseudo-human voice, and proceeded to cross-examine him. Old Josh strongly resented the persistent questioning, but found himself unable to do anything about it. The inexorable voice went on and on, asking the most idiotic questions about the most commonplace things, and all that Old Josh could do was answer to the best of his ability.
For what purposes were sheep used? Could many other animals be domesticated? Were any animals intelligent? Why did Old Josh wear clothes? What was the weapon with which he had blown some absurd pellets of lead down the garden path? What other kinds of weapons were in general use? Was he of average intelligence, or were there superior minds in the world? Did he know of methods of illumination better than the crude lamp he was using? Electricity ... ah! ... was that used for any purpose other than illumination?
Thus it went on. He struggled against it. He disliked this sardonic treatment of an education that wasn't as good as it might have been. He objected to being treated like a child's primer, to be opened and read for the sake of some kindergarten knowledge. Finally, he resented the downright foolishness of some of the questions, the answers to which everybody knew.
"Dogs dislike cats—what are cats?"
Chapter Two
THE DOCTOR looked down at the body of Old Josh Hawkins and said, "I don't care if a thousand people claim to have seen him since then. I say he died about two o'clock this morning and that his death was from natural causes." He glanced at his watch. "He's been dead about fourteen hours."
Police Officer Kelly felt far from satisfied. There was nothing surprising about the old sheepman's demise, especially when you considered his age. But there were one or two strange features about the case that needed clearing up before it could be considered neat and tidy. Kelly liked his jobs to be neat. In addition to which, he was and always had been a very suspicious man.
"But look here, Doctor Lanigan," he protested. "Jeff Anderson swears he saw Old Josh waiting for the first bus out of the village at seven-thirty this morning. Three people say they saw Old josh getting off the bus at the depot at seven-fifty. A few more say they noticed him wandering around. They noticed him particularly, because he was acting strangely. He was looking around like a visitor who'd never seen the place before, and when a couple of them spoke to him he wouldn't answer."
"Two o'clock," declared Doctor Lanigan stubbornly.
"If he got a lift back here, or even if he walked, he might have been alive around eight to have reached home again."
"He was dead long before then," asserted the medico, flatly. "The evidence puts it beyond dispute." He closed his bag with the air of one whose position is unassailable. "And let me tell you, Kelly, corpses don't go gallivanting around and catching buses."
"Let me ride down to the village with you," requested Kelly. "There's something fishy somewhere. I'm going to ask some questions." He heaved his heavy frame into the doctor's car, and added, "Why should Josh's three dogs have popped off with him? Did they die around two o'clock? Heck of a coincidence, isn't it?"
"You'll have to get a vet to examine them," said Lanigan. "I admit that it's very strange that the dogs should have died too. Maybe Josh went queer at the end, and finished them off himself."
"I'll get a vet all right!" growled Kelly.
THEY SPED down to the village, the doctor silent and certain, the police officer surly and dissatisfied. As they were passing the tiny post office, Kelly let out a yell, waved frantically to an ambling pedestrian. Doctor Lanigan braked his car to a stop.
"Jeff," said Kelly, as the walker came up, "tell the doctor what time you last saw Old Man Hawkins."
"I told you once." Jeff Anderson's frown showed that already he was sick of the subject. "It was seven-thirty. He had a date with the first bus."
"Impossible!" Lanigan snapped.
"And for why?" demanded Anderson, his frown changing to a scowl.
"He was dead. What's more, he'd been dead several hours."
"That's what you think," said Anderson succinctly. "I saw him, the whole medical profession notwithstanding!" And with that shot, he turned to go.
It was the doctor's turn to scowl. Police Officer Kelly chewed his bottom lip and looked bothered. The pair stared at each other.
"Say, Jeff, did Old Hawkins look any different from usual?"
Jett lounged back, considered a moment, said, "Only that his face fungus was yellow."
"Yellow!" ejaculated Lanigan. "What color is it usually."
"Brown," answered Jeff Anderson. "A dirty, terbaccery brown." He swivelled on one heel, made off with an air of finality.
Again the pair in the car gaped at each other. Utter bafflement showed on both men's faces.
After a while, Kelly remarked slowly and thoughtfully, "Jeff's no speechmaker, but he's got good, sharp eyes. If he says they were yellow, then they were yellow."
"Well?"
"And the bush on Josh's dead face was stained a nice, ripe, fruity brown. You saw those whiskers yourself!"
Lanigan began to breathe words in a soft, low voice, then he said, more loudly, "Hawkins tried to clean up his beard for the first time in donkey's years. He turned it yellow. Then he came down to the village and caught a bus. After that, he returned home, carefully stained his whiskers their former color and finished up by dying several hours after he was already dead. It's pure baloney! Anderson's been drinking!"
"What, so early in the morning?" Kelly objected. "Besides, others saw Old Josh."
"Then you'd better get the opinion of another medical man," growled Lanigan. He accelerated his car with savage determination, whizzed it down the road to where Kelly's home bore the modest sign: POLICE. With a faint touch of sarcasm, he added, "Snoop around a bit and see if Old Whiskers has a twin brother who'll inherit."
Kelly winced, heaved his brawny form out of the car. Then he noticed a familiar figure waiting by the gate. It was Art Calder, booking clerk at the local depot.
"What is it, Art?"
"The boys tell me you're asking questions about Old Josh," replied Art. "So I thought I'd better come down from the depot and say my piece." He blinked nervously, licked his lips. "Josh caught the eight-fifty-five express for London. I sold him his ticket. I saw him get on the train."
Despite his middle age, Doctor Lanigan was a healthy, active man. He proved it by the way he stopped his engine and vaulted from the car in one dexterous twist. He stood chest to chest with the uneasy Art, thrust forward an aggressive face.
"You are prepared to swear that it was Hawkins and, no other?"
"Of course, Doc.," Art assured. He fidgeted under his questioner's intent gaze. "I couldn't mistake that dodderer."
Lanigan turned to Kelly. "You know Hawkins far better than I do. You positively identify that body as his?"
"I do," swore Kelly, certainty in his voice, and stupefaction on his face.
"Right!" Doctor Lanigan shoved thumbs into vest pockets, lumped his jaw and peered shrewdly at his puzzled companions. "I admit my error. Kelly, I want Hawkins and the dogs brought in for post mortem examination. It's going to be thorough and complete, believe me!" He turned to Art. "And I want you to phone along the line to the terminus, trying all intervening stations, and find out whether any collector has taken that ticket you issued."
"Sure," agreed Art. "It won't take long to get that information."
"You'd better report this to county headquarters," the physician told Kelly. "Evidently this affair isn't as simple as it looks. None of us really know just what happened or how it happened." He looked from one to the other. "But to me it's mighty like murder."
"Ugh!" grunted Art Calder. He shuddered as he thought of a killer in his little office, with only the glass plate between them. He had pushed his hand through the hole in that glass. If death had clasped his hand ...
THE POST mortem was official and, as Lanigan had promised, very, very thorough. Old Josh had been electrocuted as efficiently as any condemned gangster. So had his dogs. "They'd died in the night—two dogs first, Soldier later, Old Josh last—somewhere between one-thirty and two-thirty in the dark hours before the haunted dawn. They'd died beneath a funereal sky which had released no lightning, had done no more than spread its sable pall across the scene of agony. There the quartet had gasped their last and scented the air with their final burns, man and animals alike, in an oil-illuminated cottage a full seven miles from the nearest power lines.
It was impossible. Nevertheless, it had happened.
The dumbfounded investigators had just reached the conclusion that, since all the signs were those of electrocution, there was no other possible diagnosis, idiotic as that one might seem, when news came in about the ticket. It had been handed in at Euston Station by a well-groomed, prosperous looking individual, presumably a business man.
Ten minutes after the ticket had been surrendered a questing porter found a corpse. It was reposing in one corner of an empty coach. It seemed to be asleep, and blissfully unconscious of its own complete nakedness. The porter nudged the cadaver which promptly flopped over with all the horrible abandon of empty clay. By a most remarkable coincidence, it was that of a well-groomed, well-cared-for individual, presumably a business man. A twin, in fact, of the gentleman who had given up the ticket bought by the twin of Old Josh.
The twin of Old Josh was not on the train.
Chief Inspector McKechnie was thinking about this mixture of twins as he sat at his desk in Scotland Yard and stared beneath bushy eyebrows at Doctor Lanigan and Police Officer Kelly. The inspector was big and shrewd: he looked like a bull buffalo with no illusions.
"I'm glad you two came along so promptly. The evidence you've been able to give shows clearly that there is some extremely mysterious but quite definite connection between the death of Hawkins and the body found at Euston."
He paused, thought a moment, then went on, "The body on the train has been identified as that of Wilson C. Fairbrother, a broker of some prominence. He appears to have died by electrocution strange as that may seem."
“Ah!" exclaimed Lanigan.
"Something very cock-eyed links these two tragedies," McKechnie continued. He rested heavy elbows on his desk, propped his big jaw with ham-like fists. "Hawkins, by all accounts, got on that train but never got off it. Fairbrother's double got off it but we've failed to turn up any evidence that he ever got on it in the first place. So what?" They waited for him to tell them. “So the conclusion to be drawn is childishly obvious; the man who caught the train while cleverly impersonating Hawkins was one and the same individual as the man who left the train in the guise of Fairbrother."
"But—" began Lanigan.
"Where is the motive?" said McKechnie, finishing the question for him. He spread his large, capable hands in a gesture of disgust. "There's the weak spot! Fairbrother was carrying little money, had no known enemies. And, according to you two, Hawkins was a harmless old cuss without a cent in the world. Added to which, I quite fail to see why any killer should choose to masquerade as his victims. It doesn't make sense.”
"It's pointless," agreed Lanigan.
"It's nutty," Kelly rumbled.
"YOU’VE HIT the nail right on the head?" Chief Inspector McKechnie wagged an emphatic finger. "It's so crazy that that in itself is a lead. Until more satisfactory data comes in I’ll make a rough guess that we're bedevilled by an insane actor, an unsuccessful individual who's overdue for the nuthouse, a would-be screen star with delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex."
