bragged the Master. "He behaves as well as any human. Better than most of them. He--"
"That isn"t the point," said his host, with growing uneasiness. "You see, Daylight Park is run as a club. Home government and all that sort of thing. Well, these livestock fracases raised such a row that the club"s Board of Governors has pa.s.sed an ordinance, forbidding the keeping of any pet animals in the whole park. Nothing bigger than a canary bird can be harbored here. It"s a hard-and-fast rule. It seemed the only way to save our whole summer colony from disruption. You know a livestock squabble can cause more ructions in a small community than--"
"I see," mused the Master, staring glumly after Lad who was just vanishing into the house in the wake of the Mistress and the unhappy Mrs. Harmon. "I see. H"m!"
He pondered for an instant, while his host shifted from foot to foot and looked apologetic. Then the Master spoke again.
"The only way out, that I see," he hazarded, "is for me to drive back home with Lad; and leave him there and come on here, tomorrow. I can--"
"Nothing of the sort!" protested Harmon, "There"s an easier way than that. Wittsville is only a mile or so from the Park gates. They"ve got a fine boarding kennel there. Several of the Park"s dogs were exiled to it, when our ordinance went into effect. Jump into the car, and we"ll take your collie there in ten minutes. He"ll be well treated. And you and your wife can go to see him, every day you"re here. Come along.
I--I hate to seem inhospitable about this thing. But you see for yourself how it is. We--"
"Certainly," a.s.sented the Master. "I"ll go in and get him and explain to my wife. Don"t let it make you feel uncomfortable. We both understand."
Which accounts for the fact that Lad, within the next half hour, was preparing to spend his first night away from home and from the two people who were his G.o.ds. He was not at all happy. It had been an interesting day. But its conclusion did not please Laddie, in any manner.
And, when things did not please Lad, he had a very determined fashion of trying to avoid them;--unless perchance the Mistress or the Master had decreed otherwise.
The Master had brought him to this obnoxious strange place. But he had not bidden Lad stay there. And the collie merely waited his chance to get out. At ten o"clock, one of the kennelmen made the night rounds. He swung open the door of the little stall in which Lad had been locked for the night. At least, he swung the door halfway open. Lad swung it the rest of the way.
With a plunge, the collie charged out through the opening portal, ducked between the kennelman"s legs, reached the open gate of the enclosure in two more springs; and vanished down the road into the darkness.
As soon as he felt the highway under his feet, Lad"s nose drooped earthward; and he sniffed with all his might. Instantly, he caught the scent he was seeking;--a scent as familiar to him as that of his own piano cave; the scent of the Place"s car-tires.
It had taken Harmon and the Master the best part of ten minutes to drive through the park and to the boarding kennels. It took Lad less than half that time to reach the veranda of the Harmon house. Circling the house and finding all doors shut, he lay down on the mat; and settled himself to sleep there in what comfort he might, until the Mistress and the Master should come down in the morning and find him.
But the Harmons were late risers. And the sun had been up for some hours before any of the household were astir.
If Lad had been the professionally Faithful Hound, of storybooks, he would doubtless have waited on the mat until someone should come to let him in. But, after lying there until broad daylight, he was moved to explore this new section of the world. The more so, since house after house within range of his short vision showed signs of life and activity.
Several people pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed along the private roadway in front of the Harmons" door; and nearly all of these paused to peer at Lad, in what seemed to the collie a most flattering show of interest.
At last, the dog got to his feet, stretched himself fore-and-aft, in true collie fashion; and trotted down the paved walk to the road. There for a moment, he stood hesitant. As he stood, he was surveying the scene;--not only with his eyes, but with those far stronger sense organs, his ears and his nostrils. His ears told him nothing of interest. His nose told him much. Indeed, before he had fairly reached the road, these nostrils had telegraphed to his brain an odor that not only was highly interesting, but totally new to him. Lad"s experience with scents was far-reaching. But this smell lay totally outside all his knowledge or memory.
It was a rank and queer smell;--not strong enough, out there in the open, to register in a human-brain; but almost stingingly acute to the highly sensitized dog. It was an alluring scent; the sort of odor that roused all his curiosity and seemed to call for prompt investigation.
Nose to ground, Lad set off to trace the smell to its source. Strong as it was, it grew stronger and fresher at every step. Even a mongrel puppy could have followed it. Oblivious to all else, Lad broke into a canter; nose still close to earth; pleasurably excited and keenly inquisitive.
He ran along the private road for perhaps a hundred yards. Then, he wheeled in at another paved walk and ran up a low flight of veranda steps. The front door of a house stood invitingly open to the cool air of the morning. In through the doorway went Lad; unheeding the gobbling call of a maid-servant who was sweeping the far end of the veranda.
Lad did not know he was committing trespa.s.s. To him an open door had always meant permission to enter. And the enticingly rank scent was tenfold stronger indoors than out. Across a hallway he trotted, still sniffing; and up a flight of stairs leading to the second story of the house.
At the stairhead, a room door stood wide. And into this room led the odor. Lad went in. He was in a large and sunlit room; but in the most disorderly room he had ever set eyes on. The room needed airing, too.
For all its four windows were closed, except one which was open for perhaps six inches from the top.
Lad circled the room, twice; from door to windows, and thence to center table and around the walls; pausing at one window sill and again at the threshold; picking his way daintily over heaps of litter on the floor.
Yes, the room was full of the scent. But, whence the scent emanated, Lad could not, for the life of him, tell. The room gave him no clew.
And, after a few minutes of futile investigation, he turned to depart.
At the stairhead, he came upon the same servant he had seen sweeping the veranda. She cried: "Shoo!" at him and brandished her broom. Lad, in offended dignity, stalked past her and out of the house.
His quest having proven vain, he betook himself to the Harmons", arriving there as the Mistress and the Master emerged upon the veranda in company with their hosts. In wild delight, Lad scampered up to the Mistress; his whole stately body wriggling in eager welcome, his tiny white forepaws patting at her feet, his muzzle thrusting itself into her cupped hand.
"Why, Lad!" she cried. "Laddie! We were so worried about you. They just phoned from the kennels that you had gotten away. I might have known you"d find your way to us. We--"
She got no further. Up the walk, from the road, came running an apoplectically red and puffing man of late middle age;--a man whose face bore traces of lather; and who was swathed in a purple bathrobe.
Flapping slippers ill-covered his sockless feet.
The Master recognized the fast-advancing newcomer. He recognized him from many pictures in newspapers and magazines.
This was Rutherford Garretse, world-famed author and collector; the literary lion and chief celebrity of the summer colony at Daylight Park. But what eccentricity of genius could account for his costume and for this bellicose method of bearing down upon a neighbor"s home, was more than the Master could guess.
Nor did the visitor"s first words clear up the mystery. Halting at the foot of the steps, Rutherford Garretse gesticulated in dumb anguish, while he fought for breath and for coherent speech. Then, disregarding Harmon"s wondering greeting, the celebrity burst into choking staccato speech.
"That dog!" he croaked. "That--that--DOG! The maid saw him go into the house. Saw him go up to my study. She was afraid to follow, at first.
But in a few minutes she did. She saw him coming out of my study!
COME!!! I demand it. All of you. COME!"
Without another word, he wheeled and made off down the road, pausing only to beckon imperiously. Marveling, the group on the veranda followed. Deaf to their questions, he led the way. Lad fell into line behind the perplexed Mistress.
Down the road to the next house, stalked Rutherford Garretse. At the doorway, he repeated his dramatic gesture and commanded:
"COME!"
Up the broad stairs he stamped. Behind him trailed the dumfounded procession; Laddie still pattering happily along with the Mistress. At the open door of a large room at the stairhead, the author stood aside and pointed in silent despair through the doorway.
"What"s up?" queried Harmon, for perhaps the tenth time. "Is anything--?"
His question ended in a grunt. And, like the others, he stared aghast on the scene before him.
The room, very evidently, was a study. But much of its floor, just now, was heaped, ankle high, with hundreds of pages of torn and crumpled paper.
The desk-top and a Sheraton cabinet and table were bare of all contents. On the floor reposed countless shattered articles of gla.s.s and porcelain; jumbled together with blotters an pastepot and shears and ink-stand and other utensils. Ink had been poured in grotesque pattern on rugs and parquetry and window curtains.
In one corner lay a typewriter, its keys twisted and its carriage broken. Books--some of them in rare bindings,--lay gutted and ink-smeared, from one end of the place to the other.
Through the daze of general horror boomed the tremblingly majestic voice of Rutherford Garretse.
"I wanted you to see!" he declaimed. "I ordered everything left as it was. That mess of papers all over the floor is what remains of the first draft of my book. The book I have been at work on for six months!
I--"
"And it was the dog, there!" sputtered the maid-servant; emotion riding over discipline. "I c"n swear the room was neat and all dusted. Not a blessed thing out of place; and all the paper where Mr. Garretse had stacked "em in his portfolio, yonder. I dusted this study and then the dining room. And then I went out to sweep the veranda; like I always do, before breakfast. And maybe ten minutes later I see this brute trot out of Mr. Harmon"s place, and along the road, and come, asnuffing up the steps and into the house. And when I followed him upstairs and scatted him out, I saw the room looking like it is, now; and I yells to Mr. Garretse, and he"s shaving, and--"
"That will do, Esther!" snapped the author. "And, now, sir--"
"But, Mr. Garretse," put in the Mistress, "Lad never did such a thing as this, in all his life! He"s been brought up in the house. Even as a puppy, he was--"
"The evidence shows otherwise," interrupted Garretse, with a visible struggle at self-control. "No human, unless he were a maniac, would have done such a wantonly destructive thing. No other animal has been here. The dog was seen entering and leaving this room. And my work of six months is not only destroyed by him, but many of the very best pieces in my gla.s.s-and-porcelain cabinet."