"But--"
"I consented to stay on at Daylight Park, only on the solemn a.s.surance of the Governors that no animal should be allowed again within the Park precincts. I detest animals. Particularly dogs. And now I see my dislike is not mere prejudice. May I ask what the owners and--and the harborer--of the cur mean to do about this outrage? Notice, please, that I am speaking with studied moderation, in asking this vital question. I--"
"It is my fault,--or rather, it is a mistake,--that Lad is in the Park," spoke up the Master. "Mr. Harmon is wholly innocent in the matter. I can testify to that. If there is any fine or other penalty in connection with my dog"s being here, I"m ready to settle for it. But if you expect me to believe that Laddie did all this weird damage to your ma.n.u.script and your collection and your room,--why, that"s absurd!
Utterly absurd! Lad, never in his life,--"
"The courts will think otherwise!" blazed Garretse, losing a fraction of his hard-held selfmastery. "And the case shall go through every court in the land, since you persist in this idiotic denial of a proven fact. I warn you, I shall--Look there!" he broke off, furiously, leveling a shakily vehement forefinger at Lad. "Watch him! He"s prowling around, even now, in search of more things to injure. He--"
The author finished his sentence by catching up a heavy metal paperweight and drawing it back as if for a throw. His muscles flexed.
The Mistress moved, as by accident, between the raging man and the dog.
The Master, for the moment, lacked presence of mind to do even that much for his canine chum"s safety. He was too much taken up in glaring unbelievingly at Lad.
The sedate collie, after following the bevy of excited humans upstairs, had stood gravely, just inside the threshold; looking with keen interest from one to the other of the gesticulating and noisy group.
Then, as a sharp whiff of that same baffling scent a.s.sailed his nose, he began a new tour of the room.
The odor was fresher than before. And Lad"s curiosity was roused to the full. He sniffed to right and left, exploring the floor rubbish with inquiring muzzle, and circling the despoiled writing desk.
It was then that Garretse called attention to him. And it was then that Lad"s nose suddenly pointed skyward. In another moment, he had bounded eagerly toward one of the windows,--the window that was slightly open from the top.
From that direction, the scent now came; and it was more potent than at any earlier time in his quest.
Even as the astonished eyes of the group followed Lad window-ward, those same eyes were attracted by a partial darkening of the open s.p.a.ce at the window"s top.
Into the room, through the narrow aperture wiggled a hairy form, moving with eel-like speed.
Thence, it leaped to the floor. For the fraction of a second, the intruder crouched there; peering about, to determine into what company his jump had landed him.
He was a gray monkey, small, infinitely aged and withered of aspect.
His paws and forearms were black with half-dry ink. Here and there, all over his fuzzy gray body, ink-blobs were spattered. In one skinny paw he still clutched the splintered fragment of a Satsuma vase.
By the time the gaping humans could get a single good look at the monkey, Lad was at him. Here at last was the solution of that mysterious scent, so new to the collie.
Lad galloped toward the wizened and malodorous gray bunch; more intent on investigation than on attack. The monkey did not wait for him. With an incredibly agile leap, he was on the spattered window curtains and swarming up to the rod at the top. There he squatted, well out of reach; grimacing horribly and chattering in simian wrath.
"It"s--it"s a devil!" stammered Rutherford Garretse; his nearsighted eyes squinting as he sought to take in the motley details of the creature"s appearance. "I--"
"It"s Mrs. McMurdle"s pest of a monkey, sirs" blithered the maid.
"Asking your pardon. The one she made such a fuss about sending away, last month, when all beastees was barred from the Park. It must "a"
strayed back from where she sent it to, the crafty little nuisance!
It"s--"
"Incidentally," said the Master, "it is the creature that wrecked your room. See the ink on it. And that bit of porcelain it"s brandishing at us looks like a match for some of these smashed bits on the floor. It got in here, I suppose, through that window, earlier,--and--"
"No," corrected the Mistress, wiser at deduction. "Through the doorway, downstairs. From somewhere outside. Probably while the maid was dusting the dining-room. It came in here and began destroying things; as monkeys love to. And Laddie struck its trail and followed it up here.
It heard Lad coming and it got out through the window. Then, just now, something outside scared it; and it climbed back in again. I wonder if--"
As she talked, the Mistress had moved toward the nearest window.
"See?" she finished, in triumph, as she pointed out and down.
On the patch of back lawn, below, stood a very much fl.u.s.tered old lady, her worried gaze upraised to the study. In one hand she carried a leash, in the other a half-peeled banana.
"It"s Mrs. McMurdle!" exclaimed Harmon. "The maid was right. She must have disobeyed the ordinance and had the miserable monkey hidden in her house all the time. It must have gotten out, this morning; and she hunted around till she saw it perched on the top of the window cornice.
I suppose it dived back in here, at sight of her. She--"
"Come on, Laddie!" whispered the Mistress, under cover of a new outbreak of multiple talk. "YOU"RE acquitted, anyhow. And the rest of the scene is really no business of ours. The sooner we get you to the boarding kennels again, the less chance there is of trouble. And Master and I will come to see you there, every single day, till we go back home."
A week later, the car turned in again at the gates of the Place. This time, Lad rode in state atop the flat trunk on the rear seat. As the car halted at the veranda, he sprang to earth without waiting for the tonneau door to be opened.
For, dashing toward him from the direction of the lake, Lady hove in sight. Behind her, and trotting more leisurely, came Wolf. At sight and scent of her returned mate, Lady fairly squealed with delight. She whirled up to Lad, frantically licking his face and spinning about him with little staccato yelps of joy.
Lad was deliriously happy. Not only was he at home again; but Lady was welcoming him with an effusion that she had not shown him for many a sorrowful month. He could not understand it. Nor did he try to. He was content to accept the miracle; and to rejoice in it with all his great honest heart.
Knowing nothing of feminine psychology, he could not realize that a week of Puppy Wolf"s sole and undiluted companionship had bored Lady horribly and had begun to get on her nerves;--nor that she had learned to miss and yearn for the big, wise, ever-gentle mate whom she had so long neglected.
It was enough for Lad to know that he was no longer a neglected outsider, in the Place"s canine family; but that his worshiped mate was wild with joy to see him again.
"Look!" said the Master. "The old chap has forgiven her for every bit of her rottenness to him. He"s insanely happy, just because she chooses to make much of him, once more."
"Yes," a.s.sented the Mistress, cryptically "Sometimes dogs are pitifully--human!"
CHAPTER VI. The Tracker
The child"s parents were going to Europe for three months, that winter.
The child himself was getting over a nervous ailment. The doctors had advised he be kept out of school for a term; and be sent to the country.
His mother was afraid the constant travel from place to place, in Europe, might be too much for him. So she asked leave of the Mistress and the Master,--one of whom was her distant relative,--for the convalescent to stay at the Place during his parents" absence.
That was how it all started.
The youngster was eleven years old; lank and gangling, and blest with a fretful voice and with far less discipline and manners than a three-month collie pup. His name was Cyril. Briefly, he was a pest,--an unspeakable pest.
For the first day or two at the Place, the newness of his surroundings kept Cyril more or less in bounds. Then, as homesickness and novelty alike wore off, his adventurous soul expanded.
He was very much at home; far more so than were his hosts, and infinitely more pleased than they with the situation in general. He had an infinite genius for getting into trouble. Not in the delightfully normal fashion of the average growing boy; but in furtively crafty ways that did not belong to healthy childhood.
Day by day, Cyril impressed his odd personality more and more on everything around him. The atmosphere of sweet peace which had brooded, like a blessing, over the whole Place, was dispersed.
The cook,--a marvel of culinary skill and of long service, gave tearful warning, and departed. This when she found the insides of all her cooking utensils neatly soaped; and the sheaf of home-letters in her work-box replaced by cigar-coupons.
One of the workmen threw over his job with noisy blasphemy; when his room above the stables was invaded by stealth and a comic-paper picture of a goat"s head subst.i.tuted for his dead mother"s photograph in the well-polished little bronze frame on his bureau.
And so on, all along the line.
The worst and most continuous sufferer from Cyril"s loathed presence on the Place was the ma.s.sive collie, Lad.