Cornell Woolrich: The Dog with the Wooden Leg

The dog lay stretched out on the dingy tenement floor, muzzle between paws, ears sensitively erect, watching the girl move about. Its fine intelligent eyes followed each turn she made with mute devotion. One paw, the left front one, seemed to be tucked under its body; it was hidden from the joint down.

Celia Campbell spoke to it as she busied herself about the cramped, stuffy little room, moving back and forth between the gas range and the table. She was about twenty years old, golden-haired and blue-eyed, neatly but poorly dressed.

“Hungry, Dick? Go in and fetch gramp; breakfast is ready.”

The dog, a fine specimen of German shepherd, immediately got up, but with a slight awkwardness in gaining its balance that was noticeable in so fine an animal. It was only when it was clear of the floor that the reason for it could be seen. The left front paw ended at the joint, evidently amputated just like a human being’s. Attached to the stump was a leather cup and below this there was a miniature wooden leg.

The dog turned and went into the adjoining room at her command, the light tap-tap of the little artificial limb mingling oddly with the soft patter of the three normal paws. It had no difficulty moving about, had evidently grown used to the appliance long since. It came back in a moment guiding a man of about sixty with its muzzle, nudging him in the calf of the leg as they advanced to help him in avoiding obstacles.

Marty Campbell was blind. His eyes, blue like his granddaughter’s, betrayed their sightlessness only by the fixity of their stare. His face had the serene, expressionless look of the unseeing.

The dog nudged him to a chair at the table, then crouched down beside him on the floor once more. The girl brought food to the table, set a pan down on the floor for the third member of the little group. The three of them began to eat.

“It’s a beautiful day out,” Celia said, turning to glance through the window at the sunlight creeping down the dingy air shaft. “Why don’t you let Dick take you to the park?”

“I can feel it.” Marty smiled. “I can feel the balmy sunshine even in here.”

She glanced at the cheap alarm clock on the shelf. “I’ll have to hurry or I’ll be late at the factory and spoil my record.” She jumped up, put on a shabby hat, thrust a worn pocketbook under her arm. Then she stopped short, looked wistfully over at old Marty, impulsively opened her purse and took out a quarter. “Here,” she said, pressing his hand tight around it, “buy yourself a chocolate bar and an orangeade.” It meant she would have to do without her own lunch, but she didn’t mind that.

She carefully tried the gas-jet cocks on the stove to make sure they were tightly closed, bent over and kissed Marty lightly on the part of his silvery hair. He was very proud of that part; he got it straight every day, unaided, just by the wonderful sensitivity of his fingertips alone.

“Don’t stay out past dark, now. Ask some stranger the time when you feel it getting late.” She knew he could sense that too, could feel it when the sun went down and darkness set in. He wasn’t so handicapped as people would have believed. And then with a parting pat for the dog, she admonished:

“Be good boys, the two of you. Don’t get into any trouble,”

What trouble could a harmless, blind old man, watched over by a loyal dog, get into? And yet stranger things have happened.

Marty Campbell heard the door close after his granddaughter and listened to her quick tread go hurrying down the rickety tenement stairs outside. He shook his head and sighed to his canine pal.

“So young and pretty to be slavin’ in a garment sweatshop just to support us. She oughter be out in the sunshine herself, gallivantin’ with some nice young feller. I’m a millstone round her neck, Dick. But pretty soon now I’ll be able to do something for her instead; I’ll have a surprise for her.”

He stood up from the table. Dick instantly got up also, eyes watchfully on his master’s face.

Marty felt his way over to the cupboard, opened it, felt along the top shelf until he had located a battered pewter humidor. He brought it back with him, sat down, took the lid off. It was one receptacle Celia was sure of never looking into; she knew it had his tobacco in it. And he was always careful to have enough additional by him in a little sack, when she was in the flat, in order not to have to open it before her. Once or twice when he’d been caught short, he’d manfully done without his beloved pipe rather than have her fetch him the container. The reason soon became apparent. It was three quarters filled with cheap smoking tobacco, but his fingers dug under this and brought forth a packet of bills, fastened by a rubber hand. He told their corners off between his thumb and forefinger. There were ten of them, ten twenties — two hundred dollars.

“Don’t you tell her, now,” he warned the dog, cocking a finger at it, “where we been getting this from. She’d lace it into me sure enough. She told me once she’d walk out and leave me if she ever caught me doin’ that.”

Dick showed his teeth in what could easily have passed for a canine grin of conspiracy.

Marty reburied the money under the tobacco mound, put the humidor back where he had found it.

“The more it mounts up,” he admitted, “the harder it gets to think up an explanation of how I come by it so’s she’ll believe it. I could tell her a rich banker in his car come near running me down on the drive way in the park, and felt sorry for me and gave it to me. Think she’ll believe that?” He didn’t seem to himself, shook his head dissatisfiedly. “I’ll think of something by and by,” he temporized.

It wasn’t, he would have insisted, as though he actually solicited alms, went around panhandling with a sign on his chest: “I am blind.” He just sat there on the park bench minding his business, and if people felt like dropping coins as they went by, was that his fault? They had no business jumping at conclusions. That tin cup that he always kept next to him was to give Dick a drink of water out of, and for no other purpose. How could he give all that money he always found in it back, when he couldn’t even see the people who had dropped it in?

He always took care to change the coins into a bill before he returned home; they would have jangled too much and given him away. The clerk at a certain cigar store was an unwitting accomplice of Marty’s in this, without being at all aware of the source of the change he brought in nearly every day. Then when he had ten single bills accumulated, he would change them into a ten-spot. In the latter case he always checked on the clerk’s honesty immediately after the transaction; he had to, because he couldn’t tell by his fingertips as he could with the dimes and nickels. He would show the bill to the first person he met outside the store and ask, “Is this a tenner?” From which it will be seen that old Marty Campbell was shrewd in spite of his innocent, childlike face.

“Get me my hat, Dick,” he ordered.

The dog instantly trotted into the other room, came back with a battered old felt hat gripped in its teeth, presented it to Marty by rearing two front paws up against him, so that he wouldn’t have to stoop down and feel for it.