Рекс Стаут: In the Best Families

It may have taken five minutes, or it could have been fifteen; I don’t know. Anyhow it didn’t accomplish anything except getting Rackham unstuck from my head for the night, for the best I could do was decide for postponement. If he had his guard up, so far I had not got past it. With that settled, I got under the covers again, took ten seconds to get into position on a strange mattress, and was off this time...

Nearly, but not quite. A shutter or something began to squeak. Calling it a shutter jerked me back part way, because there were no shutters on the windows, so it couldn’t be that. I was now enough awake to argue. The sound continued, at brief intervals. It not only wasn’t a shutter, it wasn’t a squeak. Then it was a baby whining; but it wasn’t, because it came from the open window, and there were no babies out there. To hell with it. I turned over, putting my back to the window, but the sound still came, and I had been wrong. It was more of a whimper than a whine. Oh, nuts.

I rolled out of bed, switched on a light, went down the hall to Leeds’ door, knocked on it, and opened it.

“Well?” he asked, full voice.

“Have you got a dog that whimpers at night?”

“Whimpers? No.”

“Then shall I go see what it is? I hear it through my window.”

“It’s probably — turn on the light, will you?”

I found the wall switch and flipped it. His pajamas were green with thin white stripes. Giving me a look which implied that here was one more reason for disapproving of my being there, he padded past me into the hall and on into my room, me following. He stood a moment to listen, crossed and stuck his head out the window, pulled it in again, and this time went by me with no look at all and moving fast. I followed him downstairs and to the side door, where he pushed a light switch with one hand while he opened the door with the other, and stepped across the sill.

“By God,” he said. “All right, Nobby, all right.”

He squatted.

I take back none of my remarks about Doberman pinschers, but I admit that that was no time to expand on them, nor did I feel like it. The dog lay on its side on the slab of stone with its legs twitching, trying to lift its head enough to look at Leeds; and from its side that was up, toward the belly and midway between the front and hind legs, protruded the chased silver handle of a knife. The hair around was matted with blood.

The dog had stopped whimpering. Now suddenly it bared its teeth and snarled, but weakly.

“All right, Nobby,” Leeds said. He had his palm against the side, forward, over the heart.

“He’s about gone,” he said.

I discovered that I was shivering, decided to stop, and did.

“Pull the knife out of him?” I suggested. “Maybe—”

“No. That would finish him. I think he’s finished anyhow.”

He was. The dog died as Leeds squatted there and I stood not permitting myself to shiver in the cold night breeze. I could see the slender muscular legs stretch tight and then go loose, and after another minute Leeds took his hand away and stood up.

“Will you please hold the door open?” he asked. “It’s off plumb and swings shut.”

I obliged, holding it wide and standing aside to let him through. With the dog’s body in his arms, he crossed to a wooden bench at one side of the little square hall and put the burden down. Then he turned to me. “I’m going to put something on and go out and look around. Come or stay, suit yourself.”

“I’ll come. Is it one of your dogs? Or—”

He had started for the stairs, but halted. “No. Sarah’s — my cousin’s. He was there tonight, you saw him.” His face twitched. “By God, look at him! Getting here with that knife in him! I gave him to her two years ago; he’s been her dog for two years, but when it came to this it was me he came to. By God!”

He went for the stairs and up, and I followed. Over the years there have been several occasions when I needed to get some clothes on without delay, and I thought I was fast, but I was still in my room with a shoe to lace when Leeds’ steps were in the hall again and he called in to me, “Wait downstairs. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I called that I was coming, but he didn’t halt. By the time I got down to the little square hall he was gone, and the outside door was shut. I opened it and stepped out and yelled, “Hey, Leeds!”

His voice came from somewhere in the darkness. “I said wait!”

Even if he had decided not to bother with me there was no use trying to dash after him, with my handicap, so I settled for making my way around the corner of the house and across the graveled rectangle to where my car was parked. Getting the door unlocked, I climbed in and got the flashlight from the dash compartment. That put me, if not even with Leeds for a night outdoors in the country, at least a lot closer to him. Relocking the car door, I sent the beam of the flash around and then switched it off and went back to the side door of the house.

I could hear steps, faint, then louder, and soon Leeds appeared within the area of light from the hall’s window. He wasn’t alone. With him was a dog, a length ahead of him, on a leash. As they approached I courteously stepped aside, but the dog ignored me completely. Leeds opened the door and they entered the hall, and I joined them.

“Get in front of her,” Leeds said, “a yard off, and stand still.”

I obeyed, circling.

“See, Hebe.”

For the first time the beast admitted I was there. She lifted her head at me, then stepped forward and smelled my pants legs, not in haste. When she had finished Leeds crossed to where the dead dog lay on the bench, made a sign, and Hebe went to him.

Leeds passed his fingertips along the dead dog’s belly, touching lightly the smooth short hair. “Take it, Hebe.”

She stretched her sinewy neck, sniffed along the course his fingertips had taken, backed up a step, and looked up at him.

“Don’t be so damn sure,” Leeds told her. He pointed a finger. “Take it again.”

She did so, taking more time for it, and again looked up at him.

“I didn’t know they were hounds,” I remarked.

“They’re everything they ought to be.” I suppose Leeds made some signal, though I didn’t see it, and the dog started toward the door, with her master at the other end of the leash. “They have excellent scent, and this one’s extraordinary. She’s Nobby’s mother.”

Outside, on the slab of stone where we had found Nobby, Leeds said, “Take it, Hebe,” and when she made a low noise in her throat as she tightened the leash, he added, “Quiet, now. I’ll do the talking.”

She took him, with me at their heels, around the corner of the house to the graveled space, across that, along the wall of the main outbuilding, and to a corner of the enclosed run. There she stopped and lifted her head.

Leeds waited half a minute before he spoke. “Bah. Can’t you tell dogs apart? Take it!”

I switched the flashlight on, got a reprimand, and switched it off. Hebe made her throat noise again, got her nose down, and started off. We crossed the meadow on the trail to the edge of the woods and kept going. The pace was steady but not fast; for me it was an easy stroll, nothing like the race Leeds had led me previously. Even with no leaves on the trees it was a lot darker there, but unless my sense of direction was completely cockeyed we were sticking to the trail I had been over twice before.

“We’re heading straight for the house, aren’t we?” I asked.

For reply I got only a grunt.

For the first two hundred yards or so after entering the woods it was a steady climb, not steep, and then a leveling off for another couple hundred of yards to the start of the easy long descent to the edge of the Birchvale manicured grounds. It was at about the middle of the level stretch that Hebe suddenly went crazy. She dashed abruptly to one side, off the trail, jerking Leeds so that he had to dance to keep his feet, then whirled and came back into him, with a high thin quavering noise not at all like what she had said before.