When “the reek and the riot of night is done,”
certain selected wolves may be fit to be welcomed indoors.
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WOLF
It was Harry Decant who started it. There is no use his trying to dodge the responsibility for starting it, for that, at least, is a matter of record. He may or may not have been a thoughtless pawn in the coldly scientific hands of Amos Slizer; but the fact remains that he was the one who first dragged David off to a doctor, he was the one who found out about Amos’ private resort, and—so Harry said—talked that eccentric genius into accepting them as guests. And, certainly the most important point of all, it was he who managed their joint introduction to Leona.
It was the introduction that really started things off. Harry and David were sitting on the dock, Harry fishing and David day-dreaming wistfully of meat—thick, juicy steaks, by preference; or, failing that, any kind of solid food that would not exhibit a mad urge to retrace its steps the minute it completed the pleasant journey to his stomach. The Minnesota woods were basking pleasantly in the summer sunshine and faintly over the water came the embattled voices of Amos and that rugged stone wall of scientific conservatism, Angus McCloud, who were ostensibly fishing from a boat. So lay the scene, and David was finding it, in spite of the breakfast which had recently deserted him, all rather comfortable.
He was brought back to reality by the voice of Harry murmuring with admiration in his ear.
“—A super babe.”
“Huh?” responded David absent-mindedly.
“Look!” demanded Harry, digging his elbow into David’s ribs. “—Coming down the path.”
Wearily, David turned his head toward the rutted trail that led down from the slope on which the guest cabins perched. Super babes might be all very well to look at, but at the moment they were running a poor second to day-dreams of tenderloin.
“Where?” he asked.
But Harry had already scrambled to his feet; and David, finding the super babe was not on the path, but already stepping on the shore side of the dock, automatically followed him. So it was, that what with his own abstraction and the confusion attendant on getting to his feet, he did not actually get a good look at Leona until they were standing almost face to face.
What he saw was a lissome redhead in scarlet bathing suit. She was tall, easily as tall as Harry—which made her just about even with David’s chin and her eyes were as green as the summer woods. At the sight of David she stopped dead, and the two of them stood, transfixed, staring at each other.
Meanwhile, with the ease of long practice, Harry had charged blithely into the business of making himself acquainted.
“Well, well!” he said, heartily. “And, well! You must be one of our fellow guests. Let me extend the hand of friendship and exchange names. I am Harry Decant, and this long, dyspeptic-looking character with the ugly face and large hands is known as David Muncy.”
He jogged David with an elbow as a signal to speak up, but the effort was lost. For, suddenly, at the moment of finding himself face to face with the redhead, David had become completely lost in a welter of reactions similar to nothing he had experienced before. His throat had gone dry. His body was tense. The little hairs on the back of his neck had risen tinglingly, and he was possessed of a sudden overwhelming urge to sniff at the newcomer.
“David!” said Harry, jogging him again. “Say hello to the lady.”
“Sniff!” sniffed David audibly, leaning forward.
“Dave!” cried Harry.
The redhead drew back half a step, curled her upper lip away from one dainty tooth and snarled delicately.
“Dave!” repeated Harry, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back. With a start, David came to himself. The odd sensations disappeared in a wave of embarrassment, and he drew back in his turn.
“Excuse me,” he mumbled, extending an awkward paw. “I’m glad to meet you.”
Cautiously, the girl took it.
“How do you do?” she said in a warm contralto, “I’m Leona Parr, Dr. Slizer’s secretary.” A feeling of warm pleasure spread over David. He shook her hand warmly. She smiled up at him.
“I’m up here for my health,” he said, still holding onto her hand.
“Really,” said Leona. “That’s too bad.”
“Yes,” said David, blissfully, “I can’t eat solid food.”
“How terrible.”
“Yes.”
“Hey!” said Harry.
They both turned toward him.
“I’ve got a hand too,” he said.
“Oh. Sorry,” said David. He thrust Leona’s hand rather ungraciously into Harry’s. She shook it absent-mindedly.
“It comes from overwork,” said David.
“It does?” asked Leona.
“Yes. I was working on my Doctor’s thesis in Elizabethan prose and I guess I overdid it.”
“You should take better care of yourself.”
“Hey!” said Harry.
“I will.”
“Yes, do.”
“I guess I might as well shove off,” said Harry.
“I keep dreaming of meat.”
“Poor thing.”
“Thick, juicy cuts of meat.”
“Well, goodbye,” said Harry.
“Goodbye,” said Leona absently. “Fresh meat—raw.”
“Raw?” echoed David. “Oh—goodbye, Harry.”
“Bah!” said Harry, stamping off.
“Much better than cooked,” said Leona.
“Do you really think so?” asked David. “I once had an uncle who—”
When the sun went down on the lake, they were still on the dock, and still talking. Leona’s bathing suit was still dry.
“Well?” said Harry that evening, in the cabin they shared jointly.
“Well what?” asked David.
“I have,” said Harry, sitting up in his bunk and pointing a deliberate finger at David, “known you for twelve years. In all that time, you have been, if you will pardon the expression, a schlump where women are concerned. I say this not to cast any reflection on you, for you are the scholarly type and everyone knows that scholars have a reputation for goggling, stammering, and stumbling in social situations. But, consider, I—” Harry thumped himself emphatically on the chest—“have been working my tongue to the bone for you these last twelve years. If we needed dates, I got both of them. If the conversation lagged over the doughnuts and coffee, I spoke for both of us, filling the air with light chatter and careless banter. And now, all of a sudden, you seem to have blossomed out with this Leona female and become an operator. And I think you owe me an explanation. Have you been goldbricking in lazy treacherous fashion all these years? Or have you suddenly been struck by lightning? Or—” Harry looked at him suspiciously—“what?”
David turned away from the moon he had been contemplating through the cabin window.
“Harry,” he said. “Do you know what brought us here?”
“An invitation from Dr. Slizer,” answered Harry. “Arranged by yours truly.”
“No, Harry,” David contradicted with gentle patience. “That’s what you think it was. But actually it was fate.”
“Fate?”
“Fate,” said David, turning back to the window, “that which o’ersees the affairs of men, and turning, twists them to its goals.”
“What?” yelped Harry. “Fate? Goals? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, that,” for a second David looked his normal shy self. “It’s a line from a poem I was writing this evening.”
“It sounds like Shakespeare,” said Harry, suspiciously.
“It does not sound like Shakespeare,” answered David indignantly, “and anyway, that’s beside the point. The point is, Fate had brought Leona and myself together. I almost proposed on the dock tonight. I’ll do it tomorrow. We can drive to the nearest Justice and be married in the afternoon. Will you be my best man, Harry?”
“Good God!” cried Harry. “You’ve been struck by lightning!”
He leaped out of his bunk, a startling figure in maroon pajamas.
“Stay here,” he begged. “Promise me you’ll stay here until I get back, Dave.”
“The world is all one to me tonight,” answered David, loftily.
“Well, just stay here,” said Harry, and rushed out into the gloom.
The resort was plunged in that absolute blackness peculiar to forested country at night; but the lights of the windows up at the owner’s lodge stood out clearly. With only an occasional yelp or curse as his bare feet came into painful contact with stones or twigs, Harry plowed through the darkness to the front door of the lodge and hammered upon it.
“Come in,” rasped the irascible voice of Amos Slizer, and Harry burst in to find the two savants arguing over and around a bottle of scotch in the kitchen.
“Have a drink and get your breath back,” said Angus, hospitably, offering the bottle, which, incidentally, belonged to Amos.
Harry grabbed at it and poured a couple of good-sized swallows down his throat by way of lubrication.
“That’s fine,” said Angus, approvingly, “and now that you’ve got your breath back—”
“I don’t know what to think—” began Harry, wildly.
“Now that you’ve got your breath back,” repeated Angus, smoothly, folding his knotted hands together, “perhaps you’ll bear me out on a small point of my discussion with Amos, here.”
“But David—” began Harry.
“Tush and foosh, David,” interrupted McCloud, whose accent betrayed him only when he became irritated. “This is important. Our good friend Amos here—” he leered at the other, who snorted, “has been reading a lot of old wives’ tales, superstitions and the like. And the result is, they’ve driven him clear out of his head. They’ve addled his brains so much he’s come up with what the poor soul thinks is a whole new division of knowledge.”
“Pay no attention to his phraseology, Decant!” snapped Amos. “He’s trying to prejudice you.”
“But—” said Harry.
“The result is,” continued McCloud, laying a heavy hand on Harry’s arm, “that he’s taken to believing in witches and ghosts and the like and maintaining that they follow purely natural laws of their own order.”
* * *
END OF SAMPLE
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