the swift inspection, Laddie’s eyes rested again on the Mistress. For an
instant, he stood, looking at her, in that mildly polite curiosity which
held no hint of personal interest.
Then, all at once, his plumy tail began to wave. Into his sad eyes
sprang a flicker of warm friendliness. Unbidden—oblivious of every one
else—he trotted across to where the Mistress sat. He put one tiny white
paw in her lap; and stood thus, looking up lovingly into her face, tail
awag, eyes shining.
“There’s no question whose dog he’s going to be,” laughed the Master.
“He’s elected you,—by acclamation.”
The Mistress caught up into her arms the half-grown youngster, petting
his silken head, running her white fingers through his shining mahogany
coat; making crooning little friendly noises to him. Lad forgot he was a
dignified and stately pocket-edition of a collie. Under this spell, he
changed in a second to an excessively loving and nestling and adoring
puppy.
“Just the same,” interposed the Master, “we’ve been stung. I wanted a
dog to guard the Place and to be a menace to burglars and all that sort
of thing. And they’ve sent us a Teddy-Bear. I think I’ll ship him back
and get a grown one. What sort of use is—?”
“He is going to be all those things,” eagerly prophesied the Mistress.
“And a hundred more. See how he loves to have me pet him! And,—look—he’s
learned, already, to shake hands, and—”
“Fine!” applauded the Master. “So when it comes our turn to be visited
by this motor-Raffles, the puppy will shake hands with him, and register
love of petting; and the burly marauder will be so touched by Lad’s
friendliness that he’ll not only spare our house but lead an upright
life ever after. I—”
"Don’t send him back!" she pleaded. “He’ll grow up, soon, and—”
"And if only the courteous burglars will wait till he’s a couple of
years old," suggested the Master, “he—”
Set gently on the floor by the Mistress, Laddie had crossed to where the
Master stood. The man, glancing down, met the puppy’s gaze. For an
instant he scowled at the miniature watchdog, so ludicrously different
from the ferocious brute he had expected. Then,—for some queer
reason,—he stooped and ran his hand roughly over the tawny coat, letting
it rest at last on the shapely head that did not flinch or wriggle at
his touch.
“All right,” he decreed. “Let him stay. He’ll be an amusing pet for you,
anyhow. And his eye has the true thoroughbred expression,—‘the look of
eagles.’ He may amount to something after all. Let him stay. We’ll take
a chance on burglars.”
So it was that Lad came to the Place. So it was that he demanded and
received due welcome;—which was ever Lad’s way. The Master had been
right about the pup’s proving “an amusing pet,” for the Mistress.
From that first hour, Lad was never willingly out of her sight. He
had adopted her. The Master, too,—in only a little lesser
wholeheartedness,—he adopted. Toward the rest of the world, from the
first, he was friendly but more or less indifferent.
Almost at once, his owners noted an odd trait in the dog’s nature. He
would of course get into any or all of the thousand mischief-scrapes
which are the heritage of puppies. But, a single reproof was enough to
cure him forever of the particular form of mischief which had just been
chidden. He was one of those rare dogs that learn the Law by instinct;
and that remember for all time a command or a prohibition once given
them.
For example:—On his second day at the Place, he made a furious rush at a
neurotic mother hen and her golden convoy of chicks. The
Mistress,—luckily for all concerned,—was within call. At her sharp
summons the puppy wheeled, midway in his charge, and trotted back to
her. Severely, yet trying not to laugh at his worried aspect, she
scolded Lad for his misdeed.
An hour later, as Lad was scampering ahead of her, past the stables,
they rounded a corner and came flush upon the same nerve-wrecked hen and
her brood. Lad halted in his scamper, with a suddenness that made him
skid. Then, walking as though on eggs, he made an idiotically wide
circle about the feathered dam and her silly chicks. Never thereafter
did he assail any of the Place’s fowls.
It was the same, when he sprang up merrily at a line of laundry,
flapping in alluring invitation from the drying ground lines. A single
word of rebuke,—and thenceforth the family wash was safe from him.
And so on with the myriad perplexing “Don’ts” which spatter the career
of a fun-loving collie pup. Versed in the patience-fraying ways of pups
in general, the Mistress and the Master marvelled and bragged and
praised.
All day and every day, life was a delight to the little dog. He had
friends, everywhere, willing to romp with him. He had squirrels to
chase, among the oaks. He had the lake to splash ecstatically in. He had
all he wanted to eat; and he had all the petting his hungry little heart
could crave.
He was even allowed, with certain restrictions, to come into the
mysterious house itself. Nor, after one defiant bark at a leopardskin
rug, did he molest anything therein. In the house, too, he found a
genuine cave:—a wonderful place to lie and watch the world at large, and
to stay cool in and to pretend he was a wolf. The cave was the deep
space beneath the piano in the music room. It seemed to have a peculiar
charm to Lad. To the end of his days, by the way, this cave was his
chosen resting place. Nor, in his lifetime, did any other dog set foot
therein.
So much for “all day and every day.” But the nights were different.
Lad hated the nights. In the first place, everybody went to bed and left
him alone. In the second, his hard-hearted owners made him sleep on a
fluffy rug in a corner of the veranda instead of in his delectable
piano-cave. Moreover, there was no food at night. And there was nobody
to play with or to go for walks with or to listen to. There was nothing
but gloom and silence and dulness.
When a puppy takes fifty cat-naps in the course of the day, he cannot
always be expected to sleep the night through. It is too much to ask.
And Lad’s waking hours at night were times of desolation and of utter
boredom. True, he might have consoled himself, as does many a lesser
pup, with voicing his woes in a series of melancholy howls. That, in
time, would have drawn plenty of human attention to the lonely
youngster; even if the attention were not wholly flattering.
But Lad did not belong to the howling type. When he was unhappy, he
waxed silence. And his sorrowful eyes took on a deeper woe. By the way,
if there is anything more sorrowful than the eyes of a collie pup that
has never known sorrow, I have yet to see it.
No, Lad could not howl. And he could not hunt for squirrels. For these
enemies of his were not content with the unsportsmanliness of climbing
out of his reach in the daytime, when he chased them; but they added to
their sins by joining the rest of the world,—except Lad,—in sleeping all
night. Even the lake that was so friendly by day was a chilly and
forbidding playfellow on the cool North Jersey nights.
There was nothing for a poor lonely pup to do but stretch out on his rug
and stare in unhappy silence up the driveway, in the impossible hope
that some one might happen along through the darkness to play with him.
At such an hour and in such lonesomeness, Lad would gladly have tossed
aside all prejudices of caste,—and all his natural dislikes,—and would
have frolicked in mad joy with the veriest stranger. Anything was better
than this drear solitude throughout the million hours before the first
of the maids should be stirring or the first of the farmhands report for
work. Yes, night was a disgusting time; and it had not one single
redeeming trait for the puppy.
Lad was not even consoled by the knowledge that he was guarding the
slumbrous house. He was not guarding it. He had not the very remotest
idea what it meant to be a watchdog. In all his five months he had never
learned that there is unfriendliness in the world; or that there is
anything to guard a house against.
True, it was instinctive with him to bark when people came down the
drive, or appeared at the gates without warning. But more than once the
Master had bidden him be silent when a rackety puppy salvo of barking
had broken in on the arrival of some guest. And Lad was still in
perplexed doubt as to whether barking was something forbidden or merely
limited.
One night,—a solemn, black, breathless August night, when half-visible
heat lightning turned the murk of the western horizon to pulses of dirty
sulphur,—Lad awoke from a fitful dream of chasing squirrels which had
never learned to climb.
He sat up on his rug, blinking around through the gloom in the half hope
that some of those non-climbing squirrels might still be in sight. As
they were not, he sighed unhappily and prepared to lay his classic young
head back again on the rug for another spell of night-shortening sleep.
But, before his head could touch the rug, he reared it and half of his
small body from the floor and focused his nearsighted eyes on the
driveway. At the same time, his tail began to wag a thumping welcome.
Now, by day, a dog cannot see so far nor so clearly as can a human. But
by night,—for comparatively short distances,—he can see much better than
can his master. By day or by darkness, his keen hearing and keener scent
make up for all defects of eyesight.
And now three of Lad’s senses told him he was no longer alone in his
tedious vigil. Down the drive, moving with amusing slowness and silence,
a man was coming. He was on foot. And he was fairly well dressed.
Dogs,—the foremost snobs in creation,—are quick to note the difference
between a well-clad and a disreputable stranger.
Here unquestionably was a visitor:—some such man as so often came to the
Place and paid such flattering attention to the puppy. No longer need
Lad be bored by the solitude of this particular night. Some one was
coming towards the house and carrying a small bag under his arm. Some
one to make friends with. Lad was very happy.
Deep in his throat a welcoming bark was born. But he stilled it. Once,
when he had barked at the approach of a stranger, the stranger had gone
away. If this stranger were to go away, all the night’s fun would go
with him. Also, no later than yesterday, the Master had scolded Lad for
barking at a man who had called. Wherefore the dog held his peace.
Getting to his feet and stretching himself, fore and aft, in true collie
fashion, the pup gambolled up the drive to meet the visitor.
The man was feeling his way through the pitch darkness, groping
cautiously; halting once or twice for a smoulder of lightning to
silhouette the house he was nearing. In a wooded lane, a quarter mile
away, his lightless motor car waited.
Lad trotted up to him, the tiny white feet noiseless in the soft dust of
the drive. The man did not see him, but passed so close to the dog’s
hospitably upthrust nose that he all but touched it.
Only slightly rebuffed at such chill lack of cordiality, Lad fell in
behind him, tail awag, and followed him to the porch. When the guest
should ring the bell, the Master or one of the maids would come to the
door. There would be lights and talk; and perhaps Laddie himself might
be allowed to slip in to his beloved cave.
But the man did not ring. He did not stop at the door at all. On tiptoe
he skirted the veranda to the old-fashioned bay windows at the south
side of the living room;—windows with catches as old-fashioned and as
simple to open as themselves.
Lad padded along, a pace or so to the rear;—still hopeful of being
petted or perhaps even romped with. The man gave a faint but promising
sign of intent to romp, by swinging his small and very shiny brown bag
to and fro as he walked. Thus ever did the Master swing Lad’s precious
canton flannel doll before throwing it for him to retrieve. Lad made a
tentative snap at the bag, his tail wagging harder than ever. But he
missed it. And, in another moment the man stopped swinging the bag and
tucked it under his arm again as he began to mumble with a bit of steel.
There was the very faintest of clicks. Then, noiselessly the window slid
upward. A second fumbling sent the wooden inside shutters ajar. The man
worked with no uncertainty. Ever since his visit to the Place, a week
earlier, behind the ægis of a big and bright and newly forged
telephone-inspector badge, he had carried in his trained memory the
location of windows and of obstructing furniture and of the primitive
small safe in the living room wall, with its pitifully pickable
lock;—the safe wherein the Place’s few bits of valuable jewelry and
other compact treasures reposed at night.
Lad was tempted to follow the creeping body and the fascinatingly
swinging bag indoors. But his one effort to enter the house,—with muddy
paws,—by way of an open window, had been rebuked by the Lawgivers. He
had been led to understand that really well-bred little dogs come in by
way of the door; and then only on permission.
So he waited, doubtfully, at the veranda edge; in the hope that his new
friend might reappear or that the Master might perhaps want to show off
his pup to the caller, as so often the Master was wont to do.
Head cocked to one side, tulip ears alert, Laddie stood listening. To
the keenest human ears the thief’s soft progress across the wide living
room to the wall-safe would have been all but inaudible. But Lad could
follow every phase of it;—the cautious skirting of each chair; the
hesitant pause as a bit of ancient furniture creaked; the halt in front
of the safe; the queer grinding noise, muffled but persevering, at the
lock; then the faint creak of the swinging iron door, and the deft
groping of fingers.
Soon, the man started back toward the paler oblong of gloom which marked
the window’s outlines from the surrounding black. Lad’s tail began to
wag again. Apparently, this eccentric person was coming out, after all,
to keep him company. Now, the man was kneeling on the window-seat. Now,
in gingerly fashion, he reached forward and set the small bag down on
the veranda; before negotiating the climb across the broad seat,—a climb
that might well call for the use of both his hands.
Lad was entranced. Here was a game he understood. Thus, more than once,
had the Mistress tossed out to him his flannel doll, as he had stood in
pathetic invitation on the porch, looking in at her as she read or
talked. She had laughed at his wild tossings and other maltreatments of
the limp doll. He had felt he was scoring a real hit. And this hit he
decided to repeat.
Snatching up the swollen little satchel, almost before it left the
intruder’s hand, Lad shook it, joyously, revelling in the faint clink
and jingle of the contents. He backed playfully away; the bag-handle
swinging in his jaws. Crouching low, he wagged his tail in ardent
invitation to the stranger to chase him and to get back the satchel.
Thus did the Master romp with Lad when the flannel doll was the prize of
their game. And Lad loved such races.
Yes, the stranger was accepting the invitation. The moment he had
crawled out on the veranda he reached down for the bag. As it was not
where he thought he had left it, he swung his groping hand forward in a
half-circle, his fingers sweeping the floor.
Make that enticing motion, directly in front of a playful collie
pup;—especially if he has something he doesn’t want you to take from
him;—and watch the effect.
Instantly, Lad was athrill with the spirit of the game. In one scurrying
backward jump, he was off the veranda and on the lawn, tail vibrating,
eyes dancing; satchel held tantalisingly towards its would-be possessor.
The light sound of his body touching ground reached the man. Reasoning
that the sweep of his own arm had somehow knocked the bag off the porch,
he ventured off the edge of the veranda and flashed a swathed ray of his
pocket light along the ground in search of it.
The flashlight’s lens was cleverly muffled; in a way to give forth but a
single subdued finger of illumination. That one brief glimmer was enough
to show the thief a right impossible sight. The glow struck answering
lights from the polished sides of the brown bag. The bag was hanging in
air some six inches above the grass and perhaps five feet away from him.
Then he saw it swing frivolously to one side and vanish in the night.
The astonished man had seen more. Feeble was the flashlight’s shrouded
rag—too feeble to outline against the night the small dark body behind
the shining brown bag. But that same ray caught and reflected back to
the incredulous beholder two splashes of pale fire;—glints from a pair
of deep-set collie-eyes.
As the bag disappeared, the eerie fire-points were gone. The thief all
but dropped his flashlight. He gaped in nervous dread; and sought vainly
to account for the witchwork he had witnessed.
He had plenty of nerve. He had plenty of experience along his chosen
line of endeavour. But while a crook may control his nerve, he cannot
make it phlegmatic or steady. Always, he must be conscious of holding it
in check, as a clever driver checks and steadies and keeps in subjection
a plunging horse. Let the vigilance slacken, and there is a runaway.
Now this particular marauder had long ago keyed his nerve to the chance
of interruption from some gun-brandishing householder; and to the
possible pursuit of police; and to the need of fighting or of fleeing.
But all his preparations had not taken into account this newest
emergency. He had not steeled himself to watch unmoved the gliding away
of a treasure-satchel, apparently moving of its own will; nor the
shimmer of two greenish sparks in the air just above it. And, for an
instant, the man had to battle against a craven desire to bolt.
Lad, meanwhile, was having a beautiful time. Sincerely, he appreciated
the playful grab his nocturnal friend had made in his general direction.
Lad had countered this, by frisking away for another five or six feet,
and then wheeling about to face once more his playfellow and to await
the next move in the blithe gambol. The pup could see tolerably well, in
the darkness;—quite well enough to play the game his guest had devised.
And of course, he had no way of knowing that the man could not see
equally well.
Shaking off his momentary terror, the thief once more pressed the button
of his flashlight; swinging the torch in a swift semicircle and
extinguishing it at once; lest the dim glow be seen by any wakeful
member of the family.
That one quick sweep revealed to his gaze the shiny brown bag a
half-dozen feet ahead of him, still swinging several inches above
ground. He flung himself forward at it; refusing to believe he also saw
that queer double glow of pale light, just above. He dived for the
satchel with the speed and the accuracy of a football tackle. And that
was all the good it did him.
Perhaps there is something in nature more agile and dismayingly elusive
than a romping young collie. But that “something” is not a mortal man.
As the thief sprang, Lad sprang in unison with him; darting to the left
and a yard or so backward. He came to an expectant standstill once more;
his tail wildly vibrating, his entire furry body tingling with the glad
excitement of the game. This Sportive visitor of his was a veritable
godsend. If only he could be coaxed into coming to play with him every
night—!
But presently he noted that the other seemed to have wearied of the
game. After plunging through the air and landing on all fours with his
grasping hands closing on nothingness, the man had remained thus, as if
dazed, for a second or so. Then he had felt the ground all about him.
Then, bewildered, he had scrambled to his feet. Now he was standing,
moveless, his lips working.
Yes, he seemed to be tired of the lovely game—and just when Laddie was
beginning to enter into the full spirit of it. Once in a while, the
Mistress or the Master stopped playing, during the romps with the
flannel doll. And Laddie had long since hit on a trick for reviving
their interest. He employed this ruse now.
As the man stood, puzzled and scared, something brushed very
lightly,—even coquettishly,—against his knuckles. He started in nervous
fright. An instant later, the same thing brushed his knuckles again,
this time more insistently. The man, in a spurt of fear-driven rage,
grabbed at the invisible object. His fingers slipped along the smooth
sides of the bewitched bag that Lad was shoving invitingly at him.
Brief as was the contact, it was long enough for the thief’s sensitive
finger tips to recognise what they touched. And both hands were brought
suddenly into play, in a mad snatch for the prize. The ten avid fingers
missed the bag; and came together with clawing force. But, before they
met, the finger tips of the left hand telegraphed to the man’s brain
that they had had momentary light experience with something hairy and
warm—something that had slipped, eel-like, past them into the
night;—something that most assuredly was no satchel, but _alive_!
The man’s throat contracted, in gagging fright. And, as before, fear
scourged him to feverish rage.
Recklessly he pressed the flashlight’s button; and swung the muffled bar
of light in every direction. In his other hand he levelled the pistol he
had drawn. This time the shaded ray revealed to him not only his bag,
but,—vaguely,—the Thing that held it.
He could not make out what manner of creature it was which gripped the
satchel’s handle and whose eyes pulsed back greenish flares into the
torch’s dim glow. But it was an animal of some kind;—distorted and
formless in the wavering finger of blunted light, but still an animal.
Not a ghost.
And fear departed. The intruder feared nothing mortal. The mystery in
part explained, he did not bother to puzzle out the remainder of it.
Impossible as it seemed, his bag was carried by some living thing. All
that remained for him was to capture the thing, and recover his bag. The
weak light still turned on, he gave chase.
Lad’s spirits arose with a bound. His ruse had succeeded. He had
reawakened in this easily-discouraged chum a new interest in the game.
And he gambolled across the lawn, fairly wriggling with delight. He did
not wish to make his friend lose interest again. So instead of dashing
off at full speed, he frisked daintily, just out of reach of the clawing
hand.
And in this pleasant fashion the two playfellows covered a hundred yards
of ground. More than once, the man came within an inch of his quarry.
But always, by the most imperceptible spurt of speed, Laddie arranged to
keep himself and his dear satchel from capture.
Then, in no time at all, the game ended; and with it ended Lad’s baby
faith in the friendliness and trustworthiness of all human nature.
Realising that the sound of his own stumbling running feet and the
intermittent flashes of his torch might well awaken some light sleeper
in the house, the thief resolved on a daring move. This creature in
front of him,—dog or bear or goat, or whatever it was,—was uncatchable.
But by sending a bullet through it, he could bring the animal to a
sudden and permanent stop.
Then, snatching up his bag and running at top speed, he himself could
easily win clear of the Place before any one of the household should
appear. And his car would be a mile away before the neighbourhood could
be aroused. Fury at the weird beast and the wrenching strain on his own
nerves lent eagerness to his acceptance of the idea.
He reached back again for his pistol, whipped it out, and, coming to a
standstill, aimed at the pup. Lad, waiting only to bound over an
obstruction in his path, came to a corresponding pause, not ten feet
ahead of his playmate.
It was an easy shot. Yet the bullet went several inches above the
obligingly waiting dog’s back. Nine men out of ten, shooting by
moonlight or by flashlight, aim too high. The thief had heard this old
marksman-maxim fifty times. But, like most hearers of maxims, he had
forgotten it at the one time in his speckled career when it might have
been of any use to him.
He had fired. He had missed. In another second, every sleeper in the
house and in the gate-lodge would be out of bed. His night’s work was a
blank, unless—
With a bull rush he hurled himself forward at the interestedly waiting
Lad. And, as he sprang, he fired again. Then several things happened.