I was lying down in the kitchen, near the stove, on an old rug which
Mary-Myrtle had spread for me. She was really a nice girl. My educated
nose informed me that she was kind, young and affectionate. When
she entered the room I used to rear up and place my forepaws on her
shoulders and lick her ears. She liked me. She used to put her arms
around my neck and press against me and give me a smack on the back and
a "Go on with you, can't you see I'm busy?"
I was lying by the stove when Winnie Tompkins entered the kitchen.
Mary-Myrtle was bending over the stove, fussing with a saucepan of
vegetables. I was quietly sniffing with interest the combination of
cooking-smells and the scents from the warm spring afternoon. Winnie
strolled across the kitchen, took his thumb and forefinger and gave her
a hard pinch on her buttock.
"Oh! God!" she shrieked and turned to confront him. "Oh, you!" she
observed. "I thought you'd got over all that!"
He whistled between his teeth, put one tweed-clad arm around her
shoulders and pressed her to him.
"Go on!" she said, in a half-whisper. "I'll call Mrs. Tompkins."
Still whistling, with his free hand he tilted her chin up to his face,
stooped over and kissed her. I could see her hands flutter and press
against his chest for a moment, then relax, then clutch him fiercely,
as her lips thrust against his mouth. I rose and growled.
"Hello!" Winnie exclaimed. "Why if it isn't Ponto? You jealous again,
old boy? We can't have a moralist around here, can we, Myrtle?"
He turned and kissed her again.
I stalked over and stood, rumbling a bit, beside her, ready to attack
if he carried his dalliance beyond decorum.
"Let me go, sir," Myrtle begged in a hoarse whisper.
"Tonight?" he asked, holding her close.
"Yes," she sighed. "I'll come down, sir. Tonight, when the dishes are
done and the house asleep."
He snapped his fingers at me, with an air of assured authority. "Come
on, Ponto," he commanded.
I followed him with murder in my heart, my toe-nails clicking on the
parquet floor, my tail wagging with slow servility. He led the way
upstairs to my wife's bedroom. He tapped on the door.
"Come in," Germaine called. "And here's Ponto!"
I padded across the room to the chaise longue and lay down beside her.
I gave her silk-clad leg a poke with my nose. She smelled lovely.
"Thank you, Ponto," she said courteously.
I rested my head on my paws and looked at Winnie. He absent-mindedly
pulled a cigar out of his pocket, bit off the tip and lighted it,
after spitting the shreds of tobacco in the general direction of the
fireplace. I could feel Germaine go tense.
"I'm so glad you decided not to go to Hartford after all," she remarked
quietly. "It's much nicer for you here. Myrtle and I can take care of
you and see that you have a good rest. Poor darling, you must need one."
Winnie blew a heavy puff of smoke toward her bed-canopy. I could tell
by the way he answered her that he was feeling his way.
"Yeah," he agreed. "I might as well get a sample of this far-famed
suburban home-life you read about."
She jumped up and put her arms around his neck.
"It's not so bad, is it, Winnie?" she asked gently. "You know--I
suppose it's silly to tell such things--but last night I dreamed we
were going to have a baby."
"Good Lord, Jimmie!" he drawled. "I hope not. You know as well as I do
that we aren't the kind of people who have kids. If you think there's
any danger of it, there's a doctor I know in New York who'll put a good
stop to it."
Germaine's hand fluttered helplessly at her breast and her face went
white and peaked. A sharp whiff of the acrid sense of human anger and
fear came from her body. I rose and eyed Winnie steadily. I was careful
not to growl.
"Why, I thought--" she began. "The other night, I mean, it was all
so--What's the matter? What has changed?"
He gave a sort of neighing laugh. "Oh nuts, Jimmie! We aren't the
type. Say it's spring or what-have-you? Just for that are you going to
go through hell just to have a little animal that will go 'Aah-Aah-Aah'
at you?"
Germaine stood up. "Yes," she said. "I am. If that's the way these
things happen, that's what I want. If it doesn't happen I never want
to see you again so long as I live. But if it does, it will be _my_
business, not yours. I want this baby. You loved me the other night.
You needed me. We needed each other. I can't throw that away, like
a--like a dead cigar butt."
He thrust his cigar into the corner of his mouth, a la Churchill. "So
that's the way it is, is it?" he demanded. "Okay, but how am I expected
to know that it wasn't Jerry Rutherford--"
"Oh!" Germaine looked at him in utter, white-lipped silence. "You know
that can't be true."
After a minute she spoke to him quite gently.
"Winnie," she told him, "you know, I think you really ought to go to
the Sanctuary, as you planned. You do need a rest, dear, and it would
be better if you took it there where they have trained attendants and
good doctors. I'll be waiting here till you come back. Do go, darling.
It will do you a world of good. Everything will work out for us all
right now."
"So you want to railroad me to an asylum, eh?" he snarled. "Well, nuts
to that! As far as I'm concerned, we're back on the old basis. You go
your way and I go mine. And no brats, mind you! or I'll call the whole
thing off. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Winnie," Germaine replied, in a small, frightened voice. "You
make yourself perfectly clear."
"Okay," he told her. "Come on, Ponto!"
He had the nerve to snap his fingers at me. Not even when I had him
in the Packard, headed for White Plains and chloroform, had he stood
nearer death, but Germaine's hand--cold and little--rested briefly on
my ears and I mastered my rage.
I followed him into his bedroom and he slammed the door behind me.
"See here, you black son of a bitch," he truthfully addressed me. "You
seem to have made one hell of a mess of my affairs. Oh, I don't suppose
you can understand me now that you're a dog again, but just the same,
for two cents I'd send you to the boneyard. I've still to find out how
much hell you've been raising with my business, but damn it all!!!
Couldn't you _tell_ that it didn't suit my plans to be clubby with
Jimmie?"
I padded loyally across the bedroom and laid my head on his lap. He
milked my ears automatically and I rejoiced, because the more he
thought of me as Ponto the less likely he was to discover my human
personality. I had not yet decided when to kill him.
"Yes, damn it! hound," Winnie continued. "This is one thing the
experts will never know about. It's out of this world. Three weeks as
an involuntary Great Dane, ending up in a shot-gun marriage with a
big brindle bitch named Buglebell III! If you want to know my idea of
shooting ducks in a rain-barrel, that is it. No privacy at all. Just
an old boy writing things down in the stud-book. Jimmie may think I'm
mean but after that experience who wants off-spring, cannon-fodder or
kennel-fodder? I don't. Neither would you, Ponto. I suppose," he added,
"that legally speaking you are the putative father, not me. Gosh! what
an experience!"
He reached over to the night-table and pulled the brandy-bottle out
from the little cupboard, which was neatly fitted out with glasses,
bottle-openers, a syphon and a decanter. He glared accusingly at the
bottle.
"Damn you!" he exclaimed, "It's almost gone. My best brandy! Whoever
told you you could touch my liquor? Oh, well, can't say that I blame
you. Here, I'll let you smell the cork."
He held it out at me and I sniffed it dutifully. I jumped back,
sneezing.
"Not so keen about it, eh?" he demanded gruffly. "Well, just to even up
the score I'll make you drink some."
He grabbed my lower jaw with his free hand and forced my tender lips
against my sharp teeth until I opened my mouth. Then he poured some of
it down my throat. I choked, but got it down.
"Atta dog!" he praised me. "Now you just stick around and you'll see
some fun."
He went out and closed the door, leaving me alone in the darkened room.
An hour or so later, the door reopened and Winnie swaggered in. He
looked slightly more bloated than before and his eyes were glazed with
liquor. He tossed off his clothes, went to the bathroom and took a hot
shower. Then he lighted a cigar and lay on his bed, in his dressing
gown, waiting--
After a while there was a quiet step in the hall and the click of
the door-handle. It was Mary-Myrtle. She was wearing a red flannel
dressing-gown and her hair was done up in a pigtail. She closed the
door behind her and cast an anxious glance over her shoulder in the
direction of the hall.
Tompkins guffawed. "Who? Jimmie?" he demanded. "Not her! She knows
better than to interfere."
Myrtle cast strange little embarrassed glances to right and left and
I noted that her hands were trembling as they fumbled at the buttons
of her dressing-gown. I strolled across to her and sniffed the sharp
perfume of desire on her limbs.
She gave a little squeak. "Oh, Ponto! You gave me such a start." She
turned to Winnie. "Take him away," she said. "It doesn't seem decent
with him watching."
He gave a loose lipped smile and rolled off the bed.
"Ponto," he ordered. "You're de trop. Get the hell out of here!"
He opened the door to the hall and I slunk out into the darkness of
the landing. My toes clicked their way across to the door of my wife's
bedroom. I lay down, on guard, my ear cocked to catch the desperate
stifled sobs of the woman inside.
It was then that I decided that Tompkins must die.