The Seventh Noon Part 46

"d.i.c.k--is this you, d.i.c.k?"

Again the moist tongue reached for his fingers.

Donaldson picked him up.

"Sandy," he cried, "answer me."

The dog closed his eyes as though expecting a blow.

Donaldson dropped him. The animal crawled away beneath the sofa.

Donaldson felt more alone that minute than he had ever felt in all his life. It was as though he sat there, the sole living thing in the broad universe. There was nothing left but the blinking eyes of the bottles dancing in still brisker joy. He could not endure it.

Moving across the room he knelt by the sofa and tried to coax the frightened animal out again.

"Sandy. Come, Sandy," he called.

There was no show of life. He snapped his fingers. He groped beneath the old lounge. Then, in a frenzy of fear, lest it had all been an apparition, he swung the sofa into the middle of the room. The dog followed beneath it, but he caught a glimpse of him. He pushed the sofa back to the wall and began to coax again.

"Come out, Sandy. I 'll not hurt you. Come, Sandy."

There was a scratching movement and then the tip of a hot, dry nose appeared.

"Come. That 's a good dog. Come."

He could hear the tail vigorously thumping the floor, but the head appeared only inch by inch. Donaldson held his breath.

"Come," he whispered.

Slowly, with the sly pretension that it demanded a tremendous physical effort, the dog emerged and stood shivering beneath the big hand which smoothed its back with cooing words of a.s.surance.

"Why, I was n't going to hurt you, Sandy," whispered Donaldson, finding comfort in p.r.o.nouncing the name. "I was n't going to hurt you. We 're old friends. Don't you remember, Sandy? Don't you remember the night I held you? Don't you remember that, Sandy?"

The dog looked up at him moistening its own dry mouth. In every detail this was the same dog he had held upon his knee while arguing with Barstow. He made another test.

"Mike," he called.

In response the pup wagged his tail good naturedly and with more confidence now.

Donaldson caught his breath. Locked within that tiny brute brain was the secret of what waited for him on the morrow: love and the glories of a big life, or death and oblivion. The answer was there behind those moist eyes. But if he could reach Barstow--

Here was a new hope. He could ask him if this was Sandy, and so spare himself the terrors of the night to come. He had the right to do that as long as he abided by the decision. There was a telephone here, and he knew that Barstow lived in an up-town apartment house, so that some one was sure to be in. He found the number in the battered, chemical-stained directory, and put in his call. It seemed an hour before he received his reply.

"No, sir, Mr. Barstow is away. Any message?"

"Where has he gone?" asked Donaldson dully.

"He's off on a yachting cruise, sir."

It would have been impossible for him to withdraw more completely out of reach.

"When do you expect him back?"

"I don't know, sir. He said he might be gone a day or two or perhaps a week."

"And he left?"

"Last Friday--very unexpectedly."

Donaldson hung up the receiver, which had grown in his hand as heavy as lead. He turned back to the dog, who had jumped upon the sofa and was now cuddled into a corner. He lifted his head and began to tremble again as Donaldson came nearer.

"Still afraid of me?" he asked with a sad smile. "Why, there is n't enough of me left to be afraid of, pup. There 's only about a day of me left and we ought to be friends during that time."

He nestled his head down upon the warm body. The dog licked his hair affectionately. The kindness went to his heart. The attention was soothing, restful. He responded to it the more, because this dog was to him the one thing left in the world alive. He snuggled closer to the silky hide and continued to talk, finding comfort in the sound of his own voice and the insensate response of the warm head.

"We ought to be good comrades--you and I--Sandy, because we 're all alone here in this old rat trap. When a man's alone, Sandy, anything else in the world that's alive is his brother. The only thing that counts is being alive. Why, a fly is a better thing than the dead man he crawls over. And if there be a live man, a dead man, and a fly, then the fly and the live man are brothers. So you and I are brothers, and we must fight the devil-eyes in those bottles together."

They danced before him now--yellow, blue, and blood-red. A more perfect semblance of an evil gnome could not be made than the flickering reflection of the sunlight in the bottle of blood-red liquid. It was never still. It skipped from the bottom of the bottle to the top and from one side to the other, as though in drunken ecstasy.

It fascinated Donaldson with the allurement of the gruesome. It was such a restless, scarlet thing! It looked as though it were trying to get out of its prison and in baffled rage was shooting its fangs at the sides, like a bottled viper.

"See it, Sandy? It's trying to get at us. But it can't, if we keep together. It's only when a man's alone that those things have any power. And the little devil knows it. If it were not for you, Sandy, the thing might drive me mad--might make me mad before I had written my letter!"

He sprang to his feet in sudden pa.s.sion, and the dog with all four feet planted stiffly on the sofa gave a sharp bark. This broke the tension at once.

"That's the dog," Donaldson praised him. "When the shadows get too close bark at 'em like that!"

The bellicose att.i.tude of the tiny body brought a smile to Donaldson's mouth. This, too, was like a bromide to shaking nerves.

But in this position the dog did not so closely resemble that other dog which he had held upon his knee. He looked thinner, more angular. His ears were c.o.c.ked like two stiff v-shaped funnels. Now he looked like an older dog. It was more reasonable to suppose, Donaldson realized, that Barstow had two dogs of this same breed than that a dead dog had come to life.

"Sandy!" he called sharply.

The dog wagged his stub-tail with vigor.

"Spike!" he called again.

The tail wagged on with undiminished enthusiasm.

Donaldson pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead.

This was as useless as to try to solve the enigma of the Sphinx. The dog's lips were sealed as tightly as the stone lips; the barrier between his brain and Donaldson's brain was as high as that between the man-chiseled image and the man who chiseled. He was only wasting his time on such a task, time that he should use in the framing of his letter.

He sat down again upon the sofa, took the dog upon his knee, and tried to think. Before him the bottles danced--purple, brown, and blood-red.

He closed his eyes. He would begin his letter like this:

"To the most wonderful woman in all the world."

He would do this because it was true. There was no other woman like her. No other woman would have so helped an old man in his battle with himself; no other woman would have stayed on there alone in that house and would have helped the son in his battle with himself; no other woman would have followed him as she had wished to do and help him fight his battle with himself. But she was the most wonderful woman in the world because of the white courage she had shown in standing before him and telling of her love. The eyes of her--the glory in her hair--the marvel in her cheeks--the smile of her!