“But, colleague, it’s so simple.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Ozymandias the Great drew himself up to his full lack of height. “Colleague, you are about to see it!” Yoggoth tugged warningly at his coattails. “Leave me alone, Wolf. An aspersion has been cast!”
Fergus returned from the wings dragging a soiled length of rope. “This do?”
“Admirably.”
“What goes?” the casting director demanded.
“Shh!” said Gloria. “Oh—”
She beamed worshipfully on Ozymandias, whose chest swelled to the point of threatening the security of his buttons. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he announced, in the manner of one prepared to fill a vast amphitheater with his voice. “You are about to behold Ozymandias the Great in the Indian Rope Trick! Of course,” he added conversationally, “I haven’t got a small boy to chop into mincemeat, unless perhaps one of you— No? Well, we’ll try it without. Not quite so impressive, though. And will you stop yapping, Wolf?”
“I thought his name was Yogi,” said Fergus.
“Yoggoth. But since he’s part wolf on his mother’s side—Now, quiet, all of you!”
He had been coiling the rope as he spoke. Now he placed the coil in the center of the stage, where it lurked like a threatening rattler. He stood beside it and deftly, professionally, went through a series of passes and mumblings so rapidly that even the superhumanly sharp eyes and ears of Wolf-Yoggoth could not follow them.
The end of the rope detached itself from the coil, reared in the air, turned for a moment like a head uncertain where to strike, then shot straight up until all the rope was uncoiled. The lower end rested a good inch above the stage.
Gloria gasped. The casting director drank hurriedly. Fergus, for some reason, stared curiously at the wolf.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen—oh, hang it, I do wish I had a boy to carve—Ozymandias the Great will ascend this rope into that land which only the users of the rope may know. Onward and upward! Be right back,” he added reassuringly to Wolf.
His plump hands grasped the rope above his head and gave a little jerk. His knees swung up and clasped about the hempen pillar. And up he went, like a monkey on a stick, up and up and up—until suddenly he was gone.
Just gone. That was all there was to it. Gloria was beyond even saying “Oh.” The casting director sat his beautiful flannels down on the filthy floor and gaped. Fergus swore softly and melodiously. And Wolf felt a premonitory prickling in his spine.
The stage door opened, admitting two men in denim pants and work shirts. “Hey!” said the first. “Where do you think you are?”
“We’re from Metropolis Pictures,” the casting director started to explain, scrambling to his feet.
“I don’t care if you’re from Washington, we gotta clear this stage. There’s movies here tonight. Come on, Joe, help me get ’em out. And that pooch, too.”
“You can’t, Fred,” said Joe reverently, and pointed. His voice sank to an awed whisper. “That’s Gloria Garton—”
“So it is. Hi, Miss Garton. Cripes, wasn’t that last one of yours a stinkeroo!”
“Your public, darling,” Fergus murmured.
“Come on!” Fred shouted. “Out of here. We gotta clean up. And you, Joe! Strike that rope!”
Before Fergus could move, before Wolf could leap to the rescue, the efficient stagehand had struck the rope and was coiling it up.
Wolf stared up into the flies. There was nothing up there. Nothing at all. Someplace beyond the end of that rope was the only man on earth he could trust to say Absarka! for him; and the way down was cut off forever.
Wolfe Wolf sprawled on the floor of Gloria Garton’s boudoir and watched that vision of volupty change into her most fetching negligee.
The situation was perfect. It was the fulfillment of all his dearest dreams. The only flaw was that he was still in a wolf’s body.
Gloria turned, leaned over, and chucked him under the snout. “Wuzzum a cute wolf dog, wuzzum?”
Wolf could not restrain a snarl.
“Doesn’t um like Gloria to talk baby talk? Um was a naughty wolf, yes, um was.”
It was torture. Here you are in your best-beloved’s hotel room, all her beauty revealed to your hungry eyes, and she talks baby talk to you! Wolf had been happy at first when Gloria suggested that she might take over the care of her costar pending the reappearance of his trainer—for none of them was quite willing to admit that “Mr. O. Z. Manders” might truly and definitely have vanished—but he was beginning to realize that the situation might bring on more torment than pleasure.
“Wolves are funny,” Gloria observed. She was more talkative when alone, with no need to be cryptically fascinating. “I knew a Wolfe once, only that was his name. He was a man. And he was a funny one.”
Wolf felt his heart beating fast under his gray fur. To hear his own name on Gloria’s warm lips…but before she could go on to tell her pet how funny Wolfe was, her maid rapped on the door.
“A Mr. O’Breen to see you, madam.”
“Tell him to go ’way.”
“He says it’s important, and he does look, madam, as though he might make trouble.”
“Oh, all right.” Gloria rose and wrapped her negligee more respectably about her. “Come on, Yog— No, that’s a silly name. I’m going to call you Wolfie. That’s cute. Come on, Wolfie, and protect me from the big, bad detective.”
Fergus O’Breen was pacing the sitting room with a certain vicious deliberateness in his strides. He broke off and stood still as Gloria and the wolf entered.
“So?” he observed tersely. “Reinforcements?”
“Will I need them?” Gloria cooed.
“Look, light of my love life.” The glint in the green eyes was cold and deadly. “You’ve been playing games, and whatever their nature, there’s one thing they’re not. And that’s cricket.”
Gloria gave him a languid smile. “You’re amusing, Fergus.”
“Thanks. I doubt, however, if your activities are.”
“You’re still a little boy playing cops and robbers. And what boogeyman are you after now?”
“Ha-ha,” said Fergus politely. “And you know the answer to that question better than I do. That’s why I’m here.”
Wolf was puzzled. This conversation meant nothing to him. And yet he sensed a tension of danger in the air as clearly as though he could smell it.