LITMIR.BIZ

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more he would interrupt Alistair to turn to Alec. Although he apparently could not understand Alec’s thoughts at all, he seemed to comprehend perfectly when Alec spoke to Alistair. And within a few days she learned to accept these interruptions, for they speeded up the research they were doing. Alec was almost totally ignorant of the advanced theory with which Alistair worked, but his mind was clear, quick, and very direct. He was no theorist, and that was good. He was one of those rare grease-monkey geniuses, with a grasp that amounted to intuition concerning the laws of cause and effect. Tiny’s reaction to this seemed to be approved. At any rate, the occasions when Alistair lost the track of what Tiny was after happened less and less frequently. Alec instinctively knew just how far to go back, and then how to spot the turning at which they had gone astray. And bit by bit, they began to identify what it was that Tiny was after. As to why—and how—he was after it, Alec’s experience with old Debbil seemed a clue. It certainly was sufficient to keep Alec plugging away at a possible solution to the strange animal’s stranger need.

      “It was down at the sugar mill,” he told Alistair, after he had become fully acquainted with the incredible dog’s action and they were trying to determine the why and the how. “He called me over to the chute where cane is loaded into the conveyors.

      “‘Bahss,’ he told me ‘dat t’ing dere, it not safe, sah.’ And he pointed through the guard over the bull gears that drove the conveyor. ‘Great big everlahstin’ teeth it has, Miss Alistair, a full ten inches long, and it whirlin’ to the drive pinion. It’s old, but strong for good. Debbil, what he saw was a bit o’ play on the pinion shaf’.’

      “‘Now, you’re an old fool,’ I told him.

      “‘No, Bahss,’ he says. ‘Look now, sah, de t’ing wit’ de teet’—dem, it not safe, sah. I mek you see,’ and before I could move meself or let a thought trickle, he opens the guard up and thrus’ his han’ inside! Bull gear, it run right up his arm and nip it off, neat as ever, at the shoulder. I humbly beg your pardon, Miss Alistair.”

      “G-go on,” said Alistair, through her handkerchief.

      “Well, sir, old Debbil was an idiot for true, and he only died the way he lived, rest him. He was old and he was all eaten out with malaria and elephantiasis and the like, that not even Dr. Thetford could save him. But a strange thing happened. As he lay dyin’, with the entire village gathered roun’ the door whisperin’ plans for the wake, he sent to tell me come quickly. Down I run, and for the smile on his face I glad him when I cross the doorstep.”

      As Alec spoke, he was back in the Spanish-wall hut, with the air close under the palm-thatch roof and the glare of the pressure lantern set on the tiny window ledge to give the old man light to die by. Alec’s accent deepened. “‘How you feel, mon?’ I ahsk him. ‘Bahss, I’m a dead man now, but I got a light in mah hey-yud.’

      “‘Tell me, then, Debbil.’

      “‘Bahss, de folk-dem say, ol’ Debbil, him cyahn’t remembah de taste of a mango as he t’row away de skin. Him cyahn’t remembah his own house do he stay away t’ree day.’

      “‘Loose talk, Debbil.’

      “‘True talk, Bahss. Foh de Lahd give me a leaky pot fo’ hol’ ma brains. But Bahss, I do recall one t’ing now, bright an’ clear, and you must know. Bahss, de day I go up the wahtah line, I see a great jumbee in de stones of de Gov’nor Palace dere.’”

      “What’s a jumbee?” asked Mrs. Forsythe.

      “A ghost, ma’am. The Crucians carry a crawlin’ heap of superstitions. Tiny! What eats you, mon?”

      Tiny growled again. Alec and Alistair exchanged a look. “He doesn’t want you to go on.”

      “Listen carefully. I want him to get this. I am his friend. I want to help you help him. I realize that he wants as few people as possible to find out about this thing. I will say nothing to anybody unless and until I have his permission.

      “Well, Tiny?”

      The dog stood restlessly, swinging his great head from Alistair to Alec. Finally he made a sound like an audible shrug, then turned to Mrs. Forsythe.

      “Mother’s part of me,” said Alistair firmly. “That’s the way it’s got to be. No alternative.” She leaned forward. “You can’t talk to us. You can only indicate what you want said and done. I think Alec’s story will help us to understand what you want and help you to get it more quickly. Understand?”

      Tiny gazed at her for a long moment, said “Whuff!” and lay down with his nose between his paws and his eyes fixed on Alec.

      “I think that’s the green light,” said Mrs. Forsythe, “and I might add that most of it was due to my daughter’s conviction that you’re a wonderful fellow.”

      “Mother!”

      “Well, pare me down and call me Spud! They’re both blushing!” said Mrs. Forsythe blatantly.

      “Go on, Alec,” choked Alistair.

      “Thank you. Old Debbil told me a fine tale of the things he had seen at the ruins. A great beast, mind you, with no shape at all, and a face ugly to drive you mad. And about the beast was what he called a ‘feelin’ good.’ He said it was a miracle, but he feared nothing. ‘Wet it was, Bahss, like a slug, an’ de eye it have is whirlin’ an’ shakin’, an’ I standin’ dar feelin’ like a bride at de altar step an’ no fear in me.’ Well, I thought the old man’s mind was wandering, for I knew he was touched. But the story he told was that clear, and never a simple second did he stop to think. Out it all came like a true thing.

      “He said that Tiny walked to the beast and that it curved over him like an ocean wave. It closed over the dog, and Debbil was rooted there the livelong day, still without fear, and feelin’ no smallest desire to move. He had no surprise at all, even at the thing he saw restin’ in the thicket among the old stones.

      “He said it was a submarine, a mighty one as great as the estate house and with no break nor mar in its surface but for the glass part let in where the mouth is on a shark.

      “And then when the sun began to dip, the beast gave a shudderin’ heave and rolled back, and out walked Tiny. He stepped up to Debbil and stood. Then the beast begun to quiver and shake, and Debbil said the air aroun’ him heavied with the work the monster was doing, tryin’ to talk. A cloud formed in his brain, and a voice swept over him. ‘Not a livin’ word, Bahss, nor a sound at all. But it said to forget. It said to leave dis place and forget, sah.’ And the last thing old Debbil saw as he turned away was the beast slumping down, seeming all but dead from the work it had done to speak at all. ‘An’ de cloud leave in mah hey-yud, Bahss, f’om dat time onward. I’m a dead man now, Bahss, but de cloud gone and Debbil know de story.’” Alec leaned back and looked at his hands. “That was all. This must have happened about fifteen months pahst, just before Tiny began to show his strange stripe.” He drew a deep breath and looked up. “Maybe I’m gullible. But I knew the old man too well. He never in this life could invent such a tale. I troubled myself to go up to the Governor’s Palace after the buryin’. I might have been mistaken, but something big had lain in the deepest thicket, for it was crushed into a great hollow place near a hundred foot long. Well, there you are. For what it’s worth, you have the story of a superstitious an’ illiterate old man, at the point of death by violence and many years sick to boot.”

      There was a long silence, and at last Alistair threw her lucent hair back and said, “It isn’t Tiny at all. It’s a…a thing outside Tiny.” She looked at the dog, her eyes wide. “And I don’t even mind.”

      “Neither did Debbil, when he saw it,” said Alec gravely.

      Mrs. Forsythe snapped, “What are we sitting gawking at each other for? Don’t answer; I’ll tell you. All of us can think up a story to fit the facts, and we’re all too self-conscious to come out with it. Any story that fit those facts would really be a killer.”

      “Well said.” Alec grinned. “Would you like to

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