The Rat Race by Jay Franklin (book club books txt) 📕

might as well be philosophical about it. Winnie never dreamed that conditions were not as they had been before the second of April, just as though Frank Jacklin had never existed. The chances were that he would continue to believe that it was all a dream, an hallucination. As for the F.B.I. and Von Bieberstein, putting first things first, that was no longer any of my business. Dogs were not expected to develop patriotism: that luxury was reserved for human beings. All I could do now was to wait my chance. Perhaps the time would come when I could repossess Winnie Tompkins' body. Then, by George! I would not waste one minute but would have him chloroformed at once. In the meantime, my cue was to be a good dog.

There was a shrill whistle from the house.

"Ponto!" Winnie's voice called. "Come here, Ponto. That's a good dog! Come on, Ponto! That's a good dog!"

I ran, wagging my tail, to the open door and on all fours entered the house I had left only two hours before as its proud master.

CHAPTER 34

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.

CHAPTER 35

My opportunity to settle the account did not present itself for more than twenty-four hours. Early the following morning, Myrtle was kicked out and crept upstairs. Winnie slammed the door and snored like a hog until ten o'clock—at which time he stamped downstairs and roared for breakfast.

After he had eaten, he went to his room again, shutting me outside, and dressed himself carefully in the manly tweeds he had been wearing on that first day in the Pond Club. He drove to the station—I assumed—leaving me behind at Pook's Hill with two unhappy women. He did not return that evening at all and it wasn't until late the following morning—that would be Saturday I figured, although I was already losing my human preoccupation with time—that I recognized the crunch of the Packard's tires on the graveled drive. I was standing just inside the door as I heard his key fumbling in the lock.

It was Winnie and he was drunk.

"Oh, hullo, Ponto," he remarked thickly. "So you're the welcoming committee. Come on up with me, boy, and hear the dirt."

I followed his uncertain steps upstairs and into the bedroom. It would not be long now.

"Ponto!" he announced. "Good old Ponto, Ponto! I'm going to tell you a great secret. You won't tell anybody about it, will you? You can't."

I lay on the rug and panted at him.

"Yes, Ponto, if you're