A Werewolf Among Us

Rainy smiled. It was the first time St. Cyr had witnessed any genuine humor in the man. Rainy said, 'And what in hell do you want me to do with the bloodhounds?'

St. Cyr sat up straight, 'They've arrived?'

'Yes,' Rainy said. 'What a hideous name for such gentle-looking creatures. What are they for?'

'A little-known, seldom-used method of tracking fugitives,' St. Cyr told him. 'They became pass? when limited-response mechanicals became the big rage in police work.'

'You're going to put them onto the wolf?'

'I hope so. I sent for them three days ago, when Dane and I came back from visiting the gypsies. They're from off-planet, though out of this same solar system. Great expense getting them here, but it's Jubal's money being spent.' He pushed himself to the edge of the bed and got to his feet. A dull flutter of pain flowed down his left side, most of it masked by whatever narcotics the autodoc had given him.

'Here, now!' Rainy said, standing, reaching to give him a steadying hand. 'As I understand it, you're confined to the bed.'

'Not with the hounds here and some daylight left,' St. Cyr said.

'You're in no condition to—'

'Look, Otto, you know as well as I how an autodoc can knit you up. I've got bulky speedheal bandages on here. In two days I'll have nothing to show for this but a white scar.'

Reluctantly, Rainy agreed.

'Good. Now I want to find the shirt I was wearing this morning when I was attacked. It'll have my scent, chiefly. But good dogs ought to be able to ferret out the wolf's spoor and ignore mine.'

'I'll ask Tina where it is,' Rainy said.

St. Cyr said, 'Be in the garden, where it happened, in fifteen minutes.'

'Right.'

St. Cyr dressed slowly, favoring his damaged shoulder.

* * *

'Track him by smell?' one of the policemen with Inspector Rainy asked, incredulous. He looked disdainfully down at the sloppy-lipped hound that was snuffling at his shoes.

'They successfully tracked more fugitives, over the last few thousand years, than any of your damned machines,' the dogs' trainer said. He was a short, wiry, blue-eyed albino named Horace Teeley, and he clearly would not tolerate anyone maligning his charges. The expression he gave the young copper was enough to wilt the grass under them.

The first couple of times St. Cyr had located and leased hounds, he had expected their trainers to arrive in overalls, work shirts, mudboots and straw hats, just as they usually appeared in ancient fiction and old picture books. But they were all depressingly modern. The fees they made from occasionally renting their animals were sufficient to keep them in a kind of style. Either that or they were independently wealthy and raised bloodhounds for the sport of it more than anything. No one spent hours training a hound to track, these days; it was simply a way to pass the time or a good protection against burglary. Horace Teeley was dressed in an expensive blue suit, flamboyant lace shirt and a white string tie. As pale as he was, he looked more like a deepsea creature imitating a man, or an escapee from a costume party, than like a trainer.

'This shirt,' St. Cyr said, hunkering beside Teeley, 'is mine. It's full of my scent. But I was wearing it when I was clawed. There'll be a trace of the wolf on it — if the dogs can delineate that closely.'

'Nothing better?' Teeley asked.

'The police still have the clothes that the other three victims were murdered in. Someone could be sent back to headquarters in the copter and have them here in forty minutes or so.'

Teeley shook his head. 'No. Too much time will have passed for those old clothes to be of any use; scent will have faded. We'll make a go of it with this.'

St. Cyr stepped back beside Inspector Rainy and let the trainer alone with his animals. St. Cyr looked at the sky, decided they had a little less than two and a half hours of daylight left With a little luck, that would be enough.

Besides himself and Inspector Rainy, there were three more cops in the garden. Dane was there too, heedless of the warnings Inspector Rainy had given him. The rest of the family remained in the house. He wondered if Tina were painting at the moment…

'Looks like he's talking English to them,' the young copper said.

Teeley was hugging both of the big, sad-eyed dogs to him, whispering to them, scratching them, occasionally stuffing the shirt under their noses, only to pull it away and, in words none of the others could hear, caution them about the double scent the shirt bore. At last, he stood up. 'I think they've got it now.'

Both dogs were whining, snorting, slobbering close to the ground, turning their heads this way and that.

Rainy said, 'Why not start them in the part of the garden where it happened?'

'That's nearby,' St. Cyr said. 'And depending on how they lead us to the spot, we'll know which scent they're onto — mine or the wolf's.'

'Let's go,' Rainy said.

Teeley gave the dogs their leash and waited.

The thoroughbreds snuffled like two straining steam engines and began to run toward the nearest hedgerow. They bent their heads to it, whined slightly, followed it quickly along to the middle and tried to force their way through it at that point. Realizing finally that this was not how it was done, they wanted to leap over. Afraid they'd hamstring themselves, Teeley calmly walked them to the beginning of the hedge, around it, and down the other side to the spot they felt the wolf had leapt across. They picked the scent up again at once, and they were off, moving fast enough to make it clear they were onto something, but not fast enough to build up any premature hopes in those who tagged after them.

When they entered the tree-shrouded walkway in which St. Cyr had been attacked, the cyberdetective said, 'They've got the wolf, not me. I entered it from the other end and never got this far!'

'I'll be damned!' the young copper said. He loped ahead to be closer to the hounds.

Shortly, they were at the place where the wolf had brought St. Cyr down, running in tight circles, crying mournfully.

'This way, I think,' Teeley said.

The hounds took off again, nearly dragging him to the ground.

'Looks like we have something,' Rainy said.

St. Cyr didn't feel like committing himself yet. A moment later, he was glad he hadn't. The hounds stopped dead, having lost the trail.

'What is it?' Rainy asked.

'Give them time!' Teeley shouted.

St. Cyr explained to the Inspector that the hounds had unaccountably lost the trail.

'They'll find it! They'll get it again!' Teeley said.

Half an hour later it was quite evident that the trail was lost for good. The hounds had given up on it and were spending more time sniffing at each other than at the ground. When one of them, the one Teeley called Blue, stuck his big blunt nose in a large yellow flower to suck down a little perfume he fancied, St. Cyr thought the trainer was going to have a fit and strike the dog dead with his bare hands.

'Never failed like this before,' Teeley said. 'Never so soon.'

'Any notion why?' Rainy asked.

'They were at it great,' the trainer said. 'Then they get to that spot there and they're stymied, just like the damn wolf vanished there.'

'Perhaps it did,' Dane said.

The trainer looked at him. 'Serious?'

Dane said he was. He looked at St. Cyr. 'If it was not just an ordinary wolf but a du-aga- klava, it could have changed from wolf to man at that spot and walked calmly away.'

'The scent would remain the same,' St. Cyr said patiently.

'For wolf-form and man-form? I doubt it.'

'Anyway,' St. Cyr said, 'if this is a du-aga-klava, it has a human accomplice who fired the darts at me.'