Tales of the Wold Newton Universe (9 page)

Stampfert prepared the drinks at a well-stocked bar in the corner of the rather large living room. She made herself a tequila with lemon and salt, gave me the requested double Duggan’s Dew o’ Kirkintilloch on the rocks, and poured out three shots of King’s Ransom Scotch in a rock-crystal saucer on the floor. The dog began lapping it; then seeing me raise my eyebrows, he said, “I’m a private eye, Doc. It’s in the best tradition that PI.’s drink. I always try to follow human traditions—when it pleases me. And if my drinking from a saucer offends you, I can hold a glass between my paws. But why the hell should I?”

“No reason at all,” I said hastily.

He ceased drinking and jumped up onto a sofa, where he sat down facing us. “You two have been drinking at the Kennzeichen,” he said. “You are old customers there. And then, later, you had lunch at the Neu Bornholt. Doctor Stampfert said you were coming in the taxi, but you changed your mind and took the bus.”

There was a silence which lasted until I understood that I was supposed to comment on this. I could only say, “Well?”

“The babe didn’t tell me any of this,” Ralph said somewhat testily. “I was just demonstrating something that a mere human being could not have known.”

“Mere?” I said just as testily.

Ralph shrugged, which was quite an accomplishment when one considers that dogs don’t really have shoulders.

“Sorry, Doc. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. No offense.”

“Very well,” I said. “How did you know all this?”

And now that I came to think about it, I did wonder how he knew.

“The Kennzeichen is the only restaurant in town which gives a stein of Lowenbrau to each habitué as he enters the bar,” von Wau Wau said. “You two obviously prefer other drinks, but you could not turn down the free drink. If you had not been at the Kennzeichen, I would not have smelled Lowenbrau on your breath. You then went to the Neu Bornholt for lunch. It serves a salad with its house dressing, the peculiar ingredients of which I detected with my sense of smell. This, as you know, is a million times keener than a human’s. If you had come in a taxi, as the dame said you meant to do, you would be stinking much more strongly of kerosene. Your clothes and hair have absorbed a certain amount of that from being on the streets, of course, along with the high-sulfur coal now burned in many automobiles. But I deduce—olfactorily—that you took instead one of the electrically operated, fuel-celled, relatively odorless buses. Am I correct?”

“I would have said that it was amazing, but of course your nose makes it easy for you,” I said.

“An extremely distinguished colleague of mine,” Ralph said, “undoubtedly the most distinguished, once said that it is the first quality of a criminal investigator to see through a disguise. I would modify that to the
second
quality. The first is that he should smell through a disguise.”

Though he seemed somewhat nettled, he became more genial after a few more laps from the saucer. So did I after a few more sips from my glass. He even gave me permission to smoke, provided that I did it under a special vent placed over my easy chair.

“Cuban make,” he said, sniffing after I had lit up.
“La Roja Paloma de la Revolution.”

“Now that is astounding!” I said. I was also astounded to find Stampfert on my lap.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I started to write a trifling little monograph on the subtle distinctions among cigar odors, but I realized that it would make a massive textbook before I was finished. And who could use it?”

“What are you doing here?” I said to Stampfert. “This is business. I don’t want to give Herr von Wau Wau the wrong impression.”

“You didn’t used to mind,” she said, giggling. “But I’m here because I want to smoke, too, and this is the only vent he has, and he told me not to smoke unless I sat under it.”

Under the circumstances, it was not easy to carry on a coherent conversation with the dog, but we managed. I told him that I had read something of his life. I knew that his parents had been the property of the Hamburg Police Department. He was one of a litter of eight, all mutated to some degree since they and their parents had been subjected to scientific experiments. These had been conducted by the biologists of
das Institut und die Tankstelle fur Gehirntaschenspielerei.
But his high intelligence was the result of biosurgery. Although his brain was no larger than it should have been for a dog his size, its complexity was comparable to that of a human’s. The scientists had used artificial protein to make billions of new nerve circuits in his cerebrum. This had been done, however, at the expense of his cerebellum or hindbrain. As a result, he had very little subconscious and hence could not dream.

As everybody now knows, failure to dream results in a progressive psychosis and eventual mental breakdown. To rectify this, Ralph created dreams during the day, recorded them audiovisually, and fed them into his brain at night. I don’t have space to go into this in detail in this narrative, but a full description will be found in
The Case of the Stolen Dreams.
(Not yet published.)

When Ralph was still a young pup, an explosion had wrecked the Institute and killed his siblings and the scientists responsible for his sapiency. Ralph was taken over again by the Police Department and sent to school. He attended obedience school and the other courses requisite for a trained
Schutzhund
canine. But he was the only pup who also attended classes in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Ralph was now twenty-eight years old but looked five. Some attributed this anomaly to the mutation experiments. Others claimed that the scientists had perfected an age-delaying elixir which had been administered to Ralph and his siblings. If the explosion had not destroyed the records, the world might now have the elixir at its disposal. (More of this in
A Short Case of Longevity,
n.y.p.)

Ralph’s existence had been hidden for many years from all except a few policemen and officials sworn to silence. It was believed that publicity would reduce his effectiveness in his detective work. But recently the case had come to the attention of the public because of Ralph’s own doing. Fed up with being a mere police dog, proud and ambitious, he had resigned to become a private investigator. His application for a license had, of course, resulted in an uproar. Mass media persons had descended on Hamburg in droves, herds, coveys, and gaggles. There was in fact litigation against him in the courts, but pending the result of this, Ralph von Wau Wau was proceeding as if he were a free agent. (For the conclusion of this famous case, see
The Caper of Kupper, the Copper’s Keeper,
n.y.p.)

But whether or not he was the property of the Police Department, he was still very dependent upon human beings. Hence, his search for a roommate and a partner. I told him something about myself. He listened quietly and then said, “I like your odor, buddy. It’s an honest one and uncondescending. I’d like you to come in with me.”

“I’d be delighted,” I said. “But there is only one bedroom...”

“All yours,” he said. “My tastes are Spartan. Or perhaps I should say canine. The other bedroom has been converted to a laboratory, as you have observed. But I sleep in it on a pile of blankets under a table. You may have all the privacy you need, bring all the women you want, as long as you’re not noisy about it. I think we should get one thing straight though. I’m the senior partner here. If that offends your human chauvinism, then we’ll call it quits before we start, amigo.”

“I foresee no cause for friction,” I replied, and I stood up to walk over to Ralph to shake hands. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that Stampfert was still on my lap. She thumped into the floor on her buttocks and yelled with pain and indignation. It was, I admit, stupid—well, at least an unwise, action. Stampfert, cursing, headed toward the door. Ralph looked at my outstretched hand and said, “Get this straight, mac. I never shake hands or sit up and beg.”

I dropped my hand and said, “Of course.”

The door opened. I turned to see Stampfert, still rubbing her fanny, going out the door.

“Auf Wiedersehen
,” I said.

“Not if I can help it, you jerk,” she said.

“She always did take offense too easily,” I said to Ralph.

I left a few minutes later to pick up my belongings from the hotel. When I re-entered his door with my suitcases in hand, I suddenly stopped. Ralph was sitting on the sofa, his eyes bright, his huge red tongue hanging out, and his breath coming in deep happy pants. Across from him sat one of the loveliest women I have ever seen. Evidently she had done something to change his mood because his manner of address was now quite different.

“Come in, my dear Weisstein,” he said. “Your first case as my colleague is about to begin.”

An optimist is one who ignores, or forgets, experience. I am an optimist. Which is another way of saying that I fell in love with Lisa Scarletin at once. As I stared at this striking yet petite woman with the curly chestnut hair and great lustrous brown eyes, I completely forgot that I was still holding the two heavy suitcases. Not until after we had been introduced, and she looked down amusedly, did I realize what a foolish figure I made. Red-faced, I eased them down and took her dainty hand in mine. As I kissed it, I smelled the subtle fragrance of a particularly delightful—and, I must confess, aphrodisiacal—perfume.

“No doubt you have read, or seen on TV, reports of Mrs. Scarletin’s missing husband?” my partner said. “Even if you do not know of his disappearance, you surely have heard of such a famous artist?”

“My knowledge of art is not nil,” I said coldly. The tone of my voice reflected my inward coldness, the dying glow of delight on first seeing her. So, she was married! I should have known on seeing her ring. But I had been too overcome for it to make an immediate impression.

Alfred Scarletin, as my reader must surely know, was a wealthy painter who had become very famous in the past decade. Personally, I consider the works of the so-called Fauve Mauve school to be outrageous nonsense, a thumbing of the nose at commonsense. I would sooner have the originals of the
Katzenjammer Kids
comic strip hung up in the museum than any of the maniac creations of Scarletin and his kind. But, whatever his failure of artistic taste, he certainly possessed a true eye for women. He had married the beautiful Lisa Maria Mohrstein only three years ago. And now there was speculation that she might be a widow.

At which thought, the warm glow returned.

A. Scarletin, as I remembered, had gone for a walk on a May evening two months ago and had failed to return home. At first, it was feared that he had been kidnapped. But, when no ransom was demanded, that theory was discarded.

When I had told Ralph what I knew of the case, he nodded.

“As of last night there has been a new development in the case,” he said. “And Mrs. Scarletin has come to me because she is extremely dissatisfied with the progress—lack of it, rather—that the police have made. Mrs. Scarletin, please tell Doctor Weisstein what you have told me.”

She fixed her bright but deep brown eyes upon me and in a voice as lovely as her eyes—not to mention her figure—sketched in the events of yesterday. Ralph, I noticed, sat with his head cocked and his ears pricked up. I did not know it then, but he had asked her to repeat the story because he wanted to listen to her inflections again. He could detect subtle tones that would escape the less sensitive ears of humans. As he was often to say, “I cannot only
smell
hidden emotions, my dear Weisstein, I can also
hear
them.”

“At about seven last evening, as I was getting ready to go out...” she said.

With whom? I thought, feeling jealousy burn through my chest but knowing that I had no right to feel such.

“...Lieutenant Strasse of the Hamburg Metropolitan Police phoned me. He said that he had something important to show me and asked if I would come down to headquarters. I agreed, of course, and took a taxi down. There the sergeant took me into a room and showed me a painting. I was astounded. I had never seen it before, but I knew at once that it was my husband’s work. I did not need his signature—in its usual place in the upper right-hand corner—to know that. I told the sergeant that and then I said, ‘This must mean that Alfred is still alive! But where in the world did you get it?’

“He replied that it had come to the attention of the police only that morning. A wealthy merchant, Herr Lausitz, had died a week before. The lawyer supervising the inventory of his estate found this painting in a locked room in Lausitz’s mansion. It was only one of many valuable objects d’art which had been stolen. Lausitz was not suspected of being a thief except in the sense that he had undoubtedly purchased stolen goods or commissioned the thefts. The collection was valued at many millions of marks. The lawyer had notified the police, who identified the painting as my husband’s because of the signature.”

“You may be sure that Strasse would never have been able to identify a Scarletin by its style alone,” Ralph said sarcastically.

Her delicate eyebrows arched.

“Ach! So that’s the way it is! The lieutenant did not take it kindly when I told him that I was thinking of consulting you. But that was later.

“Anyway, I told Strasse that this was evidence that Alfred was still alive. Or at least had been until very recently. I know that it would take my husband at least a month and a half to have painted it—if he were under pressure. Strasse said that it could be: one, a forgery; or, two, Alfred might have painted it before he disappeared. I told him that it was no forgery; I could tell at a glance. And what did he mean, it was painted some time ago? I knew exactly—from day to day—what my husband worked on.”

She stopped, looked at me, and reddened slightly.

“That isn’t true. My husband visited his mistress at least three times a week. I did not know about her until after he disappeared, when the police reported to me that he had been seeing her... Hilda Speck... for about two years. However, according to the police, Alfred had not been doing any painting in her apartment. Of course, she could have removed all evidence, though Strasse tells me that she would have been unable to get rid of all traces of pigments and hairs from brushes.”