Mink Is for a Minx [1st Annual Edition: The best from Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine]

Murder Slick as a Whistle by Arthur Porges

Martin Calder said cheerfully, “Goering, you are going to kill your master for me.” The big, gentle Doberman, one hundred sixty pounds of loyalty and affection, whined. Whether this was because he objected to “Goering,” when his real name was Siegfried, or actually understood the implications of the threat against Tracy Benton, was known only to himself. Calder patted the sleek head, and the dog licked his hand.

“You may say ‘no,’” Calder murmured, “but Pavlov says ‘yes’ — and my money’s on the famous Muscovite. The fact is, Hermann, he knew more about your species than you do about his. Goering, my boy,” he added wryly, “you’re living proof that dumb animals have no better intuition than people. If they did I’d be chewed to bits by now.”

Actually Calder had nothing against the dog, which belonged to his brother-in-law. If he called him by so obnoxious a name, it was merely to annoy Tracy Benton, who hated the idea. As an excuse, Calder had drawn Tracy’s attention to the Doberman’s excess poundage, for certainly the animal was overfed.

“Siegfried, my eye,” Calder had jibed some months earlier. “That hound looks more like Hermann Goering. He has the same fat-jowled, piglike face. All he needs is a gaudy uniform and eight pounds of medals.”

This was a fair return, Calder felt, for having to endure Tracy’s choice of music on the hi-fi. It was the kind of music, he complained sourly to Elsie, his sister, that made Sir Adrian Boult. Elsie didn’t get it, but the joke relieved Calder’s feelings.

Considering that Calder consistently sponged off her, his patronizing, thinly-veiled contempt for her slow-wittedness was hardly courteous; but until Tracy entered the picture, things had been perfect. Here was Calder’s sister, a pretty but brainless woman, recently widowed, and the owner of a quarter of a million dollars in income property, inherited from her first husband. It was not surprising that she had turned to her brother for help in managing this bonanza, and he had lived high on the hog for two years, pocketing a very unfair share of the profits. Since Elsie experienced difficulty in comprehending the economics of a one-cent sale, it had been ridiculously easy.

But then along had come Tracy Benton, a pleasant, charming bachelor, an accountant by profession, and Elsie had leaped into his eager arms as if jet-propelled. Before Calder realized that they were past the hand-shaking stage he was on the outside looking in, and the gravy train had been derailed.

No longer manager, he was merely an object of charity, permitted to live with the newlyweds, but on no better terms than Siegfried himself. He should have been grateful that Benton had refrained from exposing his criminal juggling of the books, but Martin Calder was not the grateful type.

But all that was about to change now, because Calder had an ingenious mind and few scruples. He intended to make Elsie a widow again. It was almost poetic justice. The dog, which both of them seemed to prefer to him, would bring about the death of Benton.

All Calder needed was a week or two alone with the animal, and that was in the offing right now. Tracy and his wife were leaving for New York on what Elsie liked to refer to as a “second honeymoon” and Calder would be left with Siegfried for at least a fortnight, which should give him plenty of time to complete the task he had in mind.

The isolated house, high in the new Laguna Hills development, would be a perfect spot. Few of the new, plush homes there had been sold yet, and the Bentons had nearly five acres to themselves, the nearest neighbor being several streets away. There was the cleaning woman, of course, but she came only twice a week for a few hours, and would find nothing amiss.

Once the couple were safely on a jet for New York, Calder hastened to implement his murder plan. The first item was a silent whistle, the kind pitched too high for human ears, but readily heard by a dog. That was the easy part. He bought it a number of miles away. Not that such a purchase was inherently grounds for suspicion; hundreds were bought yearly. But he was careful not to purchase it at a local store.

Calder then proceeded to work on the dog’s collar, a stiff leather affair with heavy brass studs. Since it was well suited to his purpose, he saw no point in purchasing a collar of a different type, which he could easily have done. Using a long extension cord of tough rubber, he modified the collar just enough so that the studs could be electrified from any outlet. Now he was ready.

Calder put the dog into an inner room of the big house, chaining him to a heavy steel fixture that protruded from the brick fireplace. The chain was so short that no matter how violently Siegfried struggled, he could put no strain on the rubber extension cord itself.

Since Calder did not want the dog to associate him with its discomfort, he loosened the fuse controlling the room’s three outlets before plugging in the cord. Then he went down to the basement, blew a hard but noiseless blast on the whistle, and tightened the fuse.

There was a yelp of agony above him as the big dog, in severe pain from the current at his throat, tore madly at the chain. Calder could hear him barking, whining, and thrashing about. He inflicted ten seconds of torment on the animal, then loosened the fuse again. Allowing Siegfried a few moments in which to calm down, Calder went upstairs.

To his surprise, the dog obviously associated his reappearance with the cessation of pain, and seemed to regard him as a rescuer. It almost battered him to the floor with affectionate attentions. So much the better, Calder told himself. If the dog continued to prove so friendly in public, that fact alone would prevent anyone from suspecting the truth of their relationship.

Every day for three weeks Calder continued this training. The dog could never know in advance when the whistle would sound, a prelude to ten seconds or more of almost unendurable torture. Long before the time was up Pavlov had been vindicated, since Siegfried no longer even waited for the actual shock, but went into a terrible frenzy the moment he heard a blast. The beast even frothed at the mouth.

Then, when Calder came in a little later, the animal would greet him in a fit of wild joy and relief. There was no longer any doubt in his mind about the plan’s effectiveness. The timing was a problem, but there was no statute of limitations on that. He could repeat the conditioning until everything clicked.

As a final step, he tested the effect of distance. Siegfried had no trouble hearing the whistle from two hundred yards away.

When the Bentons returned from their trip, there was no outward evidence of Siegfried’s unpleasant new reflex. The cord was safely back among the tools. Only the whistle was left, hidden from view deep in Calder’s trouser pocket.

On the day after their return, Tracy was to visit Los Angeles, a hundred miles from the Laguna Hills development. He usually made the trip twice a month to check over the rental and the occasional resale of Elsie’s city property. An hour before his brother-in-law was supposed to leave, Calder climbed into his own car, a beat-up MG, and set out to lay his trap.

When Tracy came to the first turn-off on the freeway just west of the town, Calder was waiting on the shoulder. He spotted the big Buick on the inner and fastest lane. There could be no mistaking either the car or the huge dog sharing the front seat with the driver. Calder’s scheme depended upon this habit of Benton’s — taking Siegfried along on the Los Angeles drive.

Calder immediately entered the stream of traffic, and by skillful maneuvering worked his way up to a place roughly one hundred yards behind the Buick, and in the slowest lane. He felt sorry for the innocent people whose lives would be endangered but there was no other way.

To Martin Calder, at the moment, they were faceless abstractions. With luck, a big truck might come along where there was no other traffic. There was a fair likelihood that only Benton would die.

But it wasn’t quite as easy as he’d hoped. Twice Tracy shifted to a slower lane where there was no chance to have a head-on collision, and several times Calder himself had to get into a faster lane in order to keep up with his brother-in-law. The inner stream of traffic was the one. Not a car there was doing under sixty-five, and only a few feet away, without so much as a low divider, was the reverse flow, traveling just as fast in the opposite direction.

If two of those cars happened to meet head-on, with a combined velocity of a hundred and twenty or so, both drivers would almost certainly be killed.

At last the right moment arrived. Tracy was back in the high speed lane, doing almost seventy towards the north. And coming up in the next lane, hurtling south at fifty-plus, was a small truck.

Calder put the silent whistle in his mouth, checked his own position in the slow lane, well out of the imminent crash area, and blew a mighty blast, inaudible to human ears, but certain to reach those of Siegfried.

In the Buick the great Doberman reacted according to his grim conditioning. At the sound of that ominous keening, which always meant a searing agony at his throat, the dog went wild, thrashing about with all his weight of a hundred and sixty pounds. He was barking, clawing, and even snapping at his own flesh.

Through some saving remnant of affection for his master, even in that extremity, he did Tracy no direct harm. But the result otherwise was all too predictable. Benton lost control of the speeding car. It swerved into the stream of southbound traffic, meeting the truck head-on in a smashup that literally collapsed the vehicles.

Both men died instantly, and in the resulting pile up of seven cars, more than a dozen people were injured. Even Calder, on the fringe, escaped only because of his knowledge of what was coming. He slowed and jounced onto the shoulder of the road in time.

Suddenly he stiffened where he sat, his churning stomach tight from a new shock. From the tangle of crumpled, smoking steel, Siegfried had emerged. His muzzle was streaming blood from many cuts, and he limped badly. But by some miracle of tough bone and muscle, the dog was not severely injured. Now, frightened and bewildered, he must have scented a friend nearby, and was seeking him out. The Doberman headed unerringly towards Calder’s car.

Calder’s mind began to race. It wouldn’t do to be found so close. Who knew what connection the police might be clever enough to make? The damned whistle was still on his person.

Forgetting the pile-up he had just caused, Calder thought only of himself now. Hurriedly he tooled his MG back on the edge of the freeway, and inched past the nearest stalled car. Several drivers, trapped themselves, yelled at him angrily, but there were no patrol cars on the scene yet, so he made it to the next turn-off.

Later, on a side road, he flung the whistle into a patch of weeds. What was done, was done; nobody could pin anything on Martin Calder. Elsie would be dependent on him again, and he’d take good care she didn’t meet any more hungry bachelors.

At the funeral, three days later, Elsie was nearly hysterical in spite of two tranquilizers. Calder managed to look sorrowful, but internally he couldn’t help smiling. Most of the pleasure he felt was at the success of his brilliant stratagem. The rest was due to the ludicrous appearance of Siegfried, held well back from the grave by a friendly neighbor, and looking, with that mass of bandages, like a freakish human on all fours, rather than a dog.

Standing at the foot of the grave, Calder heard the minister drone on; beside him, Elsie was whimpering again. Now they were lowering the coffin into the deep recess. Soon the whole messy business would be over, and things back to normal at home. His sister was basically shallow; she’d get over her loss easily enough. Control of a quarter of a million dollars was changing hands.

A jet flew over, drowning out the minister’s final platitude; some of the mourners looked up in annoyance. And at that moment Siegfried went mad again. Yelping, whining, and writhing in an attempt to escape the invisible torment he was expecting, the dog tore free from his leash.

In the extremity of his fear, he sought comfort where it had always been found after the ordeal of high voltage. He raced to Martin Calder, whimpering, and sprang into the man’s arms. Taken by surprise, off balance at the edge of the open grave, Calder tottered under the sudden impact, then with a choked cry fell backwards into the pit. The loud snap as his neck broke was audible some feet away, even to human ears.

Everybody was staring at the dog; he was shaking himself, and seemed quite calm again. They could never know how the jet plane, as it hurtled over them at six hundred miles an hour had, at one point in its passage, generated a typical supersonic wave on the frequency of Calder’s whistle.