The Dog with the Wooden Leg

Chapter VII. Walking on Air.

They lurched off with a suddenness that threw Dick against him, off balance. Marty didn’t bother seeking the rear seat, stayed crouched on his knees directly behind the driver’s shoulder.

“Can you still see them?” he kept asking at intervals. “Can you still see them?”

“Plain as day,” the driver assured him each time.

The strain was much worse than it had been while he was still afoot; then he’d had his own senses to depend on, now he had to get it secondhand through someone else’s.

“How many in it, can you make out?”

“Just one guy, at the wheel.”

“Has he looked around? D’you think he’s caught on? Try not to let him if you can help it.”

“He hasn’t turned around once, but then I’m no mind reader; he has. a rear-view mirror.” Then presently, “He’s stepping it up now. And before Marty could make the suggestion, the cab began to increase speed itself.”

“That’s it; don’t let him get away from you.”

“Gee, you sure must want him bad, whoever he is,” the driver remarked cufiously.

“Can you still see him?”

“Like he was on the seat next to me.”

Dick rocked there on the floor of the cab, with the difficulty any animal always has traveling in a fast vehicle, but he didn’t let out a whimper. Marty fumbled with the dog’s leg once, as if to see that it was properly adjusted.

“What’re you slowing for?” he asked abruptly.

“ ’Cause he is, too. Looks like he’s got where he’s going.”

“Where is it? What’s it like? I’ve got to know!”

“You’ll know in a minute,” promised the driver. He braked the car, got out, came around and opened the rear door. His voice turned raspy like a file. “Get out, stoolie,” he said. “This is as far as we go.” Something cold and round, with a hole bored through it, dug into Marty’s side.

The man holding it gave a whistle, a door opened, and footsteps came hurrying over.

“Who you got there?” a new voice asked.

“A police spotter,” answered the erstwhile cab driver. “This guy I been using to make deliveries in the park turns out to be an undercover cop or something. But get this: I noticed him coming after me, on my way back to the car. So I get in and pretend to start off. Then I kill my engine, coast around the other way, and come back to him from where I was, and he takes me for a taxi! He hops in and tells me to follow myself!”

“Bring him in and let’s hear what Angie has to say about it.”

“Watch that dog.”

Dick was already growling at the sight of the gun impinging on Marty’s ribs. He wouldn’t have a chance against a bullet at such close quarters, Marty knew, and they were probably both armed.

“Quiet, Dick!” he said hastily, and put a restraining hand on the dog’s collar.

One order from Marty was always enough for Dick. He subsided.

“Be a shame to have to shoot him. I’d like to show that leg to Angie. Maybe we could use him some more in our business, with one of our own guys, after we get rid of this mug. Get out, you!”

Marty fumbled his way through the door, was gripped roughly by the arm, swung forward.

“Look out,” he warned. “I’m not resisting, but I can’t control the dog if he sees you handle me.”

“Well, we can,” was the savage answer.

He was flung violently across some kind of open space, too broad to be just a sidewalk. The cement ended abruptly and it turned to sod or turf underfoot. He was swinging back and forth like a weather vane at the end of the brawny arm that held him, but Dick’s simmering resentment never had a chance to explode into the retribution it craved. Marty quelled it each time with a “Quiet, Dick!” for the dog’s own sake.

Marty was hustled in some kind of building entrance. Dick’s muzzle pressed anxiously at his calf as he followed close behind, and the tap-tap of his leg sounded as the flooring changed to concrete. There was a downward slope to it, too, like a ramp, so it was some kind of garage or warehouse. Marty was led onto a platform elevator and it started to go up under the four of them. Then they got off again and knocked at a door. It opened, he was shoved through, and could sense he was in the presence of three or four people. But only one voice spoke, an authoritative one. It was highly nasal.

“Company? Well, well.”

“He backfired on us, Angie,” said the one who had acted the part of cab driver.

Someone else said in surprised discovery, “He’s blind!”

“He can see stars, though,” said the nasal voice.

A swivel chair scraped back, someone stepped up close, and there was the shattering impact of a fist against Marty’s jaw. But even as he staggered from the blow, he had presence of mind enough to cry out hoarsely, “Down, Dick!” His dog’s safety was all that concerned him.

There was a skitter of suddenly arrested claws as Dick held back from launching himself into midair.

“I don’t care what happens to me,” Marty panted, still dizzy from the blow, “but I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“We could use him, Angie,” the phony cab driver pointed out. “One of our own guys could get behind the blinkers and go around passing it out.”

Marty spoke up as though anxious to impress his dog’s good points on them, even if it meant having him drafted for criminal activities. “He’s almost human,” he said: “he understands pretty near everything you say. Watch. I’ll show you what he can do.”

He wet the point of his finger, held it up like a becalmed mariner trying to find out if there was any wind. Then he advanced unerringly holding it before him.

“Watch out for that window,” he heard someone whisper warningly.

“It’s barred,” Angie answered. “What good’ll it do him?”

Marty turned to face them as though he hadn’t overheard. There was an iron bar against his shoulder blade, and its mate was about ten inches over.

“I just want to show you what he can do,” he said disarmingly. “I won’t even raise my voice, just talk like I would to you.”

There was an interested silence all around him.

“Get my hat, Dick,” he said quietly.

The dog reared up before him on its hind paws. Marty suddenly snatched it off his head himself, out of the dog’s jaws, shied it through the opening between the two bars. Dick dropped down for a second, sprang, there was the sound of his heavy breathing as he squirmed between the bars to the outside.

“Hey!” a voice cried out alarmedly.

There was a rush of footsteps from all over the room — too late. The barred window was empty.

“He made it, wooden leg and all!” someone gasped incredulously. “See him down there. He’s wagging his tail, he’s got the hat in his teeth!”

Marty turned his sightless face toward the opening, yelled as he had never yelled before. “Take it home, Dick; take it to Celia!”

Again a fist crashed into his jaw, but not quickly enough to silence the order. He went down smiling.

“Stop that dog!” Angie was raging. “Get him!”

A shot boomed out, a second one followed. Marty, a thread of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, was still smiling.

Angie was swearing like a maniac. “Gimme that gun, you cockeyed— You couldn’t hit the side of a barn!”

A third shot jolted, and this time there was a thin yelp from outside in the open somewhere.

“You got him, Angie! He’s down! I can see him floundering over there!”

“Well, go down there and finish him off! Give him one close to the ear!”

Marty wasn’t smiling any more. His head slowly drooped forward until it hung down over his chest. Dimly, through his grief, he was aware of footsteps returning to the room sometime afterward, a winded voice reporting:

“Hunted high and low for him and couldn’t find him, he must’ve crawled off into a hole somewhere to die!”

Angie had cooled off now. “Well, what’s the difference? He couldn’t have showed them where we are anyway; he was brought all the way out here in a car. Now let’s find out just how much this blind rat knows and then we’ll send him after his pooch. They loved each other so much, be a shame to separate ’em!”

Marty lost all track of time. His indifference, now that Dick was gone, was like a blanket wrapped around him, kept him from feeling their cuffs, hearing their questions, or caring what went on around him. Presently — but whether it was hours later or just a little while later, he didn’t know — he seemed to be out in the open air again. But his captors were still all around him and his hands were tied behind him now.

“D’jever hear of guys walking the plank?” Angie’s voice was saying. “That’s what the old pirates made ’em do. Well, I got a treat for you boys; that’s why I had you bring him up here on the roof. Now some of the slabs on this coping that runs all around it are loose and will topple off if any weight is put on ’em. I know how you guys like to bet, and here’s a chance for a little money to change hands while we’re getting rid of him. Number the defective ones off in chalk; that’s it, one, two, three, like that. We’re going to hoist him up there and see how far he gets. A lighted cigarette, fastened on the end of this cane of his and held close to the back of his neck will guarantee he keeps moving and don’t stall on us. All right, keep your hands on him now till all bets are in. Here’s a hundred berries says he gets all the way to the third loose slab. I know these blind guys; they’ve got eyes in their big toes.”

“I’ll take you up on that. Here’s two hundred that the first one throws him.”

“All right, take your hands off him. Start walking. You’re on the air, dim headlights!”

“The floor is six stories away on the outside,” somebody jeered.

The heat of a cigarette started to singe the fuzz on the back of Marty’s neck. The ledge was only wide enough for one foot at a time. He felt his way forward with one foot like a tightrope walker, brought the other one up, around, and in front of the first, kept slowly repeating the process. They didn’t know it, but he wasn’t really scared. He was dead calm, cold about the whole thing. Now that Dick was gone, he didn’t care how soon he dropped. It was a fairly painless way to die anyway.

Something wabbled treacherously underfoot, and he quickly shifted weight, put his foremost foot down two paces ahead instead of one, while one of the slabs in between slithered off into space.

“He made it!” a jubilant voice shouted. “I’m in two hundred bucks. See me, baby!”

Far down below on the outside there was the tiny sound of something striking the ground.

And then, as if in answer, a dog began to bark excitedly. “Dick! That was Dick’s bark, he recognized it! Dick wasn’t dead after all, he was alive down there! And all at once Marty was alive again himself, fear of falling entered his mind for the first time, and just because he was afraid of falling, he was about to. He started to teeter back and forth, and sway, and struggle to free his arms.”

A shot rang out, down below, not up on the roof, and something fiery creased his shoulder and flung him off the perilous ledge — to the inside. The fall stunned him for a minute, though it was only a distance of a foot or two, for he hadn’t been able to use his arms to cushion it, and while he lay there, there were a lot more shots, both from the roof and from down below. Then the ones below passed into the building, and came on up. Someone fell near him and groaned in Angie’s nasal voice. Someone else screamed, and there was the sound of loose slabs being torn off the ledge.

Then there was a rush of wind and Dick was licking his master’s face all over and whimpering. Somebody lifted Marty up and freed his hands, and Burkhardt’s voice asked:

“Did I get you very bad? It was either that or see you fall to your death before our eyes.”

But Marty had no time to bother about himself. “Dick, did they hurt him bad?”

“Does he act it? Just clipped him one.”

“How did you know where to come?”

“Someone passing in a car picked Dick up close by here. His name and address are engraved on his collar plate, of course. They found your note in Dick’s leg, ‘Bring help; Dick will show you where,’ and saw that he was hurt. They took him to the police, and the police came and got me at your place. Then the people that had found Dick brought us back to the place where they’d first picked him up. He’d lost a little blood, and that led toward here.”

“Have I cleared myself?” Marty asked, while they were dressing his shoulder down below. “Do you believe me now that I wasn’t working with them?”

“The ones that are still alive are in handcuffs and you’re not; there’s your answer.”

“And you’re not sore about the way we kept you tied up in our place all that time?”

“Not so sore as you’d think. It gave me a chance to get pretty well acquainted with Celia. You’ll be seeing a good deal of me around your flat from now on. But tell me one thing. How is it you had time to write that note and stick it in Dick’s leg?”

“I didn’t write that here. I had it all written out before I even got here. I caught on I wasn’t in a cab almost as soon as I got in; the distance between the front and rear seats was too great, and I couldn’t hear any meter ticking off. Also I recognized the guy’s voice as being that of the same man who stopped me on the street only a few minutes before. So I wrote it out then, while I still had the chance. The only way to get rid of Dick was trick him into jumping out of the window after my hat. His job is to look after me, and he: wouldn’t have left me otherwise, no matter how obedient he is.”

All Burkhardt said was, “What a dog!”