Cornell Woolrich

The Dog with the Wooden Leg

Chapter I.

Blind Man’s Scheme.

The dog lay stretched out on the dingy tenement floor, muzzle between paws, ears sensitively erect, watching the girl move about. Its fine intelligent eyes followed each turn she made with mute devotion. One paw, the left front one, seemed to be tucked under its body; it was hidden from the joint down.

Celia Campbell spoke to it as she busied herself about the cramped, stuffy little room, moving back and forth between the gas range and the table. She was about twenty years old, golden-haired and blue-eyed, neatly but poorly dressed.

“Hungry, Dick? Go in and fetch gramp; breakfast is ready.”

The dog, a fine specimen of German shepherd, immediately got up, but with a slight awkwardness in gaining its balance that was noticeable in so fine an animal. It was only when it was clear of the floor that the reason for it could be seen. The left front paw ended at the joint, evidently amputated just like a human being’s. Attached to the stump was a leather cup and below this there was a miniature wooden leg.

The dog turned and went into the adjoining room at her command, the light tap-tap of the little artificial limb mingling oddly with the soft patter of the three normal paws. It had no difficulty moving about, had evidently grown used to the appliance long since. It came back in a moment guiding a man of about sixty with its muzzle, nudging him in the calf of the leg as they advanced to help him in avoiding obstacles.

Marty Campbell was blind. His eyes, blue like his granddaughter’s, betrayed their sightlessness only by the fixity of their stare. His face had the serene, expressionless look of the unseeing.

The dog nudged him to a chair at the table, then crouched down beside him on the floor once more. The girl brought food to the table, set a pan down on the floor for the third member of the little group. The three of them began to eat.

“It’s a beautiful day out,” Celia said, turning to glance through the window at the sunlight creeping down the dingy air shaft. “Why don’t you let Dick take you to the park?”

“I can feel it.” Marty smiled. “I can feel the balmy sunshine even in here.”

She glanced at the cheap alarm clock on the shelf. “I’ll have to hurry or I’ll be late at the factory and spoil my record.” She jumped up, put on a shabby hat, thrust a worn pocketbook under her arm. Then she stopped short, looked wistfully over at old Marty, impulsively opened her purse and took out a quarter. “Here,” she said, pressing his hand tight around it, “buy yourself a chocolate bar and an orangeade.” It meant she would have to do without her own lunch, but she didn’t mind that.

She carefully tried the gas-jet cocks on the stove to make sure they were tightly closed, bent over and kissed Marty lightly on the part of his silvery hair. He was very proud of that part; he got it straight every day, unaided, just by the wonderful sensitivity of his fingertips alone.

“Don’t stay out past dark, now. Ask some stranger the time when you feel it getting late.” She knew he could sense that too, could feel it when the sun went down and darkness set in. He wasn’t so handicapped as people would have believed. And then with a parting pat for the dog, she admonished:

“Be good boys, the two of you. Don’t get into any trouble,”

What trouble could a harmless, blind old man, watched over by a loyal dog, get into? And yet stranger things have happened.

Marty Campbell heard the door close after his granddaughter and listened to her quick tread go hurrying down the rickety tenement stairs outside. He shook his head and sighed to his canine pal.

“So young and pretty to be slavin’ in a garment sweatshop just to support us. She oughter be out in the sunshine herself, gallivantin’ with some nice young feller. I’m a millstone round her neck, Dick. But pretty soon now I’ll be able to do something for her instead; I’ll have a surprise for her.”

He stood up from the table. Dick instantly got up also, eyes watchfully on his master’s face.

Marty felt his way over to the cupboard, opened it, felt along the top shelf until he had located a battered pewter humidor. He brought it back with him, sat down, took the lid off. It was one receptacle Celia was sure of never looking into; she knew it had his tobacco in it. And he was always careful to have enough additional by him in a little sack, when she was in the flat, in order not to have to open it before her. Once or twice when he’d been caught short, he’d manfully done without his beloved pipe rather than have her fetch him the container. The reason soon became apparent. It was three quarters filled with cheap smoking tobacco, but his fingers dug under this and brought forth a packet of bills, fastened by a rubber hand. He told their corners off between his thumb and forefinger. There were ten of them, ten twenties — two hundred dollars.

“Don’t you tell her, now,” he warned the dog, cocking a finger at it, “where we been getting this from. She’d lace it into me sure enough. She told me once she’d walk out and leave me if she ever caught me doin’ that.”

Dick showed his teeth in what could easily have passed for a canine grin of conspiracy.

Marty reburied the money under the tobacco mound, put the humidor back where he had found it.

“The more it mounts up,” he admitted, “the harder it gets to think up an explanation of how I come by it so’s she’ll believe it. I could tell her a rich banker in his car come near running me down on the drive way in the park, and felt sorry for me and gave it to me. Think she’ll believe that?” He didn’t seem to himself, shook his head dissatisfiedly. “I’ll think of something by and by,” he temporized.

It wasn’t, he would have insisted, as though he actually solicited alms, went around panhandling with a sign on his chest: “I am blind.” He just sat there on the park bench minding his business, and if people felt like dropping coins as they went by, was that his fault? They had no business jumping at conclusions. That tin cup that he always kept next to him was to give Dick a drink of water out of, and for no other purpose. How could he give all that money he always found in it back, when he couldn’t even see the people who had dropped it in?

He always took care to change the coins into a bill before he returned home; they would have jangled too much and given him away. The clerk at a certain cigar store was an unwitting accomplice of Marty’s in this, without being at all aware of the source of the change he brought in nearly every day. Then when he had ten single bills accumulated, he would change them into a ten-spot. In the latter case he always checked on the clerk’s honesty immediately after the transaction; he had to, because he couldn’t tell by his fingertips as he could with the dimes and nickels. He would show the bill to the first person he met outside the store and ask, “Is this a tenner?” From which it will be seen that old Marty Campbell was shrewd in spite of his innocent, childlike face.

“Get me my hat, Dick,” he ordered.

The dog instantly trotted into the other room, came back with a battered old felt hat gripped in its teeth, presented it to Marty by rearing two front paws up against him, so that he wouldn’t have to stoop down and feel for it.

Marty stuffed the tin cup — whose magic earning power his granddaughter never dreamed or she would have promptly thrown it out — into his pocket, put on a pair of dark glasses. These were strictly legitimate; he had her permission to wear them when he was out on the streets. They helped by warning people of his handicap, made Dick’s task easier. The dog was competent to guide him through the thickest traffic or most crowded sidewalks, but motorists and pedestrians would understand more quickly at sight of the glasses, be less likely to graze or jostle him. He also took a stick with him.

He carefully stowed the quarter his granddaughter had given him into his pocket, took along a small sack of tobacco and his pipe, locked up the flat, and started down the stairs with his companion. At every turn Dick carefully closed in, nudged him around in the direction they were to follow, although he had the banister rail to guide him. But once they were out on the open street, he was totally dependent on the dog.

He felt for each of the three steps going down to sidewalk level, and a friendly feminine voice beside him said:

“Good morning, Mr. Campbell. Off to the park?”

“Good morning, Mrs. Schultz.” He smiled, recognized it as the jaintress’ voice without trouble.

They advanced over cement sidewalk for about thirty or forty yards. Then Dick halted him by pressing his muzzle like a brake before Marty’s kneecap. The traffic was louder just ahead of them, and his stick went down lower than his feet when he tested it, so he knew they’d come to the brink of a crossing.

A traffic whistle blew shrilly, and Dick nudged him on again. He stepped down and they started over. Brakes screamed, coming around at them on a right turn, and the dog quickly prodded him diagonally out of the way, but he had such confidence in it he wasn’t even frightened. It was really safer than walking with your eyes open, because by not seeing the vehicles all around him, there was no chance for him to lose his presence of mind and step the wrong way, which is a cause of most mishaps.

The dog thrust its shoulder before him again like a brake, so he knew they had reached the opposite curb line, and stepped up. They repeated this three or four times. But meanwhile, as they left their own immediate neighborhood, where both were a familiar sight, and entered a more congested business district, the dog’s wooden leg began to attract more and more attention. Marty could hear a hum of voices all around him. “Look at that! D’je ever see anything like it before?” He could tell by the scuffle of feet that everyone was stopping a moment to stand and stare as he and Dick went by. He was used to that by now; it happened nearly every time he went out.

He was used to people asking him about it, too; stooping to examine it and pet the dog. So was Dick; he bore it with an air of patient indifference. Someone did right now, as usual. A voice edged up beside him.

“Does he bite if you touch him?”

“No, he won’t bite you,” Marty answered gently, as he had many times before.

The voice dropped down lower; the man was evidently squatting down to pat Dick and — Marty could tell by the slight hitch in their progress — lift the wooden leg up to inspect it at closer range. He would have answered the next question before it was asked, so sure was he what it would be.

“What happened to him, mister? Is it a real amputation or is the paw just folded over double inside that leather pouch?”

“It’s real,” Marty answered patiently. “He was run over by a truck when he was just a little pup, before he’d been trained.” And then as a gentle hint that they’d been delayed long enough. “Go ahead, Dick.”

“Well, I’ll be darned!” the voice gasped.

Dick went on again, so Marty knew the interference had ended, for this time at least.

Marty could smell trees and grass before him after the next crossing, so he knew they were at the park entrance. The traffic noises subsided behind them, and the twittering of birds took their place.

“Our usual bench, Dick,” he told the dog.

Their progress was now curved and serpentine instead of being in a straight line, as they followed the winding park pathway. An occasional perambulator guided by a nursemaid was the only danger they had to run now. Somebody’s Pekingese out for an airing yapped uncivilly at Dick, but the latter just ignored it disdainfully. He was trained not to fight with other dogs while he had someone in his charge, no matter what the provocation.

Once there was a whiff of water to one side of them as they skirted a little lake. The dog edged him to one side of the path finally, and they’d reached their familiar bench. Marty sat down, patted Dick’s head, and let the pleasant warmth of the sun soak into him. He didn’t neglect, however, to put the “drinking cup” on the bench beside him. There was a soft thud as Dick sank to rest on the pathway before him.

It was the most peaceful spot imaginable. He smiled when the thought of Celia’s parting admonition: “Don’t get into any trouble.” Wasn’t that just like a woman, to fret when there was no reason? He filled his pipe, lighted it, and began peacefully puffing away. Dick yawned comfortably. Marty could tell by the almost human sound his expanding jaws made.

A half hour went by. Steps came along the path toward them, stopped short at sight of the dog’s wooden leg. Marty had known they would. He waited for the inevitable question to come. The man took a minute or two to get up courage to address him. Or maybe he was staring at the leg, unable to believe his eyes. Marty smiled a little toward the place where the steps had stopped, simply to get the thing over with as quickly as possible. That brought it on.

“What happened to him, dad?”

“He was run over when he was a pup.”

“I’ll be hanged. What’ll they think of next?”

It was all right so long as he didn’t plank himself down on the bench next to Marty and make a pest of himself. Dick was company enough for Marty’s liking. The man didn’t. He stared his fill, and then his steps went on again.

“Fold it under you so they won’t pester us so much, Dick,” Marty said in a low voice. He reached down, felt for the leg, and patted it to help the dog understand. Dick got his meaning; the little wooden pivot scraped the cement as he bedded it under him.

Presently more footsteps came, from the same direction as the last. They, too, stopped short, so some of the leg must have been showing after all, in spite of their precaution. Marty sighed, then smiled again encouragingly, to get it over with. Otherwise it was liable to drag on ten minutes or more.

“What’s he got there, gramp, a wooden leg?”

“Yep. Run over by a truck when he was a pup.”

This was one of the real nosey kind, the from-Missouri kind. They averaged about one to ten of the others. “Is it all right if I look at it? Will he bite?”

“He won’t bite so long as you don’t try to touch me.”

There was the soft thump of Dick’s coat being patted propitiatingly. Then the man coaxed: “Let’s see it, old boy. Tha-at’s it.” Dick must have submitted resignedly. The next sound was of the man slapping his own thigh in amazement. “Can you beat it! I thought I’d seen everything, but this is a new one on me.”

The footsteps went on their way again. They seemed to go at a little quicker gait than they had approached, but then maybe the man had some place to go and wanted to make up for the time he had lost by stopping and rubbernecking. Or else maybe it was just Marty’s imagination that his pace was faster now, and it really wasn’t. It was such a little thing after all.

Chapter II.

Crime in the Park.

“And you,” Burkhardt’s lieutenant said to him when he had detailed all the others in the squad, “take the park.”

Burkhardt looked disgruntled. Respect for his superior was all that tempered his expostulation. “What’s this, a new way of disciplining me? I thought I was water front and bulkheads, lieutenant.”

“Well, you’re park from now on. You’re a fresh-air fiend, a nature lover, or else just a lazy bum out of work, I don’t care which. Only you do that park twenty-four hours a day until further orders; keep circulating and keep using your eyes.” His fist came down on his desk with a sound like a backfire. “I’m gonna bust this thing or bust a blood vessel, one of the two! We’ve fine-combed the whole city, we’ve cleaned it up, and they’re still operating. Which proves what? We’ve driven it under cover by the rampage we’ve been on all winter, and that’s about all: it’s still active. Now I’m tired of you men bringing me in the small fry, I want the higher-ups; that’s the only way to scotch it. When you’re dealing with a poisonous snake, it don’t do any good to snip off pieces of its tail, you gotta stamp on its head. This is a poisonous snake if there ever was one, and we’re the venom milkers; that’s our job.

“I’ve turned loose three of those little guys we’ve been holding as bait. They couldn’t tell us anything because they didn’t know any more than we did ourselves, but they can lead us where we want to get. My information is that they’ve developed a sudden craving for fresh air and sunshine; each one of the three has been seen coming out of the park at least once since they were released. That’s not natural for birds like that. You get in there, Burkhardt, and just laze around. When you see a familiar face, you know what to do. It’s some place in there, unless I miss my guess.”

A man with a turned-down hat brim which shadowed his unnaturally bright eyes, hurried along the park path with a furtive air about him which wasn’t at all in keeping with such a sunny, peaceful place. He kept giving quick little looks from side to side, and more than once he glanced back over his shoulder. But there was nothing to see that could have caused anyone alarm, so this wariness must have been just a nervous habit with him.

He looked ill, his face was pasty and his cheeks hollow, and yet his gait was just a little too fast to be that of a man who was strolling in the park for his health, to benefit from the open air and sunshine. He almost gave the impression of being in a hurry to get out of the park and return to wherever it was he had come from.

As the distant building line began to climb up over the treetops ahead of him, his face took on a relieved look, as though it spelled safety for him. He’d had apprehensive eyes for every tree, every shrub that he passed on the way, and now suddenly this unusual fear of harmless green things, if that was what it was, proved to be justified. There was a large oak a yard or two off the path on his left, and as he came abreast of it, it suddenly spoke.

“Just a minute, Sniffles. What’s your hurry?”

He came to an almost galvanic stop. He stared straight ahead, not toward where the sound had come from, as though rigid with terror, unable to turn his head. He couldn’t get any whiter than he was because his face had been the color of chalk all along. He just stood there and began to shiver helplessly, like a bird that feels a snake’s gaze on it. But the paralysis that gripped him didn’t extend to his right hand, the one of the side away from the vocal tree. He made a swift little pass with it. and some little white thing flew into a shrub growing there, almost quicker than the eye could follow. Or most eyes, anyway.

A man detached himself from the cover of the bulky tree trunk and came slowly over.

“Like the park, eh? Why, all of a sudden?”

The rigid figure standing there on the pathway didn’t answer.

“What’re you shaking all over for?”

“You frightened me,” said the white-faced man hoarsely.

“What’ve you got to be frightened about?” was the deadly retort.

“N-nothing.”

Burkhardt began slapping him backhand here and there about the clothing.

“Where’ve you got it?” he demanded remorselessly.

“I’m not on, I’m off.” faltered the quivering one. He managed to get his elbows up to shoulder level. “You can search me.”

“That tells me where to look.” The detective grinned, but not humorously. “Stand there,” he ordered; “don’t try to break and run for it, because you’re not in shape to outrun me, and if you make me chase you, I’ll beat you to a pulp when I overhaul you.” He moved a step or two away, in the direction the other man had been coming from. “You were about here when my hail hit you.” He turned sharply right, went off the path. “It ought to be in around here some place, unless it had a propeller.”

He began spading his hand in and out of the shrub. The last time it went in farther, came out holding a little white oblong about the size of a toothpick jacket. He came back toward the sweating culprit. The detective’s free hand landed flat on the fellow’s bony shoulder, with such weight that his knees sagged under it. Or else maybe fright did that alone. With his other hand Burkhardt deftly unrolled the little cylinder between thumb and forefinger, like an expert rolling his own cigarette, only in reverse. Then he passed it just once across at the level of his upper lip, with an involuntary grimace of repulsion.

His face hardened menacingly. He said just one word: “Cocaine.” Then the man he was holding began dancing back and forth, as his powerful left arm pistoned in and out. “Where’d you get it? Who’s doing the passing in here?”

Chapter III.

Mysterious Footsteps.

“I can feel the sun going down,” Marty remarked to Dick. “It’s below treetop level now and sinking lower every minute. I can tell by the coolness setting in; I don’t have to ask anyone, like she says.” He reached down and knuckled the stone of the path. “Sure, there’s been shade on it for the past half hour. Time to go, I guess.”

He carefully knocked the ashes out of his pipe, thrust it into his pocket stem-first. He reached for the tin cup, shook it regretfully.

“Didn’t have much of a day today, did we? Won’t have any changing to do at the cigar store this time. Maybe we better pick another bench tomorrow—”

He broke off short, listening. “Here’s someone coming now, ’way off. I’ll ask him what time he’s got, just to make doubly sure.”

The tread he had detected was still so far away that probably a person with normal vision and whose hearing therefore wasn’t so acutely developed as Marty’s, wouldn’t have been able to hear it at all. But the bush of evening had fallen on the air, the breeze was coming from that direction, and the soft scrape of shoe leather carried clearly to Marty’s sensitized faculties.

He sat back on the bench waiting for the stranger to reach the spot. The tread came on a little closer, but strangely enough without growing proportionately louder, almost as though it were being purposely muffled. Then suddenly it ceased altogether. A moment or two went by, and it never resumed again where it had broken off.

“That’s funny,” Marty soliloquized “He didn’t turn around and go back, because I would have heard bis steps receding. And he didn’t branch off in another direction, because I would have heard that, too, and anyway there are no other paths leading away from this one hereabouts. Must be standing there stock-still in the middle of the path. Either that or he stepped off it a minute onto the grass. Oh, well, he’ll step on again in a minute from where he left off. He was coming this way, so he’ll have to finish coming this way.”

But the soft tread never resumed, was left hanging in midair, as it were. As two, three, four minutes ticked by, the sense of expectancy, of waiting for it to continue from where it had left off, began to get on Marty’s nerves. He didn’t turn his head that way, because in his case that wouldn’t have helped; he had no vision to project. But he did sit with his head slightly bowed, listening with every nerve in his body. “What the devil happened to that fellow, was he snatched bodily up into the air?” he thought.

He reached down finally and lightly explored the side of Dick’s head. The dog’s ears were stiffly perked, its muzzle was pointing that way. So Dick’d heard it, too. A little uneasiness began to tinge what until now had just been idle curiosity with Marty. Whoever that was he’d heard approaching furtively along the path, that person was still around some place, taking pains not to let himself be heard. Why?

Marty didn’t move there on the bench, but he was as alive as a dynamo inside himself, straining his ears to catch every slightest vibration. Suddenly he was rewarded. A slight hiss reached him, not distinct enough even to be a rustle; the sound grass makes when a foot is moved through it. But what was important was, it was much nearer than where the footfalls had last sounded from, and it was no longer anywhere near the path, it was around well in back of them now.

So somebody was stalking him, lurking back there in the lengthening shadows of the park. Again why? What did he want from a helpless old blind man sitting on a bench? Uneasiness became fear, as a twig snapped, still nearer than the first warning rustle of grass had been. The skulker was doing his best not to be heard, and he was being pretty successful at it, only two little revelatory sounds in all that distance that he’d covered since leaving the open path, and even those two an ordinary person would have missed entirely.

Marty was breathing a little quicker now, but he still hadn’t moved a muscle. He knew it was hopeless to try to get up and run for it. What chance had he against even the slowest pursuer? To cry out for help would be equally futile; the twilight must be deepening every moment, the governesses and the children had all gone long ago, he could tell by the utter, complete silence there was no longer a living soul around this part of the park, Dick, of course, would be able to give a good account of himself if it came to the worst, but a knife or weighted club might enter into it, and he didn’t want harm to come to his faithful companion.

The best strategy was the old, old one of pretending unawareness and tap-tapping away in slow retreat, if he was allowed to. To show that he was on guard would only bring on whatever threatened all the quicker. He thrust the decoy cup a little farther from him along the bench. “If he’s figuring on holding me up, let him see I haven’t taken in a cent since I’ve been sitting here.” But somehow he had a feeling that the shadowy presence back there behind him wasn’t a mere footpad; he wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble. He would simply have snatched up the tin cup and run off.

Dick gave a sudden, single resentful bark. Marty understood it perfectly.

“So he’s hiding behind a tree or something, and you caught him looking out at us, huh?” he breathed. Then in an unnaturally loud voice, to cover up the warning signal, he exclaimed: “What’s the matter, boy, you getting hungry?” He felt for the dog’s collar, gave it a restraining tug, whispered: “Sh, Dick, quiet. I know all about it. Come on; let’s get out of here.”

He got up from the bench with elaborate slowness, pointed his stick to the ground, took a preliminary shuffle or two into mid-path, but he was quivering inside like a compass needle. Dick took up his position against the outside of his master’s right leg; he had a job to do now, and the mysterious skulker was forgotten. Besides, his master had ordered him to be silent, and one command was all Dick ever needed.

They advanced slowly some twenty yards down the path, and nothing happened. Had they left him lurking back there, or was he creeping on after them? It was important to know that, and there was only one way of finding out: reproducing the original utter stillness that had betrayed his presence. Even the slight tap of Dick’s leg, the shuffle of his own feet, was enough to mar that. But Marty was as cagy in his way as anyone.

He stopped short, stooped over, pretending to pick up and examine a nonexistent twig lying in the path and which he had felt through the worn sole of his shoe. Actually he was listening as he had never listened before, with not a move from Dick to disturb him. Was that tread coming on after him? Nothing for a long minute. Then—

Shuh-chuh. It was. A grain of grit or two between the furtively oncoming sole and the pathway cement made a microscopic grinding sound that was all that Marty needed. As tiny a noise as the beak of a bird pecking at a grain of corn. So tiny that maybe the very man himself who made it didn’t hear it. But then he didn’t have Marty’s ears: no one else did.

So he was back on the path again, and at about the position of the bench they had just quitted. Would he close in, now that his attempt at creeping up behind them and ambushing them had been frustrated by their getting up and moving away? No, evidently not. Not another sound came, so seeing them halted there ahead of him, he had evidently halted, too, was waiting for their next move. It was a regular cat-and-mouse play. The skin on the back of Marty’s neck crawled involuntarily. It wasn’t physical fear; as said before, he had Dick with him. It was the eeriness, the inexplicability of the thing, that had him terrified. It was no footpad, he was sure of that by now, or he would have made his larcenous attack before Marty could get any closer to the perimeter of the park and the safety of lights and passers-by; and he hadn’t. Was it some maniac?

Marty pretended to throw the imaginary twig he had been fiddling with away and struck out once more, still slowly, calmly, to all appearance unaware that he was being followed.

“Take it easy, now, boy,” he whispered to the dog. “If we can make that exit, I think we’ll be all right. He won’t come on any farther than that.”

Slowly they followed the twisting roundabout course of the pathway, and twice more Marty stopped to listen, once pretending to adjust Dick’s collar, another time pretending to retie his own shoelace. Evidently the nemesis had learned his lesson by that single revelatory bark Dick had given back there; he stayed so far behind them that even the dog wasn’t aware of his presence any more. But Marty could hear that soft whisper of a tread each time, feeling its way after them, stopping way back there when they stopped, but never quickly enough to avoid one last betraying footfall that sent its message to Marty.

“If I only had your eyes or you only had my voice,” he sighed to Dick.

The hum of traffic outside the park, far off at first, slowly drew nearer, louder, finally swirled protectively about them with a roar and a reek of gasoline as they came out the entrance and Dick nudged him to a stop at the curbing. There were pin points of sweat on Marty’s face.

“We made it,” he murmured.

Where was the stalker now? Was he standing there just inside the entrance behind them, looking frustratedly out after them, beyond his reach? Would he turn around and slink back into the evil shadow that had conjured him up? Or would he keep on after them, right up to their own door, right up to where they lived? “How’ll I know?” Marty said to himself, with renewed apprehension at the thought that he might be unwittingly bringing home some danger to Celia. “How’ll I be able to tell, with dozens of other footsteps around me, unless I identify his tread first?” And there hadn’t been enough of it to go by so far; not two good clear-cut steps in succession.

The traffic roar suddenly died out to a pulsing of waiting motors, there was a sharp click from the automatic light stanchion on the opposite corner, and Dick nudged him over the curb and on. Marty listened all the way over, but nothing followed across the asphalt. He climbed the opposite curb, the light switch clicked back again to green. Then just before the waiting motors raced into motion, and before they grew loud enough to drown it out, there was a quick passage of steps across, hurrying to beat traffic and therefore more unguarded.

About two dozen in succession, as clear as a bell, and Marty drank in every last one of them. A slight tick went with them, so there were metal tips on the soles. The fellow came down a little heavier on one foot than the other, one was a counterpoint to the other. And lastly and most important, Marty had counted three between each two footfalls, so that meant the man had good long legs; that gave Marty his pace. A medium-height man was usually two; a shorty, one. Three would be easy to keep track of, no matter how many other footsteps cluttered up the sidewalk. Three wasn’t often met with, three meant he was a good six feet or over. Marty had got all he needed out of that one incautious passage against the traffic light. He, the shadower, knew he was following a blind man, so he should have known better.

All the way down the first block that step, one-two-three, step, one-two-three, hung on after them, not so far behind as in the park, but at about ten yards distance now. Sometimes other steps blotted it out, but it always came through again to Marty’s keen ears. He stopped, just to make doubly sure, to test it, and it alone of all the others, stopped, too.

He knew that if he went up to a cop and complained someone was following him, the first thing the cop would say was: “But you’re blind. How can you tell if someone is or not?” Or if to humor him, the cop escorted him up to his own door, that would be the very thing Marty didn’t want, that would reveal where he lived.

“I’m not licked yet,” he muttered grimly to the dog. “I’m going to lose him if it takes all night. After all, I’m one up on him; I know that he’s tailing me, but he doesn’a know that I know. Pop Sabbatino’s market has a back entrance on an alley. He’ll see us go in there, but he’ll never see us come out again.”

The third crossing after the park was where he had to turn off the straightaway to get to Sabbatino’s; he knew that much. But he had to get the idea across to Dick. Dick was training to lead him home the shortest way; he didn’t know anything about detours. And if the watcher in the background noticed them disputing about it, he’d catch on what was up right away.

Marty turned left. Dick immediately got in front of him and tried to block him, head him back in the way they had been going.

“Cut it out,” Marty whispered tensely; “he’ll see you. Sabbatino. Sabbatino, Dick. Don’t you get it?”

The dog had been there with him, of course, on errands for Celia. But Dick wasn’t used to going there from the park, he was used to going there from the flat. He wouldn’t budge, thinking Marty had lost his bearings and it was up to him to set him right. And behind them, eyes were watching every move the two made, as they jockeyed stubbornly for leadership.

Suddenly Marty remembered a phrase Celia usually tacked on at the end of her instructions: “And a piece of liver for Dick.” He repeated it now.

The dog understood, gave in. They trudged up the side street toward their new destination.

There was a moment or two of silence in their wake.

“He’s watching us from the corner, letting us have our heads,” said Marty shrewdly.

Then on it came again, step, one-two-three, step, one-two-three. The dog nudged Marty aside again, toward a smell of oranges and fresh green vegetables, and the sidewalk underfoot changed to wooden flooring sprinkled with sawdust. A cash register trilled somewhere nearby.

A booming Italian voice hailed them heartily. “Hello, Marty! What’sa it gonna be tonight?”

“Just stopped in to say hello,” said Marty noncommitally. No sense taking Sabbatino into his confidence; the latter would probably tell him he was just imagining things. All these people with eyesight were always so sure they knew better than a blind man. He drummed his fingers on the glass counter top for a minute or two, to give the shadower time to look in and reassure himself that he was in there; then he would probably cringe back out of sight again, like a cat watching a mouse hole.

“Anyone looking in from the street?” Marty asked finally.

“Huh? Nomebody.”

“Sure? Take another look.”

“Issa no one there,” insisted the bewildered Sabbatino.

“Then take me over to the back door, Sabbatino; I’ll go out that way.”

“What’s a matt,’ you in troub’?” But the storekeeper did as he asked.

“No,” said Marty, “I’m not in trouble, and I aim to stay that way. Just sick of people gaping at me and Dick. Anyone looking in yet?”

“I can’t a tell, canno see the street from here, issa counter full of can’ goods ina way.”

“Good,” said Marty. “If anyone steps in the next ten-fifteen minutes and asks you what became of me, you never saw me, you don’t even know who I am.”

The back door of Sabbatino’s closed behind them, and Dick led him down a narrow delivery passage between two buildings to the next street over. They rounded the corner of that and rejoined the street they lived on, but above their house now, and not below it. Marty stood and listened a minute. Silence all around them; they’d finally thrown that step, one-two-three, off the track.

“It worked,” Marty exulted. “Now hurry up; let’s get in out of the open while we have the chance!”

The two of them all but ran the remaining distance to their door, Dick nearly tripping him up when it came time to turn him aside finally toward the right entrance. Marty lurched inside, drew a great breath of relief as he felt the walls of the narrow entrance hall safe around him and knew that he was screened from the street.

“I don’t know what that was all about,” he panted, “but I sure didn’t like it, and I’m staying indoors from now on!”

Chapter IV.

A Horrible Predicament.

He was still out of breath from that last headlong race to sanctuary, when he finally got upstairs to the flat. Celia was already home and worried about him.

“Gramp,” she scolded, “what happened to you? You were never this late before! I was scared sick! Don’t you ever do that again!”

He decided not to tell her about those mysterious footsteps that had followed him; it would only frighten her, and she had things hard enough without adding to her worries. Besides, he was safe now, he’d outwitted whatever the danger was, so there was no need to alarm her. “I guess we sat there a little too long,” he mumbled penitently.

“Well, sit down: supper’s been ready for half an hour.”

All through the meal he was unusually silent, trying to figure out what that could have been. What reason could anyone have, first, to try to creep up on him in the park, and then to follow him along the streets with the obvious purpose of finding out where he lived? He had no enemies; there was no neighborhood gossip of hoarded wealth attached to his name to arouse any malefactor’s cupidity, they all knew Celia worked hard for a pittance every week. Who could it have been, and what could he have wanted?

The harder Marty tried, the less sense he could make out of it. Celia noticed his preoccupation after awhile.

“Gramp, what’s troubling you? You’re not eating anything.”

“Nothing. Just musing, that’s all.”

Dick, the lucky dog, didn’t have his worries, although they’d shared the creepy experience together. He could hear the dog’s jaws busily grinding away on a bone on the floor. Then suddenly the crunching stopped.

“What’s the matter?” Marty asked the girl. “What’d he stop for?”

“Listening to something outside, I guess,” she answered evenly. “Probably hears somebody on the stairs, going to one of the other flats.”

Marty reached down and felt the dog’s ears, those infallible indicators of danger. They were perked alertly, its head was turned toward the door, bone forgotten; but there wasn’t a sound to be heard out there. Not even Marty’s keen ears could distinguish anything. The dog must have been conscious of some vibration that the humans in the room were not attuned to.

Marty put down his fork, clenched his hand at his side, out of his granddaughter’s sight. This was it again. It had caught up with him anyway, in spite of his strategy. A low preliminary rumbling sound started up from the dog’s throat. Marty fingered its muzzle; it was wrinkled back, baring sharp teeth for impending action. It wasn’t because of the bone, either; Dick’s head was steadfastly facing the door.

“Sh!” Marty silenced the full-bodied bark that was forming by clamping his hand about the dog’s jaws. He signaled the girl to come around closer to where he was, so that he could whisper it to her without being overheard. “There’s somebody standing out there. Dick hears him.”

A faint creak sounded just outside their threshold, in confirmation. Again Marty had to restrain Dick from giving challenge.

“Get over there and push home the bolt, quick!”

“But who?” her frightened whisper came back.

“I don’t know. I didn’t tell you before, but footsteps followed me all the way home from the park.”

They had no telephone in the place, the windows looked out on a shaft, without even a fire escape leading down from them; they were trapped, sealed in.

“But we have no reason to be afraid of anyone,” Celia protested. “I’m going to open the door and see who it is. It may simply be somebody trying to find their way to one of the other flats, who stopped off at the wrong floor.”

“Then they’d come up openly like honest people do, not creep up like a spook out of a cemetery!” He half rose from his chair. “If you won’t do as I say and lock it, I’m going to, before—”

But it was already too late. Without any further warning the door swung inward, around on its hinges, and struck the wall behind it with a shattering crash. Marty heard his granddaughter’s scream of alarm, and he could sense someone standing there in the opening looking in at them, without being able to see him. Marty could feel Dick’s powerful shoulder muscles tense under his hand for a spring at the intruder.

Then a man’s voice barked authoritatively: “Hold him back, pop! I’ve got a gun here, and I don’t want to have to use it on him!”

“Be careful of Dick, gramp; he has!” the girl corroborated.

Marty gripped Dick restrainingly by the collar, but warned:

“Stay out of here now, or I’ll let him at you! What do you want, breaking in here at the point of a gun? I’ll get the police—”

“I am the police,” was the grim answer.

Marty heard the door swing closed again with a slam, as though given a backward kick, but the voice reained on the inside of it.

“Narcotic squad,” it added quietly.

He must have shown the girl some credential or other. Marty heard her say in a dazed voice:

“Burkhardt, narcotic division—” Then she went on: “But what do you want here? We haven’t done anything.”

“You haven’t,” said the voice, coming forward into the room; “I can tell that by what I overheard you say about opening the door when the dog first scented me.”

“But gramp hasn’t either!” she protested.

“I’m sorry, miss, but he has. He’s been peddling cocaine in the park.”

Marty just sat there turned to stone, stunned, unable to believe his ears for a minute. It was as though he heard himself being accused of murder. He could hear Celia sobbing:

“Oh, no! No! I’m sure you’re mistaken! Not my gramp—”

“I watched him with my own eyes,” was the devastating answer.

Marty reared up, brought his fist down on the table so that the crockery sang out. “You’re a liar!” he bellowed.

The detective’s voice was flinty. “We purposely turned one of the hop-heads loose a week ago. I saw him come up to you on that bench this afternoon, take something out of the little leather cup fastened to the stump of your dog’s leg. I caught up with him as soon as he left you, and I’ve got the evidence in my pocket right now!”

Marty slumped down again, ran a despairing hand through the part in his silvery hair he was so proud of. “But... but they all stop and fiddle with Dick’s wooden leg, look it over. Nearly every time I go out. Just because one of them happened to have that stuff on him, is no proof he got it from me.”

“I followed him every step of the way from his room, and he didn’t go within arm’s length of another human being. It’s a cinch he didn’t bring that stuff out with him, to carry around on the streets, knowing the risk he ran of being stopped on sight by one of us. No, pop, you can’t pass the buck this time. I’m sorry to see an old man like you mixed up in such a filthy business.” The detective’s voice softened momentarily. “Especially with a sweet granddaughter like you have, doing everything she can to look after you. Another thing, if you weren’t guilty, why did you try to shake me off on the way home like you did? You gave me the slip all right, you’re smart; but you forgot that you’re too well known in the neighborhood on account of your affliction and the dog. All I had to do was ask around and I found out where you lived.”

“I was scared,” Marty tried to explain forlornly, “that’s why I tried to dodge you getting home. I heard somebody tailing me, and I didn’t know who it was or what he wanted, that’s all. You’ve got to believe me, you’ve got to!”

“I wish I could. I saw what happened. What’d you do with the money you’ve been getting for it? Don’t try to tell me you’ve been giving it away for free samples.”

“I never got a penny from doing such a thing. I wouldn’t touch that kind of money!”

“Yeah? Well, we’re going to take a look around. Sit there now, don’t try to get away; one of my teammates is down at the street door.”

Celia’s voice sounded, with an edge of pride in it. “He’s innocent, why should he try to get away? I wouldn’t want him to, until this has been cleared up.”

The detective’s tread went into the next room. Marty heard the mattress of his cot being lifted up bodily over the foot of it, thumped here and there. Drawers were thrown open, the window casings rapped, the floor boards tested for looseness under the weight of the detective’s foot. Marty just sat huddled there, meanwhile, staring sightlessly at the floor, wondering how this horrible predicament could have come about. The next thing he knew, the detective was back in the room with them again, continuing his rummaging, and Celia was saying impatiently:

“You won’t find any money; all he’s ever had to his name are the few pennies I’ve spared him each day.” There was a clash of metal on the shelf as something was shifted.

The humidor!

Marty lifted his head in terror, thrust out his hand inadvertently, as if to stop the detective from taking it down. Then he quickly withdrew it again, but they must have both seen the telltale gesture. There was a moment of horrible silence, and he could feel them both looking at him, the detective probably with a grin of satisfaction, the girl in dismay.

Then the sound of Burkhardt uncapping the receptacle, the rustling of the loose tobacco as he dredged it, and then another pause, more awful than the first. He was probably holding up the two hundred dollars. There was an intake of breath from Celia. The detective said, speaking softly, so Marty knew it was to her — people had told him she was pretty:

“Tell me the truth, now, and don’t try to cover him up. Did you ever see this before? Did you know it was here in the house with you?”

She was loyal to the bitter end; she didn’t answer. But the detective answered his own question.

“Your face tells me you didn’t. We’ll leave you out of this. Come along, Marty Campbell; there’s a few things we’d like to know, that you can tell us.”

A hand descended on his shoulder, but not roughly. Dick bristled a little at the liberty, and it was Marty who silenced him, himself. “He’s the only one who could clear me,” he thought poignantly, “and he can’t talk.” He stood up submissively.

“I got that money from panhandling in the park... not actively, just by sitting there with a tin cup alongside me,” he said. “But I guess it’s no use expecting you to believe me any more.”

“Two hundred dollars?” was all the detective said pointedly.

“I been doing it for five years past. Dick’s wooden leg gets them, is a big attraction.”

Then from the open doorway he turned and made one final plea. “You believe me, don’t you, Celia? No matter how it looks, you don’t believe I’d do anything like that, do you?”

The stifled silence of the room behind him gave him the answer.

Chapter V.

Blind Man’s Luck.

They started down the tenement stairs, Burkhart incautiously in the lead, to guide Marty, the latter feeling his way down after him, one hand pinned between the detective’s arm and his body, more to show him the way down than to hold him fast, the other trailing the banister railing. Dick zigzagged disgruntedly at the rear, trying to force his way past to the front and assume his rightful duties, now taken over by this stranger.

Marty went to his impending disgrace in bitter silence, too proud to plead his innocence any more with the cards stacked against him the way they were. What hurt most was that even Celia seemed to think that where there was that much smoke, there must be a little fire.

He wouldn’t have done what he did — he was in hot water enough already without adding to it — but as they rounded the turn of the landing, he crowded Burkhardt slightly and the latter’s gun, bedded in his hip pocket, grazed him. It would be so easy to— The idea leaped into his mind then and there, full-grown, and he acted on it without giving himself time to lose his nerve.

There was a light bulb hanging directly over the landing on a loose cord, he knew — a light that he couldn’t see and didn’t need, but that Burkhardt did. And the next one was a full floor below. His captor’s gun at his own fingertips, his captor’s eyesight at the mercy of a fragile filament in a vacuum, and Dick at his heels — the combination was too favorable to pass by, and Marty had to have freedom of action to square himself with Celia.

He lifted his right hand from the rail as they rounded the turn, crossed it under the pinioned one, closed it around that wedge-shaped butt protruding from Burkhardt’s hip — whisk! and up it came, described an arc over the rail, and went dropping down four floors to the bottom of the stair well. He couldn’t risk retaining it himself; it would have been too easy for Burkhardt to get it back again.

Before the detective had even had time to whirl completely around at the feel of it gone, that same hand had flapped upward in a violent fly-swatting motion. Luck was with him, blind luck for a blind man. His fingertips grazed the tip of the bulb; an eighth of an inch lower and they would have only fanned it. It danced violently away at the end of its cord, hit the ceiling, and pop! — no more light.

Even while the glass capsule was still in the act of flying apart all around its luminous core, he’d shrilled the command, “Get him, Dick! Hold him down!” He bent over double as though he were playing leapfrog, something long and heavy swept over him, there was a thump of two colliding bodies, and Burkhardt went down on the landing with a crash that shook the whole stair structure.

Dick knew just how to do it, and Burkhardt seemed to know enough about this kind of dog not to resist; that would have cost his life. There wasn’t a move out of him as he lay pinned there flat on his back, just the sound of his tense, heavy breathing. The dog’s fangs must have been bared right over his jugular.

“Lie still or he’ll tear your throat!” Marty warned. “Don’t call out!” He hobbled quickly up to his own floor again. Celia had thrown open the apartment door at the sound of the fall, was standing out there, unable to see in the dark. He caught her by the edge of the dress, tugged at it.

“Hurry up! Dick’s got him! Bring that clothesline from the fire escape. You’ve got to help me bring him back up here!”

“Gramp! Isn’t it bad enough already. without—”

“I’ve got to have a chance to square myself, and this is the only way I’ll get it. They’ll send me away, Celia, for something I never did!”

“But, gramp, they’ll only get you in the end, and then it’ll be worse.”

“All I ask is a chance to clear my name. Celia, won’t you see that I get it?”

Burkhardt, who must have overheard them, spoke softly from where he lay helpless in the dark. “You’re making her an accomplice if you talk her into laying a hand on me—” Dick’s warning snarl cut him short.

The veiled threat in it seemed to decide her, womanlike, to do the opposite. “I have no one but you, gramp,” she said impulsively. “Whether you did or didn’t, you’re going to have your chance!”

She turned and ran back into the flat, came out again with the clothesline. Between them they trussed up the seething detective, under the compulsion of Dick’s menacing teeth, thrust a handkerchief loosely into his mouth, got him up into the flat again somehow. They sat him down in a chair, with Dick still the chief restraining influence.

“His gun’s down there at the bottom of the stairs; go down and get it before someone sees it,” Marty ordered.

When she returned with it, they closed the door on the captor who had now become captive.

“He said he had another man waiting outside the house,” she reminded Marty anxiously.

“I don’t believe it; that was just to make me go along quietly. Why should it take two of them?”

“But they’ll miss him at his headquarters, won’t they?”

“Maybe, but they won’t find him right away; he came here on his own.”

“But, gramp, we can’t keep him here forever!”

“That’s up to him. Take the gag out of his mouth, Celia. If he tries to yell, put it back in again.” To the detective he said: “You still won’t believe me that I’m not guilty of passing out that stuff?”

“Now less than ever,” was the immediate retort.

“Then you’re going to stay here until I can square myself.”

“And how do you expect to do that?”

Marty felt for a chair, sat down opposite the prisoner’s voice. “Listen to me. You know what you know: that an addict received cocaine out of Dick’s wooden leg. I know what I know: that I didn’t put it there, or know it was there. How’d it get there, then? Even a blind man like me can figure that out. Every day on my way to the park, people stop around me, even go so far as to bend down, fiddle with Dick’s leg. One of them put it in, I carried it into the park, and it was received at the other end, all without my knowing it. Much safer for them, since you people were on the warpath.”

“How about payment?” said the detective noncommittally. “They giving it away free?”

“If they used Dick to make the sale, they used him to bring back the proceeds, too. It’s taken out on the way back, maybe by the same fellow—” He broke off short. “Wait a minute! It just come to me now. No one stopped me tonight, because you were coming after me, and I turned off my usual route, ducked over to Sabbatino’s. Celia, look in that leather shield around the upper part of Dick’s leg.”

Her dress rustled as she squatted down to where the dog crouched watching Burkhardt. She gave a wordless little exclamation. It was the detective who spoke:

“Two tens!”

“See?” Marty cried triumphantly.

The detective wouldn’t give in. “Yeah, and I found twenty more of them in that humidor. You’re only building up my original case against you. The way you tell it, it’s too hit-or-miss a way of collecting for sharks like them to rely on. If the buyer happens to have the money, all well and good. If not, what’s to stop him from helping himself and not depositing anything in return?”

“He could try that just once. He knows he’d never get any again when he needs it most. And he knows he’d get caught up with and have the amount outstanding beaten out of his hide sooner or later. I’ll admit it’s kind of a hit-or-miss system and they wouldn’t use it ordinarily, but you’ve driven ’em underground and they have no choice until the heat goes down. At that, I could only supply one customer at a time for them. But one customer a day they’re sure of, with absolutely no risk to themselves, is better than nothing. And I suppose they have others like me all over town they’re using right now — flower venders, chewing-gum peddlers, pushcart owners. And now if I turn you loose and give you back your gun, will you give me my chance to square myself?”

“What’s that?” asked the detective, with reservations in his voice.

“Why, just go for my regular outing in the park like I’ve been doing every day, but with you keeping me in sight. On the way back, whoever stops me to take the money out of Dick’s leg, that’s your man, that’s who you want to follow. I’ll know when it happens, and I’ll find some way of tipping you off in time. You keep him in sight and he’s bound to lead you where you want to go, eventually, to the higher-ups.”

Burkhardt must have been nine tenths detective. Or maybe he was just sore at having had one put over on him by a blind man and wouldn’t have given in to anything. “Or maybe he’ll lead me on a wild-goose chase, and you’ll conveniently sprout wings and disappear while my back’s turned. I could lie to you, for the sake of getting my hands free, but I wouldn’t stoop to that with a man twice my age and blind in the bargain, after you already got the better of me once. I’m giving you fair warning. If you turn me loose and give me back my gun. I’m going to take up right where I left off, finish the job I started out to do: haul you in with me and turn over the evidence I’ve got against you!”

Marty took a deep breath, more of regret than resentment. “Then I’ll have to go it alone,” he said.

“Without even being able to see where you’re going, you expect to accomplish what our whole squad has been trying to do all winter long, without succeeding so far?” Burkhardt scoffed. “With what?”

“My ears, my dog, and whatever brains God gave me,” answered Marty.

Chapter VI.

Trailing by Ear.

He came out of the house with Dick at his usual time the next day. Again Mrs. Schultz, the janitress, was loitering on the doorstep, said good morning as he went by. Everything seemed just like other days. Only, Celia hadn’t gone to work today. She was upstairs in the flat with a raging, unshaven, tied-up detective on her hands, with orders to see that he stayed where he was until her grandfather had his chance to clear his name.

There would be no danger attached to it so far as he was concerned, Marty had assured her over and over. Naturally he couldn’t expect to tackle a gang, bring them in unaided. But he would find some way of singling out whoever it was had been using him for a dope runner, maybe even tracing him back to his base of operations: and the rest was up to the narcotic squad. To which Burkhardt growled contemptuously:

“Sure! You’re so inconspicuous, with your smoked glasses and peglegged dog, no one would ever notice you following them! What d’ye expect to do, tie a cowbell around his neck?”

“When I come back,” Marty answered, “I’ll be able to tell you where the headquarters of this dope ring is, which is more than you’ve been able to find out by yourself, with two good eyes!”

They advanced along the street now in their usual fashion. Yesterday’s twenty-dollar “take” had been carefully replaced in Dick’s leg, since but for the intervention of Burkhardt, Marty would never have known it was there in the first place, and he wasn’t supposed to even now.

The usual crowd of rubbernecks started to form as soon as they were out of their own neighborhood, and the usual foolish questions were asked. Then the usual “Missourian” stepped forward, impeded them while he inspected the leg.

Was this his man? Marty didn’t make any attempt to find out. It was daylight all around him, for everyone but him; the odds were still too unequal, like last night before he’d smashed that light bulb. On the way back was the time to try to tag him.

Two crossings away, as they stood waiting for the light, he ordered Dick: “Stand up and take my hat off for me.” This was only so that he could get the dog in a position where he could find out if the switch had already been made, without bending over and examining the leg, which would have tipped his hand. Eyes might still be watching him from a distance. The dog reared up against him on its two hind legs, caught the brim of Marty’s hat between his teeth, removed it for him. Eut while Dick was up against him like that, body to body, Marty quickly thrust one exploring finger into the leather shield. The wad of folded money was gone. A cube of paper, folded tightly over something crumbly, was there instead. So that had been his man back there just now.

Loiterers still hanging around watching, applauded the dog’s cleverness as it dropped down again to all fours with the hat between its jaws. A coin or two dropped into it in appreciation; that covered up what he had just done beautifully, as far as Marty was concerned. They went on again. That was Step 1. “I’m one up on them now,” he thought. “I knew what I’m carrying, and they still don’t know that I knew.”

They found their usual bench in the park, sat down on it.

“Step 2 will take place pretty soon. Fold your leg under you,” Marty told Dick, and jogged it with the tip of his stick; “that’ll give him away to us.”

Footsteps sounded in the distance, drew nearer, came to a halt opposite them.

“What’s that, a wooden leg your dog has?”

Marty felt like saying: “How do you know? You can’t see it from where you are.” But he didn’t. He wasn’t interested in this poor wretch, anyway. He and others like him had already been picked up long ago by Burkhardt’s squad, then turned loose again for come-ons.

“Stretch your paw out a little, doggie, so I can see it.”

“And get my bum jolts,” added Marty to himself.

He let the steps fade away in the distance, then he bent over and ran his finger under the leather cushion a second time. The little paper cube was gone now; the spongy feel of folded money was back again.

“We’re getting there,” he told the dog softly. “The preliminary stages are over with now. At dusk, when we go out of here, our job begins.”

The wheels of a little cart came creaking along the path about an hour later. Marty knew who it was; they were old friends.

“Hello, Silvestro,” he said. “I got a sweet tooth today. What you got that’s extra sticky and makes a lotta noise when you chew it?” “Popcorn dip’ in molasses, she’sa make the most noise, she’sa the worst sticky thing I got ona whole cart. You getta on your fingers, you never getta off again, issa worse than fly pape.”

“Gimme a dime’s worth of it.”

But the sweet tooth must have gone sour on him; after the little cart had trundled on, he put it all in his pocket, still wrapped up; didn’t even taste it.

When he felt the pavement under him getting cool and knew the shadows had lain over it for a long time, he got up and they started slowly back. Dick didn’t know that they weren’t going home just like any other night, Dick couldn’t tell they were up against the toughest job of both their lives. But if he had, he’d have still been there beside him, probably.

Near the park entrance Marty stopped a laborer they passed and asked him, not the exact time, but just how dark it was.

“It’s as dark as it’ll ever get tonight,” was the answer.

Marty nodded his thanks and went on. That was the way he wanted it to be. The street lights would still give his intended adversary a big advantage at that; this was as even as the odds could be made, and they were still pretty heavy against him.

Back into the built-up streets they crossed, and his heart was pounding while he trudged so serenely along beside Dick. Along here some place it would be, somewhere along the next three blocks.

It was nightfall now and people were hurrying home from their offices and jobs; they didn’t have leisure to collect around him and gape like they did earlier in the day. A glance in passing was the most they gave him. Not more than one person, as a rule, stepped up and asked him foolish questions on his way back at nights. He knew now what that meant, who that one person was, but he hadn’t until now.

They slowly coursed the first block after the park and nothing happened. The way Dick’s coat kept contact with the shank of his leg, no one could have impeded the dog for a moment without Marty’s knowing it immediately.

They crossed the intersection and began covering the second block. Marty couldn’t tell whether it was a darker stretch than the one before, and therefore more favorable to undercover purposes, or not. It sounded a little quieter, however, and therefore must have been less brightly lighted. Along they toiled, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, with the patter of Dick’s three normal paws and the tick of his little wooden peg for an accompaniment. Then suddenly just as they were nearing the far corner, and Marty had already checked the block off as not being the one, a single stealthy footfall fell directly beside them, as though someone had stepped out of the shelter of a doorway or nook in the building line.

A voice asked softly, “What’s that, a wooden leg he’s got, pop?”

“Yeah,” said Marty benevolently, and took a deep breath.

He brought the popcorn out of his pocket, well crumbled by now in its wrapping, started to put a little in his mouth, fumbled the package, and it spilled all over the sidewalk around him, like rice at a wedding, but much stickier than rice could ever be.

There was a crunching, gritty sound, as it was ground underfoot, became embedded in shoe leather. As the man who had been crouching down beside Dick moved inadvertently backward in straightening up, he apparently didn’t even notice that he was getting his soles full of it.

“Some contraption!” he murmured appreciatively.

His steps receded. But they couldn’t be very furtive any more. Scrunch, scrunch, scrunch, it was almost like someone walking on gravel. Marty’s ears could pick it up as easily as a microphone in a recording room.

The retreating man became conscious of it himself after a few steps. There was a scraping sound as he tried to free the soles of his shoes. But the stuff was as hard to get off entirely as chewing gum. The crunching had diminished considerably when the tread resumed, but there was still plenty of it left to be a distinguishing mark for Marty; it was a lot easier to identify than Burkhardt’s one-two-three had been last night.

Meanwhile he and Dick were advancing again in their original direction, with the gritty walk receding far ahead of them now and drawing farther away at every step. Suddenly it was blotted out entirely, and Marty knew what that meant: the man had rounded the corner.

“Hurry up before we lose him!” he whispered, and started out at a lumbering headlong run, stick folded under his arm to avoid tripping over it.

Dick loped along beside him, then swerved in and braked him abruptly, so he knew they were out at the curb line. That was too far out; all the man had to do was look back over his shoulder and he’d see them there. Marty quickly tacked back for what he judged to be a sufficient distance to be sheltered by the building line; then he shifted over closer to it and listened for all he was worth. All this of course was confusing to Dick, but he followed suit.

Yes, there it was, he could still make it out going far down the side street. Gra-ak, grick, gra-ak, grick. Very faint, though, now. “Have to close in a little or we’re going to lose it,” he said, and that was a dangerous thing to do in a straight line. He took off his glasses and pocketed them as he rounded the corner, but he knew the precaution was worse than useless; while Dick remained with him, he could be spotted a mile off. And what good was he without Dick?

For the first time the thought of failure entered his mind. Burkhardt was right, he’d never make it. Too late, Marty saw now what his mistake was. He should have brought someone else along with him, someone with eyesight. He could have accomplished what he had so far, then they could have taken it up from here on, tracked his man down, come back, and reported where he had holed up. But who could he have used? Celia? That would have subjected her to danger; and then probably Burkhardt would have freed himself in her absence, raised an alarm, and he would be in a detention cell by now. Marty cast the thought of defeat resolutely from him. The footsteps were still in range, weren’t they? Why give up yet?

Twice they faded out, and he thought he’d lost them, but each time they came back again. Still, he didn’t like the sound of that. What did it mean, that he’d stopped and looked back? Meanwhile, Marty was hustling along at a pace he’d never attempted before, and taxing Dick’s ingenuity to the utmost. Dick wasn’t used to guiding him at the double-quick like this, but the dog made a good job of it.

The steps ahead were growing a little clearer again, which meant that he was closing in on them, when suddenly what he had been dreading most all along happened. They stopped dead about three quarters of a block ahead, there was the sound of a latch being opened, and then a car door slammed closed with sickening finality.

It was over; he’d lost him. He might as well quit now. Even memorizing the license plate wouldn’t have been much good, but he couldn’t even do that. An engine started to turn with a fine silky whir, wheels slithered into motion. He might have known this would happen. Birds like that didn’t travel afoot any farther than they could avoid it; too much danger of being picked up.

There was only one slim chance left, and he tried for it. He swerved out to the gutter and started to flourish his stick wildly and bawl, “Taxi! Taxi!” This was one thing Dick couldn’t do for him, but he added his barks to the din. The departure of their quarry was drowned out in the racket.

He was luckier than many a full-sighted person has been in such an emergency. One must have been passing on the opposite side of the street just then. He heard the squeal of a U turn, and Dick nudged him back out of the way just in time to avoid having his shins barked by a running board that came coasting up.

“Yes, sir,” a cheery voice said. “Where to?” And a door was swung open for him.

He tumbled in, Dick after him with an ungainly heave.

“Did you notice a car just pulling away from the curb, on this side, on your way up just now?”

“Yeah, I can still see it from here. There’s a light holding him up two blocks down.”

Gratification almost made Marty stammer. “Keep him in sight for me, stay with him, don’t lose him!”

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!”

Content

Cornell Woolrich
The Dog with the Wooden Leg

Chapter I. Blind Man’s Scheme.

Chapter II. Crime in the Park.

Chapter III. Mysterious Footsteps.

Chapter IV. A Horrible Predicament.

Chapter V. Blind Man’s Luck.

Chapter VI. Trailing by Ear.

Chapter VII. Walking on Air.