As we got into the VW, he said, “I smelled her. OK, I apologize. I keep forgetting you don’t have my keen nose. That disguise would’ve fooled me, too, if I’d just eyeballed her. Maybe. Didn’t you dig that hipswaying? She was trying to walk like a man and almost succeeded.”
“I thought he might just be a little, you know, on the ambiguous side,” I said.
“Always the gent, ain’t you, Doc?”
As we drove away, I said, “How do you know she’s going to Venice?”
“That’s where the long green, the loot, the mazuma is just now. And where the carrion is, the hyenas gather. In this case, Giftlippen and his sidekick, Smigma. Things must be about ready to pop open. Otherwise, Giftlippen wouldn’t have called in his old lady.”
“But,” I said, “Giftlippen and Smigma are dead! They were blown to bits last year at Marienbad when the Czech police ambushed them. You know that. You set up the trap for them.”
“How many wooden pfennigs have you got in the bank, Doc?”
2
As Ralph had predicted, her taxi went straight to the Northern Aircross, the airport at Fuhlsbüttel. I hope my foreign readers will forgive me if I mention, with some pride, that it is the oldest airport in Europe. It also has some of the longest lines at the ticket counter in the world. Ralph stayed in the car while I waited by the counter and ascertained that Saugpumpe was indeed going to Venice. Fortunately, she was so intoxicated that her normal perceptiveness was missing. She didn’t notice me. Also, I suppose she must have been sure she had eluded her shadows, if any.
She was still in her male clothes, passing as a Herr Kleinermann Wasnun. I returned to the parking lot, where I got out of the trunk our forged IDs and other papers. Among these was a health certificate from a licensed veterinarian, required for a seeing-eye dog traveling to a foreign country. I wrote in the date since it is invalid if issued over fifteen days before leaving. I then muzzled Ralph, another requirement; and with a suitcase which is always packed for such emergencies, we proceeded to buy a ticket. (A blind man’s dog travels free.) Of course, we couldn’t board Saugpumpe’s airliner. Even she would have thought it suspicious that we would have been at the opera and on her plane, too. She took a Lufthansa directly to the Lido Airport, and we left on an Albanian airliner to Rome. Not, however, before I had phoned Lisa Scarletin. When I hung up, I found that Ralph had been eavesdropping.
“You look like one of Dracula’s victims,” he said. “She really chewed you out, didn’t she?”
“Yes. She said this was the last time. She gave me seven days more. If the case isn’t wrapped up by then, I can either abandon it and return to Hamburg. Or...”
“Or forget the wedding bells, heh? Well, Doc, you can’t blame her. She hardly ever gets to see you, and you lead a very dangerous life. Besides, women regard their competitors as bitches, but a male dog... unforgivable! I won’t crowd you. You’re a big boy now. You can make your own decision.”
“Either way, I lose!” I cried.
“That’s life for you.” But his involuntary whine betrayed him. He was as upset as I.
The flight was pleasant enough, though marred by three minor incidents. One was when a scowling Albanian commented, in his native Gheg, about us. I leaned down to Ralph, who was lying in the aisle by my seat, as regulations required. “What did he say?”
“How the hell can I talk with this muzzle on?” he said.
Reassured that I could hear him—after all, the voder in his throat doesn’t depend upon his lip movements—he said, “Something about a capitalist dog.”
“What?” I said. “I shall certainly complain to the stewardess. After all, the Albanian Airline is trying to drum up business, and they certainly won’t get any goodwill if they allow their passengers to be insulted.”
“For cripes’ sake, pipe down!” he said. “He was referring to me. And quit talking. They’re staring at us.”
Sometime later he rose while I was eating. Through a lifted lip, he said, “How’s the rabbit stew?”
“Delicious. But I can’t give you some. You know I can’t unmuzzle you to eat.”
“It ain’t rabbit, Doc. It’s cat!”
I suddenly lost my appetite. And I was furious, but I could not complain. I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself. Besides, how could I explain that I knew the difference between cat and rabbit without admitting that I was well acquainted with the taste of both?
About an hour before we landed at Rome, Ralph again put his head on my lap. “I can’t stand it anymore,” he said. “I gotta go!”
“Number 1 or Number 2?” I said.
“Do you want a demonstration in the aisle? Let me into the toilet before I bust.”
It was most embarrassing, but Ralph insisted on the intensity of the urgency in terms which would affront the more delicate of my readers. In fact, they affronted me. Even more furious, I rose and tap-tapped my way down the aisle with the leash in my other hand. The passengers started, but they assumed of course that I was the one in need. Once at the door of the toilet, which fortunately was in the rear, I observed that no one was looking. I quickly opened the door and Ralph bounded in and sat down on the seat. I shut the door, but a few seconds later it occurred to me that if anyone did look back he might be surprised. I went into the toilet quickly and locked the door.
“I was wondering what you were doing out there,” Ralph said. “I don’t know what the Albanians consider a low sanitation level, but they might object to a mere canine using their facilities.”
“Hurry up,” I said. “The other toilet’s occupied, and somebody might want to use this one at any moment. If he should see us emerge together from this place, well...”
“Can it, Doc! No pun intended. I’ve been able to adapt to living as a human in most respects. But I am a dog, and in some things I’ll always be a dog. For Homo sap, Number 1 relief is a continuous process, quickly done. For me, it’s intermittent, and it’s long, though highly pleasurable. So keep your shirt on.”
I sweated, and then at last Ralph was finished, and I opened the door. And what I’d dreaded, happened. A fat, frowzy, and elderly woman was waiting outside. Her expression of impatience, and perhaps of some slight pain, became astonishment. Then revulsion. She poured out a flood of furious protest mixed with some invectives, I’m sure, though I didn’t understand a word of it. Ralph growled, and even though muzzled he scared her. She backed up, screaming for the stewardess. There was quite a commotion for a while. I got back to my seat and sat down, and then the stewardess, speaking German, asked me for an explanation.
“It’s simple,” I said. “The dog was suffering, and so I took him where he would no longer have to suffer.”
“But that is for the passengers,” she said, though she was having difficulty repressing a smile.
“The dog is a passenger,” I said. “And I didn’t see any sign forbidding use by animals. Besides, he’s much cleaner than her,” and I pointed to the fat woman glaring at us from across the aisle.
“Oh, you mustn’t say that!” she said. “She’s a commissar!”
But she returned to the woman; they talked for a while, and that was the last I heard of that. However, after disembarking, Ralph pulled me up alongside the woman, who was trudging across the field carrying a large attaché case. He lifted his lip, said something, and then dropped back. She looked back, this time with a frightened look, and then broke into a waddling run.
“All right,” I said. “What did you say?”
“Do you know the Albanian for up yours?”
“Ralph,” I said, “that was stupid. We’ve had a lot of publicity. She might put two and two together and...”
“And come up with vier,” he said. (I should explain that the German word for four sounds much like the British English fear.)
“Anyway,” he continued, “she’ll convince herself she was mistaken. It’s been my experience that nobody really believes in a talking dog until he’s been around me for a whi
le.”
“Nevertheless, that was stupid. It could jeopardize our mission.”
“I’m human, all too human. Likely to give way to selfdestructive impulses. I apologize again. You’re entitled to that remark. God knows how many times I’ve called you stupid. I’ve regretted it later, of course. After all, it’s not your fault you don’t have my high IQ.”
3
For the reader who knows nothing about Ralph—though it seems incredible in this day of global TV—I’ll recapitulate his career. Ralph was the result of experiments by psychobiologists at an institute in Hamburg. They were able to raise the intelligence of various animals through the implantation of an artificial protein. These developed into billions of cerebral nerve synapses, making the brain not much larger but immensely more complex.
German shepherd dogs were not the only experimental animals at the institute. The scientists had succeeded in raising the intelligence of all their subjects and also increased the size of many. The sentient beasts had included donkeys, bears, otters, rodents of various kinds, and a gorilla.
The person believed to be chiefly responsible for the IQ-raising techniques was Professor Pierre Sansgout. He was a biologist who had been fired from the University of Paris because he preferred German beer to French wine.
Blackballed everywhere in his native country, he had gone to work for the Hamburg institute. Apparently, the explosion that killed everyone but Ralph at the institute was Sansgout’s fault. From the few notes escaping destruction, it was learned that his pet project was the mutation of bees which would directly produce mead. According to a note, he had done this, and the alcoholic content of this mead was eighty percent. However, he, and the institute as a whole, had become victims of oversuccess. The source of the explosion was traced to a giant hive on his laboratory table.
Ralph was now twenty-nine but was as vigorous as a man of the same age. No one knew how his lifespan had been extended. The explosion had also destroyed the records. There was speculation that the scientists had discovered an age-delaying “elixir” which had been injected into the beasts. But no one really knew.
Ralph was a pup when the explosion occurred. Legally, he was a Schutzhund, the property of the Hamburg Police Department. He came close to being destroyed—“murdered,” Ralph said—by the HPD because of his slow growth, which matched the pace of a human infant. But when he uttered a few words while on the way to the gas chamber, he was saved. The HPD realized what they had and gave him an education.
Investigation revealed that a voder had been implanted in his throat. This was connected to cerebral circuits which enabled him to switch it off and on and converted his linguistic thoughts into spoken words. As he grew older, larger voders were implanted. At the present, the voder contained circuits enabling him to speak with a perfect accent all twelve of the world’s great languages and a number of the minor.
However, Ralph wasn’t fluent in all of these. He had not as yet mastered all. Nor could he speak all of these with perfect grammar or a large vocabulary. But he was learning. The voder also contained different voice circuits. Hence, he had two male, one female, and one child’s voice. He could also whistle, meow like a cat, utter ten different bird calls, and the decibel level ranged from that of a bullhorn to a whisper.
Every four years, the voder had to be removed and its tiny atomic battery replaced.
On becoming a juvenile, Ralph went to work for the HPD. He soon became famous because of his success in solving crimes. Eventually, he tired of this and applied for freedom and a license as a private detective. Those familiar with my chronicles will know that he had to endure a trial to establish his legal right to become a German citizen. Ralph won, but he also had to pay back the HPD for the expenses of his education. Thus, though he often earned fabulous fees, he was still sending large monthly amounts to the HPD.
A bitter aggravation of his financial distress had been brought about by the very villain we were tracking, Giftlippen, Baron Rottenfranzer. Before taking up a criminal career, Giftlippen had been an eminent literary critic and an affluent literary agent. Though a native and resident of the tiny principality of Liechtenstein, his influence was enormous all over the world. When Ralph’s novel, Some Humans Don’t Stink, came out, Giftlippen had turned thumbs down on it. His venomously unfair and viciously scornful articles had resulted in small sales for the book. (He even had the audacity to claim that it was authored by a ghost writer.)
Recently, we’d heard that the English translation was selling well. But the American royalties had not yet arrived. I once asked Ralph how it was possible for a distinguished and highly educated man like Giftlippen to become a crook.
“From literary critic to criminal is only a short, almost inevitable, step,” Ralph had replied bitterly.
Smigma had been a noted Polish author of didactic fairy tales. He was also Giftlippen’s good friend and client. His fiction, however, was only a sideline. He was a high official in the communist propaganda bureau. Then a strange thing happened after he’d suffered brain damage in a car crash. He found himself unable to utter a falsehood. This, of course, rendered him unfit for writing propaganda or fiction. (This characteristic would trip him up in The Case of the Jesting Pilot.) It also made him dangerous to the state. He fled Poland and joined Giftlippen.
In the case titled A Scarletin Study, I recount my own career as a physician for the Autobahn Patrol Medical Department. During an encounter with the murderous Rottenfranzer Gang—oil-hijacking specialists—I suffered a wound which hospitalized me. I retired and took up private practice without much success. During this time I met Ralph, who was looking for a human to share the expenses of his apartment. I abandoned my practice and became Ralph’s full-time partner.
It was an exciting life, but now I had to make a choice between Lisa and Ralph. She would accept no more excuses that I was sorely needed by Ralph.
While we were waiting for our plane, Ralph explained why we were going to Venice.
“Here’s the setup, Doc. Venice has slowly been sinking at the rate of 2.08 centimeters annually since 1920. It doesn’t sound like much, but Venice is flush with the surface of the sea. In addition, the tides and seiches that sweep through the lagoon from the Adriatic cause a lot of trouble. And the atmospheric pollution from the factories of Mestre, the nearest mainland city, is destroying the art treasures, the building exteriors, the paintings, the statues, et cetera.
“The islands of Venice are sinking because of withdrawal of water through wells. The water-bearing strata are subsiding. And it won’t do any good to pump water back in, according to the scientists. Venice seemed doomed.
“Meanwhile, a short time ago, a savior, or a man who claims to be a savior, appears. He’s a strange man with a strange story. His name was Giuseppe Granelli. He was born and raised in the back woods of the Italian Alps. His village was destroyed in a landslide. He was the sole survivor, though crippled for life. But during his convalescence he had a selcouth experience.”
“Selcouth? What does that mean?” I said.
“It’s an archaic English word meaning unusual or strange, my unlearned colleague. Granelli had a series of visions which revealed to him that he is the reincarnation of the most famous Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, died 1205. He adopted the name and came to Venice in his wheelchair. There he proclaimed his real identity and his mission and organized the Venice Uplift Foundation. Despite the sound of its title, it is not an organization to raise money to buy a bra for the goddess of the sea.”
“Spare me,” I murmured.
“Dandolo’s ideas for salvation sound feasible, though they’ll cost a hell of a lot of money. He aroused vast enthusiasm. Mazuma pours in from art lovers, rich and poor, from all over the world. We kicked in twenty marks ourselves, remember, Doc? Had to skip a few meals but we considered it worth it.”
“You did,” I said. “Lisa was upset when I took her out to a Colonel Sanders’ instead of the Epicurean’s Club.”
??
?Economics always wins over esthetics. Anyway, the Fund’s funds are kept in a Venetian bank. So far, eighty million dollars American, and more coming in. And in two days the various festivals will start, including the traditional Marriage of the Sea of the Doge.”
“And you think this vast sum will tempt Giftlippen? And he’ll attempt a robbery during the confusion of the festivals?”
“Bingo! Give the man a kewpie doll! Look, I could be wrong. But it’ll be the first time. Why should Giftlippen’s mistress suddenly take off for Venice? It’s because Giftlippen isn’t dead, and he needs her for more than just sexual satisfaction.”
“And Saugpumpe will lead us to Giftlippen?”
“We’ll nail him. And we’ll be financially independent. The reward offered for him, dead or alive, by the West German government has not been withdrawn. He’s supposed to have perished, but the bureaucrats haven’t gotten around to canceling the offer. It’s still in effect, legally, and if we get him, we can legally collect. Five million marks. Think of that. You’ll take your half and marry Mrs. Scarletin with your head held high. You won’t be a down-at-the-heels quack marrying a rich widow.”
“I don’t care for your choice of words,” I said. But it was an automatic response. I had gotten used to Ralph’s taking his resentments out on me. Even though he had proved a hundred times that he was smarter and more educated and competent than most humans, he was still patronized by many. To them, he was just a freak. There were many who didn’t believe that he was just a freak. There were many who didn’t believe that he was truly sentient. I’ve even read articles where it was hinted that he couldn’t speak at all, that I was a ventriloquist. The worst, in his eyes, were those who talked down to him, who insisted on petting him. He couldn’t stand this. Not even I was allowed to pat his head. Lisa was the only exception so far.
He had once explained to me why she was granted this privilege.