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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction November 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
CLEAN BREAK
By ROGER DEE
Illustrated by CONNELL
_A veteran veterinarian might have vamoosed--but Watts had to help any sick animal...._
* * * * *
Nothing more exciting ever happened to Oliver Watts than beingrejected by his draft board for a punctured eardrum until, deferringas usual to the superior judgment of his Aunt Katisha and ofGlenna--his elder and militantly spinster sister--he put away hislifelong dream and took up, at the age of twenty-five, the practice ofveterinary medicine.
The relinquished dream was Oliver's ambition, cherished sincechildhood, to become some day a hunter and trainer of jungle animals.It had been discouraged firmly and at length by his Aunt Katisha, whomaintained that the skin of the last male Watts was not to be riskedin a pursuit so perilous; and his Aunt Katisha won. He would do farbetter, Oliver realized finally, to resign himself to the quietsuburban life of Landsdale, Florida, and to perpetuate the Watts lineby marrying some worthy and practical local girl. The quiet life, itdeveloped, was that of a D. V. M.; the worthy and practical girl, MissOrella Simms of Tampa, to whom he was now engaged.
To put it plainly, Oliver was until the moment of his GreatOpportunity a good-humored stooge with a cowlick and a sense ofresponsibility, whose invariable cue was family obligation and whosecrowning virtue was docility. He was maneuvered into becoming a D. V.M. (though to tell the truth the profession suited him well enough,being the nearest possible approach to realizing his ambition) solelybecause the veterinary college in Tampa was near enough to Landsdalefor commuting and because his later practice could be carried on underthe guiding aegis of his personal matriarchy. The virtuous, and vapid,Orella Simms became his fiancee by the same tactics and for the samereasons.
Oliver _had_ considered rebellion, of course, but common sensediscouraged the idea. He had no intimates outside his family nor anyexperience with the world beyond Landsdale and Tampa, and hisfledgling self-confidence invariably bogged down in a welter ofintrospective apprehensions when he thought of running away. Wherewould he go, and to whom could he turn in emergency?
Such was the character and condition of Oliver Watts when his newlyundertaken practice of veterinary medicine threw him into the companyof "Mr. Thomas Furnay" and of a girl whose name, as nearly as it canbe rendered into English, was Perrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above. Theiradvent brought Oliver face to face for the first time in his sedentarylife with High Adventure--with adventure so high, as a matter of fact,that it took him literally and bodily out of this humdrum world.
* * * * *
The initial step was taken when Mr. Furnay, known to Landsdale as awealthy and eccentric old recluse who had recently leased a walledproperty on Federal Route 27 that had once been the winter retreat ofa Prohibition-era gangster, was driven by emergency to call uponOliver for professional service. Mr. Furnay usually kept very much tohimself behind his iron-grilled gates and his miles of stuccoed wall;but it happened that in pursuit of his business (whose true naturewould have confounded Landsdale to its insular core) he had justbought up the entire menagerie of an expiring circus billed asSkadarian Brothers, and it was the sudden illness of one of his newlyacquired animals that forced him to breach his isolation.
Mr. Furnay called at the Watts place in his town car, driven by asmall, dark and taciturn chauffeur named Bivins. He found Oliver atwork in his neatly ordered clinic at the rear of the big house, busilyspooning cod-liver oil into a trussed and thoroughly outraged chownamed Champ.
"I have a sick animal," Mr. Furnay stated tersely. He was a slight manwith a moderately long and wrinkled face, a Panama hat two sizes toolarge and a voice that had, in spite of its excellent diction, ajarring timbre and definitely foreign flavor.
Oliver blinked, surprised and a little dismayed that Fate should havesent him so early in his career a known and patently captiousmillionaire. Bivins, waiting in visored and putteed impassivity toreopen the door for his master, was silently impressive; the town car,parked on the crushed shell driveway outside, glittered splendidly inthe late afternoon sunshine.
"I'll be happy to call later in the day," Oliver said. He removed thepadded block that had held Champ's jaws apart, and narrowly missedlosing a finger as the infuriated chow snapped at his hand. "My auntand sister are bringing my fiancee down from Tampa for dinner thisevening, and I can't leave the clinic until they get here. Someonemight call for his pet."
Mr. Furnay protested his extremity of need. "The animal suffersperiodic convulsions," he said. "It may be dangerously ill!"
Oliver unstrapped Champ from his detention frame and dodged withpracticed skill when the chow tried to bite him on the thigh. He hadtaken it for granted--having heard none of the gossip concerning Mr.Furnay's recent purchase of the Skadarian Brothers' menagerie--thatthe sick animal in question was a dog or cat or perhaps a saddlehorse, and the bald description of its symptoms startled him more thanChamp's predictable bid for revenge.
"Convulsions? What sort of animal is it, Mr. Furnay?"
"A polar bear," said Mr. Furnay.
"Polar bear!" echoed Oliver, and in his shock of surprise he dropped adetaining strap and let Champ loose.
* * * * *
The dog sprang across the room--without a breath of warning, as chowswill--and bit Bivins on the leg just above his puttee. The chauffeurscreamed in a high and peculiarly raucous voice and jerked away,jabbering in a vowelless and totally unfamiliar foreign tongue. Mr.Furnay said something sharply in the same grating language; Bivinswhipped out a handkerchief, pressed it over the tear in his whipcordsand went quickly out to the car.
Oliver collared the snarling Champ and returned him to his cage, wherethe dog pressed bristling against the bars and stared at Mr. Furnayhungrily with wicked, muddy eyes.
Mr. Furnay's shocked voice said, behind Oliver, "What a ghastly world,where even the _pets_...."
He broke off sharply as Oliver turned from the cage.
"I'm truly sorry, Mr. Furnay," Oliver apologized. "If there's anythingI can do ... a dressing for Bivins' leg--"
Mr. Furnay gathered himself with an effort. "It is nothing, a scratchthat will heal quickly. But my bear--you will come to see him atonce?"
At another time, the thought of absenting himself without due noticeto his Aunt Katisha and Glenna would have prompted Oliver to refuse;but the present moment called more for diplomacy than for convention.Better to suffer matriarchal displeasure, he thought, than to risk adamage suit by a millionaire.
"I'll come at once," Oliver said. "I owe you that, I think, after thefright Champ gave you."
And, belatedly, the realization that he might handle a bear--a great,live, lumbering bear!--surged up inside him to titillate his oldboyhood yearning. Perhaps it was as well that his aunt and sister wereaway; this chance to exercise his natural skill at dealing withanimals was too precious to decline.
"Of course I won't guarantee a cure," Oliver said, qualifying hispromise, "because I've never diagnosed such a case. But I think I canhelp your bear."
Oddly enough, he _was_ almost sure that he could. Oliver, in hisyounger days, had read a great deal on the care and treatment ofcircus animals, and the symptoms in this instance had a familiarsound. Mr. Furnay's bear, he thought, in all probability had worms.
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The Furnay town car purred away, leaving Oliver to marvel at his owndaring while he collected the instruments and medicines he might need.
In leaving the clinic he noted that Mr. Furnay's chauffeur haddropped his handkerchief at the doorway in his hurry to be gone--butOliver by this time was in too great a hurry to stop and retrieve it.
His Aunt Katisha might spoil the whole adventure on the instant with atelephone call from Tampa. Bivins could wait.
* * * * *
The drive, after a day spent in the antiseptic confines of his clinic,was like a holiday jaunt.
The late June sun was hot and bright, the rows of suburban houses trimand clean as scrubbed children sunning themselves among color-splashedcrotons and hibiscus and flaming poincianas. Oliver whistled gaily ashe turned his little white-paneled call truck off the highway anddrove between twin ranks of