Turtle cleared his throat, grinning wickedly at the major.
“We tried,” the sergeant admitted.
The major grinned, glancing under the table.
“He didn’t seem to think too much of the idea.”
“He’s been cooped up so much lately, he may just have needed the run,” I decided.
“Swim,” the major corrected me. “He didn’t stay in long, though.”
I laughed heartily. “He’s a frustrated lifeguard. I remember one time Dad and I went over to Wildwood Beach that’s Jersey coast. Merlin wouldn’t let me in the water. The sea wasn’t rough or anything and Merlin’d been in. We couldn’t understand it. Then Dad tried and he wouldn’t let Dad in. Dad was furious. A boy, about four or five, started to wade in and Merlin ran around him until the child was so terrified he went screaming back to his parents. I want to tell you we had quite a time. The lifeguards called the police and wouldn’t listen when Dad and I kept trying to explain that Merlin was not rabid, had had all his shots, was a trustworthy animal and you know.” I nodded significantly at Turtle who nodded back sagely. “They were all set to take Merlin by force when someone started screaming out in the ocean. Come to find out, Merlin wasn’t so stupid. There were swarms of jellyfish and men-of-war coming in with the tide.” I shuddered at the thought of those slimy, stinging tentacles. “How Merlin knew they constituted a danger, I don’t know. But he wasn’t going to let me or Dad or that child in the water. The others, already swimming, I guess he figured he couldn’t help.”
“Dog’s near human,” the lieutenant commented appreciatively.
Merlin, who knew we were talking about him, laughed happily up at us, his tongue dangling sideways out of his mouth.
The eggy aroma of Yorkshire pudding now overlaid the combined smells of meat and woodsmoke. I hastily checked my dinner.
“Sure do admire pioneer women, coping with these things,” I groaned, trying to avoid the blast of hot air from the oven. “We got to eat right now.”
“No complaints here,” Turtle assured me.
CHAPTER NINE
Merlin woke me. The very manner in which he woke me, his cold nose butting into my eyes, told me he was on the alert. He kept butting me in the neck when he saw my eyes open. Assured I was awake, he carefully got down from the bed, turned back, and imperiously nudged my shoulder. Shivering, I dragged my dressing robe around my shoulders and slid into it. Merlin went to the door. No sound, not so much as the click of a toenail on the bare floor.
I opened the door cautiously, grimacing at the effort of keeping the metal latch silent. He slipped out as soon as there was enough space for his body. He went towards the back of the house. I grabbed his neckchain as we passed Turtle’s door. I hesitated briefly. Merlin’s manner told me someone unannounced was either in the house or trying to get in. He had not barked but had awakened me for further orders. I couldn’t imagine who was trying to get in the house, snowbound and isolated as it was.
Even if Lieutenant DeLord, presumably fast asleep in the kitchen as the other two bedrooms had no fireplaces, were prowling about, Merlin was not likely to have been alarmed. He trusted DeLord and had been given no orders restricting the lieutenant to the kitchen.
I’m sure if the major had known I could specify DeLord was to be kept kitchenbound by Merlin, he would have suggested it. But we had had a very convivial evening after all. I don’t know when the men got to bed, because I left early. They were well into the bottle when I went up. Perhaps, in their cups, Major Laird might have reconciled his differences with Robert DeLord.
Also, if Lieutenant DeLord was so fascinated by my father’s stamps, there were easier ways for him to get a look at them than crawling around a frigid house in the dark. The albums could be anywhere.
So here was I, prowling the freezing hall myself. I paused by Turtle’s door and listened, ear against the cold wood. I was rewarded with the sound of fantastic snores, each bigger or more intricately breathed than the last. I was not going to wake him if the only way I could do so was yell “Sarge” or risk my brains blown out.
I passed the room by. Merlin stopped at the bathroom. I could see his eyes gleam as he turned his head back to me expectantly. I tried to remember if the roof of the kitchen extended below the bathroom. Someone could climb it to the second story. If someone had scouted the first floor, he would have seen the lieutenant asleep in the kitchen and decided against that. The back door wasn’t locked though the front was, an unnecessary precaution in this weather and on the Cape. No, the back room, where the footlockers were, gave onto the kitchen roof, not this bathroom.
I snapped my finger softly at Merlin and started towards the back room, certain now that would be the point of entry. The next thing I knew someone’s hand was over my mouth and I was being yanked back into the bathroom.
I struggled, wondering with amazement why Merlin wasn’t ferociously attacking my assailant. I tried to bite the hand over my mouth just as I heard him snap “Quiet!” in a tonelessness that was too low on the audible threshold to be called a whisper. It was the major. He was fully dressed except for boots and wore his heavy outer coat. He had a gun in his hand, a little Luger from the size of it. His lips were at my ear and he released my mouth.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a below-sound word that was really enunciated air.
“Merlin’s on the alert,” I said, trying to duplicate his near-silent communication. “Why are you here?” I demanded.
“Not now.” And, steely fingers around my arm, he propelled me to the back room, Merlin padding soundlessly beside us.
The door creaked as the cold hinges complained in the wood. Then Merlin erupted into the room, launching himself, a silvery projectile, against the back window. There was no doubting the presence of the intruder. His body was silhouetted in the window against the snow on the slope behind the house. Merlin had leaped in silence but the moment he connected with the barrier of glass he burst into enraged snarls. The figure hesitated only briefly and then turned, slipping down the incline of the roof and dropping off into the drifted snow below. Merlin clawed frantically at the window, snarling, bilked of an immediate capture. He had more wit than we did, for he did an end-for-end switch to get out of the room and down the stairs.
But the room was small and crowded, with one hundred twenty pounds of shepherd, me in a full-skirted robe, and the major. The door got closed. The major and I in a comedy of errors both tried to find the latch and let the frantic dog out. When we did, Merlin tore around the hallway, no attempt at quiet progress now. He didn’t stop at the front door and even as the major, a few steps ahead of me all the time, followed him, we heard Merlin crashing against the kitchen door, barking urgently.
Just as the major reached the kitchen door it opened, revealing the lieutenant, hair tousled, down to his heavy underwear, obviously not the one who had tried to enter the back room. He stepped aside for Merlin and the major. Merlin, his feet scrabbling an impatient tattoo, danced at the back door. The major, his arm fully extended, flipped up the latch and followed the dog’s mad flight to the final door out. Merlin took off across the snow with my voice roaring a command after him.
“Hold him, Merlin, hold him and guard!”
As the major started after the dog, I screamed at him, “Your boots. Get your boots. Merlin’ll hold whoever it is.”
The major caught at the door frame to stop his forward momentum as he, too, realized he was no good in that deep snow in stocking feet. Before he could, I had rushed into the study and retrieved his boots by the fireplace. He dropped to the floor, jamming his feet in, lacing them part way.