Black Mask (Vol. 7, No. 5 — April 1950), British Edition
Man’s Best Fiend
by Robert Turner
Sneering at the warnings of bottle-happy Irma, Harry Wenzel pitted his cunning against the animal that hated his guts — and the man who loved his wife.
Chapter One
Crazy Canine
The whole thing is crazy, sure, and a lot of people around here say it couldn’t have happened that way. But you’d have to know Harry Wenzel and the dog, Satan. And you’d have had to be there to believe it... It isn’t much of a place, Loon Lodge. A huge, rambling, rustic inn and roadhouse on a tar road, miles from anyplace. It has a sweep-around verandah and nestles in a grove of pines, mirrored from behind by a lovely lake.
The big, semi-circular bar was empty. There were never many people in the place, except during fishing season, when the lake was well worked.
Harry Wenzel, the owner, was behind the bar. We gabbed awhile and he told me about the dog somebody had just given him. He said I had to see it.
He’d built a big, chicken wire pen and the animal was pacing up and down the narrow confines, when we got there. He stopped still, when he saw us and I felt my skin go cold. I like dogs. But I didn’t like this one.
He was a Great Dane, powerful and sleek-muscled, even though he was only about nine months old. But there was something wrong with his eyes. They were set too closely together and they were mean and reddish like little live coals. A nasty, warning rumble rolled from his throat as we approached. His ears flattened and his flews curled back to give a hint of the shining white fangs beneath.
“Harry,” I said. “You’d better not keep him. You’d better get rid of him. That dog’s no dam’ good. Got a mean streak in him, heart-deep. He’ll cause you a lot of trouble.”
Harry Wenzel laughed. When Harry Wenzel laughed, he put everything into it. At quick glance, he didn’t seem such a big man, but when you looked real close, you saw the power and the beef. He was about five-ten and went one-eighty or one-ninety. He was in his fifties, gray-templed and with a high, bony forehead. In contrast to his powerful body, his face was almost wolf-gaunt and was always an unhealthy gray color.
He wore an old pair of baggy trousers, loosely belted at the waist and an ancient striped shirt, opened at the throat. His sleeves were rolled up and he had the veiniest, most muscular forearms I ever saw. Once, I’d seen those arms lift a man up and bodily hurl him ten feet through a window.
The laughter roared from him, mouth wide, showing the empty gums in back and the gold-capped front teeth glittering in the afternoon sun. He slapped me on the back and I almost fell on my face.
“Get rid of that mutt?” he roared. “You got stones in your skull? He’s worth three hundred dollars. Got more papers than you ever saw. He ain’t mean. Just got spunk, a lot of guts and fight to him. I like a mutt like that. He respects me. I’m his boss. Watch.”
I watched. Harry Wenzel went up to the chicken wire and grabbed it with his hands, grinning. “Here, Satan, you big, ugly scoundrel! Come over and see your master. Let’s be friends, boy. Come over here!”
The dog took three long bounding leaps and hit the wire with his full hundred pounds. I thought he was coming right on through it at Harry Wenzel’s throat. The wire stopped him, a snarling, flashing-toothed monster. The weight of him knocked Wenzel backward and some of the dog’s fangs got him across the back of the hand. Not badly. Just enough to break the skin and bring blood.
Harry Wenzel stood there, swearing and looking down at his hand. “The big stupid lug!” he said. “I’ll have to get that cauterized.” He smeared the blood on the back of his trousers. “I’ll fix him for that,” he roared. “I’ll show him who’s boss.”
“Harry, I told you to get rid of that dog,” I said.
He wheeled on me, savage-eyed, his thin mouth tight, the muscles in his lean, wolf-like jaw, showing all bunched. “Shut up!” he said. “You wait here. I’ll show you. Get rid of him, hell! I’ll break him if I have to kill him!”
He spun away toward the house. I didn’t want to wait but I had to. He came out of the lodge wearing a knee-length winter sport coat, leather on the outside and sheepskin-lined, thick and heavy. There were thick leather gauntlets over his hands and wrists and a baseball catcher’s mask on his face. He must have been expecting to have to do something like this.
He headed right to the door that opened into the pen, unhooked it and stepped inside. The dog backed away from him, at first, crouched, his back hair ruffled, growling and suspicious and just a little cautious. Harry Wenzel swore at him. “Come here, roughneck. You want to fight? I’ll fight you!” He made a threatening move and the dog came at him.
The animal was lightning fast. The only thing that saved Harry Wenzel was the baseball mask and the fact that he had his chin down and his head hunched into his neck so that the padded bottom of the mask protected his throat. I could hear the rasp of the dog’s fangs against the steel front of the mask. For a moment, they were a tangle, the dog kicking, twisting and letting unearthly growls from deep in his throat.
Then the growls cut off and I saw that Harry had gotten his leather-gloved hands around the animal’s throat. He straightened his powerful arms and held the beast at arm’s length. He held him there for a moment. Then he hurled him the length of the pen and against the wall of the building.
The dog fell, floundered and then got to his feet again, shaking himself. Harry Wenzel went toward him and the dog circled, snarling, crouching. “What’s the matter, Satan? You didn’t have enough? You want more?”
The Great Dane went for him again. This time, Harry Wenzel sidestepped and swung his gloved fist in a vicious hooking blow. The animal turned over once and fell on his back. He rolled over and lay there for a moment, dazed. Then he recovered and got up and tried it again, this time, going in low for Harry Wenzel’s legs. Harry booted him square in the face.
Then Harry whipped off the baseball mask and tossed it aside and stood there, glowering at the dog and waiting for him to attack again. But the animal was finished. He wasn’t having any more.
Harry backed out of the pen. The dog watched his every move, hatred in his close-set little red eyes. When he joined me outside, Harry was breathing hard and his face was shiny with sweat. He sleeved it off. “Okay, let’s go in and have a drink. You think that dog’ll ever bother me again?”
“Not if you never turn your back.”
He laughed and we went inside. Harry’s wife, Irma, was standing at the back door. She had a mocking grin on her face. She was Harry’s third wife, an almost too-thin and willowy woman, about half Harry’s age. She had a high-cheekboned, Oriental cast to her thin features that was fascinating. Her eyes were long and pulled up a little at the outer corners, long-lashed and sort of sneaky and cat-like and beautiful and they could make your spine crawl with a look.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” she said to Harry. “Picking on that poor dumb beast?”
Harry raised his wiry gray brows, turned to me. “How do you like that? Me, picking on Satan?”
“You’d better watch out for that animal,” she told him. “Some day he’s liable to kill you.”
He grabbed her around the waist. “What do you care, baby?” he demanded, roughly. “I got insurance. And you’d make a lovely widow.” He laughed uproariously and then he cut it short and kissed her. She turned her head, giggling. Over his shoulder, she looked at me. She looked bored and cynical and her green eyes gave me a look that could have melted me.