"I've embarrassed you, haven't I, Robby?"
"No," I mumbled, forcing myself to look back up into her maroon eyes. "But you do flatter me. Thank you."
We both studied each other as we sipped at our drinks. Then she abruptly grabbed my left elbow, steered me around the bar and toward a set of double doors at the far end of the room. "Now if s time to continue the tour," she said brightly. "I want to show you my office."
Her "office" turned out to be one of the long, low buildings I had glimpsed from the road. There were four rows of glass cages running the length of the building, separated by two aisles. Inside each case was something deadly. In the case directly in front of me was a black mamba. In this snake there was none of the tubular sleekness one often sees in reptiles like Frank, the reticulated python, or in rattlesnakes. The mamba was a dull black, and puffy, as if it had no skeleton to hold in its guts. It looked like what it was, an ugly, black bag of death.
"I milk venomous snakes for pharmaceutical companies, other private researchers, and a number of universities," Harper said. "I also conduct research on hemo- and neurotoxins myself. My labs are in the other building. I have a full-time staff of lab assistants and keepers, but I sent them all home after I received your call." She paused, smiled broadly. "I wanted you all to myself."
She paused, turned toward me, set down her drink on top of one of the glass cases, and pulled up the sleeves of her pale blue jumpsuit. There were a number of tiny scars on both forearms and on the backs of her hands.
"I've been bitten more than forty times," she continued matter-of-factly. "The trick is in surviving the first two or three bites. After that, it gets easier. You develop antibodies. Now I'm virtually immune to most kinds of snake venom, and my blood is almost as good as any antitoxin scrum. Once, when a kid in Idaho was bitten by a rattlesnake and they couldn't get the right serum, they gave him a pint of my blood. He lived."
"I'm impressed, Harper," I said evenly.
"Good," she said brightly as she picked up her drink again. "I want you to be, because I'm certainly impressed by you. I've been reading and hearing stories about you for years. You're quite a famous man, you know."
"It's not something I give a lot of thought to, Harper."
"I have a thick file of clippings about you somewhere in the house. Its seems dwarf private investigators who get involved in the kinds of bizarre cases you handle get a lot of press coverage. I know you live in New York City. I've thought of calling you a number of times over the years."
Somehow we had become separated as we continued to talk; I had veered off and gone down the aisle on the right while Harper had continued on down the other aisle. I was about three quarters of the way through my drink. It had been a big one, but I'd drunk a good deal more on other occasions without feeling any ill effects. Now, however, I felt positively giddy as I looked across the tops of the glass cases filled with very dangerous creatures into the maroon eyes of another very dangerous creature.
"Why didn't you?" I asked quietly. I felt slightly short of breath.
"I'm not sure," she replied thoughtfully, cocking her head slightly and studying me through narrowed lids. "I think I was afraid of you."
Of all the possible answers, or excuses, she might have offered, that was absolutely the last one I'd have expected to hear. "You were afraid of me?”
"You tame wild things, Robby," she said softly. "You do it whether you mean to or not."
Feeling as light-headed as I did, I reacted naturally-by taking another long pull on my drink. Then I looked down. The glass case in front of me looked empty except for some leaves, a few bare branches, and sand with tiny crawl marks in it. "What's supposed to be in here?" I asked.
"Oh, it's there; it's very small, and it's probably hiding behind some leaves. It's a krait. In Africa, they call it the 'hundred-foot snake.' Obviously, it's not called that because of its length. It gets its name from the fact that a hundred feet is about as far as a man can stagger or crawl after he's been bitten by one. Ounce for ounce, it's probably the most poisonous snake in the world."
"Charming."
"Venomous snakes are of enormous medical benefit, Robby. Medicines made from venom are responsible for saving thousands of lives each year. Observing how venom acts on the mammalian nervous system has taught researchers an enormous amount about the nervous system itself. I try to spend a few weeks each year in Brazil with an international research team looking for new species, trying to keep ahead of the people who are cutting down the trees. At the rate the rain forests are being destroyed, it's conceivable that dozens of unknown species could vanish before we're even aware of their existence. It's also conceivable that the venom from any one of those unknown species could provide us with a cure for multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, maybe even cancer."
"I loved you, you know," I blurted out, looking up across the rows of cases into the woman's eyes.
"I know, Robby," she replied evenly. "I believe I loved you too, but I just didn't realize it. I was such a child. I mean, I had all those big, burly things after me, and you were just a dwarf. How could I be in love with a dwarf? At that time, you were something I needed far more than just another lover; you were a friend, probably the only real friend I had during that period of my life, or at least the best one. You truly cared for me as a person, and you always did your best to look out for my interests."
"You never needed anyone to look out for you, Harper."
She shook her head impatiently, sipped at her drink, said, "It never occurred to me at the time that I might love you. You were just the person who related well to all the wild things in the circus."
I looked away, drained off the rest of my Scotch. Now I was feeling really giddy. Softheaded.
"I never saw the man then," Harper continued.
"Mmm."
"You were always there when I needed you-or when anyone or anything else needed you." "Mmm."
"Are you married, Robby?"
"No."
"In all those years, Robby, who was there for you when you needed a friend?"
"The wild things."
"You were always cheerful and even-tempered; you always had a kind word or a joke to cheer up someone who was sad. It was only after you left that it occurred to me how lonely you must have been all those years you were with the circus."
I walked to the end of the aisle, around the cages, back up the second aisle toward Harper. My gait, like my speech, was steady enough, so I decided it wasn't the Scotch I had consumed that was responsible for my light-headedness. Harper had once again set her drink down on top of one of the snake cages and was waiting for me, arms at her sides. I knew she was waiting to be kissed.
I stopped a pace away from her and held my empty tumbler in front of me like a shield. "Phil Statler's in trouble," I said. "It's the reason I flew down here."
If she was surprised at my reluctance to take her in my arms, she didn't show it-and I decided that my notion about her waiting for me to kiss her had only been a fantasy. Her brows knitted, and shadows moved in her expressive eyes. "What's the matter with him, Robby?"
I told her how I had come across Phil Statler, homeless, missing fingers and toes, waiting to die in a welfare ward at Bellevue Medical Center.
"God, Robby," she said in a small voice. "I had no idea; nobody had any idea. I left the circus almost eight years ago. A while back I heard that the circus had changed hands, but we all just assumed that Phil had sold at a good price and was off lazing around on the beach of some Caribbean island."