'I don't pretend to know,' said Doyle. I ain't no scientist and I don't catch the lingo, but some of them botany fellows, they can do some funny things. Like that man named Burbank. They can fix it so plants will do most anything they want. They can change the kind of fruit they bear and they can change their size and their growing habits and I haven't got no doubt at all if someone put his mind to it, he could make a tree grow money.'
Mabel slid out of the booth. I'll get the sack,' she said.
Doyle shinnied up the tree that grew outside the high brick wall. Reaching the big branch that extended over the wall, invading the air space over the Metcalfe garden, he crouched quietly.
He tilted his head skyward and watched the scared fleeing of light clouds. In another minute or two, a slightly larger cloud, he saw, would close in on the moon and when that happened was the time to drop into the garden.
He crouched and watched the garden and there were several trees but there was nothing he could make out that was peculiar about any one of them. Except it seemed, when he listened closely, that the rustling of the leaves of one of them was crisper than the other rustlings.
He checked the rope looped in his hand and the sack tucked beneath his belt and waited for the heavier cloud to move across the moon.
The house was quiet and still and only showed one faint glimmer of light in an upstairs room. And the night was quiet as well, except for the rustling of the leaves.
The edge of the cloud began to eat into the moon and Doyle moved out on cat feet along the branch.
Swiftly he knotted the rope around the branch and let it down.
And having accomplished that, having come this far, he hesitated for an instant, listening hard, straining his eyes for any trace of motion in the darkened rectangle of the garden.
He could detect none.
Quickly, he slid down the rope and stole toward the tree which had seemed to rustle more crisply than the others.
He reached it and thrust up a cautious hand.
The leaves had the size and feel of bills and he plucked at them frantically. He jerked the sack from his belt and thrust the handful of leaves into it and then another handful and another.
Easy, he exulted. Just like picking plums. Just like being in a plum thicket. As easy as picking…
Just five minutes, he told himself. That is all I need. Just five full minutes with no one pestering.
He didn't get five minutes. He didn't get a minute, even.
A whirlwind of silent anger came in a quiet rush out of the darkness and was upon him. It bit him in the leg and it slashed him in the ribs and it tore his shirt half off him. It was as silent as it was ferocious, and he glimpsed it in that first startled second only as a floating patch of motion.
He stifled the hurt yap of surprise and fear that surged into his throat and fought back as silently as the thing attacking him. Twice he had his hands upon it and twice it slipped away and swarmed to the attack again.
Then, finally, he got a grip upon it that it could not shake and he lifted it high to smash it to the ground. But as he lifted it, the cloud sailed off the moon and the garden came alight.
He saw the thing, then, really saw it, for the first time, and clamped down his gurgle of amazement.
He had expected a dog of some sort. But this was not a dog. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. It was nothing he had ever heard of.
One end of it was all mouth and the other end of it was blunt and square. It was terrier-sized, but no terrier. It had short, yet powerful legs and its arms were long and sinuous and armed with heavy claws and somehow he had managed to grab it in such a manner that the arms and murderous claws were pinned against its body.
It was dead white and hairless and as naked as a jaybird. It had a sort of knapsack, or what appeared to be a knapsack, strapped upon its back.
But that was not the worst of it.
Its chest was large and hard and gleaming, like the thorax of a grasshopper and the chest was like a neon-lighted billboard, with characters and pictures and dots and hooks and dashes flashing off and on.
Rapid-fire thoughts snaked their way through the fear and horror that tumbled in Doyle's brain and he tried to get them tracking, but they wouldn't track. They just kept tumbling round and wouldn't straighten out.
Then all the dots and dashes, all the hooks and symbols cleared off the billboard chest and there were words, human words, in capitals, glowing upon it:
LET GO OF ME!
Even to the exclamation point.
'Pal,' said Doyle, not a little shaken, but nevertheless determined, 'I will not let you go. I got plans for you.'
He looked swiftly around for the sack and located it on the ground nearby and reached out a foot to pull it closer.
YOU SORRY, spelled the creature.
'Not,' said Doyle, 'so that you could notice.'
Kneeling, he reached out swiftly and grabbed the sugar sack. Quickly he thrust the creature into it and jerked the drawstring tight.
He stood up and hefted the sack. It was not too heavy for him to carry.
Lights snapped on in the first floor of the house, in a room facing on the garden, and voices floated out of an open window. Somewhere in the darkness a screen door slapped shut with a hollow sound.
Doyle whirled and ran toward the dangling rope. The sack hampered him a little, but urgency compensated for the hindrance and he climbed swiftly to the branch.
He squatted there, hidden in the shadow of the leaves, and drew up the rope, coiling it awkwardly with his one free hand.
The thing inside the sack began to thrash about and he jerked the sack up, thumped it on the branch.
The thing grew quiet at once.
Footsteps came deliberately down a shadow-hidden walk and Doyle saw the red glow of a cigar as someone puffed on it.
A man's voice spoke out of the darkness and he recognized it as Metcalfe's voice.
'Henry!'
'Yes, sir,' said Henry from the wide verandah.
'Where the devil did the rolla go?'
'He's out there somewhere, sir. He never gets too far from the tree. It's his responsibility, you know.'
The cigar-end glowed redder as Metcalfe puffed savagely.
'I don't understand those rollas, Henry. Even after all these years, I don't understand them.'
'No, sir,' said Henry. They're hard things to understand.'
Doyle could smell the smoke, drifting upward to him. He could tell by the smell it was a good cigar.
And naturally Metcalfe would smoke the very best. No man with a money tree growing in his garden need worry about the price of smokes.
Cautiously, Doyle edged a foot or two along the branch, anxious to get slightly closer to the wall and safety.
The cigar jerked around and pointed straight at him as Metcalfe tilted his head to stare into the tree.
'What was that!' he yelled.
'I didn't hear a thing, sir. It must have been the wind.'
'There's no wind, you fool. It's that cat again!'
Doyle huddled closer against the branch, motionless, yet tensed to spring into action of it were necessary. Quietly he gave himself a mental bawling-out for moving.
Metcalfe had moved off the walk and clear of the shadow and was standing in the moonlight, staring up into the tree.
There's something up there,' he announced pontifically. The leaves are so thick I can't make out what it is. I bet you it's that goddam cat again. He's plagued the rolla for two nights hard running.'
He took the cigar out of his face and blew a couple of beautiful smoke rings that drifted ghost-like in the moonlight.
'Henry,' he shouted, 'bring me a gun. I think the twelve-gauge is right behind the door.'
Doyle had heard enough. He made a dash for it. He almost fell, but he caught himself. He dropped the rope and almost dropped the sack, but managed to hang onto it. The rolla, inside the sack, began to thrash about.