Read The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder for Free Online Page B

voice. He walked towards the door.
    Marion said something in a quietly threatening tone. The Baron wished very much that he knew exactly what she had said. The Baron followed her through the living room towards the front door. He was prepared to sneak out with her, leap out leashless, and just stay with her. Marion paused to talk with the young man in the fuzzy tweed trousers who had come up to her.
    Bubsy interrupted them, waving his hands, wanting to put an end to the conversation.
    Marion said, “Good night . . . good night . . .”
    The Baron squeezed out with her, loped in the hall towards the elevators. A man laughed, not Bubsy.
    “Baron, you can’t . . . darling,” said Marion.
    Someone caught the Baron by the collar. The Baron growled, but he knew he couldn’t win, that someone would give him a warning slap, if he didn’t do what they wanted. Behind him, the Baron heard the awful clunk that meant the elevator door had closed on Marion, and she was gone. Some people groaned as the Baron crossed the living room, others laughed, as the din began again, louder and merrier than ever. The Baron made straight for his master’s room which was across the hall from Bubsy’s. The door was closed, but the Baron could open it by the horizontal handle, providing the door wasn’t locked. The Baron couldn’t manage the key, which stuck out below the handle, though he had often tried. Now the door opened. Bubsy had perhaps been showing the room to some of his guests tonight. The Baron went in and took a breath of the air that still smelled faintly of his master’s pipe tobacco. On the big desk was his master’s typewriter, now covered with a cloth of a sort of polka-dot pattern like the lining of his basket-bed in the spare room. The Baron was just as happy, even happier, sleeping on the carpet here near the desk, as he had often done when his master worked, but Bubsy, nastily, usually kept the door of his master’s room locked.
    The Baron curled up on the carpet and put his head down, his nose almost touching a leg of his master’s chair. He sighed, suddenly worn out by the emotions of the last ten minutes. He thought of Marion, recalled happy mornings when Marion had come to visit, and his master and Bubsy had cooked bacon and eggs, or hotcakes, and they had all gone for a walk in Central Park. The Baron had used to retrieve sticks that Marion threw into a lake there. And he remembered an especially happy cruise, sunlight on the decks, with his master and Marion (pre-Bubsy days), when the Baron had been young and spry and handsome, popular with the passengers, pampered by the stewards who brought whole steaks to his and Eddie’s cabin. The Baron remembered walks in a white-walled town full of white houses, with smells he had never known before or since . . . And a boat ride with the boat tossing, and spray in his face, to an island where the streets were paved with cobblestones, where he got to know the whole island and roamed where he wished. He heard again his master’s voice talking calmly to him, asking him a question . . . The Baron heard the ghostly click of the typewriter . . . Then he fell asleep.
    He awakened to Bubsy’s coughing, then his strained intake of air, with a wheeze. The house was quiet now. Bubsy was walking about in his room. The Baron got to his feet and shook himself to wake up. He went out of the room, so as not to be locked in for the rest of the night, walked towards the living room, but the smell of cigarette smoke turned him back. The Baron went into the kitchen, drank some water from his bowl, sniffed at the remains of some tinned dog food, and turned away, heading for the spare room. He could have eaten something—a bit of leftover steak, or a lambchop bone would have been nice. Lately, Bubsy dined out a lot, didn’t take the Baron with him, and Bubsy fed him mostly from tins. Now his master would have put a stop to that! The Baron curled up in his basket.
    Bubsy’s