Clean Break, Page 2

shedding cabbage palms toward the irongates of the Furnay estate.

  A uniformed gateman who might have been a twin to Bivins admitted him,pointing out a rambling white building that lay behind the stuccoedmansion, and shut the gate. Oliver parked his truck before themenagerie building--it had been a stable in the heyday of theProhibition-era gangster, when it had held horses or cases ofcontraband as occasion demanded--and found Bivins waiting for him.

  Bivins, looking upset and sullen in immaculate new whipcords, openedthe sliding doors without a word.

  The vast inside of the remodeled stable was adequately lighted byroof-windows and fluorescent bulbs, but seemed dark for the momentafter the glare of sun outside; there was a smell, familiar to everycircus-goer, of damp straw and animal dung, and a restless backgroundstir of purring and growling and pacing.

  Oliver gaped when his eyes dilated enough to show him the real extentof Mr. Furnay's menagerie holdings. At the north end of the buildingtwo towering Indian elephants swayed on picket, munching hay andshuffling monotonously on padded, ponderous feet. A roped-offenclosure held half a dozen giraffes which nibbled in aristocraticdeprecation at feed-bins bracketed high on the walls; and beyond themthree disdainful camels lay on untidily folded legs, sneering glassilyat the world and at each other.

  The east and west sides of the building were lined with rank afterrank of cages holding a staggering miscellany of predators:great-maned lions with their sleek green-eyed mistresses; restlesstigers undulating their stripes back and forth and grinning in sly,tusky boredom; chattering monkeys and chimpanzees; leopards andcheetahs and a pair of surly black jaguars whose claw-scored hidesindicated either a recent difference of opinion or a burst of conjugalaffection.

  The south end of the vast room had been recently partitioned off, witha single heavy door breaking the new wall at its center. On eitherside of this door the bears held sway: shaggy grizzlies, black bears,cinnamon and brown; spectacled Andeans and sleek white polars paddingsilently on tufted feet.

  The sick bear sulked in a cage to himself, humped in an oddly doglikepose with his great head hanging disconsolately.

  Oliver sized up the situation, casting back to past reading for theproper procedure.

  "I'll need a squeeze-cage and a couple of cage boys to help immobilizethe brute," he said. "Will you--"

  He was startled, in turning, to find that Bivins had not accompaniedhim into the building. He was not alone, however. The door at thecenter of the partitioning wall had opened while he spoke, and aslender blonde girl in the briefest of white sunsuits was looking athim.

  * * * * *

  Apparently she had not expected Oliver, for there was open interest inher clear green eyes. She said something in a clear and musical--butcompletely unintelligible--voice that ranged, with a remarkablyoperatic effect, through two full octaves.

  Oliver stared. "I'm here to doctor the sick bear," he said.

  "Oh, a _native_," the girl said in English.

  Obviously she was trying to keep her voice within the tonal range ofhis own, but in spite of the effort it trilled distractingly up anddown the scale in a fashion that left Oliver smitten with a sudden andunfamiliar weakness of the knees.

  "May I help?" she said.

  She might, Oliver replied. She could have had as readily, he mighthave added, a pint of his blood.

  Many times while they worked, finding a suitable squeeze-cage anddragging it against the bear's larger cage so that the two doorscoincided, Oliver found the prim and reproachful image of Miss OrellaSimms rising to remind him of his obligations; but for the first timein his life an obligation was surprisingly easy to dismiss. Hisassistant's lively conversation, which was largely uninformativethough fascinatingly musical, bemused him even to the point ofshrugging off his Aunt Katisha's certain disapproval.

  The young lady, it seemed, came from a foreign country whose name wasutterly unpronounceable; Oliver gathered that she had not been longwith Mr. Furnay, who was of another nationality, and that she washomesick for her native land--for its "saffron sun on turquoise hillsand umber sea," which could only be poetic exaggeration or simpleunfamiliarity with color terms of a newly learned language--and thatshe was as a consequence very lonely.

  She was, incredibly, a trainer of animals.

  "Not of such snarling fierce ones as yours," she said, with a littleshiver for the polar bear watching them sullenly through the bars,"but of my own gentle beasts, who are friends."

  Her name was a startling combination of soprano sounds that might havebeen written as Perrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above, but which Oliver wascompletely unable to manage.

  "Would you mind," he asked, greatly daring, "if I called you Pearlinstead?"

  She would not. But apparently Mr. Furnay would.

  * * * * *

  The millionaire, who had entered the menagerie unheard, spoke sternlyto the girl in his own raucous tongue and pointed a peremptory fingertoward the door through which she had come. The girl murmured "_Aidocssain, Tsammai_," in a disappointed tone, gave Oliver a smile thatwould have stunned a harem guard, and disappeared again into her ownterritory.

  Oliver, being neither Chesterfield nor eunuch, was left with the giddysensation of a man struggling to regain his balance after a suddenearth temblor.

  His client reoriented him brusquely, "Treat my bear," Mr. Furnay said.

  "I've been waiting for help," Oliver said defensively. "If you'll sendaround your menagerie manager and a cage boy or two--"

  "I have none," Mr. Furnay said shortly. "There are only the four of ushere, and not one will approach within touching distance of a brute sovicious."

  Oliver stared at him in astonishment.... Four of them meant onlyBivins, the gateman, the lovely blonde creature who called herselfPerrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above and Mr. Furnay himself.

  "But four inexperienced people can't possibly look after a menagerieof this size!" Oliver protested. "Circus animals aren't house pets,Mr. Furnay--they're restless and temperamental, and they need expertcare. They bite and claw each other--"

  "There will be more of us later," Mr. Furnay said morosely, "but Idoubt that numbers will help. We had not anticipated a ferocity soappalling, and I fear that my error may have proved the ruin of anexpensive project. The native beasts were never so fierce on other--"

  He broke off. "I am sorry. You will have to manage as best you canalone."

  And he left the menagerie without looking back.

  To deal tersely with subsequent detail, Oliver did manage alone--aftera fashion and up to a point. It was a simple matter, once he found afour-foot length of conveniently loose board, to prod the unhappy bearfrom his larger prison to the smaller. The process of immobilizing thebrute by winching the squeeze-cage tight was elementary.

  But in his casting-back Oliver had overlooked two vitally importantprecautions: he'd forgotten to secure the gear fastenings, and he'dneglected to rope the smaller cage to the larger.

  The bear, startled by the prick of the needle when Oliver gave him asizable injection of nembutal, reacted with a frantic struggling thatreversed the action of the unsecured winch and forced the two cagesapart. The door burst open, sprung by the sudden pressure.

  The bear stood free.

  A considerable amount of legitimate excitement could be injected intosuch a moment by reporting that the bear, at last in a position torevenge itself for past indignities, leaped upon its tormentor with ablood-freezing roar and that Oliver, a fragile pygmy before thatnear-ton of slavering fury, escaped only by a hair or was annihilatedon the spot.

  Neither circumstance developed, however, for the reason that the bearwas already feeling the effects of the anesthetic given it and wantednothing so much as a cool dark place where it might collapse inprivacy. And Oliver, caught completely off guard, was too stunned bythe suddenness of catastrophe to realize his own possible danger.

  What did happen was that Perrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above chose thatparticular mome
nt to open her door again and look out.

  Her fortuitous timing altered the situation on the instant; the bear,bent only on escape and seeing comparative gloom beyond the door,charged not at Oliver but through the opening. And Oliver, still tooconfused to think past the necessity of retrieving his error, ranafter it, brandishing his length of board and shouting wildly.

  * * * * *

  The smaller area beyond the partition was dimly lighted, but to judgeby its straw-covered floor and faint animal smell was evidently aspecial division of Mr. Furnay's menagerie. The light was too dim andthe emergency too great to permit Oliver more than a brief andincredulous glimpse of the improbable beast placidly munching hay in acorner; his whole attention was centered first on the fleeing bear andthen upon the prostrate form of Perrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above, whohad been violently bowled over by the bear's