Read the book: «Michael, Brother of Jerry», page 12

CHAPTER XXI

Harry Del Mar found only a few white feathers on the floor of Dag Daughtry’s room in the Bowhead Lodging House, and from the landlady learned what had happened to Michael. The first thing Harry Del Mar did, still retaining his taxi, was to locate the residence of Doctor Emory and make sure that Michael was confined in an outhouse in the back yard. Next he engaged passage on the steamship Umatilla, sailing for Seattle and Puget Sound ports at daylight. And next he packed his luggage and paid his bills.

In the meantime, a wordy war was occurring in Walter Merritt Emory’s office.

“The man’s yelling his head off,” Doctor Masters was contending. “The police had to rap him with their clubs in the ambulance. He was violent. He wanted his dog. It can’t be done. It’s too raw. You can’t steal his dog this way. He’ll make a howl in the papers.”

“Huh!” quoth Walter Merritt Emory. “I’d like to see a reporter with backbone enough to go within talking distance of a leper in the pest-house. And I’d like to see the editor who wouldn’t send a pest-house letter (granting it’d been smuggled past the guards) out to be burned the very second he became aware of its source. Don’t you worry, Doc. There won’t be any noise in the papers.”

“But leprosy! Public health! The dog has been exposed to his master. The dog itself is a peripatetic source of infection.”

“Contagion is the better and more technical word, Doc.,” Walter Merritt Emory soothed with the sting of superior knowledge.

“Contagion, then,” Doctor Masters took him up. “The public must be considered. It must not run the risk of being infected – ”

“Of contracting the contagion,” the other corrected smoothly.

“Call it what you will. The public – ”

“Poppycock,” said Walter Merritt Emory. “What you don’t know about leprosy, and what the rest of the board of health doesn’t know about leprosy, would fill more books than have been compiled by the men who have expertly studied the disease. The one thing they have eternally tried, and are eternally trying, is to inoculate one animal outside man with the leprosy that is peculiar to man. Horses, rabbits, rats, donkeys, monkeys, mice, and dogs – heavens, they have tried it on them all, tens of thousands of times and a hundred thousand times ten thousand times, and never a successful inoculation! They have never succeeded in inoculating it on one man from another. Here – let me show you.”

And from his shelves Waiter Merritt Emory began pulling down his authorities.

“Amazing.. most interesting.. ” Doctor Masters continued to emit from time to time as he followed the expert guidance of the other through the books. “I never dreamed.. the amount of work they have done is astounding.. ”

“But,” he said in conclusion, “there is no convincing a layman of the matter contained on your shelves. Nor can I so convince my public. Nor will I try to. Besides, the man is consigned to the living death of life-long imprisonment in the pest-house. You know the beastly hole it is. He loves the dog. He’s mad over it. Let him have it. I tell you it’s rotten unfair and cruel, and I won’t stand for it.”

“Yes, you will,” Walter Merritt Emory assured him coolly. “And I’ll tell you why.”

He told him. He said things that no doctor should say to another, but which a politician may well say, and has often said, to another politician – things which cannot bear repeating, if, for no other reason, because they are too humiliating and too little conducive to pride for the average American citizen to know; things of the inside, secret governments of imperial municipalities which the average American citizen, voting free as a king at the polls, fondly thinks he manages; things which are, on rare occasion, partly unburied and promptly reburied in the tomes of reports of Lexow Committees and Federal Commissions.

* * * * *

And Walter Merritt Emory won his desire of Michael against Doctor Masters; had his wife dine with him at Jules’ that evening and took her to see Margaret Anglin in celebration of the victory; returned home at one in the morning, in his pyjamas went out to take a last look at Michael, and found no Michael.

* * * * *

The pest-house of San Francisco, as is naturally the case with pest-houses in all American cities, was situated on the bleakest, remotest, forlornest, cheapest space of land owned by the city. Poorly protected from the Pacific Ocean, chill winds and dense fog-banks whistled and swirled sadly across the sand-dunes. Picnicking parties never came there, nor did small boys hunting birds’ nests or playing at being wild Indians. The only class of frequenters was the suicides, who, sad of life, sought the saddest landscape as a fitting scene in which to end. And, because they so ended, they never repeated their visits.

The outlook from the windows was not inspiriting. A quarter of a mile in either direction, looking out along the shallow canyon of the sand-hills, Dag Daughtry could see the sentry-boxes of the guards, themselves armed and more prone to kill than to lay hands on any escaping pest-man, much less persuavively discuss with him the advisability of his return to the prison house.

On the opposing sides of the prospect from the windows of the four walls of the pest-house were trees. Eucalyptus they were, but not the royal monarchs that their brothers are in native habitats. Poorly planted, by politics, illy attended, by politics, decimated and many times repeatedly decimated by the hostile forces of their environment, a straggling corporal’s guard of survivors, they thrust their branches, twisted and distorted, as if writhing in agony, into the air. Scrub of growth they were, expending the major portion of their meagre nourishment in their roots that crawled seaward through the insufficient sand for anchorage against the prevailing gales.

Not even so far as the sentry-boxes were Daughtry and Kwaque permitted to stroll. A hundred yards inside was the dead-line. Here, the guards came hastily to deposit food-supplies, medicines, and written doctors’ instructions, retreating as hastily as they came. Here, also, was a blackboard upon which Daughtry was instructed to chalk up his needs and requests in letters of such size that they could be read from a distance. And on this board, for many days, he wrote, not demands for beer, although the six-quart daily custom had been broken sharply off, but demands like:

WHERE IS MY DOG?

HE IS AN IRISH TERRIER.

HE IS ROUGH-COATED.

HIS NAME IS KILLENY BOY.

I WANT MY DOG.

I WANT TO TALK TO DOC. EMORY.

TELL DOC. EMORY TO WRITE TO ME ABOUT MY DOG.

One day, Dag Daughtry wrote:

IF I DON’T GET MY DOG I WILL KILL DOC. EMORY.

Whereupon the newspapers informed the public that the sad case of the two lepers at the pest-house had become tragic, because the white one had gone insane. Public-spirited citizens wrote to the papers, declaiming against the maintenance of such a danger to the community, and demanding that the United States government build a national leprosarium on some remote island or isolated mountain peak. But this tiny ripple of interest faded out in seventy-two hours, and the reporter-cubs proceeded variously to interest the public in the Alaskan husky dog that was half a bear, in the question whether or not Crispi Angelotti was guilty of having cut the carcass of Giuseppe Bartholdi into small portions and thrown it into the bay in a grain-sack off Fisherman’s Wharf, and in the overt designs of Japan upon Hawaii, the Philippines, and the Pacific Coast of North America.

And, outside of imprisonment, nothing happened of interest to Dag Daughtry and Kwaque at the pest-house until one night in the late fall. A gale was not merely brewing. It was coming on to blow. Because, in a basket of fruit, stated to have been sent by the young ladies of Miss Foote’s Seminary, Daughtry had read a note artfully concealed in the heart of an apple, telling him on the forthcoming Friday night to keep a light burning in his window. Daughtry received a visitor at five in the morning.

It was Charles Stough Greenleaf, the Ancient Mariner himself. Having wallowed for two hours through the deep sand of the eucalyptus forest, he fell exhausted against the penthouse door. When Daughtry opened it, the ancient one blew in upon him along with a gusty wet splatter of the freshening gale. Daughtry caught him first and supported him toward a chair. But, remembering his own affliction, he released the old man so abruptly as to drop him violently into the chair.

“My word, sir,” said Daughtry. “You must ’a’ ben havin’ a time of it. – Here, you fella Kwaque, this fella wringin’ wet. You fella take ’m off shoe stop along him.”

But before Kwaque, immediately kneeling, could touch hand to the shoelaces, Daughtry, remembering that Kwaque was likewise unclean, had thrust him away.

“My word, I don’t know what to do,” Daughtry murmured, staring about helplessly as he realised that it was a leper-house, that the very chair in which the old man sat was a leper-chair, that the very floor on which his exhausted feet rested was a leper-floor.

“I’m glad to see you, most exceeding glad,” the Ancient Mariner panted, extending his hand in greeting.

Dag Daughtry avoided it.

“How goes the treasure-hunting?” he queried lightly. “Any prospects in sight?”

The Ancient Mariner nodded, and with returning breath, at first whispering, gasped out:

“We’re all cleared to sail on the first of the ebb at seven this morning. She’s out in the stream now, a tidy bit of a schooner, the Bethlehem, with good lines and hull and large cabin accommodations. She used to be in the Tahiti trade, before the steamers ran her out. Provisions are good. Everything is most excellent. I saw to that. I cannot say I like the captain. I’ve seen his type before. A splendid seaman, I am certain, but a Bully Hayes grown old. A natural born pirate, a very wicked old man indeed. Nor is the backer any better. He is middle-aged, has a bad record, and is not in any sense of the word a gentleman, but he has plenty of money – made it first in California oil, then grub-staked a prospector in British Columbia, cheated him out of his share of the big lode he discovered and doubled his own wealth half a dozen times over. A very undesirable, unlikeable sort of a man. But he believes in luck, and is confident that he’ll make at least fifty millions out of our adventure and cheat me out of my share. He’s as much a pirate as is the captain he’s engaged.”

“Mr. Greenleaf, I congratulate you, sir,” Daughtry said. “And you have touched me, sir, touched me to the heart, coming all the way out here on such a night, and running such risks, just to say good-bye to poor Dag Daughtry, who always meant somewhat well but had bad luck.”

But while he talked so heartily, Daughtry saw, in a resplendent visioning, all the freedom of a schooner in the great South Seas, and felt his heart sink in realisation that remained for him only the pest-house, the sand-dunes, and the sad eucalyptus trees.

The Ancient Mariner sat stiffly upright.

“Sir, you have hurt me. You have hurt me to the heart.”

“No offence, sir, no offence,” Daughtry stammered in apology, although he wondered in what way he could have hurt the old gentleman’s feelings.

“You are my friend, sir,” the other went on, gravely censorious. “I am your friend, sir. And you give me to understand that you think I have come out here to this hell-hole to say good-bye. I came out here to get you, sir, and your nigger, sir. The schooner is waiting for you. All is arranged. You are signed on the articles before the shipping commissioner. Both of you. Signed on yesterday by proxies I arranged for myself. One was a Barbadoes nigger. I got him and the white man out of a sailors’ boarding-house on Commercial Street and paid them five dollars each to appear before the Commissioner and sign on.”

“But, my God, Mr. Greenleaf, you don’t seem to grasp it that he and I are lepers.”

Almost with a galvanic spring, the Ancient Mariner was out of the chair and on his feet, the anger of age and of a generous soul in his face as he cried:

“My God, sir, what you don’t seem to grasp is that you are my friend, and that I am your friend.”

Abruptly, still under the pressure of his wrath, he thrust out his hand.

“Steward, Daughtry. Mr. Daughtry, friend, sir, or whatever I may name you, this is no fairy-story of the open boat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the treasure a fathom under the sand. This is real. I have a heart. That, sir” – here he waved his extended hand under Daughtry’s nose – “is my hand. There is only one thing you may do, must do, right now. You must take that hand in your hand, and shake it, with your heart in your hand as mine is in my hand.”

“But.. but.. ” Daughtry faltered.

“If you don’t, then I shall not depart from this place. I shall remain here, die here. I know you are a leper. You can’t tell me anything about that. There’s my hand. Are you going to take it? My heart is there in the palm of it, in the pulse in every finger-end of it. If you don’t take it, I warn you I’ll sit right down here in this chair and die. I want you to understand I am a man, sir, a gentleman. I am a friend, a comrade. I am no poltroon of the flesh. I live in my heart and in my head, sir – not in this feeble carcass I cursorily inhabit. Take that hand. I want to talk with you afterward.”

Dag Daughtry extended his hand hesitantly, but the Ancient Mariner seized it and pressed it so fiercely with his age-lean fingers as to hurt.

“Now we can talk,” he said. “I have thought the whole matter over. We sail on the Bethlehem. When the wicked man discovers that he can never get a penny of my fabulous treasure, we will leave him. He will be glad to be quit of us. We, you and I and your nigger, will go ashore in the Marquesas. Lepers roam about free there. There are no regulations. I have seen them. We will be free. The land is a paradise. And you and I will set up housekeeping. A thatched hut – no more is needed. The work is trifling. The freedom of beach and sea and mountain will be ours. For you there will be sailing, swimming, fishing, hunting. There are mountain goats, wild chickens and wild cattle. Bananas and plantains will ripen over our heads – avocados and custard apples, also. The red peppers grow by the door, and there will be fowls, and the eggs of fowls. Kwaque shall do the cooking. And there will be beer. I have long noted your thirst unquenchable. There will be beer, six quarts of it a day, and more, more.

“Quick. We must start now. I am sorry to tell you that I have vainly sought your dog. I have even paid detectives who were robbers. Doctor Emory stole Killeny Boy from you, but within a dozen hours he was stolen from Doctor Emory. I have left no stone unturned. Killeny Boy is gone, as we shall be gone from this detestable hole of a city.

“I have a machine waiting. The driver is paid well. Also, I have promised to kill him if he defaults on me. It bears just a bit north of east over the sandhill on the road that runs along the other side of the funny forest.. That is right. We will start now. We can discuss afterward. Look! Daylight is beginning to break. The guards must not see us.. ”

Out into the storm they passed, Kwaque, with a heart wild with gladness, bringing up the rear. At the beginning Daughtry strove to walk aloof, but in a trice, in the first heavy gust that threatened to whisk the frail old man away, Dag Daughtry’s hand was grasping the other’s arm, his own weight behind and under, supporting and impelling forward and up the hill through the heavy sand.

“Thank you, steward, thank you, my friend,” the Ancient Mariner murmured in the first lull between the gusts.

CHAPTER XXII

Not altogether unwillingly, in the darkness of night, despite that he disliked the man, did Michael go with Harry Del Mar. Like a burglar the man came, with infinite caution of silence, to the outhouse in Doctor Emory’s back yard where Michael was a prisoner. Del Mar knew the theatre too well to venture any hackneyed melodramatic effect such as an electric torch. He felt his way in the darkness to the door of the outhouse, unlatched it, and entered softly, feeling with his hands for the wire-haired coat.

And Michael, a man-dog and a lion-dog in all the stuff of him, bristled at the instant of intrusion, but made no outcry. Instead, he smelled out the intruder and recognised him. Disliking the man, nevertheless he permitted the tying of the rope around his neck and silently followed him out to the sidewalk, down to the corner, and into the waiting taxi.

His reasoning – unless reason be denied him – was simple. This man he had met, more than once, in the company of Steward. Amity had existed between him and Steward, for they had sat at table, and drunk together. Steward was lost. Michael knew not where to find him, and was himself a prisoner in the back yard of a strange place. What had once happened, could again happen. It had happened that Steward, Del Mar, and Michael had sat at table together on divers occasions. It was probable that such a combination would happen again, was going to happen now, and, once more, in the bright-lighted cabaret, he would sit on a chair, Del Mar on one side, and on the other side beloved Steward with a glass of beer before him – all of which might be called “leaping to a conclusion”; for conclusion there was, and upon the conclusion Michael acted.

Now Michael could not reason to this conclusion nor think to this conclusion, in words. “Amity,” as an instance, was no word in his consciousness. Whether or not he thought to the conclusion in swift-related images and pictures and swift-welded composites of images and pictures, is a problem that still waits human solution. The point is: he did think. If this be denied him, then must he have acted wholly by instinct – which would seem more marvellous on the face of it than if, in dim ways, he had performed a vague thought-process.

However, into the taxi and away through the maze of San Francisco’s streets, Michael lay alertly on the floor near Del Mar’s feet, making no overtures of friendliness, by the same token making no demonstration of the repulsion of the man’s personality engendered in him. For Harry Del Mar, who was base, and who had been further abased by his money-making desire for the possession of Michael, had had his baseness sensed by Michael from the beginning. That first meeting in the Barbary Coast cabaret, Michael had bristled at him, and stiffened belligerently, when he laid his hand on Michael’s head. Nor had Michael thought about the man at all, much less attempted any analysis of him. Something had been wrong with that hand – the perfunctory way in which it had touched him under a show of heartiness that could well deceive the onlooker. The feel of it had not been right. There had been no warmth in it, no heart, no communication of genuine good approach from the brain and the soul of the man of which it was the telegraphic tentacle and transmitter. In short, the message or feel had not been a good message or feel, and Michael had bristled and stiffened without thinking, but by mere knowing, which is what men call “intuition.”

Electric lights, a shed-covered wharf, mountains of luggage and freight, the noisy toil of ’longshoremen and sailors, the staccato snorts of donkey engines and the whining sheaves as running lines ran through the blocks, a crowd of white-coated stewards carrying hand-baggage, the quartermaster at the gangway foot, the gangway sloping steeply up to the Umatilla’s promenade deck, more quartermasters and gold-laced ship’s officers at the head of the gangway, and more crowd and confusion blocking the narrow deck – thus Michael knew, beyond all peradventure, that he had come back to the sea and its ships, where he had first met Steward, where he had been always with Steward, save for the recent nightmare period in the great city. Nor was there absent from the flashing visions of his consciousness the images and memories of Kwaque and Cocky. Whining eagerly, he strained at the leash, risking his tender toes among the many inconsiderate, restless, leather-shod feet of the humans, as he quested and scented for Cocky and Kwaque, and, most of all, for Steward.

Michael accepted his disappointment in not immediately meeting them, for from the dawn of consciousness, the limitations and restrictions of dogs in relation to humans had been hammered into him in the form of concepts of patience. The patience of waiting, when he wanted to go home and when Steward continued to sit at table and talk and drink beer, was his, as was the patience of the rope around the neck, the fence too high to scale, the narrowed-walled room with the closed door which he could never unlatch but which humans unlatched so easily. So that he permitted himself to be led away by the ship’s butcher, who on the Umatilla had the charge of all dog passengers. Immured in a tiny between-decks cubby which was filled mostly with boxes and bales, tied as well by the rope around his neck, he waited from moment to moment for the door to open and admit, realised in the flesh, the resplendent vision of Steward which blazed through the totality of his consciousness.

Instead, although Michael did not guess it then, and, only later, divined it as a vague manifestation of power on the part of Del Mar, the well-tipped ship’s butcher opened the door, untied him, and turned him over to the well-tipped stateroom steward who led him to Del Mar’s stateroom. Up to the last, Michael was convinced that he was being led to Steward. Instead, in the stateroom, he found only Del Mar. “No Steward,” might be described as Michael’s thought; but by patience, as his mood and key, might be described his acceptance of further delay in meeting up with his god, his best beloved, his Steward who was his own human god amidst the multitude of human gods he was encountering.

Michael wagged his tail, flattened his ears, even his crinkled ear, a trifle, and smiled, all in a casual way of recognition, smelled out the room to make doubly sure that there was no scent of Steward, and lay down on the floor. When Del Mar spoke to him, he looked up and gazed at him.

“Now, my boy, times have changed,” Del Mar addressed him in cold, brittle tones. “I’m going to make an actor out of you, and teach you what’s what. First of all, come here.. COME HERE!”

Michael obeyed, without haste, without lagging, and patently without eagerness.

“You’ll get over that, my lad, and put pep into your motions when I talk to you,” Del Mar assured him; and the very manner of his utterance was a threat that Michael could not fail to recognise. “Now we’ll just see if I can pull off the trick. You listen to me, and sing like you did for that leper guy.”

Drawing a harmonica from his vest pocket, he put it to his lips and began to play “Marching through Georgia.”

“Sit down!” he commanded.

Again Michael obeyed, although all that was Michael was in protest. He quivered as the shrill-sweet strains from the silver reeds ran through him. All his throat and chest was in the impulse to sing; but he mastered it, for he did not care to sing for this man. All he wanted of him was Steward.

“Oh, you’re stubborn, eh?” Del Mar sneered at him. “The matter with you is you’re thoroughbred. Well, my boy, it just happens I know your kind and I reckon I can make you get busy and work for me just as much as you did for that other guy. Now get busy.”

He shifted the tune on into “Georgia Camp Meeting.” But Michael was obdurate. Not until the melting strains of “Old Kentucky Home” poured through him did he lose his self-control and lift his mellow-throated howl that was the call for the lost pack of the ancient millenniums. Under the prodding hypnosis of this music he could not but yearn and burn for the vague, forgotten life of the pack when the world was young and the pack was the pack ere it was lost for ever through the endless centuries of domestication.

“Ah, ha,” Del Mar chuckled coldly, unaware of the profound history and vast past he evoked by his silver reeds.

A loud knock on the partition wall warned him that some sleepy passenger was objecting.

“That will do!” he said sharply, taking the harmonica from his lips. And Michael ceased, and hated him. “I guess I’ve got your number all right. And you needn’t think you’re going to sleep here scratching fleas and disturbing my sleep.”

He pressed the call-button, and, when his room-steward answered, turned Michael over to him to be taken down below and tied up in the crowded cubby-hole.

* * * * *

During the several days and nights on the Umatilla, Michael learned much of what manner of man Harry Del Mar was. Almost, might it be said, he learned Del Mar’s pedigree without knowing anything of his history. For instance he did not know that Del Mar’s real name was Percival Grunsky, and that at grammar school he had been called “Brownie” by the girls and “Blackie” by the boys. No more did he know that he had gone from half-way-through grammar school directly into the industrial reform school; nor that, after serving two years, he had been paroled out by Harris Collins, who made a living, and an excellent one, by training animals for the stage. Much less could he know the training that for six years Del Mar, as assistant, had been taught to give the animals, and, thereby, had received for himself.

What Michael did know was that Del Mar had no pedigree and was a scrub as compared with thoroughbreds such as Steward, Captain Kellar, and Mister Haggin of Meringe. And he learned it swiftly and simply. In the day-time, fetched by a steward, Michael would be brought on deck to Del Mar, who was always surrounded by effusive young ladies and matrons who lavished caresses and endearments upon Michael. This he stood, although much bored; but what irked him almost beyond standing were the feigned caresses and endearments Del Mar lavished on him. He knew the cold-blooded insincerity of them, for, at night, when he was brought to Del Mar’s room, he heard only the cold brittle tones, sensed only the threat and the menace of the other’s personality, felt, when touched by the other’s hand, only a stiffness and sharpness of contact that was like to so much steel or wood in so far as all subtle tenderness of heart and spirit was absent.

This man was two-faced, two-mannered. No thoroughbred was anything but single-faced and single-mannered. A thoroughbred, hot-blooded as it might be, was always sincere. But in this scrub was no sincerity, only a positive insincerity. A thoroughbred had passion, because of its hot blood; but this scrub had no passion. Its blood was cold as its deliberateness, and it did nothing save deliberately. These things he did not think. He merely realized them, as any creature realizes itself in liking and in not liking.

To cap it all, the last night on board, Michael lost his thoroughbred temper with this man who had no temper. It came to a fight. And Michael had no chance. He raged royally and fought royally, leaping to the attack, after being knocked over twice by open-handed blows under his ear. Quick as Michael was, slashing South Sea niggers by virtue of his quickness and cleverness, he could not touch his teeth to the flesh of this man, who had been trained for six years with animals by Harris Collins. So that, when he leaped, open-mouthed, for the bite, Del Mar’s right hand shot out, gripped his under-jaw as he was in the air, and flipped him over in a somersaulting fall to the floor on his back. Once again he leapt open-mouthed to the attack, and was filliped to the floor so hard that almost the last particle of breath was knocked out of him. The next leap was nearly his last. He was clutched by the throat. Two thumbs pressed into his neck on either side of the windpipe directly on the carotid arteries, shutting off the blood to his brain and giving him most exquisite agony, at the same time rendering him unconscious far more swiftly than the swiftest anæsthetic. Darkness thrust itself upon him; and, quivering on the floor, glimmeringly he came back to the light of the room and to the man who was casually touching a match to a cigarette and cautiously keeping an observant eye on him.

“Come on,” Del Mar challenged. “I know your kind. You can’t get my goat, and maybe I can’t get yours entirely, but I can keep you under my thumb to work for me. Come on, you!”

And Michael came. Being a thoroughbred, despite that he knew he was beaten by this two-legged thing which was not warm human but was so alien and hard that he might as well attack the wall of a room with his teeth, or a tree-trunk, or a cliff of rock, Michael leapt bare-fanged for the throat. And all that he leapt against was training, formula. The experience was repeated. His throat was gripped, the thumbs shut off the blood from his brain, and darkness smote him. Had he been more than a normal thoroughbred dog, he would have continued to assail his impregnable enemy until he burst his heart or fell in a fit. But he was normal. Here was something unassailable, adamantine. As little might he win victory from it, as from the cement-paved sidewalk of a city. The thing was a devil, with the hardness and coldness, the wickedness and wisdom, of a devil. It was as bad as Steward was good. Both were two-legged. Both were gods. But this one was an evil god.

He did not reason all this, nor any of it. Yet, transmuted into human terms of thought and understanding, it adequately describes the fulness of his state of mind toward Del Mar. Had Michael been entangled in a fight with a warm god, he could have raged and battled blindly, inflicting and receiving hurt in the chaos of conflict, as such a god, being warm, would have likewise received and given hurt, being only a flesh-and-blood, living, breathing entity after all. But this two-legged god-devil did not rage blindly and was incapable of passional heat. He was like so much cunning, massive steel machinery, and he did what Michael could never dream he did – and, for that matter, which few humans do and which all animal trainers do: he kept one thought ahead of Michael’s thought all the time, and therefore, was able to have ready one action always in anticipation of Michael’s next action. This was the training he had received from Harris Collins, who, withal he was a sentimental and doting husband and father, was the arch-devil when it came to animals other than human ones, and who reigned in an animal hell which he had created and made lucrative.