Free The Theban Mysteries by Amanda Cross Page B

and it rings a bell in Mr. O’Hara’s apartment. They make their way up and down the building during the night, and if they find an intruder, their job is to keep him until help comes, not to attack him unless he tries to run or to reach for a gun or something of the sort. Then they would leap on him, as I understand this—Mr. O’Hara offered to demonstrate with a man dressed in heavily padded clothing, but I decided to take his word for it as long as he was able to assure me that they were trained not to kill under any circumstances. Now, as you will readily have seen, if the dogs are cornering an intruder, they will not press their paws on the electrified pad at the end of the hall, and when he does
not
hear the bell go off, Mr. O’Hara, armed, one gathers to the teeth, goes to see what has happened. He lets the police know before going, on my insistence, and that’s it.”
    “A neat system,” Kate said. “I take it it’s been a complete success.”
    “Complete. We haven’t had a single robbery or intrusion, Mr. O’Hara thinks, because, however secretwe may have been about the dogs, those who set about to make illegal entries know well enough that the dogs are here. We did have an unfortunate repairman, in the early days of the dogs, who agreed quite nobly to stay overtime to fix a leak in one of the lavatories, and no one thought to mention it to Mr. O’Hara. The dogs cornered the poor man, who fortunately simply stood in one place and trembled till Mr. O’Hara came and called the dogs off.”
    “Naturally,” Kate said, “there are a million questions I want to ask about this fascinating arrangement, but I suppose I ought to contain my curiosity till we get to tonight’s problem. I’m to gather that the dogs found someone tonight.”
    “They did. Angelica Jablon’s brother, not to put too fine a point on it. The boy was in a dreadful state to start with, and when those two snarling beasts cornered him, he panicked completely and finally fell backward, striking his head on the corner of something. Of course he had a scalp wound which bled all over the place, scalp wounds always do; he’s now in the hospital being treated for concussion and shock. He’ll be all right, at least as far as tonight’s little episode is concerned. Angelica, who saw him lying in a pool of blood, literally, I gather, before they took him to the hospital, is having hysterics down the hall in the nurse’s office, being comforted, one fervently hopes, by Mrs. Banister. The dogs are back on the roof and the Theban is faced with another crisis. We are one over par this week.”
    Kate appreciated the light tones with which Miss Tyringham told this extraordinary story. From the point of view of the head of the school, it was vital to play down the drama—a boy had naughtily hidden out,been frightened by some dogs, and hit his head. An unfortunate accident; one did not wish to underestimate the human implications of his actions, but if there was any horror to being evoked by dwelling on the occurrence at the Theban, Miss Tyringham did not intend to evoke it. Kate could hardly blame her.
    Yet, listening to Miss Tyringham, Kate was herself overcome with the sheer naked terror that boy must have felt. To hide out alone in an unlit building is to expose oneself to certain fears which the mind may explain away but the stomach responds to; to hide out as a criminal, it scarcely mattered why, even if his reasons were beyond question sound, could not be the calmest of undertakings. Then, suddenly, wholly without warning—for surely the dogs walk silently—to back away from two foaming monsters, well, not foaming, perhaps, but Miss Tyringham had said that they bared their teeth and certainly if he moved they growled. How was the boy to know they would not attack, and would he have been able to convey the news to his thumping pulses even if he had known?
    Kate knew that not for many nights would she rid herself of that scene, imagined to