“Easily done!” came the reply. “Bide a moment. There! Trade?”
“You have it! Catch!”
Something flashed through the air to rattle farther down the hill, followed by scurrying sounds.
“Fair enough! Here’s yer liver!”
There came a _splap_ from higher up and a muttered “Got it!”
“Hey!” came a lady’s voice then, from off to the left. “While you’re about it, have you a skull?”
“Indeed I do!” said the second man. “What’ll you give?”
“What do you need?”
“Fingerbones!”
“Done! I’ll tie ’em together with a piece of twine!”
“Here’s your skull!”
“Got it! Yours’ll be along shortly!”
“Has anyone the broken vertebrae of a hanged man?” came a deep masculine voice with a Hungarian accent, from somewhere far to the right.
There followed a minute’s silence. Then, “I’ve some mashed ones here! Dunno how they got that way, though!”
“Perhaps they’ll do. Send them along, please!”
Something white and rattling flashed through the starlit air.
“Yes. I can work with these. What’ll you have for them?”
“They’re on the house! I’m done! ‘Night!”
There followed the sounds of rapidly retreating footfalls.
“See?” the old dog said. “He didn’t fill it in.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be up kicking dirt all night.”
“Afraid I can’t help you. I’ve got my own job to see to.”
“Eyeballs, anyone?” came a call.
“Over here,” said someone with a Russian accent. “One of them, please.”
“I’ll have the other,” came an aristocratic voice from the opposite direction.
“Either of you got a couple of floating ribs, or a pair of kidneys?”
“Down here, on the kidneys!” came a new voice. “And I’m in need of a patella!”
“What’s that?”
“Knee bone!”
“Oh? No problem. . . .”
On the way out, we passed a white-bearded, frail-looking man, half-adoze, leaning on a spade near the gate. Casual inspection would have had one believe him a sexton, out for a bit of night air, but his scent was that of the Great Detective, hardly drowsing. Someone had obviously spoken too publicly.
Jack muffled himself and we slunk by, shadows amid shadows.
Thus was all our work quickly concluded to everyone’s satisfaction, save for the tired hound. Such times are rare, such times are fleeting, but always bright when caught, measured, hung, and later regarded in times of adversity, there in the kinder halls of memory, against the flapping of the flames.
Forgive me. The New Moon, as they say, gives rise to reflection. Time to make my rounds. Then some more dragging.
October 18
First time out yesterday I got him farther through the muck, but he was still in it when I left him. I was tired. Jack was sequestered with his objects. The police were about, searching the area. The vicar was out, too, offering exhortations to the searchers. Night came on, and later I made my way back to the muck, chasing off a few vermin and beginning the long haul once again.
I’d worked on and off for over an hour, allowing myself several panting breaks, when I realized I was no longer alone. He was bigger than me even, and he moved with a silence I envied, some piece of the night cut loose and drifting against lesser blacknesses. He seemed to know the moment I became aware of him, and he moved toward me with a long, effortless stride, one of the largest dogs I’d ever seen outside of Ireland.
Correction. As he came on I realized he wasn’t really a dog. It was a great gray wolf that was bearing down on me. I quickly reviewed my knowledge of the submissive postures these guys are into as I backed away from the corpse.
“You can have it,” I said. “It’s all right with me. It’s not in the best of shape, though.”
He loomed nearer. Monstrous jaws, great feral eyes. . . . Then he sat down.
“So this is where it is,” he said.
“What?”
“The missing body. Snuff, you are tampering with evidence.”
“And you might say I’m tampering with something already tampered with. Who are you?”
“Larry. Talbot.”
“Could’ve fooled me. I thought you were, a great wolf. . . oh.”
“That, too.”
“_Were_, huh? And you’re shifted. But this is the dark of the moon.”