Black Mask (Vol. 33, No. 3 — September 1949)

The animal was lightning fast. The only thing that saved Harry Wenzel was the baseball mask and the fact that he had his chin down and his head hunched into his neck so that the padded bottom of the mask protected his throat. I could hear the rasp of the dog’s fangs against the steel front of the mask. For a moment, they were a tangle, the dog kicking, twisting and letting unearthly growls from deep in his throat.

Then the growls cut off and I saw that Harry had gotten his leather-gloved hands around the animal’s throat. He straightened his powerful arms and held the beast at arm’s length. He held him there for a moment. Then he hurled him the length of the pen and against the wall of the building.

The dog fell, floundered and then got to his feet again, shaking himself. Harry Wenzel went toward him and the dog circled, snarling, crouching. “What’s the matter, Satan? You didn’t have enough? You want more?”

The Great Dane went for him again. This time, Harry Wenzel sidestepped and swung his gloved fist in a vicious hooking blow. The animal turned over once and fell on his back. He rolled over and lay there for a moment, dazed. Then he recovered and got up and tried it again, this time, going in low for Harry Wenzel’s legs. Harry booted him square in the face.

Then Harry whipped off the baseball mask and tossed it aside and stood there, glowering at the dog and waiting for him to attack again. But the animal was finished. He wasn’t having any more.

Harry backed out of the pen. The dog watched his every move, hatred in his close-set little red eyes. When he joined me outside, Harry was breathing hard and his face was shiny with sweat. He sleeved it off. “Okay, let’s go in and have a drink. You think that dog’ll ever bother me again?”

“Not if you never turn your back.”

He laughed and we went inside. Harry’s wife, Irma, was standing at the back door. She had a mocking grin on her face. She was Harry’s third wife, an almost too-thin and willowy woman, about half Harry’s age. She had a high-cheekboned, Oriental cast to her thin features that was fascinating. Her eyes were long and pulled up a little at the outer corners, long-lashed and sort of sneaky and cat-like and beautiful and they could make your spine crawl with a look.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” she said to Harry. “Picking on that poor dumb beast?”

Harry raised his wiry gray brows, turned to me. “How do you like that? Me, picking on Satan?”

“You’d better watch out for that animal,” she told him. “Some day he’s liable to kill you.”

He grabbed her around the waist. “What do you care, baby?” he demanded, roughly. “I got insurance. And you’d make a lovely widow.” He laughed uproariously and then he cut it short and kissed her. She turned her head, giggling. Over his shoulder, she looked at me. She looked bored and cynical and her green eyes gave me a look that could have melted me.

Harry Wenzel was funny. Sometimes he didn’t care what Irma did, nor how she acted. Sometimes he was jealous as a groom. Sometimes he flattened the guy Irma was flirting with and sometimes he took it out on her after the guy was gone.

I didn’t want any trouble. I had my drink and went out of there and didn’t think any more about it at the time. That was six months before Harry Wenzel was killed and that was when it started, I guess. That was the beginning.

It ended on a chill and rain-swept night in June. The fourteenth, to be exact, the night before opening day for the bass season. Every year, on this night, Harry Wenzel closed the place up against regular trade and held a special party, on the house, for a group of customers who were fishing fans.

There was nothing philanthropic about this on Harry’s part. He made a big night for these men, at the opening of the season, gave them rooms and provided an early breakfast so that they could get out shortly after sunrise and play for some of the bass in the lake behind the lodge.

It was a smart play. Later in the season, these men would come back here and spend their whole vacation at the place, fishing.

I’d been invited to the shindig, the past couple of years because I’d once done a feature story about Harry Wenzel’s early ring career. He’d never gotten over that quick flash of local fame. I was looking forward to the evening, as I drove up the long, winding driveway that led to the lodge. It had never been a brawl. We’d have only a few drinks, eat a lot of sandwiches and do a lot of lying and bragging about our prowess with rod and reel. It was always very pleasant.

I worked my battered coupe next to Pete Saterlee’s swank and shiny car. From inside I could hear some jazz piano that was the McCoy and somebody singing. The piano was fine and the singing was all right, though slightly whiskey-fuzzed at the edges. I was a little late and the party was evidently well under way. Then the grin froze on my face.