A werewolf among us

flower to suck down a little perfume he fancied, St. Cyr thought the trainer was going to have a fit and strike the dog dead with his bare hands.
    "Never failed like this before," Teeley said. "Never so soon."
    "Any notion why?" Rainy asked.
    "They were at it great," the trainer said. "Then they get to that spot there and they're stymied, just like the damn wolf vanished there."
    "Perhaps it did," Dane said.
    The trainer looked at him. "Serious?"
    Dane said he was. He looked at St. Cyr. "If it was not just an ordinary wolf but a
du-aga-klava
, it could have changed from wolf to man at that spot and walked calmly away."
    "The scent would remain the same," St. Cyr said patiently.
    "For wolf-form and man-form? I doubt it."
    "Anyway," St. Cyr said, "if this is a
du-aga-klava
, it has a human accomplice who fired the darts at me."
    Dane had an answer for that too. "It could have used its dart pistol while it was a man, then changed into the wolf for the attack."
    "You're getting farther and farther out in your theorization," St. Cyr said. He smiled grimly as he looked at the sky. "Besides, it's daylight, just as it was when Dorothea was killed. Your werewolf is supposed to loathe sunlight, at least when he's in his wolf-form."
    Dane said, "Perhaps; perhaps not. In the old Earth legends that parallel the story of the
du~aga-klava
, sunlight meant nothing to the creature, though the full moon was the catalyst that brought about his transformation."
    "Well, we have eight moons here," St. Cyr said. "At least two of them are always up and full. I guess it's a werewolf's paradise."
    Teeley said, "My dogs are getting cold. There's a night chill coming on."
    "Let's go back, then," St. Cyr said.
    On the way to the house, he could not shake the feeling that something important
had
been discovered through the use of the hounds. If he could just think what, it would add to the already sufficient fund of data he had accumulated.
    Very little data, actually. You're letting your emotions think for you again.
    No. I'm sure the answer is obvious and close at hand.
    Illogical.
    But I
feel
it
    Immaterial.
     

TEN:
Another Corpse
     
    An hour after the police had gone, shortly before nightfall, the house computer summoned St. Cyr to the telephone, where a call awaited him from the port offices of Worldwide Communications.
    "St. Cyr speaking."
    The woman on the other end of the line was genuine, not a tapedeck re-creation. She said, "We have a confidential light-telegram for you, Mr. St, Cyr."
    "From whom?"
    "Talmud Associates of Ionus." That would be the data that Talmud had gathered on Walter Dannery, the man whom Jubal's accountants had fired for embezzling funds.
    "Stat it, please."
    "It's labeled confidential," the woman said. "We have no authorization to stat the contents."
    "Do you have a delivery service that could get the thing to me?"
    "Tonight?"
    "If possible."
    "Not until morning," she said. "If you want it tonight, you'll have to come in to the office. You must sign for it."
    'Never mind," he said. "Have it delivered first thing in the morning."
    "Certainly, Mr. St. Cyr." She broke the connection.
    Five minutes later, he announced himself at Tina Alderban's studio door, waited a full minute and then repeated his name. He knew that she was in the suite, for if she had not been, he would have been informed of that fact by the house computer, which could keep track of comings and goings. A moment later the concealed panel slid up, coded by her voice. He stepped through the entranceway and walked into the huge room, where she was working on a new canvas. The overhead lights were on, since only a haze of sunlight entered the room through the windows. Outside, it was almost dark.
    "Am I disturbing you?"
    Without looking up, she said, "Yes. But come in and sit down."
    He did as she said, choosing a chair from which he could see the back of the easel and the front of her perfect, dark face.
    She said, "Shouldn't you be out—detecting?"
    "I am."
    "You don't appear to be. Unless I'm a suspect."
    "Everyone's a suspect."
    For the first time since he had come in she looked at him, then quickly back to her canvas and worked a brush full of blue paint into the square surface. She said, "And why do I qualify?"
    "Let's not talk about you just now," he said. "Tell me about Dane."
    "Tell you
what
about him?"
    "He seems quite superstitious."
    She nodded, put down the blue brush, picked up a yellow.
    "Doesn't that strike you as odd?" St. Cyr