A werewolf among us

week later, the following Monday, Dorothea went for a walk in the vast gardens of the Alderban estate. The gardens stretch for two miles east-west and one mile north-south; they offer many an inspiring view to a poet like Dorothea. When she did not return from her walk at the time she said she would, the family was immediately alarmed. A search of the gardens was initiated. This time, I found the body."
    The pines had given out in these higher altitudes to huge, gray-leafed trees that bent across the lanes until, almost touching above the median, they formed a dark tunnel.
    The car's lights popped on.
    Teddy said, "Dorothea had been mauled exactly as her brother had been, her throat torn through. Her left hip had also been badly mutilated, and the toes of her right foot were gone."
    "Gone?"
    "At least, they've never been found, sir."
    Another car passed them, going toward the city they had left behind, a silvery master unit chauffeuring a young couple. The girl was a pretty brunette.
    St. Cyr: "The police were summoned again?"
    Teddy: "Yes. The federal men arrived and proceeded to cover the murder scene just as thoroughly as they had done before. They super-lighted the body for fingerprints and found none. They dug under her nails for flesh—found none. They searched the garden for footprints—found none. In one area, however, they had success."
    "What was that?" St. Cyr asked. Jubal Alderban, the patriarch of this troubled family, had not told him any of these fascinating details in the light-telegram he had sent, and
St. Cyr was desperate for facts.
    "They found a wolfs hair in the wound on her neck."
    St. Cyr: "Well, there you have it A wolf—"
    "Not quite, sir. This could possibly explain Dorothea's death—though there has not been a wild wolf reported on this continent for nearly sixty years, an extinction of species specified in Climicon's plans for Darma—but it most assuredly does not explain Leon's demise. How, for instance, could a wolf get through the door locks, find its way upstairs to Leon's room, kill him, and leave without otherwise causing a disturbance?"
    St. Cyr could not explain that.
    "Wolves, Mr. St. Cyr, are apt to howl when excited. In the act of chewing and clawing Leon's throat, it would surely have awakened the household or at least drawn my own notice. There was no noise. And when I checked the lock systems, I found them inviolate; the doors had not been opened all night."
    "Who is left in the family?" St. Cyr asked. He wished they would come out of the canopy of gray trees and into the sunlight again.
    "Five," Teddy said. "There is Jubal Alderban, father of the family and owner of the Alderban Interstellar Corporation, though he has never worked much at the family business. It's nearly all in the hands of trust lawyers, who dole out large monthly allotments to the family. Jubal is a sculptor of galactic renown, as you most likely know. He, as did all the family, underwent psychiatric hypno-keying to stimulate his creative abilities."
    They drifted into sunlight again, squinted as the windshield splashed orange and then quickly opaqued in adjustment to the glare. The mountains hung over them again, rotten teeth ready to bite. Then the trees formed another canopy and brought darkness.
    "Jubal's wife," Teddy said, "is Alicia. Ten years younger than Jubal, forty-four, an accomplished classical guitarist and composer of ballads in the Spanish tradition. The three remaining children are Dane, the historical novelist, Betty, a better poet than her dead sister, and Tina—who paints. Tina is the most self-sufficient of the lot, Dane the least. Jubal is, of course, concerned about their welfare."
    St. Cyr phrased his next question carefully in order to obtain the most, clinical, factual and complete answer that Teddy could give him. "Having observed most of this firsthand, having seen the bodies and known the victims, do you have any theories of your own?" He knew that a Reiss Master Unit was a complete reasoning individual, within certain limits, and he hoped the superior logic of that mind would have some new insight that the police had not come up with.
    He was disappointed.
    "Nothing of
my
own, sir. It is truly baffling. There is only what the natives say about it."
    "Native Darmanians?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "What do they say, Teddy?"
    "Werewolf, sir."
    "Pardon me?"
    "I know that it sounds absurd to reasoning creatures like ourselves. The Darmanians
say that a werewolf, a creature they call