The Barker Street Regulars

slapped the bluestone. As if straining to reach the high notes, Ceci wailed, “Simon, wait! Simon! Simon, please don’t go! Simon! Come to me! Simon, come!”
    A voice hushed her. “Stop!” Irene Wheeler cautioned. “You are driving him away!”
    Rowdy pulled ahead of me and veered to the left. Too late, I saw that he was skirting the sundial. My right foot dropped into a pit, and my left leg threatened to go out from under me. Tightening my grip on Rowdy’s leash, I scrambled for balance. Just as I regained my footing, the iron gate gave a painful squeal. Rowdy replied with a low rumble. Framed by the masses of high hedge on either side of the gate, a gigantic form appeared. It passed through the gate and entered the yard. Rowdy’s leash carried his tension to my hand.
    “Simon!” Ceci cried. “Simon!”
    The phantasmic creature made no move toward her, but with a sudden surge of power and a low growl lunged toward Rowdy and, to my amazement, came to an abrupt and inexplicable halt. Hauling Rowdy to my left side, I took involuntary steps away from the aggressor, but I’d moved no more than a few feet when the strong beam of a flashlight in Ceci’s hand suddenly explained the inexplicable. Revealed at last was the spectral Simon, the giant dog who had left the enormous prints. A thin cord ran from his collar and disappeared in the darkness beyond the gate. Caught in the light, he was bewildered and grotesque. The white of the Great Pyrenees is so distinctive that even I had difficulty in recognizing this mutant bear as a once-white dog. He wore a hideous piebald coat of white splotched with black and gray. Ceci gasped. The beam of her flashlight moved to Rowdy.
    With sudden vehemence, Ceci swung around. As if she were jacking a deer, she directed the light into Irene Wheeler’s eyes. I’d have expected Ceci to fall to pieces. In fact, she had never sounded more dignified than she did now. “You have deceived me,” she declared flatly. “Do you imagine that I should have known better? Is that your excuse? Do you suppose that all of this is my own fault for being such an old fool? You are a vicious, cruel woman, Irene Wheeler! What you have done to me is beyond forgiveness.”
    She moved the beam back to the false Simon and slowly traced the cord that ran from his collar. The cord, I saw, was caught in the top hinge of the iron gate. The light rested briefly on a gloved hand that held the plastic handle of a retractable dog leash. Then it crept upward to reveal the face of a man. Pressed to his oddly bulbous forehead was Hugh’s revolver.
    Robert emerged from the darkness into the beam of the light and cleared his throat lightly as if preparing to deliver a speech. I had no doubt what its central theme would be. Before Robert uttered a word, however, the man who had tried to drown Tracker dropped in appropriately catlike fashion to the ground, where he must have seized Hugh’s ankles. I heard something hit the ground: Hugh’s revolver. And something else: the plastic case of the retractable leash. In seconds, the revolver was in the hands of Irene’s confederate, who pressed it against Hugh’s temple. Until Robert moved, I had forgotten that he, too, was armed. An unseen object whizzed upward and cracked down on the revolver and the hand that held it. The man screamed and bent double in pain.
    “Holmes’s favorite weapon,” Robert declared smugly. “For good reason. Hugh, the handcuffs, if you please. Thank you. Ceci, dear, some light? May I have the mixed pleasure of presenting Arthur Moore? We knew as soon as we heard the name. He goes by a nickname. Artie, he is called. Artie Moore.”
    “Is that your proof?” I burst out. “Artie Moore? Moriarty? He happens to have a name that sounds like the name of Holmes’s arch villain? That’s not proof. It’s just coincidence.”
    “Rather m-o-o-re than that,” replied Robert.
     

Chapter Thirty-two
     
    N O ONE, INCLUDING YOU," I told Kevin Dennehy late that same evening, “took that crime seriously. Not that I’m letting myself off the hook! If it had been a dog, I’d have done something. But the point is that cruelty to animals is not some peccadillo.”
    “Watch your language there,” Kevin replied. He was sitting at my kitchen table. For once, he wasn’t drinking Budweiser or anything else.
    “Kevin, please! You’re just being defensive. I asked you to send this rock and the pillowcase and the twine to the police lab. But did