Lucky for Babs, she was off the hook for her concealed weapon, but she worried about how long she’d be able to conceal a dog in a residential hotel that didn’t allow pets. For the time being, she bribed the custodian into using the freight elevator and coaxed him to teach her how to use it when he wasn’t around.
She had twelve days left to recover two dogs. Her next step was to get an object embedded with Toto’s scent, since she already had Asta’s toy rabbit. She called Strickling. He sent a messenger to bring her a scrap of Toto’s favorite blanket.
Next on her agenda: Sir Henry needed a briefing. She filled her pockets with dog treats, snuck her new K-9 partner out of the building, and took him to the nearest grassy area to practice.
“All right, you Mongrel of the Baskervilles. Let’s hope you’re not a hell hound like the one in the Conan Doyle story. We need a miracle—and fast. Give me a repeat performance of what convinced me to adopt you.”
They spent two hours together and practiced for tonight’s big event. Afterward, Babs snuck Sir Henry back into her hotel and fed him lunch. The heat and all the running tuckered them out.
When her furry friend jumped onto her bed and insisted on snuggling, she pinched her nose. “Oooh. You need a bath.”
She didn’t have a tub, and Sir Henry was terrified of the shower. Babs had to improvise and used a sponge.
Big and hairy, he reminded her of a K-9 Irish stew—part Irish Wolfhound, part Irish Setter, Irish Soft-coated Wheaten Terrier, and maybe some Irish Water Spaniel thrown in for good measure, and he ate like a monster who escaped the Irish Potato Famine. With Irish stew on her mind, she ordered that for dinner. Sir Henry gobbled the leftovers.
Nightfall approached, and she needed to finalize preparations. Babs had no choice but to trust her luck in choosing Wiggins to carry out his plans and hoped he didn’t bungle it along the way. They met at her office to go over last-minute details.
“Of what I recall…when I went over there on official business,” she explained, “the guard booth had two phone lines—one connected to the main house and one outside line where he could call the police.”
“Don’t worry, lassie. I’ll keep him busy long enough where you can pass through unnoticed. Are you taking the dog, too? The last time we met, you didn’t say a word about him.”
“He’s my new partner,” said Babs with a quick answer, which was as good as any.
Wiggins rested his chin on the small end of his mop. “Not that gentleman I always see at your front desk?”
Babs shook her head. “Sir Henry has an amazing talent for retrieval. He’s also the perfect alibi if I’m stopped and questioned. I could always say he wiggled through the gate, and I had to chase after him. Even if it’s on private property.”
Wiggins gave her a peculiar stare. “How come you’re dressed in black from head to toe? You look like a cat burglar.”
“Even though it’ll be dark, I still can’t risk anyone seeing me. Trust me, I have no plans to steal anything.” Only to bring back dogs someone else had already stolen.
“All right, I’ll be heading along. Guess we won’t see each other again until the workweek begins.” Before Wiggins left, he handed her a tiny green plant.
“What’s this?”
“A shamrock. For good luck,” he said and shut the door.
With nowhere else to put it, she stuffed it inside her bra for safekeeping. Everything else, she packed inside a rucksack. For the dogs, she brought collars and leashes, treats, and the scent items. For her, she included black leather gloves, a thermos filled with water, a pair of binoculars, flashlights, the makeshift recording device, and the “Mickey Mouse ears” or German amplification rig, but she took it out of its military-issued case because it looked like a housing for a bomb. Upon one last inspection, she realized she needed to include her handgun.
After Wiggins left, she finished putting together the rest of her outfit. To appear as inconspicuous as possible, Babs tucked her hair into a black, crocheted snood and pinned the collar of her dark-eggplant-colored sweater to stand up rather than lie flat to camouflage her pale neck. Despite the looseness of her Marlene Dietrich-style black trousers, she kept tugging and adjusting them to feel comfortable.
What Babs didn’t realize was how difficult it would be to find a taxi driver willing to transport her with a dog. When she found one, he pulled up, looked her over, but was hesitant to let her in. She assumed he was more leery of her outfit than about Sir Henry.
“We’re in a theatrical act together. I need to disappear into the shadows during a blackout—a magic show thing,” she said, improvising. Awkward, but it worked.
Whatever Wiggins had planned, he pulled it off. At the predetermined time, Babs approached the unattended guard booth. Sir Henry squeezed through first, and she followed, but had to take off her rucksack to pull it through the narrow gap in the fence.
The two intruders galloped over to an area where she could make last-minute adjustments. She smudged charcoal on her face to obscure her features even further and washed the excess soot off her hands.
Sir Henry let out a woof of excitement.
“Shush!” Babs warned him. “Promise me you’ll be as quiet as possible.”
Much good that’s going to do, she thought. I’ve known this mutt for less than twenty-four hours. Will he listen to my instructions?
Next, Babs dug out Asta’s and Toto’s scent objects, but realized Sir Henry could only follow one scent at a time. She let him sniff the scrap of Toto’s blanket, stuffed Asta’s toy rabbit into her backpack, and sent him on his way. After his departure, she put on her Mickey Mouse ears and hooked them up to the crude recording device, which she wore strapped across her chest. She took out her binoculars to see what damning evidence, if any, she could pick up from inside the house.
The only other time she tested the audio enhancers was in the gun seller’s shop. When she turned it on, the fluctuating sounds reminded her of when she was a little girl and her father fine-tuned the right frequency on his ham radio.
Babs realized she might’ve been wrong in assuming the countess was guilty. Yet von Rache seemed to have the means and the opportunity to commit these crimes. What Babs couldn’t fathom was her motivation.
Compared to the ease the merchant had back at his gun shop, Babs had great difficulty operating the spy equipment on her own. Maybe the operator’s manual could answer some of her questions. Just her luck. All the instructions were in German.
Her contraption also picked up a lot of background noise. From what she could make out, it sounded like a conversation between a mature woman, whom she assumed was the countess, and a male, who she believed to be her butler. Both had unmistakable accents.
Butler: “Why do you bring in more dogs? They are taking over our house, and we are running out of room.”
Countess: *Static…* “It does not matter.”
More squelch. What doesn’t matter?
Her equipment fizzled. I thought this was supposed to be charged. She slapped the side of the contraption like burping a baby, and it sputtered back to life. Maybe it has loose wiring. She worried about what part of this conversation she missed.
Butler: “You have—en-dan-gered species. That leopard, for ex-am-ple. When you appear in public—”
Countess: “What about my public appearances?”
Butler: “You always wear fur. May give others wrong ideas.”
Countess: “Harrumph! How dare you! Consider yourself an endangered species.”
Who was she planning on killing? Her butler? Not the dogs. The leopard? What’s with this interference? Unable to get a clear signal, Babs was ready to pack up and call the whole thing off, but she couldn’t if her pup partner was still on the prowl.
Her sound quality was awful. Using her binoculars, it looked like the woman left the room and the man or butler was alone, but she couldn’t tell for certain. Maybe he was using the phone. Whoever this was, they had their back toward her, and all she saw were shadows.
Someone: “On the Queen Mary… Hiss. Crackle… We will fool the officials…”
Her contraption powered down for good, and her backup recording device jammed.
A foolproof plan? What about the Queen Mary?
Everything seemed to malfunction. Babs yanked off her heavy Mickey Mouse headphones, now useless. She hoped to rely on her binoculars, but they fogged from the brisk night air. Unaware the countess installed a newfangled security system, Sir Henry’s proximity to the house activated a piercing alarm. Someone opened the front door, and the leopard escaped to pursue him.
“Sir Henry, come back!” She soon realized she might alert someone to her location if she continued to shout. If her Hound of the Hollywood Baskervilles was worth his weight in kibble, he’d get out of there—fast.
In trying to escape, she twisted her ankle. Her bandages tore off, reopening her wounds from yesterday’s dog bite. She feared the leopard would discover her hiding place, attracted by the smell of fresh blood. While on the ground, re-wrapping her dressings, Babs felt a wet nose. She looked up and discovered a reddish Cocker Spaniel.
“Leo?” It was hard to make out his exact coloring in the dark, but she’d seen enough photos of Basil’s and assumed this was his dog.
She snapped her fingers. “Leo—come.”
The dog allowed her to pet him and wanted to lick her wound. When Babs felt she’d gained the cocker’s trust, she leashed and collared him.
Maybe I can also regain Basil’s confidence, she thought.
Sir Henry came barreling from the house. Babs put him back on his leash and ran the best she could with a hurt ankle and the two dogs toward the front gate. Search party flashlights closed in.
A Great Horned Owl swooped down low, spooking Leo, who bolted and dragged Babs, but soon broke free. In trying to catch up, she and Sir Henry got tangled in the underbrush. As she fell, her gun went off, not injuring anyone, but it signaled her location.
The search party made a swift retreat. She assumed someone, upon hearing the alarms and the gunshot, might’ve alerted the cops, and the countess’s staff backed off, not wanting to reveal any illegal goings on in the main house.
Police arrived. Babs felt defeated. The one good thing: she recovered Basil’s dog, who must have escaped on his own. Despite her plea that she had seen and overheard incriminating evidence that warranted further investigation, the police took her into custody. Babs spent the rest of the night in jail. Since they refused to let Sir Henry remain in the cell with her, they sent him to the pound.