long and wrinkled face, a Panama hat two sizes too
large and a voice that had, in spite of its excellent diction, a
jarring timbre and definitely foreign flavor.

Oliver blinked, surprised and a little dismayed that Fate should have
sent him so early in his career a known and patently captious
millionaire. Bivins, waiting in visored and putteed impassivity to
reopen the door for his master, was silently impressive; the town car,
parked on the crushed shell driveway outside, glittered splendidly in
the late afternoon sunshine.

"I'll be happy to call later in the day," Oliver said. He removed the
padded block that had held Champ's jaws apart, and narrowly missed
losing a finger as the infuriated chow snapped at his hand. "My aunt
and sister are bringing my fiancee down from Tampa for dinner this
evening, and I can't leave the clinic until they get here. Someone
might call for his pet."

Mr. Furnay protested his extremity of need. "The animal suffers
periodic convulsions," he said. "It may be dangerously ill!"

Oliver unstrapped Champ from his detention frame and dodged with
practiced skill when the chow tried to bite him on the thigh. He had
taken it for granted--having heard none of the gossip concerning Mr.
Furnay's recent purchase of the Skadarian Brothers' menagerie--that
the sick animal in question was a dog or cat or perhaps a saddle
horse, and the bald description of its symptoms startled him more than
Champ's predictable bid for revenge.

"Convulsions? What sort of animal is it, Mr. Furnay?"

"A polar bear," said Mr. Furnay.

"Polar bear!" echoed Oliver, and in his shock of surprise he dropped a
detaining strap and let Champ loose.

* * * * *

The dog sprang across the room--without a breath of warning, as chows
will--and bit Bivins on the leg just above his puttee. The chauffeur
screamed in a high and peculiarly raucous voice and jerked away,
jabbering in a vowelless and totally unfamiliar foreign tongue. Mr.
Furnay said something sharply in the same grating language; Bivins
whipped out a handkerchief, pressed it over the tear in his whipcords
and went quickly out to the car.

Oliver collared the snarling Champ and returned him to his cage, where
the dog pressed bristling against the bars and stared at Mr. Furnay
hungrily with wicked, muddy eyes.

Mr. Furnay's shocked voice said, behind Oliver, "What a ghastly world,
where even the _pets_...."

He broke off sharply