Near the dog’s home ran a broad deep river. Here one could bathe and swim most delightfully. Here also many an unfortunate animal found a watery grave. There was one place from which (the water being deep and the bank convenient at this spot) the poor wretches were generally thrown. A good deal of refuse and worn-out articles of various sorts also got flung in here, for at this point the river skirted the back part of the town.
Hither at early morning Nox would come, in conformity with his own peculiar code of duty, which may be summed up in these words: “Whatever does not properly or naturally belong to the water should be fetched out.”
Now near the River Seine, in Paris, there is a building called the Morgue, where the bodies of the drowned are laid out for recognition by their friends. There was no such institution in the town where Nox lived, so he established a Morgue for himself. Not far from the spot I have mentioned, an old willow tree spread its branches widely over the bank, and here and there stretched a long arm, and touched the river with its pointed fingers. Under the shadow of this tree was the Morgue, and here Nox brought the bodies he rescued from the river and laid them down.
I use the word bodies in its most scientific sense, for it was not alone the bodies of men or animals that Nox felt himself bound to reclaim. He would strive desperately for the rescue of an old riding boot, the rung of a chair, a worn-out hearthbrush, or anything obviously out of place in the deep waters. Whatever the prize might be, when he had successfully brought it ashore, he would toss his noble head, arch his neck, paw with his forefeet, and twist and stick out his curly back, as much as to say, “Will no one pat me as I deserve?” Though he held his prize with all the delicacy of his retriever instincts, he could seldom resist the temptation to give it one proud shake, after which he would hurry with it to the willow tree, as if conscious that it was high time it should be properly attended to.
There the mother whose child had fallen into the river, and the mother whose child had thrown her broom into the water, might come to reclaim their property, with equal chances of success.
Now it is hardly needful to say that between Benjy and Nox there was very little in common. And if there were two things about Nox which Benjy disliked more than others, they were his talent for rescue and the institution of the Morgue.
There was a reason for this. Benjy had more than once been concerned in the death of animals belonging to other people, and the owners had made an inconvenient fuss and inquiry. In such circumstances Benjy and Tom were accustomed to fasten a stone to the corpse and drop it into the river, and thus, as they hoped, get rid of all testimony to the true reason of the missing favorite’s disappearance.
But of all the fallacies which shadow the half-truths of popular proverbs, none is greater than that of the saying, “Dead men tell no tales.” For, to begin with, the dead body is generally the first witness to a murder, and that despite the most careful hiding. And so the stones which had been tied with hurried or nervous fingers were apt to come off, and then the body of Neighbor Goodman’s spaniel, or old Lady Dumble’s Angola cat, would float on the river, and tell their own true and terrible tale.
But even then the current might have favored Benjy, and carried the corpses away, had it not been for Nox’s early rounds whilst Benjy was still in bed, and for that hateful and too notorious Morgue.