“Cuddling?” Roger has a tendency to scream. “Cuddling?”

“Mexico.” It’s the doctor, sighing, toilet bowl on his foot and knitted helmet askew.

“Hello, doesn’t that make it difficult for you to walk? should think it would… up here, first get it in the door, this way, and, ah, good,” then closing the door again around Pointsman’s ankle, the bowl now occupying Roger’s seat, Roger half-resting on Jessica’s lap, “tug now, hard as ever you can.”

Thinking young prig and mocking ass the doctor rocks back on his free leg, grunting, the bowl wallowing to and fro. Roger holds the door and peers attentively into where the foot vanished. “If we had a bit of Vaseline, we could—something slippery. Wait! Stay there, Pointsman, don’t move, we’ll have this resolved… .” Under the car, impulsive lad, in search of the crankcase plug by the time Pointsman can say, “There isn’t time Mexico, he’ll escape, he’ll escape.”

“Quite right.” Up again fumbling a flashlight from his jacket pocket. “I’ll flush him out, you wait with the net. Sure you can get about all right? Nasty if you fell or something just as he made his break for the open.”

“For pity’s sake,” Pointsman thumping after him back into the wreckage. “Don’t frighten him Mexico, this isn’t Kenya or something, we need him as close to normative, you know, as possible.”

Normative? Normative?

“Roger,” calls Roger, giving him short-long-short with the flash.

“Jessica,” murmurs Jessica, tiptoeing behind them.

“Here, fellow,” coaxes Roger. “Nice bottle of ether here for you,” opening the flask, waving it in the cellar entrance, then switching on his beam. Dog looks up out of an old rusted pram, bobbing black shadows, tongue hanging, utter skepticism on his face. “Why it’s Mrs. Nussbaum!” Roger cries, the same way he’s heard Fred Allen do, Wednesday nights over the BBC.

“You vere ekshpecting maybe Lessie?” replies the dog.

Roger can smell ether fumes quite strongly as he starts his cautious descent. “Come on mate, it’ll be over before you know it. Pointsman just wants to count the old drops of saliva, that’s all. Wants to make a wee incision in your cheek, nice glass tube, nothing to bother about, right? Ring a bell now and then. Exciting world of the laboratory, you’ll love it.” Ether seems to be getting to him. He tries to stopper the flask: takes a step, foot plunges into a hole. Lurching sideways, he gropes for something to steady himself. The stopper falls back out of the flask and in forever among the debris at the bottom of the smashed house. Overhead Pointsman cries, “The sponge, Mexico, you forgot the sponge!” down comes a round pale collection of holes, bouncing in and out of the light of the flash. “Frisky chap,” Roger making a two-handed grab for it, splashing ether liberally about. He locates the sponge at last in his flashlight beam, the dog looking on from the pram in some confusion. “Hah!” pouring ether to drench the sponge and go wisping cold off his hands till the flask’s empty. Taking the wet sponge between two fingers he staggers toward the dog, shining the light up from under his chin to highlight the vampire face he thinks he’s making. “Moment—of truth!” He lunges. The dog leaps off at an angle, streaking past Roger toward the entrance while Roger keeps going with his sponge, headfirst into the pram, which collapses under his weight. Dimly he hears the doctor above whimper, “He’s getting away. Mexico, do hurry.”