Philo the Frog-boy (Part Two)

 

We returned from lunch to find a large grey-striped cat perched atop the case, scratching as if it would claw it open. Mr. Williams shooed it off indignantly.

“Pesky beast,” he grumbled.

“How did that get in here?” Rose asked.

“Oh, it roams around the Department and gets in everywhere, it seems. I’m not sure who brought it in. It appears to keep the vermin away, though.”

He unclasped the box and looked in.

“I think it’s unnerved our little friend a bit. Look, he’s shaking.”

Philo had indeed huddled deep into the straw inside, face down. What we could see of his back was shivering under his brown coat.

“Perhaps he’s cold,” Howard suggested. “If he’s like other amphibia, his body heat should be regulated by the ambient temperature.”

Rose smiled.

“Why, Mr. Rank, what lovely five-dollar words for such a simple concept. Perhaps you should be the creature’s new showman. The room’s warm enough. It’s obvious he’s just terrified.”

“Of a cat? Why, he’s big enough to swallow it down in one gulp! If you ask me …”

“That’s enough,” said Mr. Williams. “You need to get him home with you. Protect him from the cold and from animals, if you please. You’re dismissed from my enthralling lectures for time being; Philo is your assignment. Stay home, watch him, and I’ll send word when Doctor Browning gets back. In the meantime, keep him alive.” 

He yawned.

“And now I really must retire into my private office and attend to Departmental business. Just put up the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the outer door when you leave, would you please? Good afternoon.”

As he hoisted the Frog Boy’s case, Howard gave me a look behind Mr. Williams’ turned back and quickly mimed a sleepy head hitting a pillow. Rose tittered, I grinned silently and hung the sign, and then we were headed out of the Bureau and on our way back to Mrs. Haley’s.

When we got to the boardinghouse there was some interest as we hauled the case up to our rooms. The landlady was satisfied when we told her it was an assignment from the Bureau; we didn’t think it necessary to inform her exactly what it was. As Howard said, those in her profession were seldom happy to hear about ‘pets’ coming into their house. Besides, it was only five days.

The debate began immediately the moment we got him upstairs. And the first question was: where would Philo stay?

“I think it’s fairly obvious,” Howard said. “You’ve got the space, Miss Calhoun. We should set him up in your room.”

“You have said the word yourself, Mr. Rank. Him. I’m not sharing a room with a ‘him’. It wouldn’t be decent.”

“Oh, come now. You don’t think of Philo as a person, do you? You wouldn’t object to a large dog or a parrot sharing your lodgings, would you?”

“Probably not, but I wouldn’t share them with a Barbary ape, either. Until we get some official ruling …”

“Look,” I broke in. “The important thing is to keep him warm, right? The sitting room’s the warmest place. Let’s just keep him in here, and that way we can all take our turns watching him without any – er -invading of our private places.”

“That sounds like a good idea, Bob,” Howard conceded.

Rose didn’t look too convinced.

“What if Mrs. Haley comes in?” she asked.

“We’ll just hustle him off into another room for a while or close up his box. Speaking of which, shouldn’t we let him out for some air and let him stretch his legs? It can’t be too comfortable all crammed up in there.”

“I suppose not,” said Rose. “I imagine this is only a traveling case, to carry him from place to place. Surely, he cannot live in here.” She reached out a hand to the latch, then stopped. “You don’t think he … he jumps around like a frog, do you?”

“Whoo-ee,” whistled Howard. “Can you imagine? Bounding up to the roof and all over the place? But he really didn’t seem up to such shenanigans in the office. Go ahead and open it, so we can have a look. It appears to me he’s been pretty quiet. Maybe too quiet.”

“You don’t think he’s … dead already, do you?” I asked fearfully. That would be a poor end to our first assignment, I thought. Rose looked stricken at the thought.

“Just open the case,” Howard said testily.

Rose hesitated for a second, then quickly unclicked the latches and threw the lid open. There was a sudden, sickening burst of stench and we fell back in horror, clutching at our noses and crying in disgust and shock.

“Good lord.” Howard’s face was round-eyed with wonder. “That must be a whole tenth of his body mass!”

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a frog’s excrement before; perhaps you imagine it’s some kind of pixie pellet, like a rabbit’s dropping. It is not. It is surprisingly large, gross and slimy, and you cannot imagine it coming out of that little creature. Philo had somehow managed to kick off his pants to do his business, and lying there in the straw at his feet, like an elongated oily ostrich egg, was a proportionately large donation.

The three of us just stared at it, stunned, as Philo shuffled back away from it on his haunches and watched us with his wary, inhuman eyes. Finally, Howard reached out slowly, grabbed a rustling piece of newspaper from beside the fireplace, and started reaching cautiously inside the case.

Rose seemed almost frantic that he was actually going to touch it.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“I,” said Howard, fingers curling around the globule with a slight squelch, “Am going to weigh, dissect, and analyze this, then throw it out. I suggest that you, Miss Calhoun, go and find something for Philo to eat. He must surely be feeling depleted after a movement of this size.”

“Where am I supposed to find bugs at this time of year?” she asked angrily. “Even supposing I wanted to?” She looked distracted for a moment, thinking. “I suppose some fish might do,” she suggested. “I’ll run down to the market and see what I can find there. It wouldn’t do to arouse Mrs. Haley’s suspicions.”

“Pick up some clean straw on the way,” Howard commanded. He was looking abstractedly into his acquisition, as if it were a puzzling crystal ball. “Bob, why don’t you attend to our guest in the meanwhile?”

“Hmph.” Rose flounced away huffily at his tone, and he disappeared into our room, where he already had our dresser set up as a makeshift lab. I turned to Philo, whose only action so far had been to turn his head at every movement we made and puff out his throat now and then. I inched up close to him and slowly extended my hand.

He ducked away in alarm, his eyes nearly disappearing into his head.

“Now, now, little fellow, I’m not going to hurt you,” I said gently, almost in a whisper. “I want us to be friends.” I reached out my hand slowly, just like I had seen Wheeler do. “Shake, Philo? Do you want to shake?”

He stared at me for a moment, then gradually drew closer. At last, he cautiously took my hand and slowly we started to shake.

I reached out my other hand and he flinched. I paused, then carefully brought it down and cautiously, gradually, began to scratch his head.

He looked startled at that, but after a few seconds he leaned into the touch like a dog giving in to a good petting and made a shrill little trilling noise. And after that, we were friends.

I managed to get him out of the case and back into his pants; I thought I’d better get them on, for warmth. Our little room was fairly snug, but every now and then we experienced drafts from doors opening and closing in the building. He didn’t mind the pants; in fact, he seemed eager to get them back on, basically helping me dress him again. I wondered about that. Was it just a trained animal’s habit, or did he really want to cover up his nakedness? I couldn’t quite make up my mind.

By the time Rose and Howard returned to the sitting room from their various tasks (at almost the same time), Philo and I were sitting by the hearth as cozy as could be, I in a chair and Philo toasting on the bricks near the fire. He didn’t seem to mind the flames at all.

“Did you wash your hands?” was Rose’s first pointed question to Howard.

“With carbolic soap,” he assured her sarcastically.

“Fine,” she said. “How’s our assignment been doing?” she asked me.

“Good as gold,” I said. “What’d you get him to eat?”

“Catfish,” she said flatly. “It was the cheapest thing available. But they threw in a dozen crawfish.” She uncovered the basket she was carrying. “They look like bugs, don’t they? Maybe he’ll like them.”

It turned out he did like them, once we nipped off the claws, but he wouldn’t touch the fish until we had split it open and warmed it over the fire a bit. As it turned out over the days, he always preferred the cooked to the raw, except for the bits of cabbage and lettuce we scrounged up for him. In the dead of winter, though, those was pretty scarce.

We got him fed, changed his straw, and tucked him up into his case again before we descended to the dining room for our own supper. We informed Mrs. Haley we’d be on hand for lunch too for the rest of the work week; she seemed a little annoyed, but otherwise accepted it in stride. As I said, she was used to such irregularities from her Bureau boarders. Several of them gave us a knowing look; they seemed to recognize the signs of covert departmental business and weren’t saying a word. In fact, I had bumped into one of them in the hall once as he was carrying an unusually long bundle wrapped in brown paper. I asked him what it was, and he informed me in hushed tones that it was a barometer, possibly haunted, and to mention it to no-one. This same fellow was giving me a commiserating eye as he ate his chowder.

And so we settled into our schedule of watching Philo. We made a chart recording all our observations: what we fed him, his reactions, his moods, his sounds, his movements. We included our own ideas, conjectures, and even feelings that he evoked. By the third day we had fallen into enough of a routine of caring for him that our minds were starting to disengage from our day-to-day attentions and apply themselves to some theoretical speculations.

It started out mildly enough. We had finished giving Philo his supper, cleaned out his nest with new straw, and settled him in for the night. The frog-boy had nestled down immediately and soon was fast asleep, his sides slowly moving in and out like leathery bellows. I softly closed the lid and latched it, then went to sit with the others around the fire.

“Well, he seems to be settling down nicely,” I said. “Hardly a peep out of him all day.”

Rose looked up from her petit point.

“I’m not sure if that’s the best sign, Bob,” she observed. “I don’t know how it is with these frogs, or whatever they are, but when people show such a lack of energy or interest it means that they’re feeling low.”

“I don’t know that an analogy to human behavior is going to be much use in this case.” Rank started to pack a pipe. “Whatever it is, it is an amphibian. And amphibians go into a state of hibernation, or at least estivation, during the winter months.”

“Esti...?” I began.

“Estivation,” he said. He leaned over and lit a spill from the fireplace. “Think of it as a very long nap, with breaks to get a snack.”

Rose lowered her embroidery hoop.

“All I know,” she said, “Is that if I were taking care of a child and he started acting like Philo, I’d suspect something phthisical coming on.”

“But he’s not a human child,” Howard said testily, puffing on the pipe, trying to get it to draw.

“Heck, we don’t even know if he’s a child of any kind,” I put in. “Just because he’s called the Frog Boy, don’t make it so. He might have a lot of growing to do, or he might be old as a grampa now. How could we tell? Frogs look the same from when they’re teeny-tiny until they’re big enough to fry up like a chicken.”

Rose shuddered and screwed her face up.

“Thank you, Bob, for that lovely thought. Now I can’t stop thinking of Mrs. Haley serving up poor Philo for Sunday dinner.”

Howard barked a short, braying laugh. He sat back comfortably. The pipe was drawing well, now. He exhaled a long, thoughtful cloud of smoke.

“I suppose,” he said casually, “That we’ve all got our own ideas about this creature by this point.”

“My notebook is already more than half-full,” Rose said smugly, pulling another satisfied stitch tightly to its end.

I just nodded and said nothing. I didn’t want to admit that my report so far consisted of a couple of pages of random notes and an amateurish line drawing of Philo in pencil. I’ve always liked to sketch, but I’ve got no training. I’m certainly no Raphael, but I have been told that sometimes my drawing does rise to a kind of caricature that captures a ‘soul likeness’, if not complete accuracy. I thought my little doodle had achieved at least that dignity.

I was guiltily considering erasing it and writing over the space. I was fairly sure it wasn’t what Mr. Williams was expecting in our reports. But it filled a page. Perhaps I could add a few labels and arrows and so on and pass it off as a diagram. But my heart sank at Howard’s next words.

“Maybe,” he said slowly, “Maybe we should put our heads together and compare our notes.”

“Certainly not,” the girl snapped. “I’m not having you crib off my work, Mr. Rank.” Howard looked offended.

“This isn’t schoolwork,” he said. “This is – or should be – science. We should be more worried about finding out the truth than anything personal.”

“And do you think that always happens in your glorified scientific field?” Rose asked sarcastically.

Howard grinned.

“Can’t say as I do, men being human. Especially when there’s a reward at stake, like our little job at the Bureau. However, step by step, we do progress.”

“Why don’t we all just make a note in our journals,” I suggested hastily, to defuse the situation. They turned and stared at me as if the tallboy chest had decided to speak. I stumbled on.

“We can record who said what … and so on … in general terms … and then later if we develop, you know … a new insight … we can always point to who had the … er, the original inspiration in the first place.”

“I suppose,” Howard said slowly, “We might even get credit for working together.” He looked at Rose.

“I don’t mind,” she said, mouth drawn in a prim line. “As long as credit is given where credit is due.”

“And if it helps Philo,” I said brightly, “It will certainly be worth it.”

“You definitely seem very invested in the beast,” Howard said, sitting back indulgently. “Suppose you tell us what your thoughts are.”

I froze for a moment.  

“No, suppose you go first, Mr. Rank.” Rose put aside her embroidery and smiled, straightening her skirt. “Just to show your sincerity, as it were.”

He looked at her, eyes wide.

“You don’t trust me, Miss Calhoun?” He seemed to consider the thought for a moment, then apparently reached a conclusion. “Very well,” he accepted. “I’ll tell you what I think.”

He glanced over at the case.

“Philo is an amphibian of unusual size and of some intelligence and trainability, equivalent to, say, a show dog or an educated pig. He seems sociable, tractable, and peaceable, but there is no telling how much of that is natural or learned from training.” He threw up his hands. “If it weren’t for his occasional upright posture - and we can’t be sure if even that hasn’t been beaten into him – he’s just a big frog. I would love to open him up and see if he’s any different inside. If he wasn’t accustomed to clothing, I don’t think he would project the air of personality that he does.” He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know why we persist in dressing him.”

“Warmth,” Rose said promptly.

“He likes it,” I said.

“Of course, he likes warmth,” Howard said. “But even so …”

“He came in his clothes, and we’ll give him back in his clothes,” Rose said. “Just in the same condition we received him.”

He waved his hands dismissively.

“Fine, fine, Miss Calhoun. I’ve told you what I think. Now maybe you’ll share your insights with us?”

She drew her head back.

“I think it might surprise you to learn that my conclusions are trending to your own. Philo is neither a monster nor a freak; he is simply an animal unknown to us at present. I’ve noticed nothing … extranatural … about him.” She sniffed. “His smell is certainly very … earthly.”

Howard leaned back, narrowing his eyes in disapproval. His pipe had gone out.

“Well, that doesn’t add much to the conversation.” He tamped the bowl, then reached for another spill.

“But I do disagree with your approach.”

Howard paused.

“What do you mean?”

“Philo is a living creature,” Rose said. “You seem to think of his as if he were just a slab of meat, something to be taken apart and classified. An object to be studied. I think a more fruitful approach would be looking at him in his quiddity.”

“Quiddity?” I asked doubtfully. She looked at me.

“In his essence,” she explained condescendingly. “In what he is, as a whole, not broken down into bits on a chart.”

Rank squinted one eye at her.

“And just what does your study of his ‘essence’ tell you about him?” he asked ironically, applying the spill and puffing hard to get the flame going again.

“Not much, at the moment,” Rose admitted. But she was not giving up the fight. “If we had a month more to watch him …”

“Well, we don’t,” Rank said. “Dr. Browning will be back in a couple of days, and it’ll be out of our hands.”

“If he lasts that long.” Rose sighed and pushed back a lock of red hair. She reached for her sewing again.

“Very cheerful thinking, I must say,” Howard remarked sourly, then brightened up. “Even if Philo doesn’t make it, surely there will be a dissection. Perhaps the doctor will allow me to assist.”

Rose shuddered.

“I wouldn’t, even if they asked me to.”

“More points for me, then,” he said, chuckling. He looked at me. “How about you, Bob? What does your vast ‘field experience’ tell you about our Frog-Boy?”

I blushed. I had been dreading the conversation coming around to me.

“Well,” I began. “What I think about Philo can’t rightly be put into words, or at least I don’t have the right words yet. I guess you’d more rightly call it sort of a feeling or an intuition.”

“I see,” said Howard cryptically. I could tell he was dubious. “And how have you arrived at this insight?” I glanced around at them and lowered my eyes.

“Go on,” Rose prompted.

“I don’t want it to sound like I think your approach is wrong or anything,” I said apologetically. “Or that I think I’m particularly right. But … Howard, you’re looking at Philo like an experiment, and Rose, you treat him like a pet parrot that you’re taking care of. I’ve spent more time sitting with him, getting to know him as it were, even tried to play games with him. He’s getting pretty good at pat-a-cake.”

“Just more training,” Howard said dismissively.

“What do you think your time spent proves?” Rose asked curiously.

“I think … I get the impression … well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I think Philo’s got a mind. A real personality. Maybe … maybe even a soul of some kind.”

The sound both made together can best be described as “Pshaw!”

“Only mankind has a soul!” Rose scolded.

“And I don’t know if there’s even any scientific proof of that,” Howard said acidly. “To claim it for a beast …”

“I didn’t say it was a human soul!” I explained quickly. “Something like that though, analogous, not as developed, perhaps …”

“Tell us, what other useful conclusions have you deduced from sitting around playing pat-a-cake with a frog?”

“I can’t say it’s really anything factual,” I confessed. “But taking into account what Mr. Weller told us, and what I know about him personally, and so forth, I do have a theory, a sort of story. I know it’s just my mind telling it to me, and there’s not much evidence, but I just can’t help feeling it.”

Rose looked curious.

“What do you think, Mr. Bellamy?”

Howard yawned.

“Yes, Bob. It is getting late, and we could use a good bedtime story.”

I could feel my ears burning red.

“We know Philo’s from the wilds of South America. The place is huge; any number of odd things can be hiding there. I don’t think Philo is a freak of nature, he’s too social for that. He probably comes a whole race of Frog-People. So, he must have gotten separated from them somehow.”

“That makes sense,” Rose conceded. It sounded like she was throwing me a bone out of pity, trying to shield me from Howard’s obvious scorn.

“Anyways,” I went on. “I don’t imagine he simply got lost and then captured by traders. He must have been pretty far from his folks, or some of them might have got caught, too. I figure he must have left for a reason. I thought at first maybe he was exiled, but then I don’t see Philo as the rogue type, unless his travels have quietened him down some.”

“Flawless logic.” Howard chuckled around the stem of his pipe.

“Look, you asked me what I thought.”

“Oh, please, do go on.”

“So, I got to thinking that maybe he set off himself on an adventure. That makes sense to me. If he’s a young frog feller, he might have wanted to see what’s out there in the big wide world. I think he wandered too far and then got caught. I know that there’s no way to prove his age – no frog’s got gray hair – but he just feels young to me.”

“He doesn’t seem very spry to my thinking,” said Rose.

“But Mr. Weller said he had been,” I pointed out. “This torpor seems to have come on him progressively, but quicker than old age would have.”

“Your story indicates one thing, Bob.” Howard knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “It shows that you’re quite the fabulist.” He yawned. “If you don’t get a job in the Bureau, you can always write fantastic romances for the penny press.”

“You’d better come up with some better ideas, if you want to impress Mr. Williams,” Rose agreed. “Philo’s just an animal. To think of him going on an adventure on purpose is like supposing a baby bird jumps out of the nest because it wants to go to afternoon tea.” She set her sewing aside, stood up, and stretched. “You still have a couple of days to think about it. I, gentlemen, am retiring for the night. I’ll be up by eight o’clock to take my watch. Mr. Rank, no clandestine dissections please, and Bob, don’t fry him up. Let’s try to get him back alive, shall we?”

“No kissing him either, Miss Calhoun,” Howard grinned. “No matter what fairy tales you believe in, you’ll only get warts. And even if it did work, we must get Philo back ‘just in the same condition we received him in’, eh?”

“Hmpf,” Rose sniffed, and withdrew with a sweep of her skirts to her bedchamber.

“’Night, Bob,” Howard said amiably, and slouched yawning to our room.

I was left alone by the dying fire. I mechanically piled a new log on the flames, to keep the heat up during my night watch. I settled down in the big sitting chair, Philo’s case next to me, not too far and not too close to the heat. I opened one of Howard’s books that I had borrowed to occupy me through the night, but I couldn’t bring myself to concentrate on it just yet. Eventually I clapped it shut. I reached down and cautiously opened the case by my side.

Philo lay in the straw, asleep, his sides barely lifting with each slow breath. I reached down and gently stroked his head. It felt damp and sweltering to the touch.

“Probably it is all just a story,” I murmured. “But I can’t help but think there’s a spot of truth in it. Guess I’ll never know. Wish you could talk, Philo old boy.” I sighed. “Then you might tell us what’s wrong before …” I shut up, and opened the book again quickly, leaving the thought unspoken out of a sudden vague dread.