The Lady, or the Tiger?

Chapter 23: Riding the Tiger's Back

Much like William's tiger hand-shadow puppet, up on the ceiling of William Jr.'s bedroom, the Tiger peered down from atop of the tree undetected, studying, observing, assessing, the new human in its cage. Was this human prey or a new handler? Its scent is similar to that of the human-leader, maybe this one, also, is powerful. The Tiger did not move, did not give away its presence, as it watched, patient, inquisitive – learning.

The new human walked the periphery of the cage. Wise, it is wise… It settled, still and quiet, by the door. The Tiger, behind the curiosity's sight line now, it ventured so stalk, to slink. First, secure the paws, steady, slow, tighten the grip on the branch. Easy, the rise. Be smooth, subtle, for the turn…

Whoosh…!

The human spooked…

Found the Tiger!

The Tiger froze, and its eyes, its wild jungle eyes connected to hers. The intelligence there took her breath away with terror. Julia too, froze, faced with the presence of the Tiger in the cage. "In a cage. I'm locked in a cage…" the reminder of the unbelievable emerged like the world dimly appearing behind a lifting fog, "…in a cage with a Tiger." It tingled every hair on her body, the flash, the briefest flash, of the memory of performing the postmortem on the circus-tiger years ago, and her finding its stomach full of the woman who it had eaten.

Julia did not know how she knew, but she KNEW, not to turn away, not to turn her back to the Tiger, most definitely, NOT to RUN…

BUT, just the thought "to run," twitched her legs with innate desire, and then she noticed, how weak, how feeble, her legs were underneath her, and like a wave, the panic flooded in.

Her fairy-godmotherly voice spoke in her head, "Stay still! Stay still, and breathe, Julia." It was shallow, that first breath. "Now," the voice said, calmness possible, the inner-voice advised, "Think. Think." Another breath, and Julia told herself that still, still the Tiger had not moved since she had first spotted it. "That was good," her inner-self whispered. Their eyes were still locked, and she worried to look away. It took effort, coaching. "You need to find a way to survive this, at least until William, until help, can get here. Can you get out?" the question sounded so obvious. Behind her, she knew for certain, the door was locked. She had already checked. "Perhaps over the sides of the cage…?" She would need to look up. She would need to move her eyes away from the Tiger's.

So quick, the glance up – seeing, the light through the glass ceiling so high above the bars on the top of the cage – they were inside a large, barred box, the bars of the walls cemented into the cement floor. Julia re-fixed her eyes back into those of the Tiger, up above her in the tree. "There was not a way out" – she rushed to the next thought to stave off impending helplessness, "So survive and stay inside, then. Think. Think."

)

Two people mounted upon a one-humped dromedary camel, the back rider, Malcolm Lamb, bouncing and bobbling about as much as their two bags flopping at the camel's sides, made their escape down a steep snowy hill in the middle of a field. Woods promised safety in the distance. He had told her about his gift, he had confessed to the murder to Detective Murdoch, the murder that she had committed. It did not seem important now, since they had both escaped, but still, he saw it as gallant.

Elizabeth thanked him, and then apologized again for dumping the body at Detective Murdoch's Body Farm. She had had her reasons, mostly a sort of revenge for what her husband had done to Adam – dumping the body of the man she loved in that horrid place, but she realized now that it was a mistake – a big one.

Malcolm held onto Elizabeth's waist for dear life. It had all happened so fast, and staying mounted on the top of this CAMEL, "I can't believe we're on a CAMEL!" seemed insanely precarious.

"Why not the two horses like we had planned?" he asked from behind her, his voice labored and winded and jostled.

Elizabeth frowned, unseen. "Just hold on," she instructed, fighting to keep her patience. "Camels are better in the snow anyway Malcolm – feet made for sand," she heard herself sound calmer, more in control.

"Sorry," Malcolm offered, of course, Elizabeth was the expert when it came to animals. "And besides, she'd coped incredibly well with the surprise warrant and everything…"

Elizabeth sighed. "She… the camel, she was closer than the horses," she explained. Then she added, "She was in the camel's cage, um… when I found her." Elizabeth was referring to Murdoch's wife, the pathologist. Elizabeth tightened her jaw, resisting the guilt.

"Stick as much as possible to the original plan," Elizabeth advised herself. "She can get us to the boundary of the zoo that's undercover of the woods, near the river. Then we can let her go. She'll go back to the zoo on her own… or they'll find her," she said of the camel, explaining, reassuring herself as much as anything else. Caring for animals had always been her passion, and Elizabeth needed to feel that this one, that this animal beneath them who was saving them right now, she needed to feel that it would be alright – "Do no harm," Elizabeth reminded herself of the physician's oath, finding her life-path had led her to be a physician of God's creatures, rather than one of man.

"What did you do with Murdoch's wife?" Malcolm asked her.

"Locked her in a cage in the winter-house," Elizabeth's answer was simple.

"Locked?!" Malcolm screeched, his voice filled with horror and dread, for Malcolm knew that only the BIG CATS had cages with locks!

)

Frantic, Julia's screams were outright frantic, William heard them as the big front doors of the winter-house cracked open. She was in there – she was alive, but her voice sounded exhausted, her terrified cries for help were dry and muffled and oddly tinny, somehow.

"Off to the left side, far down the aisle," he listened for the source of Julia's screams, already in motion down the long central corridor. Located, he ran full out.

Closer, he called out, "Julia!" as loudly as he could, but the panicked rhythm of her screams did not change.

And the desperation in those screams threatened to seize his heart…

"Help! Help! Help me!... Hheeeeellpp! Help!"

He flew around the last corner at the very end of the enclosure, her cries on the left from there, the backside wall of the winter-house on his right. A strange repetitive metallic scratching sound grated into his ears, shrill, reminding of fingernails scraping on a chalkboard, and it sent a repulsive shiver down his spine. Somewhere in his head he wondered after what it was?

Arriving, hugely winded, he saw it, so intimidatingly gigantic – the Tiger.

No denying it, IT WAS A TIGER!

All around the Tiger on the cement floor, his brain screamed it to himself – "NOT blood, not Julia's blood, it's water, just water," a sheet of puddled covered the whole cement floor of the cage, a great deal of water had been spilled and then flooded everywhere.

"Julia!" he screamed out her name again.

He couldn't see her in there, not anywhere.

She answered him! Not just the same frantic call for help, but his name…

"William!" she screamed.

Thank God, she heard him!

"Julia!" he screamed it out again, and his brain offered up the unfeasible, "The Tiger ate her. She's inside his stomach." And William nearly fell to the ground with the devastation of the thought, before the more rational complaint followed, assuring him, "No. No. That's impossible!"

He looked up in the tree. Empty.

But then he remembered, he had noticed IT before, IT was what was making that creepy skin-crawling scratching sound – the Tiger was intensely busy, trying, scratching ceaselessly at something, working at something

It was the metal water tub…

The Tiger was trying to flip it back over.

"Oh my God! Julia's under there!" the grasping screamed terrified fire inside his chest.

)

"Elizabeth! I insist! Stop!" Malcolm was furious by now. "I swear to God, I'll jump off this camel!" he warned.

With a huff, Elizabeth pulled the reins, the camel's weight shifting drastically backward as its head was flung up into the air, and its legs, solid and stiff, pressed forward in front of its motion, finding only sliding in the snow, slips, and trips, and jerks, before all motion, gratefully, ceased.

Malcolm remained seated and considered how far back it was to get to the zoo. He needed the camel.

"How could you do that?!" he hollered, a part of him absolutely dismayed that Elizabeth would even think of doing such a thing, "In the Tiger cage! You locked her in the Tiger cage!?"

She refused to say it, but Elizabeth was regretting it. But now there was only one thing to do – keep going!

"Malcolm, what's done is done!" she yelled back, "I'm sorry, but it's too late. She's probably already dead."

"I can't do that to Murdoch – Julia Ogden is the woman he loves more than anything in world – she's the mother of his child, for Christ's sake! She's pregnant!" he shook his head, it was truly unthinkable.

He leaned forward into Elizabeth's body and swung his leg behind himself, jumping down – incredibly far down – to the ground. "I'm going back," he said, his teeth gritted tight. He tugged at the ropes holding the bags. "I want the camel. You said you wanted her to go back to the zoo anyway," he tried to sound rational.

"I think you're being idiotic," she said. But… she dismounted.

She gave Malcolm a leg-up onto the camel. "There's nothing you can do anyway," she argued.

"I'll get the Tranq!" he yelled, his legs flailing and kicking at the camel's sides, the little stick flapping wildly about against its shoulder, the net result of all his crazed efforts to urge the camel to hurry yielding a mere departure speed of about four miles per hour.

)

Terror zapping William's heart with a strange electrical buzzing, panting and puffing, trying to simultaneously think faster and to slow himself down, he stood on the other side of the locked Tiger-cage door. Julia had stopped her screaming, the only sound cramming into his ears now was the teeth-shearing scraping of the Tiger's claws along the metal of the upside-down water tub. The Tiger seemed unable to flip the tub over. There were stripes of rub marks all over the cement floor, carved into the shiny, streaked pool of water dumped on the ground. He did not have time to marvel at how brilliant Julia had been to think of such a thing, dumping out the water and using the tub to hide under. It reminded of a turtle's shell…

"Locked, the cage is locked," William plainly stated the problem to himself. "Elizabeth would make sure they kept the key close for emergencies," William's brain told him.

He searched along all the edges of the cage door. "Hurry, William!" his inner-that voice coached.

No key to be found right by the cage door, he remembered the east-facing wall of the entire winter-house building made the other side of the corridor he was standing in, and William turned around to search the ledge – there was a wooden ledge, (running horizontally all along the wall, at the boundary between the wooden part of the wall from the floor up to about five-feet, up to the ledge, and above the ledge there were the glass walls, secured every two-feet in concrete casings, the glass protected by cage-like iron bars).

There were things on that ledge.

"The key!" hanging from a hook.

He had the key!

"Julia!" he yelled the good news loudly, "I have the key!"

"William!" he heard her reply from under the water tub.

For a moment he looked down into his hands, one clutched the key, the other the Tranq. gun.

"Julia," he called out, "I also have the tranquilizer gun. I can shoot him…"

And William's exacting brain raced forward comparing two scenarios – inside the cage to shoot the Tiger with the gun, or outside of the cage to shoot the gun…

Then Julia's voice pulled at him. She sounded so calm, so smart…

"Think like a horse's hock, William…" Julia remembered his time as a ranch-hand – William knew horses well. "Aim above the hock, towards the back section, high enough to land the dart where muscle begins to turn into tendon," she instructed, thinking that point on the Tiger's body was his best shot at hitting a vein.

He had decided it was better NOT to be in the cage, where the Tiger could turn on him, having had envisioned that, if it did, then he would not be able to shoot the dart into the Tiger's back leg, like Julia had just advised. He would stay outside for now. Shoot from out here.

William shoved the key in the lock and turned it, opening the lock. He would ONLY need to open the latch now, to get in.

He stayed outside of the cage. Moved over, stealthy, to line himself up with the backend of the Tiger as it scratched and clawed at the upside-down water tub, William noticing in his brain's background, that the Tiger was doing so with a bit less vim and vigor. "It was becoming bored with the game," he felt a small sense of reassurance.

William's arms between two separate bars, both hands on the gun reaching into the cage, he readied to shoot. "Aim, settle, feel the ground under your feet," he coached himself, "between the heartbeats…"

Thwapp! The dart landed on target, stuck in, the feathery-ends vibrating with the absorbed inertia of the sudden halt, the dart stuck and held into the Tiger's flesh!

"Got it!" William announced.

And time seemed to stand still as what was expected and what actually occurring engaged in battle.

"The Tiger should have fallen down! It should have fallen down!" William's confused and angry brain screamed inside his head, trying to make reality twist to his will.

But instead, the wild beast roared! And it leaped! And it spun!

If anything, it was MORE crazed now!

The Tiger turned back to the upside-down water tub with a renewed vengeance, panicked with rage, it ripped at the metal shield blocking it from its prey. Underneath it, Julia held on to the edges with all her might, but the Tiger furiously dug at it and pushed it, hard, pounding its full weight at the tub, with Julia scrambling underneath it as the tub was shoved into motion, scraping and sliding, fast, amazingly fast, all around the cage…

The sound of the sudden impact rang, metal-into-metal clash, as the tub crashed into the bars of the farthest wall of the cage, and an edge tilted, lifted off of the floor, with the momentum.

William saw her, under there! Saw her blue skirt! Like the soft underbelly, so vulnerable, so close to those sharp, long, deadly claws, for just that tiny second, before the tub re-centered and landed with its whole circumference flat once again down onto the ground.

The Tiger was smart, cunning…

The Tiger had seen the opportunity too! William was certain of it!

And he was already inside the cage.

He threw the empty Tranq. gun at the Tiger's head, aiming for its eye.

Whack! It hit just right, the sound trumpeting the successful contact with the bone above the eye-socket.

"Julia," he heard his own breathless voice, "It's not going down!" he yelled.

Such conflict in every cell of his body as the Tiger turned to face him. "Yes!" it had stopped trying to get Julia! And too, that strange, graying-edged dizziness, as William's eyes looked into the eyes of the Tiger.

He needed to distract it until the drug got into its bloodstream! The plan arrived in his head a split second after he had already done it.

William kept his eyes on that Tiger, and he began to back up. "It's taking too long," he wasn't sure he had said it loud enough for Julia to hear him.

"Maybe it was dosed for a smaller animal?" she yelled out from still under the tub.

The Tiger matched William's speed exactly, the fiercely harrowing beast slinking forward as William backed up, so that the focus, the distance between their eyes, never changed. William swore, even their breaths occurred in synchrony.

He remembered that the tree was behind him. Close now…

Lumberjack instincts and skills, and he was already at the top of the tree, and he knew he had turned his back on the Tiger, and so it had chased him, and it was even closer to him now than it had been before, and he had reached the end of the tree, and there was nowhere else to go...

He could jump down, the suggestion sounded too late, for he had already made a better choice.

From the very top of the tree, William jumped with all his might – Up! Up and out! One of the bars up on the ceiling, the target he reached for… "Got it!" there was a glory in the feeling of his fingers closing tight and secure around the solid, hard, cold iron of the bar. The rest of his body soared forward with the original trajectory before being veered by his having had grabbed hold of the bar, and as William hit the edge of his swing, and he held with everything he had to withstand the jarring, his body began to swing back, and he imagined the Tiger waiting there in the tree behind him, and for the first time, in a long, long time, he prayed to God, he prayed that his foot, or that his leg, would be out of the reach of the Tiger.

His body swung forward once more, this oscillation with less speed, it would be a smaller swing, and he felt a flood of ecstasy, for he had made it. He was safe. And as fast as he could, William swung his hand forward to grab another ceiling bar, and then another, walking them like monkey-bars further and further from the jumping point.

Safe now, definitely safe, his body still dangling, swaying, slower and slower, William glanced back behind him to see the Tiger at the end of the tree. He blew the pressure out through his pursed lips, and he remembered Julia was down there.

"Julia!" he alerted. "Do you think you can make it to the door?" he asked.

She had not dared to lift the bottom of the tub, but now she did. My God! The sight! William hanging from the ceiling, a man-eating Tiger readying to leap for him from the very, very edge of the branch at the top of the tree… She needed to warn him!

"William!" the emotion in her scream sent a jolt of terror through him, "He's going to pounce!"

She saw William look back...

At first, it made no sense, no sense at all, for he swung backwards, CLOSER to the Tiger…

But that backwards swing was William setting up to leap again, targeting a ceiling bar even further from the tree.

"Tink," the tiny sound of William's wedding-ring clinking into the metal of the bar – He had made it!

And, My God, was that Tiger frustrated now!

It was amazing how fast the Tiger climbed down from the tree and centered below William's dangling body.

Julia watched as…

And William looked down, and watched as…

The Tiger's eyes, his whole humungous head, swayed back-and-forth, following William's subtle rocking motion up above him…

All three of them were calculating – Could he leap that high?

The crouch, the tail, quick, rapid flicks, the ears plastered back, sleekly-flat, to the Tiger's head…

Impending, William rocked his body back, bent in half, trapeze-artist in the sky, and then swung his legs forward full force to try to catch his toes on a ceiling bar…

The Tiger's leap came…

William pulled himself as tight to the ceiling as he could…

Amazing the silence…

The Tiger's feet were back down on the ground.

"He missed!" William's brain celebrated, "I'm high enough." But William didn't see, the next crouch happened so quickly.

The Tiger had learned, his next leap would be higher.

"William!" Julia's startling cry tensed all his muscles.

Her panic hitting his ears at the same time as…

The slashing, slicing, splitting, cutting sting through the flesh of his backside, announced with William's lacerating scream, followed by the tearing "RIP" of his winter coat from around his shoulders, as the weight of the Tiger pulled his toes off of the bar, and the bottom half of his coat ripped, shredding into long strips, as the Tiger's claws snagged into the fabric, having hung its full weight, for just that miniscule tick of a second, before the seams of the coat's stitches gave way, and the massive Tiger dropped back down to the floor, its landing, noiseless, with the Tiger's feline agility.

He had gotten a piece of the prey now. The Tiger smelled blood.

Julia, out from under the water tub, tranquilizer gun picked up from the floor and in her hand, only a weapon to throw now – barely a butter-knife for a gunfight – much like her scissors against Jack-the-Ripper-Scanlon, she threw it as hard as she could at the Tiger, the Tiger that was circling, lower and lower, below William, so cunning – it would use centripetal force to increase its reach for this next pounce. And, in the center of that circle, she saw William's hat – his homburg, she loved that hat so much, she loved him so much, and, so slowly, as if they were a strange trail of red-dropped snowflakes – his blood, a little drop, then another, then another, of William's blood, dripped down from above, and landed with an inaudible 'plop,' 'plop,' 'plop,' "blood-spatter" on the floor.

And all of the air in the world sucked away…

The thump of the Tiger's ribs taking the hit of the tiny Tranq. gun.

And the Tiger's head turning in the direction of the nuisance.

Julia's motion, frozen in place, her dangling, rebellious curls still swinging forward softly around her face.

"Julia RUN!" William's voice, begging, pleading, screaming, shattered the spell.

Lightning bolt speed, never in her life so fast, the metal scraping of the water tub against the cement of the floor, she dove, dove under that tortoise shell, dove frantically for cover.

Her blue skirts did not make it under.

So quickly, the Tiger's claws ripped and pulled at her skirt, the force of the pull slamming her body into the wall of the tub, slamming the tub into the Tiger.

Rocket-speed, William monkey-barred across the ceiling…

Over the Tiger.

He didn't think, didn't decide.

"Julia! Go for the door – NOW!" his orders, so stark, so compulsory that she didn't think twice.

The tub, up and over with a metallic 'clang.'

Bolting. Bolting for the door, out of the corner of her eye, the sight so unfathomable, William falling from the sky, so fast, he dropped. He was falling ONTO the Tiger. William was attacking the Tiger! William – just a man! Halfway to the door, she heard the sound behind her, of William landing and the air blasting out of the Tiger's lungs, a growly groan with the surprise, with the shear physical compression in its lungs, as the Tiger collapsed under the gravity of the force of William's weight pounding down onto its back.

A grunt…

William's the Tiger's…?

And then, so odd, Malcolm Lamb at the cage door, opening it for her. And then, she heard the whirlwind swirling – she did! She did! The wind of it, she heard the wild spinning behind her as it began.

She was out, the slam of the metal behind her as Lamb closed the cage door, and she turned to see.

To see the man she loved, more than life itself, locked in a spiraling battle with a man-eating Tiger, William mounted up on its back, hugging tight, his arms around its neck, his legs around its abdomen, and the Tiger spun – crazed and insane and furious, so fast, so fast they were a blur, William a black stripe above the Tiger's more orangy one.

Malcolm Lamb said to her, "The tranq-dart is in?"

"Yes!" she fought the tears, the horror, the collapse.

"He needs more time," Lamb seemed so rational.

They watched, helpless, through the bars of the cage, the Tiger as much yowling as growling, spinning, turning, swiping, trying desperately to get either its mouth or its claws into William, William strategically implanted in the tiny, tiny safe-spot up on the Tiger's back, a whirling tornado of stripes of jungle-Tiger and man.

Lamb knew the zoo had one in here, a lion-tamer's pole. He looked to the ledge behind them. It was there!

Exactly where it should be, the long wooden lion-tamer's-pole with a neck-collar snagging rope at one end, tucked into its storage hooks under the ledge.

"Hurry! Over here!" Lamb yelled.

Long pole in hand, they both looked back into the cage. The spinning tirade was slowing.

"We'll have to get it around the Tiger's neck, HOPE it doesn't catch on Murdoch!" Lamb offered the plan, named the challenge, for William's arms were squeezed tight around the Tiger's neck, and William had planted his face down into the fur.

"It seemed possible," Julia's brain thought, trying to picture it working in her mind, the rope sliding over the Tiger's head and then around its furry, thick neck, then pulling to a skin-tight closing of the snag-rope so that William was not trapped inside the loop. "It seemed possible."

Lamb stepped back against the winter-building wall behind him, brought the rope-end of the long pole high up in the air, then fit it in between two of the cage bars and then lowered the rope-end back down onto the cement floor inside the cage. He stepped forward, bringing the pole deeper into the cage, and then he put one arm through one space in the bars and the other through a different space so that he could grasp and steer the pole accurately inside the cage. With enough space for Julia to fit between his chest and the bars, Lamb instructed, "Step in front of me," and Julia put each of her arms through the bars to take hold of the pole behind Lamb's grasp, and then she planted her body as close to the cage bars as she could.

Unfortunately, the pole's reach across the cage towards the striped Tiger-William twister looked barely long enough to make it. But, when the rope-end of the pole was lifted up off of the floor changing the pole's angle, making straight, parallel to the floor…?

"You control the height," Lamb said, his hands further down the pole than Julia's, "Let me steer it. I control how deep into the cage." His final instruction, he added the obvious, "And when it catches it's going to jerk hard, so hold on for dear life!"

The concentration switched, one-hundred percent into the whirlwind, into the cage.

Like trying to hook a Great-White-Shark on a rampage, they fished for the catch of their lives, the long, long pole, Malcolm Lamb working to sync the swinging loop of the rope out there with the rhythm of the spin…

up, up, Up, UPOUT!

Out and catch!

SLAM!

With unbearable torqueing force, the pole instantly was yanked out of their hands.

"Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat…" the end of the pole they had been holding walloped across the bars of the cage… Suddenly catching between two of the bars after a corner – the end of the pole stuck in the gap tight.

The immediate, abrupt STOP flinging the Tiger and William into a fishtailing, high-flying tumble. William lighter, higher, was thrown further, for the Tiger's neck was limited to the length of the pole in how far it could go, the pole held solidly in the bars of the cage wall, stopping the Tiger's head in place. Then, slowly, the Tiger's head, his whole body, slipped down to the floor, laying the Tiger flat out.

For a second, the thought flashed, "It broke its neck – the Tiger's dead!" before Julia's focus found William.

William was moving! Up on his hands and knees…!

William tried to stand, SO INCREDIBLY DIZZY.

With his first attempt, William wobbled so violently that he flung himself another five feet sideways before he fell, landing with a thud – down again. He had no idea where he was, where the Tiger was. His brain said a word… he tried to stand again. "The Door?" the word, William fell – down again.

"William!" Julia's voice, "Over here!" she had the cage door opened.

He tried to stand, to go again. She oriented him, her voice the rope he clung to, he moved towards her.

The Tiger stirred, at first unnoticed.

Pure luck, the Tiger moved away from the corner of the cage that held the pole in place, and the sound of the far-end of the pole dragging over the cement, alerted…!

The Tiger was free!

"William!" Julia screamed again.

But the Tiger too, was incredibly dizzy. And the Tiger, too, tilted to the side when it tried to stand, wobbling with a heavy thud back down to the ground.

An odd, moving-floor-in-a-funhouse-like race ensued – William shooting for the door, albeit along a teetering, serpentining, up again-down again trajectory, and behind him, the Tiger taking up tottering chase, following close on William's tail, in its own staggering, drunken, zig-zaggy, butterfly-like path.

Julia jerked free of Malcolm's arms holding her back, running into the Tiger's cage.

"William!" she caught his latest stagger, caught him in her arms.

And he was in her grasp. He never felt safer in his life.

"Julia," he said, woozy.

"I've got you!" she hollered, her husband heavy, she pulled, guided, struggling for the door.

A wobble, they remained on their feet, the Tiger had just missed, dropped sideways, falling again, off in their periphery. They would make it!

Lamb grabbed the detective the last three feet from out.

They were out!

They were out!

Lamb slammed the door closed, the sound of slamming metal like the crash of cymbals at the end of the symphony.

They were out! They were out!

He was alive! She was alive! They would be alright! Euphoria flared.

Tears filled Julia's eyes as she looked into William's face, the miracle of his survival, his stunning bravery, entirely overwhelming, the tidal wave of love hitting her. "William," she squeaked, and embraced him so intensely that air gushed out of his chest.

"William Murdoch, you are unbelievable!" she declared, her sniffles with the words in his ear. "You tackled a Tiger, William! A TIGER! To save me…"

Lamb added, "Never in all my days!" shaking his head with astonishment.

"But, you're injured, William," Julia's voice, he noticed now, reduced to a hoarse whisper, for her vocal cords had been strained with all her screaming for help.

Not caught-up yet, dazed, so out-of-breath, William half-wondered, "Julia, you're alright?! And Mary… the baby, is the baby…?"

"Yes, William yes. The baby, me – we're both alright. You saved us William!" she declared it again, "You saved us."

The major terror confronting him alleviated, he felt a bit better. And then the scorching sting screamed in agony in his backside, with reality coming into focus, somehow, with Julia's reminder, and he remembered, he had been hurt – the Tiger, the Tiger had scratched him. Incongruous, William reached back remembering hearing, feeling, his coat ripping away, and he grabbed the shredded ends and stared at them, puzzled.

Wham…! William was instantly overtaken with nausea, gurgling upward so quickly that he panicked, the disgusting retch of it hurling his body forward, William heaving Julia aside to fly out of her arms and bend in half and vomit, hugely vomit, before he had the slightest inkling of what was happening.

Malcolm Lamb said, "All that spinning made him sick – dizzy…"

"Yes," William heard Julia reply, as he stayed low, keeping his face closer to floor, and the putrid sight of his own vomit lay there before him, and he tried to catch his breath, panting and sweating, and her voice, Julia's voice, her presence, back there walloped him as he thought, "Julia's alright! Not killed by the Tiger…" And then another wave of puking erupted and the liquidy stench spewed all over the floor once more.

From somewhere else the question came, William's vomiting at a pause, and he waited for the next wave to come, "Malcolm Lamb's here? Didn't he escape?"

Back behind him, Julia held a hand to his shoulder. As she glanced back, she saw his wounds, through the rips in his clothing, the Tiger scratch was deep into William's flesh. There were at least three, long, sliced, parallel gashes starting at his lumbar region, and running down into his gluteus. "He'll need stitches," she told herself, "lots of stitches." And she wondered after her medical bag.

She turned to Malcolm Lamb. "We need to get him to Dr. Mole's surgery," she said.

William stood upright and took a deep breath, all eyes turning to see if he was alright, "Where's my hat?" he asked, still wobbly on his legs and disoriented. Gratefully, the vomiting seemed to have run its course.

"Your precious hat's in the cage, William," Julia answered him, finding pure joy in the sensation of feeling herself giggling.

Suddenly, they all remembered the Tiger, the three of them rushing to turn to see.

The collar of the tamer's pole was still snug around the Tiger's neck, the winded beast standing and staring, glassy-eyed and dazed, out in their general direction. The Tiger took a step, dragging the pole with him. He seemed to be surprised by the pole's presence, taking another jerky sideways step trying to get away from it.

It was thoroughly unexpected, William making a joke.

William's chuckle made the other two look…

And then William glanced at her, one of those lovely sideways glances he gave her sometimes, and the sides of his mouth pinched tight just a bit as he tried not to smile. "I must say" he started, and he adored the feeling of Julia's eyes on him, "that really changes my opinion of that vaudeville joke… the one about why you would need an 11-foot pole…"

And he turned to look at her, and William's face lit-up as he watched her giant smile growing.

"I remember it," Julia said, nodding, and she rushed for the punchline, getting it out between her bubbles of laughter, "For the things you can't reach, William… with your 10-foot pole?"

And the two of them shared that moment.

With Malcolm Lamb looking-on, not quite getting why it was so funny, and he felt a strange yearning, and he remembered Elizabeth with a jolt. And right then, as the laughter dwindled, Malcolm decided that he had to get away – that he had to try to catch up to her – that he loved her – that it had not been a mistake to choose her.

The Murdoch's, arm-in-arm, turned back to consider the Tiger in the cage.

"I think the tranquilizer is taking effect," Julia said.

"Mm," Malcolm quickly agreed.

The Tiger swayed, and then he slowly laid down on the floor. He held his head up and panted, and his head seemed so very heavy, and slowly, slowly, he dropped his chin down towards the floor. And suddenly he jerked it back up, but almost immediately it began to sink slowly down again, until it touched to the cement floor, and then the Tiger rolled to his side and laid flat out, his sides slowly moving up and down with his shallow breaths.

And William realized Lamb had stepped away.

And he remembered he needed to arrest him for the murder of Nicholas Mole!

And he turned around to see if Lamb was behind them, and the twisting of his lower body screamed the unbearable pain from the Tiger scratches into the forefront again, and he howled-out with the agony…

"William!" Julia reached to support him, guilt for forgetting how badly hurt he was slamming into her chest, "I'm so sorry," she exclaimed. Her doctor brain engaged, and she began to come up with a plan.

Expecting Lamb to be there, Julia instructed, "We need to get him to Dr. Mole's surgery!" And then she darted her eyes all around, surprised that Lamb wasn't there.

William explained, "He confessed to murdering Elizabeth's husband. He escaped with her. I need to arrest him," and William, for the briefest second, started to run after him. But, it only took one step for him to stop.

Julia's heart broke with the look he gave her.

"You can't, William," she answered, telling him what he already knew.

"Do you think you can make it all the way to the surgery?" she asked him, bringing his arm up over her shoulders for him. Julia reminded herself to keep her own arm high on his back, above the wounds, as she wrapped an arm around him and they began to walk.

Julia helped William down the long aisleway of the winter-house. Once they got to the big front doors of the building, William remembered Brian's wheelbarrow, that he had used for feeding the animals.

"It could work as a makeshift gurney," Julia figured. Perfect, the wheelbarrow was filled with hay, and William could lay himself across it on his stomach, thus keeping the Tiger-claw scratches from coming into contact with anything.

The moment they stepped out of the winter-house, Julia felt the blast of cold waft up her leg. It was not only William who had had the Tiger gash and rip his clothing, she had too, when the Tiger had caught her skirts, left sticking out on the ground outside of the water tub. The memory flashed, horrifying, being slammed into the tub wall with the force of the Tiger's pull. She pushed the invasive memory away, she had to help William now.

Julia would never admit it, but, through the snow, she was finding it very difficult to push the loaded wheelbarrow. Her arms were killing her. And, one by one, she was becoming more and more conscious of her own injuries. She had scraped her knees to hamburger, she could tell by the wind-sucking sting each time she bent her knees, and each time the fabric of her skirt whooshed across them. The memory of the ordeal flashed again, her under the tub, "funny how there was that musty, disgusting, scent this time," as she remembered being slid and shoved all over the cage under the water tub, and the awful shrill, screeching sound surrounding all sides from the metallic bottom edges scraping on the cement, and the Tiger's skin-curdling claws scratching above her, every molecule of her effort to stay under that tub as it flew around the cage, her knees, her elbows… she remembered the stinging pain in her elbows now, too… She shoved the thoughts away again. "Minor, compared to William's wounds," she berated herself into pushing on, finding the urgency she needed to keep going.

William talked to her as they went, no surprise, he wanted to talk about the case. Julia encouraged him, thinking it would help him better tolerate the pain. Besides, she was greatly intrigued anyway.

He filled her in on what he had learned since he left her in the winter-house collecting maggot and blood samples, "The first Body-Dumper victim was Dr. Adam Restell…"

"The escaped abortion doctor?!" Julia exclaimed.

"His escape from the Don Jail was a ruse. He was killed that night," William explained, going on, "Restell and Elizabeth had been having an affair and Elizabeth's husband killed Restell when he caught them together that night. It was Nicholas Mole who dumped Adam Restell's body at our Farm…"

Julia wanted to swipe the hair out of her face, but could not while keeping going, feeling winded, she tried to mask her strain, "And my University class found it the next day?"

"Yes," William went on, "Are you alright, Julia?" he asked, having detected her distress.

"Yes, William," she decided to admit, "It's just a bit more difficult than I thought. How did Malcolm Lamb know Elizabeth Mole's husband had killed Dr. Restell?" she wisely distracted her husband back to the case.

William reached up and rubbed at his brow, fighting with his manly urges to switch their roles, realizing it was futile at this point. He took a deep breath, blew out some of the pressure, and focused on the story of the case, "Well, then Nicholas Mole taunted… terrorized his wife, after that…" At that point in the telling, William added, "Julia, Nicholas Mole was one of those despicable brutes that beats their wives…"

"I see," Julia replied, trying so very hard to be strong. William had gone on telling, but her heart had felt a pang, the WAY William had said it touching her, like playing just the right note in a song, it affected her on a deeper, unconscious level, knowing him, knowing William FELT empathy, somehow, with what Elizabeth Mole had gone through at the hands of her abusive husband. Her psychiatry mind wanted to pursue it further, but in the midst of everything, the thoughts faded away.

Her balance bobbled!

She corrected, "tripped on the torn skirt," the explanation came, the tearing sound behind them, oddly, in both space and time, of a section of her skirt ripping away, the extra-cold air on her skin warning that all the way up to her buttocks, now, was revealed for all to see.

Her husband had gone on, his voice below her, off to the side of the wheelbarrow, "And that's exactly what happened the night Lamb killed Nicholas Mole…"

Julia reiterated in her mind, catching the main points, "Lamb killed Mole…" adding in details, "…Nicholas Mole the second victim – chopped up… shot in the back of the knee with the dart…"

"That night, Lamb told Elizabeth that he was in love with her, and she told him that her husband was watching her, and they had to be careful, that her husband had killed Restell, and Nicholas Mole overheard Elizabeth telling Lamb that," William said, "and so Nicholas Mole tried to kill them both, and Lamb stopped him by shooting him with the tranquilizer gun. Lamb said it was self-defense, and I suppose it could be argued that it was. According to Lamb, all that Elizabeth did was help him to get rid of the body. But, it bothers me Julia…"

"Uh-huh," she managed to grunt out, but she could tell her voice gave her away, and so she just put the handles of the wheelbarrow down. "Just for a second," she said. She rubbed at her fingers. She had so quickly developed bubbly thick blisters, a few of which hurt quite badly because they had already popped…

"It's too hard, Julia," William worried, finding a grip on the edge of the wheelbarrow and pushing himself up. He grimaced bearing the pain of moving. It was truly excruciating. Mission accomplished, however, he stood up. "We're almost there," he reassured. He put an arm over her shoulder and they began forward again.

William stepped on another piece of her shredded skirt. Again, there was the sound of fabric tearing away. "Sorry," he said.

Julia thought to herself with a roll of her eyes, "Quite burlesque, now husband, she's quite burlesque, your wife…" Her more inquisitive mind intruded…

"William," Julia suddenly wondered, "Didn't you say Lamb escaped with Elizabeth Mole! So, he came back then!?"

"To save us… you, I think…" William answered, "Elizabeth must've told him what she had don…"

It was at that moment that the Inspector appeared on the path.

"Murdoch! Bloody Hell! What happened?!" he declared. The man's coat was in tatters – he was leaning heavily on his wife. She was a mess too…! the Inspector's observations raced faster than his words could express, "Where's the woman's skirt!?"

Murdoch turned to show him the scratches, bloody and long and deep, ripped and sliced into his flesh.

And just that second it hit Julia, again. William had tackled a man-eating Tiger to save her! And her eyes filled with tears and she choked up so that, even in her hoarse whispers, she couldn't speak…

The Inspector took Murdoch's other arm. "Well…?" he pushed for an answer as the trio moved forward on the snowy path.

William tried to answer, "I… uh, well, it's a long…"

"William jumped down from the ceiling of the cage to tackle a Tiger to save me, Inspector," she summed it up, she thought.

"A WHAT?!" the Inspector yelled.

And William said, nonchalantly, "It seems Elizabeth Mole locked our coroner, my wife…" but his nonchalance disappeared as he felt a surge of anger rising inside of him, "in a cage with a Tiger, sir. With a huge TIGER! And, if Elizabeth Mole had NOT escaped, with Lamb… again…" his teeth gritted tight, and he warned himself to calm down, and then he sighed. He wanted to rub his brow, but both of his arms were wrapped around his helpers, "Malcolm Lamb has managed to escape – TWICE, sir," William growled, "And, if Elizabeth Mole was here, I suppose I would need to add attempted murder to her other charges… uh, when I arrest her…. maybe someday." He realized that the Inspector did not know what had happened, and he went back to the beginning to tell the highlights of the story.

Both the Inspector and Julia were filled in by the time they got to the surgery.

"Well, it's always love or money," the Inspector concluded, "I guess this time it was love. Too bad that when Crabtree gets here with the paddy-wagon and the other constables, there won't be anyone to take in."

Julia left the Inspector holding William up, and she opened the backdoor to the surgery ahead of them.

The Inspector's eyes bugged out of his head at the sexy sight of the doctor in her largely-missing and tattered skirt. "Dr. Ogden…" he tried to make his eyes come up off of the woman's curves.

Julia kept her body oriented away from the two men, looking specifically for any operating sheets to use, and she glanced back over her shoulder to follow the Inspector's gaze, noticing. She felt the blush flood into her face.

"As you can see, Inspector," Julia tried to balance patience, with teasing the man, gaining the upper-hand for his loss of self-control, and with her secret happiness that he found her to be so sexually alluring that he couldn't take his eyes off of her, and somewhere in her mind she remembered William and she thought to look over, and Julia saw that, William too, was taking in an eyeful, and her heart trumpeted with joy! And she remembered the first time, naked at the nudist colony, and then the second, with the shapely Elizabeth Mole in her tight rubber suit… "William!" she feigned shock.

"Julia," his beautiful brown eyes dashed up to meet hers. He wrinkled a corner of his mouth at her.

She failed to completely hide it, her smile.

She put her hands on her hips. "Honestly!" she huffed, "Men!" Moving on, she had found the operating sheets she needed, and she used one of them as a makeshift skirt, folding it up a few times because, "they were all so big – probably for the larger animals," she reasoned, and she tied the sheet in place.

The Inspector spoke as the group worked to get William prepared and up on the operating table.

"I'm convinced Alderman Lamb didn't know anything about all of this," the Inspector explained, "After talking incessantly to the bloody toff on the phone…" adding, his blood-pressure going up, "And the bloody mayor… The politics of the job, Murdoch, I told you it was all bollocks. You couldn't stomach it…" he felt his face flushed, "I need a bloody scotch," he thought.

Julia held what was left of William's coat up in front of her. The sight of it spoke volumes. "You need a new winter coat," she said, marveling at the strips of fabric she had just removed from her husband. His maroon scarf was alive and well after the battle, surviving snuggly in its place under his coat. She was grateful, for much like his hat, she quite adored this little accessory of his. She remembered, re-feeling her sadness and torment at the time, burying her nose in this soft scarf to surround herself with the smell of him, when he was lost, in danger, out there in the world, pretending to be a hobo with George…

She helped him take off his suit jacket and vest, noting that they each, too, were ruined, the bloodied bottoms of each had been within the grasp of the Tiger when it struck… the tails of his shirt were shredded and blood-soaked, as well, but Julia decided to leave her modest husband that modicum of covering, leaving his shirt and tie on him, "I can cut the ripped shirt-tails away, that'll do," she told herself, planning.

He turned his back to her, with the Inspector behind her, and Julia brought William's trousers and underwear down.

"Bloody Hell!" the Inspector whispered the exclamation.

His naked flesh exposed, she could see the lacerations were serious. It was there though, also, her awareness of how hunky her husband's physique was, and a thought ran through her mind, that she had made similar marks on his backside, on occasion, while in the throes of their more rough, intense, lovemaking. And she felt guilty for thinking about such things, considering how severe these cuts into his mortal body were. There was a sigh.

"Cat scratches can be particularly troublesome," she announced to the room, "I'm sure, even more so, when the cat is…" she shook her head, for it was still so unbelievable, "a Tiger." She imagined the various wound flushing treatments she could use as she continued, "They will need to be cleaned well," she explained. Her professional tone helped William feel better, the Inspector too. "If I were in my morgue, I'd apply some of my mold extract…" she gestured for William to climb up on the table…

The Inspector remained standing aside, fighting with whether or not the man would want his help while so… exposed

William managed to climb up, keeping his front-side facing away from view, his main concern, it turned out…

Julia had gone on, "That mold extract I used on the meathook wound…," she covered William's legs with an operating sheet,and using the question to asses William's state, she asked, "Do you remember, William? You took it with you, when you went to Winnipeg…?"

And he answered her, "Mmm…"

And she remembered he had lied to her back then – "withheld the truth" from her, she corrected, about his going to stay with Ettie Weston… and then the start of the whole, long, meatpacking-case saga started to unfold in her mind, and she pushed it all away, "No time now," and she covered William's upper back and shoulders with another operating sheet, and she began to search the surgery for what she needed.

It would sting, but there was alcohol…

Oh, Julia was so impressed! "She has Procaine!" Julia exclaimed. William would appreciate this, she thought, wanting to keep him feeling as at ease as possible, so she added, "Procaine is a synthetic derivative of cocaine. We can use it to locally anesthetize the area. They call it 'novocaine' – meaning "new – caine." It's the new cocaine!" Julia proclaimed, her back to them as she worked with all the little medical vials. "A German surgeon, Braun, has used it with great success…" she smiled and turned to face the two men, a syringe and needle prepared, raised high and proud…

And downright disturbingly, SCARY-looking, too.

William Murdoch swallowed, the reality of what it was that he was about to go through dawning on him.

"William," her voice had a playful scolding tone, "It's just a little needle," she told him, keeping the little detail that it would require many, many, different little pricks into his flesh around each of the long extensive Tiger-claw slices to herself.

With a glance into the Inspector's eyes, she brought her tray over to the bottom half of the operating table.

"Would you mind assisting, Inspector," she asked, as casually as she could manage. Inspector Brackenreid looked a bit pale and queasy, she warned herself, he could feint away. "Hope he falls away from the body", Julia thought, not even noticing the change in her mind to 'body,' from 'her husband,' or 'William,' or 'the love of her life, the father of her child – her children,' the subtle reminder of 'her being pregnant' had snuck in however, seeming "oddly out of place," with her other thoughts, like flushing the top of the wounds downward in smooth, even strokes, and preparing herself to ignore the patient's reaction to the stinging pain he would feel… and which of the four gashes to suture first… her role as doctor becoming wholeheartedly incorporated.

"Of course, Dr. Ogden," the Inspector replied, stepping forward, telling himself not to look at the terrifyingly unsettling slashes in his detective's behind.

Out of nowhere, Julia giggled. "Sorry gentlemen," she said. "I uh, I just remembered stitching-up William… um, his other 'cheek," she glanced up at the Inspector, checking to see if he understood her pun. "Not so long ago, the good Detective Murdoch here…" she went back to suturing, "went and got himself bit in the derriere by a guard dog – I'm sure you remember, when gallantly saving Constable Crabtree, as I remember it." She giggled again, "That time it was his other cheek. Get it…? One side, the dog, he turned the "other cheek," and now it's the cat…" she waited, receiving nothing, "It's funny…" She looked to each of the men, the Inspector peering back only mild annoyance… William's face out of her line of sight, but then…

William sighed.

And, of course, that only made her giggle more. "It must be something about you serious detective-types, this lack of a sense of humor," she reassured herself the fault lay with them, not herself, her eyes back down on the cheek in question.

Eventually, with the suturing halfway done, Brackenreid was feeling more in charge of his faculties, and his mind moved back to the case. "So, they both escaped, then?" his question felt unexpected.

Grateful for it, however, William jumped at the chance to discuss it instead of the medical event happening to him as he lay there, tolerating, and intermittently worrying about how badly this latest injury would affect his everyday life. "Yes…" he cleared his throat, "Yes, sir. At first the two of them together, Elizabeth warning me I needed to save Julia in the winter-house," he rushed passed the traumatic part, to the facts, "They had a camel, I think it was a camel… some suitcases. Went the opposite way than I did…"

"Crabtree should be here soon. We'll track them," the Inspector said assuredly, knowing to prepare the scissors for the doctor, having learned the routine of the work at hand.

Julia added, "Malcolm Lamb came back, Inspector. To be honest, that amazes me. He had made it. He was free, with the woman he loved. And he risked it all to come back…" She cut the suture and paused. "It looks good," she assessed aloud. A deep breath, still more to go, she went back to her thoughts on the case, "William figures Elizabeth Mole must have told Lamb what she had done…" Julia hesitated, surprised it would take effort to say it again, "um, locking me in a cage with a Tiger. And he came back. There's something to be said about the man in that."

"Malcolm Lamb always impressed me as a good man," the Inspector agreed. "A bit like your husband, I'd say, doctor," he went on, "Tenacious with a case, dog with a bone, if you know what I mean. Not slow as molasses though…" Brackenreid decided to keep the next part to himself, about how much smarter Murdoch was than Detective Lamb, smarter than anyone he knew, actually, he added. His mind began to replay a myriad of memories, each more astounding than the one before it, Murdoch figuring out there was a boy inside a rampaging automaton, and that the 'alien spaceship' was really an air-balloon warship, and that there was rocket aimed at New York City…

'CRree-eek'

There was a sound at the backdoor!

Everybody jumping a bit…

Well, except Julia – incredibly well-trained to have steady hands when working on a patient.

Elizabeth Mole burst through the doorway.

She was out of breath, her chest heaving. And she had a desperate expression appealing on her face. "I came for the Tiger!" she announced.

Her eyes dropped down to see what Dr. Ogden was working on, a part of her brain sending her the message that the woman stitching up the man on the table had survived, in the same instance that she determined that it was the detective down on the operating table, his quite noticeably chiseled buttocks, slashed all to hell! – "YOUR FAULT! YOUR FAULT! Elizabeth's conscience castigated her. And her knees collapsed with the weight of her guilt and her remorse.

"I'm sorry," Elizabeth pleaded, "So sorry!" her eyes rose to meet Julia's, "Malcolm was right – it was unconscionable, what I did to you…" Elizabeth expected to find hate there – anger. Breathtaking, the softness in her victim's eyes instead, so beautiful, something so unexperienced in her whole lifetime, tenderness, tenderness in response to behaving horridly, Elizabeth began to cry. "Please. Please forgive me. I was… I was, terrified. Malcolm, Malcolm had rushed off to get… he was going to… I couldn't let you stop us! I… I should never, but I panicked…"

Although Julia felt for the woman, she found herself becoming annoyed.

From flat out on his stomach on the operating table, William said, "Dr. Elizabeth Mole, I arrest you for aiding and abetting a murderer…" he wasn't going to let this one get away. "Inspector?" he requested, "Could you?"

"Oh!" William remembered, "And for the attempted murder of my wife," he added, "That too," his head changing sides as the Inspector put the surgical instrument in his hand down onto the doctor's tray and he moved towards Elizabeth Mole standing over by the backdoor.

Elizabeth sniffled, her red, wrinkled face attesting to her sincerity. Her eyes looked into the Inspector's – so frightened.

Brackenreid worried she would run…

And William suddenly remembered she had said she came for the Tiger… because he had been trying to work out why in the world she would be back here…

"You said you came back for the Tiger?" the detective asked.

And Brackenreid watched Elizabeth Mole's expression change, so drastically, fear, dread, mixed in with an immense purpose, all at one showing on her face….

Elizabeth felt the twinge of guilt in her own voice as she asked, "Did you kill it?" And her heart prayed to all the world that they had not, because she loved the Tiger, as she loved all innocent creatures, and if they had killed it, that, too, would be on her conscience till the end of her days.

"No," Julia answered, her eyes back to her husband's sutures, her anger surfacing.

"Tranquilized," William added, "with one of your darts… And, as you can see, he did quite a bit of harm, but he did not kill my wife, nor myself…"

"I'm truly grateful for that!" Elizabeth hurried to declare, "I truly, truly am. But…"

She looked around the room, her eyes seeming to dart about nearly everywhere, Julia's eyes, not receiving a return glance from the woman, the Inspector's, over to the medicine cabinet, down at the horrible, horrible wounds in the detective's rear-end, and back to the medicine cabinet…

She swallowed, so much reality coming down on her so quickly. "How long ago? How long has the Tiger been under?" she seemed dazed as she asked.

"About thirty minutes," Dr. Ogden answered, thinking to herself to try to take into account, the strange extension of time that seems to happen, when one is in the throes of trying to survive the unsurvivable, and to cope with incredible fear and pain…

"Why?" Julia added the question, for this, lifting her eyes away from her work. Just before Elizabeth Mole answered her, she thought it, a gasping "OF COURSE!" screaming inside her head…

"He needs an antidote," Elizabeth said.

And Julia's brain raced with her thoughts. "She's the murderer! She's the murderer! Not Lamb! It's not Lamb. William's wrong. It was a false confession. She did it. She shot the dart into the back of her husband's leg – HER. She knew he needed an antidote. She withheld it. She killed him…"

Elizabeth had gone on, appealing to the Inspector, "If the Tiger doesn't get it, he'll die. Please. I'll confess. I helped Malcolm dispose of the body…"

Julia watched, dumfounded as no one else appeared to have figured it out. She looked over to William. "William's quick, he'll have caught it as well as me. Let the detective take care of the case, Julia" she coached herself, and then she considered, "He's been through so much, though… And the other side of the argument piped-in, "But, he seems well in control…" then reminding herself that the first thing William did, the very second Elizabeth came in here, unexpectedly returning from her escape, was to announce that he was arresting her…

"I took the body-parts to your Body Farm," Elizabeth had continued rushing her confession so that they would let her give the Tiger the antidote – time so important. "Malcolm told me that that was a big mistake. Of course, he was right, that's obvious now…"

"Ahh!" William's brain jerked with the reemergence of the niggling thought, finally voicing it to someone who could answer it, "Lamb didn't tell you to dump the body there?"

"No. No," Elizabeth said, catching everyone's eyes but Murdoch's, because Murdoch was laid out on the operating table, "No. Um…" her brain yelled at her – "THIS IS TAKING TOO LONG!" Elizabeth stepped towards the medicine cabinet, her eyes now searching the vials for the antidote. She explained what she was doing, that she was not trying to escape again, "The antidote…" with a quick gesture to the Inspector, who nodded, "Um, Malcolm said it was best that he not know where I dumped the body. He found out when the newspapers reported it. I, uh… I…" She found the right vial. "May I?" she asked for permission to prepare the syringe.

The Inspector replied, "I see no reason you can't give the Tiger the antidote… You Murdoch?" he asked his best man.

"I hold no grudge against the Tiger, sir," Murdoch answered.

For his part, Murdoch HAD caught the point that Elizabeth's knowing about the antidote was indicative of her guilt in her husband's murder. But clues were flying about everywhere, and he was working to catch them all. Off on a tangent somewhere inside his brain he also was worried, in a guilty, hope-Julia-never-finds-out way, about Elizabeth revealing during her confessing that she knew all the details about his boobytraps at the Body Farm because HE had bragged about them to her when he was setting-up the Constabulary protection of the Pink Panther Diamond. A quick reminder to himself not to forget to ask Elizabeth about the axe missing from her home, he started his question, "So then, why did YOU choose to dump…"

Elizabeth returned to telling all, well, all she was intending to tell anyway, interrupting the detective, "I had figured your Body Farm was a perfect spot to use, because people dump bodies there all the time…"

ouch! ( ;

"…And maybe you wouldn't even notice this one, and Malcolm had said it had to be in the woods, so that animals would scavenge the cut-up pieces, and well…" Elizabeth stopped. She needed to think about this next part first, decide if it would give away too much? She kept her eyes down, preparing the syringe with the correct dose of antidote for the Tiger and thought it through. Decided, she said…

All ears attuned…

"I also thought it was a sort of poetic justice. Nick had…" Unexpectedly a wave of emotions hit her hard, Elizabeth faltering with the whamming of it. Her eyes teared and her voice choked up, and she swallowed, and she went on, croaky…

The sound of her squeakiness reminding William of Julia when she was terribly upset, thus pulling at his heartstrings…

"My bastard husband had dumped Adam there…" she sniffled and swiped at her streaming tears, "He killed him…" her voice raised in pitch as she held her breath avoiding feeling the worst of the pain, "Nick killed him, and he dumped him in that awful place, like garbage. Making a show of it. He knew it would be in all the papers when Adam's body was found, found in 'Toronto's Favorite Couple's' notorious, morbid Body Farm, and he knew that I would know it was Adam, and that he had killed him that night when he caught us together. He used it to punish me, stifle me with his constant terrorizing, like I was locked in his secret cocoon, his secret little prison, simply because I wounded his male pride."

Julia, now, felt the tug of the woman's suffering.

Anger temporarily drowned her grief, and Elizabeth's mind cleared with the instilled power the emotion. "Malcolm said it would alert you, Detective Murdoch, using your Body Farm," she heard her own strength back in her voice, "It only made it worse, he said, that I was probably one of the only people you told… err, told about the specific traps you set at your Body Farm, so it might even draw your attention to me specifically…"

"OH, HOLY CHRI…!" William's panic erupted…

Julia felt his muscles tense under her suture. "William…?" she said…

So much like how she had said it when she found out he had punched Darcy, and half of William's brain hurled down the path of remembering that humungous fight they had had in the back of the Stationhouse afterwards, and he so much didn't want to ever fight with her like that again, and he had to find some words, just some words to say…

"William, you told HER about your boobytraps? Your "super-secret," "no-one-could-ever-know-the-details," boobytraps?" she queried.

"The axe!" William yelled the incongruous statement into the air, hoping it would save him, the only thing that came to the front of his mind in his panic – he wrote it down in his little book, he never forgets things he writes down.

He had jerked so much, to say it, that the current stitch Julia was making had been much too large. There was a rather noticeable, frustrated sigh, possibly even a huff. Julia frowned and told herself she was right to be angry, he had responded to this attractive woman's obvious flirtations. "He had tried to impress the pretty woman… Obviously, he HAD impressed her…" Julia complained, "William, stay still," certain that her astute husband would grasp from her request that she was completely aware of the REASON he had jerked in the first place.

"Murdoch," the Inspector demanded, "Make some sense, man!"

As carefully as he could, trying to in no way to affect Julia's stitching with doing so, or to draw attention to the gesture, William bent his elbow under the operating sheet and rubbed at his brow. He took a deep breath and endeavored to explain the illogical comment, "I searched your home, Elizabeth. You have a woodpile, and a chopping block, but no axe…"

Seeing that there was a connection, the Inspector inserted, "Ahh… And your husband's body was chopped-up to bloody hell, wasn't it…? And, our coroner here…" the Inspector nodded to Dr. Ogden…

She returned the nod.

"Dr. Ogden's postmortem report said that the body had cutmarks consistent WITH AN AXE. Was it your axe, Dr. Mole?" the Inspector finished his question.

Elizabeth did not like the fact that the Inspector had just used her title to address her rather than her first name. And, the Tiger could be dying at this very moment. Suddenly a wave of panic hit her. The axe was so unimportant. Such a waste of time to explain…

William, thinking to himself, again, that Elizabeth would have known her husband needed the antidote after he had been shot with the tranquilizer dart, and that this might be the clue that turned the case, and that, now, she seemed to be troubled by his questioning her about her axe, and that that might be a further clue pointing her way… "Maybe it wasn't Malcolm Lamb…?"

"The axe?" the Inspector pushed, also sensing the woman's hesitation had significance.

"Really, we must hurry to the Tiger, to save him," she checked all of their faces. A sigh announced her helplessness. "Malcolm chopped up the body…" she would tell it, tell it fast, "He was in the infirmary at first, because Nick had beaten him up – me too, by the way," she added, "The hippo went into labor, and Malcolm said all the blood would mask what we were doing, so he chopped up the body in the birthing cage…"

Elizabeth turned to Dr. Ogden and said, "Your samples would have come back positive for human blood, doctor."

"They still will," Julia corrected. Her brain shot a memory of her standing alone outside of the camel cage, trying to decide whether or not to go in to take the samples while she was alone. Julia wondered after the thought, "Perhaps, if she had waited, gone to get William instead, none of this would have happened…"

Worry in her voice, Elizabeth suddenly asked, "The camel!? Did she come back?" she searched the Inspector's… the doctor's, faces. "Detective?" she asked.

"We don't know," William answered her.

"Malcolm took her, rode her back to save your wife. I hope she's not another innocent casualty of all of this," she fretted with her responsibilities, her being the one who fought for these animals, her own guilt with the betrayal sickening her. Her eyes dropped down to the syringe in her hand, "Time was running out."

"Malcolm used the zoo's axe, detective. To chop-up the body after the hippo gave birth…" So odd, the way the brain multi-tasks, for she remembered that very same hippopotamus stepping on Adam, while they were making love in the hippo paddock, that summer night. "That seemed so long ago," she marveled, and she felt once more the unbearable wave of pain of missing him, missing Adam so very, very much, swell up in her throat. Meanwhile, she had managed to force herself to move on, "I gave my axe away, to the man who finished chopping all the wood for me, after Nick was gone. Nick always chopped the wood. I didn't need it – just gave it away. Can I tell you the rest later?" she asked. "Please. Please can we go to the Tiger now?" she held her eyes firmly to the Inspector's.

"Murdoch?" the Inspector checked with the detective.

"Yes. Fine. Go," William gave. He heard the door open, at that moment remembering, "Inspector!" he alerted…

"Something important by the sound of it, Murdoch?" the Inspector turned back.

"My hat, it's in the cage with the Tiger," William explained.

"Always with the bloody hat, Murdoch," the Inspector teased, shaking his head…

"Oh, and Inspector," Julia figured she might as well, "Could you get my medical bag… um, and my coat." Anger rose inside her again, stiffening her voice, "Elizabeth will know where they are," she added.

The door squeaked on its hinges, almost closed. Julia remembered, thinking it might help them to know, she hollered after them, "Oh! And the Tiger has a lion tamer's pole around his neck…"

They would already be running. They were gone.

William and Julia alone, Julia examined her work on his sutures. She was done, and the four wounds appeared to be well-mended, even if she did say so herself. She sighed, thinking it best not to reveal to William, yet, that the job was completed. "It would be easier for him, being who he was, not to have to talk about this face-to-face," she decided.

"Almost done," she said, breaking the silence. "So, it seems you've lost the axe, detective, as a relevant clue in the case…" Julia brought up the topic, albeit indirectly, of William's thoughts on Elizabeth being the killer, Elizabeth's axe no longer a clue pointing suspicion her way.

William frowned, unseen, a part of him disappointed that his 'hunch' had been wrong. "Yes," he agreed, "We should still collect the zoo's axe, as evidence, I suppose. It would be helpful if it tested positive for human blood, but that's probably unlikely by now…"

Behind him, Julia pushed herself to be more direct. "William," her use of his first name instead of 'detective' indicating the conversation was switching to more intimate, more personal, "Do you think you might have a preference…? Um, maybe you have a predetermined inclination, I mean, more towards one suspect than the other?" She took a breath, adding, going for blunt, "Perhaps you WANTED the killer to be Lamb?"

There was a pause…

She could have kicked herself, for she rescued him from his discomfort, adding, "Well, for the second murder anyway…" she rolled her eyes at herself, and then explained, "I think we can agree that the first killer was Nicholas Mole, killing his wife's secret lover – Dr. Restell, then Mole becoming, himself, the second victim in our Body-Dumper case…" she hesitated, feeling she'd dug herself into a mess, unexpectedly feeling a bit embarrassed, she giggled, "Nicholas Mole couldn't have killed himself…"

Relieved, William was quick to add, "Nor chop himself up into little pieces and dump them at our Body Farm, for that matter, either…"

Julia sighed, "Yes, yes of course." She rolled her eyes at herself again, scolding herself in her head, "Julia Ogden, you are such a chicken!"

William meandered into more philosophical territory, considering how surprisingly common it was in double-murder cases to have the killer of the first victim end up being the second victim themselves. He wondered to himself that if the public were made more aware of that fact, if it became common knowledge, then it might have the effect of lowering murder rates, acting as a deterrent to committing the first murder in the first place…

There was a lull, each of them in their own thoughts. While William waxed theoretical on criminal justice, Julia was telling herself that she would need to steer the topic back to William's avoiding suspecting Elizabeth…

It was William, however, who interrupted, his 'dog-with-a-bone' nature bringing him back to the case anyway. "As to my preference in suspecting Lamb, the evidence went that way…" he drew her attention, "It was Lamb's modus operendi, chopping up the body into pieces to dispose of them, then his carpentry skills, being in the Don Jail, AND working at this zoo."

"Yes, William. I agree there were reasons, but… well, there were plenty of reasons to suspect Elizabeth Mole too," she argued. She felt herself becoming impatient. She decided she wanted to be able to see his face. "All finished, William," she said. She busied herself with putting away the instruments and the tray. "I was thinking," she said over her shoulder, noting William had started to move to get himself standing, "We could use the sheet, the operating sheet. The one over your shoulders, the other one is bloody," she added the explanation, "Um, we could wrap it around you, like mine. We'll be a matching set," she softly giggled envisioning the sight of them standing together, posed for a fancy photograph, 'Toronto's Favorite Sheet-Skirted Couple,' in her mind.

Now standing in front of her, even despite the fact that she was his wife, that she had seen him naked countless times, he found he was uncomfortably embarrassed. He forced himself to fight the urge to put his hands in front of his manly parts. He watched Julia look down at him.

When her eyes rose back up off of his body and caught his eye, William frowned. It made her giggle.

"Here," she instructed, and she folded the operating sheet to the right size for him. Then she wrapped it around him and tied it around his waist. "There," she said, pleased with the result, a dashingly handsome man in a dress shirt and tie, and a sort of kilt-like sheet. She informed him, "When the local anesthetic wears off, the pressure of the sheet on your stitches will hurt. Still, I think much less than if you had trousers on."

William nodded, and for a moment the couple were just happy together. "Thank you," he said giving her a bow.

Having William standing before her, in a sheet, reminded her of the time so long ago, when he had spent the night in her house after she had been attacked by Scanlon, after their dance-lesson together, and she had been so desperate to be in his arms, and she had asked him to stay, and despite the potential scandal, William had agreed, and he had slept on her couch, and, to sleep, he'd taken off his shirt and his trousers, just in his underwear, when she had cried out in the night, frightened by her nightmares, and he rushed in to help her, to soothe her, with merely a sheet up over one shoulder, draped over him, wrapped around him, so much like one of the Greek Gods, and she had teased him about it then, but, that's when it had begun, she had wholeheartedly begun her fall, her life-altering fall into loving him, then…

Julia reached up and straightened his tie, still around his neck after all of this. Back to it, keeping her eyes busy with his tie, she asked him, "William, could it be that there is a reason you were less inclined to suspect Elizabeth Mole, besides the evidence against Malcolm Lamb?"

There was a little tremor, under his feet, and unexpectedly, a memory, of his sitting with Enid on her porch-swing, when she asked him, when Enid tucked her fingers under his chin and turned his face to hers, and she pointedly asked him, if it would bother him if there was a romance between Julia and Reginald Poundsett…

William's defensive instincts kicked-in, the man was bright, he would put the shoe on the other foot, as it were…

William looked into Julia's eyes, and asked, "Or maybe YOU wanted it to be Elizabeth, because she locked you in the cage with the Tiger?"

"I must admit, that would be a good reason," she almost giggled at the absurdity of it. Julia blew the building pressure she was feeling out through her pursed lips. "Alright, just give it to him, that that is possible," her inner-voice coached inside her head. "Perhaps," she said.

There was something luring, gravitational, a soft wind-shift, about her glance at him, though, and William felt the oddest warmth, and a sense of flooding in his chest. His brain reminded him, unexpected, right in that particular second, how much he truly loved this woman.

Julia took a deep breath and stepped back. "What she did to me could be a factor… That and…" one of those tugging glances again, rocketing him somehow, "Well," Julia ducked her eyes away, as if protecting him from seeing her hurt, "Elizabeth Mole is a very pretty woman…"

"Julia," he interrupted her.

She cupped his cheek. "I know, William. And I know you would never act on any feelings you had for her… at least, not consciously… But I'm sure you feel an attraction to her…"

William's brain, jagged pathways, with lightning bolt speed, stammered. "It was best to be honest… That's what you did when Enid asked too, you admitted you had feelings for Julia…" But he was having trouble forming any words… And an argument appeared, that he certainly did NOT feel the same way about Elizabeth Mole as he had ever, EVER, felt for Julia Ogden. Yes, the woman was attractive… And yes, she'd caught his eye – he was a man after all… And then he remembered that he had bragged to Elizabeth about his booby-traps at the Body Farm, and that Julia knew that, now, too… And while all of that splattered around in his brain, all of a sudden William asked her, "Why would you ask me that?" and the moment he said it he remembered he had done the same with Enid, too, at the time.

Julia's hand pulled away from his face and she sighed. There was a frown. "William Murdoch was a brilliant man, but he could be SO OBTUSE sometimes!" she yelled the fact in her head.

Julia's blue eyes rose up to his – such a profound strength, it floored him. She moved her mouth to speak, and he was already amazed with her, he was already thanking God for bringing her into his life…

"She's your type, William," Julia said simply, matter-of-factly.

He raised an eyebrow at her, "My type?"

She sighed again. "Yes, you have a type, William. The Inspector… George, I'm sure they'd agree. You have a weakness for pretty, smart, strong, independent women," she explained it plainly for him. "I can name them, Sally Pendrick, Eva Pearce – she had quite a hold on you at first…"

William wrinkled his face at her, he couldn't deny it.

Julia went on, adding fuel to her argument, "You are even more thrown off your guard if the woman is beautiful AND well-educated, and accomplished, like myself. Consider your Egyptian doctor archaeologist, Dr. Bajjali, and now Dr. Elizabeth Mole…"

William stood exposed, doe-eyed before her.

She wrinkled a corner of her mouth, feeling compassion for him. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, William," she gave kindly, her fingers back up to cup his cheek. "But, perhaps it's best that you are aware of it, hmm? That it might be swaying your judgment, even just a little? She wrinkled a corner of her mouth at him again, asking him to acknowledge that she was right.

"Adorable," her heart fluttered, as he yielded…

William exhaled, big – the steam built-up inside him almost visible as he let it go. He reached up and rubbed his brow, and then he said, "It is possible I was swayed." But he had a sudden urge to reclaim some of his pride, telling her, "But…" and now he put his hand to her face, his fingers curled under her jaw, his thumb, feeling so delightfully big to her soft face, firm and strong, just under her ear, "But, despite that possible, and slight, hold she may have had over me, still, my suspicions were raised by her knowing about the antidote…" William held tight to Julia's blue, blue eyes and he nodded, then added, "She had to knowingly withhold it from her husband, after he'd been stabbed with the tranquilizer dart."

Julia nodded and smiled, "Yes. Yes, she would have had to. But there's more evidence against her than that, William…"

He was listening…

"Think of the shot you made today, with the tranquilizer gun, into the Tiger's back leg…"

He nodded.

"I, a trained physician, told you exactly where to target your aim. And you nailed it," she said, a part of her awed all over again by him, by what he had done to save her, by how much he loved her, "And still…" she went on, "the end of the needle did not end up in a vein. That's why it took so long for the Tiger to fall, to be overcome by the drug. But, Nicholas Mole's leg… Remember the wound, the large, deep needle mark behind his knee…"

William nodded again.

"The end of the needle of the dart that was shot into Nicholas Mole's leg went EXACTLY where it needed to go, William – into the popliteal vein. I assure you, Malcolm Lamb couldn't make that shot – it had to be her," she concluded.

"I concur," he agreed, "Elizabeth Mole is our killer. Lamb loves her. He took the blame for her, but in actuality all that he really did was help her to dispose of the body, it seems. And if Lamb had not made the mistake of letting Elizabeth decide where to dump it, and if she had not sought to dump her dead-husband's chopped-up body in the SAME place where HE had dumped her lover, after he had killed him, we likely never would have caught them."

"True," Julia said, and then added, "Ironic, that now he has escaped without her, don't you think?"

"Mm," William pinched his lips together tight, and nodded.

They let the shared relief, of solving the crime, and of working out their own little lover's dustup, linger.

Julia charmed him, "So, we make a good team?"

And he chuckled and pulled her closer. "Yes, we make a good team," he agreed.

Julia noticed, as the angle of his face in the light changed, that he had the beginnings of a blackeye. She brought her fingers to touch it. "William…?"

"Mm," he answered.

"What happened here?" she asked, "Is it from the Tiger?"

He took a deep breath and replied, "No. No, but we are going to find MANY other injuries, besides what you've stitched-up, from that encounter, I assure you, doctor. No, um…" William reached up to feel the bruise himself, "No, this was from my struggle with Malcolm Lamb, right before he and Elizabeth Mole escaped."

"I see," she answered, stepping back to better examine the pink and red and purple mark.

William explained further, "Lamb came back here, while Elizabeth was…" he swallowed, "…taking care of you. He came to get some suitcases. I caught him. I had the tranquilizer gun. He confessed, as I told you…" William reached back to find the spot on the back of his head as he went on, "Elizabeth hit me, from behind, with something…"

Julia reached back to follow his fingers and find the lump – it was substantial.

"It took me by surprise, we struggled for the gun. Lamb used one of the suitcases. Swung it, and hit me in the face," he wrinkled a corner of his mouth, admitting that he had succumbed to the hit, "I dropped the gun… and they got away."

Julia asked, "And then that's when Elizabeth Mole told you I was in danger, so you would go to save me instead of chase after them?"

"Mm-hmm," William replied.

Julia sighed. Her eyes darted away, and her mood became flirtatious, for he was an incredible man, and she found him quite attractive with all his heroism intertwined with his distinct, Williamy, vulnerabilities. Truth be told, she was just madly, madly, in love with this man.

William felt the delicious stirring in his groin as she took his tie in hand.

"I must say, detective," lush and sultry, her voice with its hoarse scratchiness, "I am happy to see that your tie survived, I do…" she leaned in and kissed him, quick, on his lips, "…so love the tie," her breath rolled over him as she said it, and she kissed him again, deeper, longer…

Mmm, so good.

Julia broke off the kiss, then nipped at his jaw, and then found his ear, "You're my knight in shining armor," she told him.

William would tease, his voice tickled with that lovely cockiness in it, "I only WISH I had had some shining armor on when I faced the Tiger," he chuckled.

And, so delightfully, Julia laughed at his joke. And their next kiss was abandoned, and wiggly, and smooshy, and deep, and fiery, and dizzying all over.

And then, unexpectedly, Julia started to cry, ducking her head away from their kissing.

"Hey, hey there," William so quickly comforted. He lowered his face, bending a bit at the knees to get underneath her line of sight, and his manly thumbs wiped at the tears glistening on her cheeks. She kept her eyes away… And her face wrinkled as her crying increased in intensity.

William's heart ached in his chest as he kissed tenderly at her tears, tasted the saltiness of her in his mouth, slippery with the tanging of being wounded, sweet and lush as he swallowed, taking her in deeper, soothing them both, for there was also healing in the touch. "Shh. Shh," his wonderful voice covered her, cloaked her. "We're alright Julia. I'm right here. Shh. We're safe now. Shh…"

"I was so scared, William," her voice squeaky, tugging at him as she confessed it. She was falling apart in his arms. "I've never been so scared…" So shaky, her inhale, "I was so, so scared…"

And her eyes, pink and pooled with tears, lifted to his. She sniffled, then giggled at herself.

"I was scared too," he said.

Julia dropped her eyes away again, and nodded to herself, "Not even when I was buried alive in Gillies' grave, inside that dreadful tiny coffin." Her eyes met his again, "Or when he hooked me up to that bomb, and I had to control my heartrate to stay alive…" She had to breathe, quivery, "Not even then, was I so totally frightened as with this Tiger today… with that deafening, nail-screeching and scraping, on top of the tub… And for a second, I thought you might not…"

Abruptly they were startled apart with a jump as the door banged opened, both Crabtree and Higgins rushing in, excited to have found someone to tell them what was going on.

But it appeared they had caught the couple in a lovestruck moment of passion, and both constables raced to stare up at the ceiling, pretending not to see, and to utter, repeatedly, a showering slather of, "Sorry!" and "Sorry, sir…" and "Pardon us, doctor…" and "So, sorry… um, err, sorry, sir…" and "Again, so sorry…" before they bolted back out of the door.

Barely safe outside, Henry exclaimed in a whisper, "I hope when Ruth and I are married, we don't develop strange sexual customs… What was with those sheets?"

"Yes, I noticed tha…"

Behind them, the detective's voice bellowed, "George! Henry! Constables! There's no reason to…"

They were already turning back when Detective Murdoch stomped his foot, standing holding the door opened, once more. "Get back in here," he yelled.

)

As they put Dr. Elizabeth Mole into the paddy-wagon, she thanked them for letting her save the Tiger. Everyone else stepped away, leaving the detective alone in front of the bars. William asked her, "Why do you think Malcolm returned? He was free. He had you. He told me he loved you, that you were his Lady?"

"He said he couldn't do it – he couldn't leave you like that, detective. Leave you to watch the Tiger kill your Lady, the love of your life. Malcolm worried that she was the mother of your child, and she was pregnant now, again, pregnant with your child. It was too horrendous," she replied shaking her head, feeling a surge of love for Malcolm Lamb, for his sense of honor, "A man as good as Malcolm Lamb, he just couldn't do such a thing." Elizabeth figured, to herself, feeling the shame and guilt and grit of who she was sting in her heart, that Malcolm felt responsible for what SHE had done to Murdoch's Love, that he could not live with himself, if he did not, at least try, to fix it.

"I'm grateful to him. He did help, you should know that. Not so much to save Julia, but he helped get ME out alive. I'll be forever grateful to him for that," William took her hand through the bars and lifted it to give her a winsome bow. "I wish you well," he said sincerely. He added, surprising himself with the disclosure, "I know the suffering, to live in a life of helplessness and constant fear. Perhaps the jury will consider it."

Elizabeth took her hand back through the bars and chuckled. She was making a transition, preparing herself for what was to come, needing to be strong and rigid and locked away from her feelings, particularly any feelings of weakness. "I would not expect so much from a jury of twelve MEN, detective. They will not be like you, nor like Malcolm," she said.

"None-the-less," he said, "I wish it for you anyway. May God be with you."

"Thank you, William," she said, her tone far-off. She moved away from the bars.

William stepped away.

)

Travelling behind the paddy wagon which transported the confessed and charged killer, Dr. Elizabeth Mole, to Stationhouse #4, was a second, quite crowded, police carriage with passengers Detective Murdoch, his wife and the coroner, Dr. Ogden, Inspector Brackenreid, and Constable Crabtree. Detective Murdoch was not able to sit on the carriage seat due to the location and severity of his Tiger-claw wounds, so instead he kneeled on the floor of the carriage, facing the seat. He spent much of the time with his head resting against his wife's leg, and he uncharacteristically allowed himself to enjoy her running her fingers through his hair despite their being 'in public.' It seemed the least she could do for him, while the man who had saved her life, saved their baby's life, the man she loved until it hurt, kneeled, trapped, a captive audience, to the ramblings of Constable George Crabtree.

"It's a shame, sir," George was in the middle of telling his rendition of their discovering that Malcolm Lamb had most assuredly escaped that second time, "but it most definitely appears that Malcolm Lamb has gone 'on the lamb,' as it were. Get it sir. It's a pun, on the word 'lamb.' I'm sure you appreciate it, Dr. Ogden. I've known you to use puns in your jokes quite often…"

Julia smiled, "I always thought it was just my brand of morgue humor, I suppose."

"Oh, no, doctor. I quite enjoy them too, and I have less connection to the morgue, now… err, as you know, because Emily, um, Dr. Grace is no longer there," George insisted. "You know, sir," George changed the subject…

And Julia turned to look out the window in an attempt to hide her laughing at having heard her husband moan.

George's story would be longwinded, "You were right – there is an abundance of evidence to be garnered from footprints, like your ascertaining that Elizabeth Mole wore her husband's shoes when she dumped his body parts at your Body Farm, amazingly, the irregular weight distribution in the prints in the snow, your clue. That was quite impressive indeed, sir. We were particularly lucky today, because of the snow, and of course, because we still had the ending glow of daylight. We were able to tell that Malcolm Lamb escaped across the Don River, and then made it to a road, where, unfortunately, we lost his tracks. We could even tell that he had had both suitcases with him! Actually, it's amazing how to do that trick. It has to do with how deep into the snow the footprints are – deeper if he was carrying the bags! By the way, guess who the tracker is at the zoo, sir? You'll never guess, in a million years…?

Julia turned back as her husband lifted his head to speak.

"Jimmy… Jimmy McLeod, I believe," William figured this out because it had to be someone who both himself and George knew, someone who was good at tracking, tracking people or animals – animals, like at a zoo. "An Indian. Worked in our stables a long while back," William said, of course, correctly, "He helped on that weird werewolf case."

Julia giggled at the sad sight of George's face.

"Yes. Yes, sir. That's right," George conceded. "I think I might have a character like Jimmy, in my next book, a sequel to 'Curse of the Pharaohs.' Actually, I consider myself quite lucky to have been sent out to search for Lamb today, sir… doctor," George included Dr. Ogden, realizing she was paying better attention than the detective was – "probably the detective is exhausted from his ordeal," he figured, explaining the detective's impatience and general lack of interest. George went on, "I think it will be very helpful, to have ridden a camel today, for my being able to better put myself in my character's shoes as it were… You know, the pharaohs are all in the desert. There have to be camels… in a story about a desert."

Julia returned her gaze to looking out of the window, her fingers still loving at her husband's hair. Her mind wandered, starting off from remembering the case that George had referred to – the werewolf case. William had been with Enid Jones back then, so potent, the words she spoke to herself in her head, "My heart – broken." But, she had made her choice, she had been honest about her abortion with him. It had hurt, but she knew it had been the right thing to do. Later, she faced an even bigger choice, whether or not to tell him about her sterility, her choice then, a choice that she had made FOR him, to let him live his life with another. That decision, too, had been right, she was certain of it, but it had hurt so badly that she wasn't sure she would ever truly recover from it… Then, the memory flashed, from when she had brought the wolf canine tooth she had found in the victim's spine, back on the strange case, to William, in his office, and he had looked at her that way he does when she has impressed him, all glittery-eyed and gorgeous, and she was certain he was about to kiss her – she had even heard the violins in her head. They were already madly in love by then, just apart, not together, but always, always, in love. With a jump in her seat, the flash from today intruded, startling her. She saw it so clearly, as if it were happening all over again right now, she saw William whirling atop the Tiger, William riding the Tiger's back. Almost lost forever.

William stirred, alerted by Julia's gasp, her startled jerk.

George's incessant talking stopped.

"Julia?" William asked.

"Sorry," she answered. "I just…"

"It's been happening to me too," William said, his beautiful face peering into hers, "I know. Suddenly it's all happening again."

"Yes," she wrinkled a corner of her mouth at him. She took his hand, found his wedding ring, rubbed at it. They both quieted.

"We're almost home," George tried to help.

Oh, how much she wanted to be home…

)

The Inspector insisted that the Murdoch's be taken straight to their house, that anything to do with the case would be dealt with tomorrow, any interrogations, evidence analysis, loose ends, writing up the final report, all of it, tomorrow. With their bottom-halves still skirted in sheets, they stood together on the front porch as William hunted through the pockets of his bloody, and tattered and torn, jacket, for the keys, and, finally, gratefully, the couple stepped in through the door. It was too late for dinner, but the mouthwatering smell of Eloise's cooking hit them, alighting a sudden awareness, now overpowering their unbearable exhaustion, of how incredibly famished they each were.

William Jr. had been waiting for them, listening to Claire-Marie read him a book in the living room. The child, already dressed in his pajamas for bed, screeched with his delight as he had heard his parents at the door… And William and Julia delighted in the sight of their little son, barreling as fast as his short, little, toddler legs could carry him, right for them. It was a tradition, a custom, a joy, and all involved knew exactly what would happen next – William Jr. would leap into his Daddy's arms, and be flown up high into the sky, and probably spun around, and then be pulled back down for a big hug and a kiss, while his Daddy growled about how much he had missed his Little Man…

And all of this happened before their eyes, with Julia hovering close, worrying for William's Tiger-claw scratch lacerations on his back, and her husband caught her eyes, and somehow reassured her, and then he added, in between his customary roughhousing roars with his son, "It's fine. I'm fine," before enacting a favorite extension of their greeting that the child particularly loved, William lying the tiny boy out flat in his arms to "fly like a plane," and delightfully adding the engine swooping sounds as the pair of them buzzed around the house.

Claire-Marie asked, standing with her mistress, watching the show, "Why are you and the detective wearing these bedlinens, if I may ask?"

"Oh, it is such a long story," Julia replied, once again feeling overwhelmed by it all. She held up William's overcoat for the nanny to see the shredding from the Tiger, and she said, "The murderer in our case, she uh, she locked me in a cage with a Tiger…" And the strangest, most wonderful sensation of ECSTASY hit her as she watched Claire-Marie's eyes bug wide, staring down at the shreds of William's coat and…

Claire-Marie gasped with disbelief, and exclaimed, "A Tiger!?"

"Yes. Isn't it amazing," Julia replied, "The detective saved me from being eaten! He jumped on the Tiger's back and… well, first he'd shot it with a tranquilizer dart, but it didn't work right away, and he had to save me, and, well, the Tiger clawed him when he was hanging from the ceiling of the cage, and…"

And then it hit her, it hit hard, took her breath away, for Julia realized, Julia remembered, she understood for the first time since it had happened, that SHE had saved HIM, TOO. SHE had come out from under the tub. SHE had improvised, thrown the tranquilizer gun at a wild, ferocious Tiger, a Tiger, just ten feet away from her. She saved him, in that eternally long, gravely important, second… SHE had been strong, and brave and amazing, too. Though, standing there a bit stunned, when Julia chased her discovery further, she did not think she would ever have had the courage to do what HE did to save her – how incredible it really was, to willingly drop yourself down onto the back of a savage, man-eating, Tiger. No, she didn't think she could have ever been THAT brave…

Claire-Marie asked, "How did you get out!?" finding the waiting impossible.

"Oh! Oh, sorry. William jumped on the Tiger, so I could get out, and then we, um, there was a long pole, that they use to handle lions and tigers, and bears, I guess… And we um, we… one of the suspects in the case helped me try to save William who was stuck up on the Tiger's back, we stuck the long pole through the bars to catch the Tiger by its neck, and it worked, and that's how William got out," she nodded, thinking she had explained it all fairly well.

"C'est incroyable!" Claire-Marie declared, her eyes still dark and saucered, as she watched the detective, wearing his bedsheet-skirt to cover his stitched-up warrior marks, play with his 'Little Man,' "C'est incroyable!"

"It truly is," Julia agreed. Unconsciously, she placed a hand to rub the growing baby inside her womb, and she noticed, she felt so remarkably happy, so ALIVE, so appreciative of… everything.

)

They discovered that William could sit on a stool with minimal pain, bringing one up from in his workroom to the kitchen table for him to use to eat. After they ate, they tucked William Jr. into bed, avoiding telling the little one anything more than that his 'Daddy had gotten hurt on his backside at work.' Unspoken between William and Julia, they each wanted to keep their son open-minded about Tiger's, about Tiger's and other such creature's in the world that survive only by eating others, until he was old enough to be able to grasp the complexities of the interconnected tangles of the world. He had already been inclined to ban the Tiger from his other toys. Certainly, knowing that one had hurt his father, not to mention almost killed and eaten his mother, and his father, and his unborn little brother or sister, too, would only cloud his judgement further.

Now, finally, all they had to do was prepare for bed. William wondered about a shower, yearning to feel the warm water flowing, soapy and soothing, all over his weary, beaten-down flesh. He imagined showering with her, and just the thought of it scrumptiously tweaked the urgency in his groin, and he marveled at himself, for, "even with all they had been through," and then he thought, "perhaps BECAUSE of all that they had been through," he wanted, so very keenly, to make love to her.

The doctor in the family, however, had other ideas.

"No. No, I don't think so, William," she said, her tone authoritative and practical, "You can't get your stitches wet. Only baths for you, no showers, I'm afraid."

His disappointed look gazed back at her, and then he accepted it, and then he wrinkled, confused. "But, a bath? How will I not get the stit…?"

"You'll have to bathe on your hands and knees, I suppose. I'll help," she answered, trying to sound cheery. "We can wash your hair under the tap in the tub. Not so bad, hmm?" she asked him, her clothes gone, he suddenly realized. Julia now removing his tie.

Now that, that was a wondrous bath, healing, and complicated, a sort of game-of-twister, mixed with laughter, and lust, and the teasing and the problem solving, and the soaking, and the shared soaping, and the rubbing, and the kissing, and it all came to a wild, rampaging head, when Julia said to him, sultry and sexy and flirtatious, there in that warm bath, her under him, naked and delicious, "You're my hero, William, and I think, that now it is time, that you come and ride THIS Tiger," and she laid back, her curves jiggly and bouncy, like that marvelous gelatinous substance, jell-O, that she had used to make the fire-poker mold all those years ago, so desperately WANTING HIM under the warm, wet glow of the bathwater, and she opened her supple, long thighs to him, and William lost all control and he charged her, his big strong muscly arms around her, he swept her up, and she gasped and she screamed and she hung on tight, her long luscious legs wrapped around his waist, arms clinging to his neck, and he swept her up out of the water.

Thud, her back slammed into the closed bathroom door, muffled, muffled and softened, by the bathrobes fluffily hanging there on their high, high hook behind her. Dripping, dripping wet, their slippery, drenched skin slid and glided and wiggled and squeezed, so unbearably delicious, melding, squishing across each other, into one another. And William began, agonizing, her voracious moan, wanting him, wanting him so much closer, and he pumped and he pounded, thrusting, abandoned, savage, primal, William made love to her, mighty, invincible, so close to touching her in that one, perfect, sweet, sweet spot, where they would implode…

And wham, the whole universe flipped over as he reached it, touched him to her, pure heaven it exploded, erupted everywhere, warm and gushy, he loved this woman so much, pure perfect heaven, the waves of rippled pleasure completely took them, delicious, one after the other the seismic rushes rolled and rumbled through every molecule of their bodies, of their souls, then his pumps slowly lessening, "I love you, so much Julia," his words scratchy and inside more than outside.

"Please don't stop," the wishing it would never, never end together, "I love you," Julia's softness, her perfect voice into him, all around him, all through him.

The stillness, the grounding, just below them now, settling, slowing, whirling, whirling, whirling, that last lovely, tiny, tiny drop rippled, then only pounding hearts and fear that you would never get enough oxygen coming into focus, he loved her, My God, he loved her. They floated there, for a moment, having just made love together like there would be no tomorrow.

Like it was the first time.

Like it was the ONLY time.

Like it was the last time.

And Julia began to cry.

And she whispered under the weight of it, "I'm sorry, William. I'm sorry. I should not have gone alone, today. I went alone…" she was referring to collecting the blood samples, and she knew he could not know that…

But he did, and he answered her, "I'm so sorry that I let you. I should have stayed, not left you alone."

And they held each other while Julia gently cried. And the wave of it passed. And the real world was back around them, and William felt the stinging of his Tiger-claw scratch sutures in his back, and he said, as he stepped back just that important inch that made two out of one, and he said, now rational and logical and realistic, "But that's how we often do it – I investigate, while you tend to pathologist matters – the body, taking samples…"

"Yes," she agreed, accepting what was.

They dried and crawled into bed, William next to her, lying on his stomach, her on her back. She snuggled to get half underneath him, kissed at his ear, ran her fingers through his hair in the dark.

She remembered their heart-to-heart talk in the surgery, him admitting his judgement could be swayed by another woman's beauty. And she remembered, too, that strange way William had said it when he was laid out in front of her in the wheelbarrow, his voice coming from below her, from where his face was hanging off over the side, as she strained to push him along, and he told her that "Nicholas Mole taunted and terrorized his wife, that he was one of those despicable brutes who beats his wife," and there had been something about the depth of the emotion that she sensed inside of him when he said it to her then, and so, now, she asked him, "William…"

"Mm," he sounded so close and warm and perfect in her ear.

"Today, when you were telling me about how badly Nicholas Mole treated Elizabeth…" she paused…

"Mm," he replied, right there with her in the safe darkness of their room.

"Well, it seemed to me…" she shifted, rolling him onto his side, the one side he had that was unscarred by the Tiger, "that you felt, quite deeply, quite personally, empathy, somehow, with what Elizabeth Mole had gone through at the hands of her abusive husband," Julia waited again, so intimate now that he would have to fight not to run away. And Julia's instincts hinted to her that this would be far enough back to be in his childhood. It would be hard.

"Yes," he reached up and found her hair, still damp, he caressed it, his fingers gliding along the edges, the outlines of her face. "I know what it's like…" he leaned down to kiss her right next to her ear. He would tell her, she was the one, the one in all the world who he wanted to know, to know everything. William took a deep breath, decided, and then told from his heart, "I know from being a boy, and living with my father. The unpredictable, sudden rages, the yelling, and slamming and throwing things and breaking things, chairs crashing through bedroom windows and my mother's voice, oddly overly calm and strong, my heart pounding and racing so hard that it drums in my ears and I can't possibly think, and I want to hide, but I have to save Susana…"

And he stopped. He stopped there. And then he whispered, "I had to save her," and he kissed Julia's ear again, not wanting to go deeper.

"And you did, William. I'm sure you did," Julia whispered back to him.

William said, after a breath, after moving back, back to now, remembering today, thinking of Elizabeth Mole, and Malcolm Lamb, and Nicholas Mole, he said, thoughtful, "Today, after I had left you, when I had caught Malcolm Lamb and he was confessing, what he was really doing, I know now, lying, saving Elizabeth by taking the blame, and he was begging me not to pursue her, that he loved her, and he said that Elizabeth had been caught in her husband's 'terror prison.' Those words – 'terror prison,' so distinct, so clear to me, what that was like, to be so scared, so frightened that you lost yourself. And that reminded me of what it was like when I was just a lad. But now, now I'm a man…"

"Mm, yes," Julia shifted again, found his shoulder, strong and robust, the deltoid. She cupped it, stroked it.

"It reminded me of James Gillies," he said, Julia not expecting that turn, but, so quickly, it making sense to her. "Gillies tried to trap me – us, in his terror prison, too. And, well, I didn't ever tell you this, but I pulled the trigger, that day, that day when he hooked you up to the bomb, and he had William Jr., the syringe, the needle, poked to our little boy's neck…"

Now Julia leaned in close, to connect, to assure him she was with him, he was not alone, with a soft kiss.

William organized his thoughts, remembering, he'd said he'd pulled the trigger… "Remember, Gillies had a gun that day, that he didn't know about the one I'd rigged-up under my sleeve…"

"Yes," Julia answered. She'd seen it. He had used it to get her to leave him William Jr., to lie down on the bed and let him hook up the bomb, or he would shoot the baby…

"I had that gun, Gillies' gun, in my hand. Gillies made me pick it up from where he had intentionally left it for me, on our coffee table. I had to take it, or he'd kill William Jr." William was rushing to tell it now, "I refused to fire it at him, in a sense choosing justice over saving my child. I was trying to find another way to save our beautiful child, without killing, without murdering. But then Gillies said it, said out loud exactly what I was planning to do. That had been my only chance – I had to be faster than Gillies, get across to knock the syringe out of his hand before he pushed it into our baby, and I just knew I would be stuck in that terrifying moment for the rest of my life, that moment before he pushed that heroin into our child, and he would have you, torment you, too, Julia, forever, ticking attached to that bomb, and so I chose. I shot. I killed, for it was not a rubber bullet in that gun…" He stopped. He breathed.

Julia's brain hurried, almost she said it, "Didn't you shoot him WITH the rubber bullet…"

William finished, "The chamber was empty, just a 'click,' and it seemed like the world ended with that unexpected, tiny 'click' because Gillies didn't die, and now he had the power, because he felt the juice of pleasure in torturing me, and he had the syringe, and you hooked up to a bomb, and I was powerless, at least that was what he had thought, and then I shot him, with the rubber bullet, so he didn't die, and still, now he's dead, justice done. But I know, Julia. I know, that to get out of that 'terror prison,' I would have killed. And, I imagine it might have been a bit like that for her… for Elizabeth, for Elizabeth, too."

"Wow," she felt the impact land heavy on her, felt how heavy it was on William's soul.

No words could cure it, it was a central, down-in-the-core, change in him. But she wanted him to know that she loved him, that she would always love him, and so she kissed at his cheek, and she told him she loved him. That she had never known a better man, she was certain none better existed anywhere in the world. And she was grateful to him, for getting THEM out of that 'terror prison,' and she figured he needed to thank God that he had been given a way, a chance, to do so, and to do so with justice, in the end.

Sleep came. The day that William rode the Tiger's back and survived, the day they saved each other from the Tiger, that momentous day, was through.

)) ((

Storyteller notes:

"The Lady, or the Tiger?" is a short story written by Frank R. Stockton in 1882. In the story, the king uses public trial by ordeal as an agent of poetic justice, with guilt or innocence decided by the result of chance. A person accused of a crime is brought into a public arena and must choose one of two doors. Behind one door is a Lady whom the king has deemed an appropriate match for the accused; behind the other is a fierce, hungry Tiger. If the accused chooses the door with the Lady behind it, he is innocent and must immediately marry her, but if he chooses the door with the Tiger behind it, he is deemed guilty and is immediately devoured by it. After the king learns that his daughter has a lover, a handsome and brave man who is of lower status than the princess, he has her lover imprisoned to await trial. The princess uses her influence to learn the positions of the Lady and the Tiger behind the two doors. When her lover looks to the princess for help, she discreetly indicates a door. The outcome is never revealed.

Many of our characters found themselves in front of these two doors, fate bringing them to a life-altering choice. It happened to Nicholas Mole the night he found his wife, Elizabeth, with her secret lover, Adam Restell. For Nicholas Mole, he could choose his Lady, love Elizabeth so much that he would let her go, or he could choose the wildness of the Tiger, he could kill, kill his rival, and in doing so, destroy his Lady. Nicholas Mole chose the Tiger. Then, the night he heard his Lady tell Malcolm Lamb that he had murdered Restell, he took a step further, choosing to kill again, again choosing the Tiger. Nicholas Mole attempted to kill his wife, was stopped from doing so by Malcom Lamb. In the end, that decision cost him his life, killed, not directly by the Tiger he had chosen, but instead, by the Lady.

)

Dr. Elizabeth Mole, too, faces pivotal decisions in this tale. She lost the Lady, although in her case, her Lady, her love, was a man, Adam Restell. He was not a choice she had. Her husband had never given her a chance to choose that door. But she had a chance at freedom, freedom becoming her Lady, after that. When confronted with the choice between her freedom or to save the Tiger, the innocent Tiger, who needed the antidote to survive, Elizabeth Mole chose the Tiger. She returned to the surgery to get the antidote, knowing she would be caught. Yes, most definitely, Elizabeth Mole chose the Tiger.

)

Malcolm Lamb is a major character in this tale. At first, it seemed he had chosen the Lady, he had escaped with Elizabeth, in doing so giving up his Tiger, the truth – Justice, by not turning himself in to Detective Murdoch. But now, now we see that was not the end of Malcom Lamb's tale. Fate had sent him another dilemma, consequential and huge. Lamb had to choose, once again. He could choose to stay, continue with his Lady, or return, return to risk being captured, but to do what was right, to correct the injustice his Lady had committed, locking Detective Murdoch's Lady in a cage to be killed by a Tiger. This time Malcolm Lamb chose his Tiger, he chose Justice over the Lady. He came back, back to help save Julia, and in the end to help Julia save her Love, Detective William Murdoch.

)

But, when you look more deeply at 'the Lady, or the Tiger' fable you discover that it is NOT the hero who has the dilemma laid out before him, but rather, it is another that holds his fate – it is the hero's lover who has the ultimate choice. It is SHE who faces the most essential dilemma, for she must decide which door to point him towards. And for William & Julia, Julia had faced this dilemma years before THIS story of 'the Lady, or the Tiger' had even happened. And thus, we already know her decision. She chose to tell her lover, the man she knew in her bones would always, always, be the love of her life, she chose to point William Henry Murdoch to the door with the OTHER Lady behind it, though it wholly shattered her heart to do so. She left him to go to Buffalo, telling him that maybe he would find another woman who would catch his eye. She made that profoundly difficult choice back then, Julia choosing the Lady for William, rather than the Tiger, the Tiger he would have faced if she had stayed, a life without having children. So, in William & Julia's story, we DO know what choice the hero's lover made. But…

One thing we also never know from 'the Lady, or the Tiger' fable is which door the hero actually chooses. True, his lover tells him which door to choose, but… could he not still choose the other? The hero could assume his lover did as Julia Ogden had done for William, point to the door with the OTHER Lady behind it, knowing that she loved him enough to give him up for herself to spare his life, to save her lover from the Tiger. But, in HIS loving HER so much, could he not still choose the other door instead? Is it not possible that the hero could choose the Tiger, in a sense choosing to risk death rather than to live a lie? And so, we know it was with William, back when his Lady left him. He chose NOT to go with another woman as Julia had guided him to do. He chose instead to live his life without a wife, alone, not having the children Julia gave him up for. He chose instead to live the truth. He chose the Tiger.

And like his real-life encounter with the Tiger today, William Murdoch found a way to face the man-eating, ferocious Tiger, and NOT to be devoured by it. Today, he did so by riding the Tiger's back long enough for chance to give him a way out. Back in the past, after he had lost his Lady, and Julia had left him, in a sense he rode that Tiger out too. William chose to live his life alone, and forever lonely, but fighting on to save the good in the world, seeking truth and justice, foregoing love. In this way William's path was substantially similar to that of Malcolm Lamb. He had chosen the Tiger, despite Julia having had pushed him the other way – to choose another Lady. He stuck it out riding his Tiger, fighting for his sense of what was right – Justice. William never took another love after Julia had left him, thus he never opened the door to the other Lady. He survived through it, survived through his loneliness, until fate gave him another chance, and his true Lady showed up one night in a red velvet dress, and he grabbed that chance. William Murdoch rode the back of the Tiger, and he survived it, and then, having survived it, he found that he could still, in the end, have his Lady.

One final truth to consider when reflecting on this story is that, for William Murdoch, the tale of the 'The Lady, or the Tiger' cannot be one of a dilemma, of a profound and important, life-shattering choice, because when it comes to Julia Ogden, William Murdoch never really has a choice, for him, it will always be the Lady if she is one of the choices. No, today our hero found another way, making this a story, not of 'EITHER – OR,' but of 'AND.' Today, at our story's end, William Murdoch chose BOTH the Lady AND the Tiger, choosing the Tiger today, in order TO CHOOSE the Lady, he chose the Tiger to save the Lady. He had no choice but to face the Tiger, not truly. And thus, for Detective William Henry Murdoch, there is a BETTER title for this tale than "The Lady, or the Tiger" – for our hero it is more accurately entitled, "FOR the Lady, the Tiger."

*** One more chapter to go (Chapter 24: In the Aftermath of the Tiger)

History and Science: true facts:

Ironic, but true – the real inventor of the Tranquilizer gun was Colin MURDOCH of New Zealand.

There really was a Riverdale Zoo, and it had all of the animals used in this story, even the hippo and the Tiger. The surgery performed on the pelican whose beak was bit off by a wolf is true. And, as awful as it is, a male elk really did gore its mate when being teased by teenage boys, with the female needing to be euthanized because of the extent of her injuries. And in 1905, a bull-buffalo cow really did protect its calf by charging at a group of workers. It is also true that, during the zoo's construction one of the zoo's hippos sat down on a wet cement floor, leaving behind a substantial divot. The building is one of the few structures that still remains at the Riverdale Zoo today.

There really was a winter-house built to protect the most vulnerable animals against the elements. And it was built by workers, most of whom really were inmates from the neighboring Don Jail, on the other side of Don River, the same Don River of fictitious Murdoch Body Farm.

In real-life, the veterinarian at the Riverdale Zoo really was named Dr. Mole. Further, the founder of the Riverdale Zoo really was "Alderman Lamb," the same last name as out fictitious retired detective, and convicted murderer and inmate at the Don Jail, Malcolm Lamb.

Curare was discovered and used as a paralyzing poison by South American indigenous people. The prey being hunted was shot by arrows or blowgun darts dipped in curare, leading to asphyxiation owing to the inability of the victim's respiratory muscles to contract. In 1780, Abbe Felix Fontana discovered that it acted on the voluntary muscles rather than the nerves and the heart, paralyzing the victim without immediately killing them. An 1887 catalogue, Burroughs Wellcome, listed tablets of curare at 1⁄12 grain (price 8 shillings) for use in preparing a solution for hypodermic injection. It is harmless if taken orally because curare compounds are too large to pass through the lining of the digestive tract to be absorbed into the blood. For this reason, people can eat curare-poisoned prey safely. In medicine, curare has been superseded by a number of curare-like agents, such as pancuronium, which have a similar pharmacodynamic profile, but fewer side effects.

Curare Antidote: Muscle paralysis can be reversed by administration of a cholinesterase inhibitor such as pyridostigmine, neostigmine and edrophonium.

Procaine was first synthesized in 1905. It was created by the German chemist Alfred Einhorn who gave the chemical the trade name Novocaine, from the Latin nov- (meaning "new") and -caine, a common ending for alkaloids used as anesthetics. It was introduced into medical use by surgeon Heinrich Braun.

UV photography does actually detect bruises unseen in the visible light spectrum. It is currently used commonly in forensics, often to document child and spousal abuse.

Finally, maggots can be used to determine location and time of death. They require a warm enough temperature to be present. They also consume the flesh of the body, and so ingest drugs the victim had in their systems. In this way, maggots can be used to discover what chemicals were administered to a victim.

*** Not Quite Yet, THE END