The Phantom in the Mirror Read Online Free Page A

to show that I didn’t even look towards the mirror. No sir, didn’t even think of looking at it. I had virtually forgotten Pete’s stupid story anyway, and I had other things on my mind, such as:
    A.
    B.
    C.
    D.
    Those were exactly the four items I had on my mind, and I’ll come back later and add the details, because, well, they’ve slipped my mind at the moment.
    But let the record show that I had four important things on my mind, not one of which in­volved checking out that mirror.
    Okay. I poked my head through the crack in the doors, ran a quick Nosatory Scan, and sent the info to Data Control. The report came back and showed traces of diesel fuel, livestock mineral blocks, ordinary barn dust, and mouse leavings.

    No major clues there, so I slipped through the doors and moved on silent paws across the cement floor. There, on that same cement floor, I came upon fresh evidence of cowboy activity: two welding leads, four stubs of welding rod, an empty pair of welding gloves, a welding hood, and several burn and splatter marks on the cement.
    Someone had been welding. That was simple enough, but how did I know that the welder had been a cowboy? Because he hadn’t put his equipment back where he’d found it. That was a dead giveaway. These cowboys around here are experts at getting out a bunch of tools and making a big mess, and then rushing off to something else.
    That’s a pretty poor way to run a ranch, if you ask me, but nobody ever does, so I’ll keep my opinions to myself.
    I picked my way through and around the de­bris, and continued my routine check of the machine shed. Everything appeared to be normal, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was too normal and too quiet, almost as though . . .
    At that moment I noticed a large mirror located near the north wall. I don’t know what drew me over there to the gloomy shadow region of the shed, but suddenly I was grabbed by a feeling: Somebody or something was lurking inside that mirror, and he was watching me!
    If you’ve been in security work as long as I have, you learn to pay attention to such unsplickable feelings. You don’t have to understand them or know where they come from. You just listen to them, knowing in your deepest heart and mind that they have nothing to do with anything Pete the Barncat might have said.
    So I zeroed in on the alleged mirror and began creeping toward it on ultrasilent paws: tail straight out, ears up in Max G (shorthand for “Maximum Gathering Mode”), and nose-radar working at top capacity.
    Closer and closer I moved, hardly daring to breathe. The mysterious feeling that someone or something was present in the shed grew stronger with every step. Cold chills began rolling down my spine and the pulse in my ears was pounding like a drum.
    Was I scared? Not really. I’ll admit to feeling a certain sense of excitement. Tension. Aloneness. Foreboding. The awful silence of the place seemed to be closing in on me, and, all right, I might have been just a bit scared, but not much.
    I had drawn to within six feet of the mysterious looking glass when suddenly I found myself staring into HIS eyes.
    I, uh, didn’t bark a challenge right away, but rather went to Full Reverse on all engines. After running backward for a moment or two and stumbling over the stupid welding leads, I regained my composure and issued a stern bark.
    At that point I faced a heavy decision. Should I return to the point of my deepest penetration into the machine shed and confront the Phantom Dog in the Looking Glass? Or should I leave the machine shed and go on about my business, confident that I had fulfilled the minimum requirements of a routine check?
    Your ordinary run-of-the-ranch mutts would have shut ’er down right there, or maybe gone to the house to bark an alarm. Me? I wasn’t quite ready to go public with this case until I had confronted the villain.
    I mean, that guy in the