Dash and Dingo Read Online Free

stand near the door. He couldn’t wait to get out of his damp clothes and turn on the gas fire. The warm amber glow from the fireplace and the lamps made his flat feel cozy and snug compared to the grey drizzle outside.
    Ordinarily, Henry was a stickler for hanging up his clothes immediately when he took them off, particularly when they were damp, but tonight he let them crumple on the floor in his eagerness. He walked naked across his bedroom to the small wardrobe where he had amassed his travel gear; all the items he thought he would need for the projected journey to Australia.
    He had taken great pains to acquire the trousers, boots, and khaki shirt, all used and previously worn, not wanting to appear ludicrous in a crisp new outfit. The shirt had belonged to his older brother James IV, who had been on safari to Africa and couldn’t stop talking about it. The rest Henry had hunted out in second-hand shops and local bazaars. He’d even purchased a bush hat at the church jumble sale once, when his mother pressured him to help her bring her boxes down.
    It had felt like some sort of fantasy treasure hunt while he was putting all the items by, but the flutter of excitement in his stomach as he donned the clothing now made it seem as if his dream was going to become a thrilling reality at last—even if it only seemed so because Dingo had intervened on his behalf. He didn’t want to be beholden to the other man, but there was a part of him that was grateful nonetheless.
    He went into the lounge to peer at himself in the mirror that hung over the fireplace, turning up the collar on his shirt. Henry donned the hat and pulled it well down over his eyes, admiring how the brim was turned down on one side while it curled rakishly up on the other.
    “Dash,” he mused. The name sounded as foreign as Dingo’s and just as improbable.
    He pushed his glasses up his nose. The hat made them tend to slide down a bit.
    “Dash Percival-Smythe. Dash Smythe. Dash Smith.”
    As if he could hear Dingo’s boisterous laughter, Henry frowned at his reflection and took off the hat. “Damn. It’ll never work.”
    Deflated, he took off his expedition wardrobe and hurried into pajamas and his dressing gown. His feet were cold. He put his slippers on and went into the kitchen to make himself a nice cup of tea before sitting in front of the fire with his feet on the fender.
    Dash and Dingo: In Search of the Tasmanian Tiger | 15

    “Dash and Dingo,” he muttered. “No, he would insist on coming first; it’d have to be Dingo and Dash.”
    Next to the bluff, breezy colonial with his broad muscular shoulders and golden skin, Henry thought he looked pale, skinny, and bookish. And rather silly in his carefully chosen bush gear.
    “It’s still my expedition,” he growled, “no matter how charming he is.”
    Rather appalled at the trend of his own thoughts, Henry rinsed out the cup, turned off the fire and lamps, and retired to sink into a somewhat uneasy slumber, dreaming of Dingo and the Tasmanian Tiger, both showing all their copious, dazzling teeth as they laughed at him.

    “Strike the trip to the zoo, Dash. It isn’t going to happen,” Dingo said, his jaws moving as he munched his bacon.
    “But I’ve got to see a thylacine alive, haven’t I? If I’m going to be able to identify one in the wild,” Henry countered.
    “It’s not bloody likely that if you saw one you’d mistake it for, oh, say a sheep,” Dingo chuckled. “If we pay a visit to old Benjamin, the game would be up. Everyone who goes tiger hunting stops off there first; so it’s no go.”
    “Fine, perhaps you’ve a point.” Henry fumed. He wanted to see the last known thylacine, which had been given the rather incongruous name of Benjamin, before the term of its natural life came to an end. “We travel by tramp steamer. I figure it’ll take approximately twenty-eight days to get to Tasmania—”
    Dingo shook his head vehemently. “Nah, mate. We’ll hop a plane.