Chapter I: Go Fishing (1)

The next morning was one of the most glorious that I remember in that whole summer. I rose early, throwing the windows wide open while I dressed to let in the full blaze of sunshine, and set myself, while the morning common-sense mood was still upon me, to go over carefully in my mind every detail of Lessing's story. Somewhere there must be a natural explanation; it was only the question of finding it. Among other things it occurred to me that someone, for reasons unknown, might be playing a series of practical jokes upon him, but it was difficult to credit a hoax of such malignant and serious intent, and even assuming for a moment that Lessing was the victim of any such plot, it did not explain those mysterious deaths which, I felt more and more convinced, were in some way connected with his own experiences.

It was at least certain that I was in for a fairly interesting vacation. I remembered with grim humour Lennox's assurance that I would find the practice a quiet one; opinions might well differ on that point. Even if Lennox came back at the time agreed upon, I had still another six weeks before me, and in six weeks a good deal might happen. It would be my own fault if I did not get some part of the mystery cleared up before then.

Everyone has his own private specific for clearing the mind. Mine was fishing. After breakfast I hunted out my tackle, asked Mrs. Searle to pack me a lunch, and set out resolutely, with the determination to remain in the open air until nightfall.

Part of the creek that lay behind the house I had already explored, and this morning I decided to work upstream, in the direction of the dam. The air was clear and fresh and the woods were alive with birds. Here and there the sumach and poison ivy were already beginning to turn colour, showing patches of tawny scarlet against the green of the undergrowth. Great painted butterflies flitted across my path, and once, as I sat quietly on a boulder in midstream, a kingfisher flashed near me in the broken sunlight.

The creek ran with a pleasant sound in its bed, now swirling between great boulders, now trickling over shallows of waving bronze-tinted weed, here and there forming deep pools, outside the stress of the current, where one might catch a glimpse of shadowy forms moving through the gold-brown sun-shot water.

I made desultory casts, taking more interest in the morning and in my surroundings than in the actual pursuit upon which I was engaged. Out here under the trees, with the music of the stream in one's ear, it was impossible to feel anything but sane and healthy.

The silence of these woods was intense. In pine woods there is always some stir of movement, however faint, but these trees, giant hickories and dense-foliaged oaks, grew so tall that sound seemed lost amid their branches. One had the impression of miles of far-reaching solitude. To break the spell I began to whistle as I moved upstream, pausing now and then to try some likely pool, picking my way over the big rocks that dotted the bed of the stream. The creek was fairly deep in places; a child, losing its footing, could be easily drowned in the strong current. It was an ideal stream for sport, but either the fish were wary this morning or I was giving but scant attention to my task, for by midday I had only one small half-pounder and a missing hook to my score. Mrs. Searle's luncheon packet bulged in my pocket, reminding me presently of hunger. I was reeling in, preparatory to settling down by some comfortable tree-trunk, when something rushed at me with a splash and a scurry. I was standing at the moment on a rounded boulder near midstream, and the impact threw me off my balance knee-deep into the water. I turned to see the Lessings' orange setter.

"Oh, you _bad_ dog!" a voice exclaimed from the bushes. "Whatever---- Oh, Doctor Haverill, I am so sorry!"

Mary Lessing stood on the bank, bareheaded, in a short golf-skirt and uprolled sleeves. The dog bounded back to her, and she dealt him a summary and ineffectual cuff on the ear.

"Don't do that!" I cried. "I was just thinking how cool it looked in here, anyway!"

I waded to the shore and joined her. "I can't shake hands, because I'm wet," I added. "How are you? I've been trying to fish, but the trout here are entirely too sophisticated!"

"You've frightened them for good now!" she laughed. "What a shame! Did you catch anything?"

"One wretched half-pounder. I put him back for luck."

"A poor luck!"

"I'm not so sure," I rejoined, smiling, and she stooped hastily down to address the setter, who sat regarding us with lolling tongue.

"When are you going to learn manners, you wretched animal? You haven't even the grace to apologize!"

The setter put up a muddied paw and scraped appealingly at her skirt. "You deserve to go without biscuit for a month," she continued. "Go away from me; don't shake yourself here!"

The command came too late, and we both dodged to avoid the jubilant shower of water drops. Mary Lessing shook her skirt and sat down.

"Do you often explore up this way?" she asked.

"No. It's the first time. I've no idea now how far I've come."

"You're about ten minutes from the dam," she said. "Our cottage is not very far off. I was just going back to lunch."

"And I was just going to have mine here." I clapped a sudden hand to my pocket; the paper parcel was still luckily intact. "Suppose we were to consider it a picnic? I don't know what Mrs. Searle has put up for me, but I have a recollection that she baked apple-cake yesterday. It's too entirely gorgeous a day to eat indoors."

"Oh, as for that----" she began.

"As for that, you must admit that lunch indoors doesn't tempt you in the very least."

"It doesn't," she said. "I came out here this morning because----"

She stopped rather abruptly. I was looking about me for a likely spot in the shade, and when I had found it, at the base of two towering hickories, I pulled Mrs. Searle's parcel out from my pocket. The setter watched my proceedings with a keen interest, intent on the chance of the moment.

"I'm convinced," she objected, "that you ought to go home and change your boots."

"It's impertinent," I reminded her, untying the pink grocery string from the parcel, "to give medical advice to a doctor. Do you like Uneeda biscuits? Because they seem to have occupied an important place in my housekeeper's mind this morning."

We sat down on the moss beneath the hickories, and I divided the single gigantic sandwich with my pocket-knife. Luckily Mrs. Searle had over-estimated my hunger. We ate healthily, with open-air appetites, and what was left over the setter finished at one watchful snap.

"When does Doctor Lennox come home?" Mary asked presently.

"He's due in another six weeks, unless he finds Europe too fascinating. Then I shall have to go back and grind, I suppose. It won't be an attractive prospect, after this holiday."

"You have a practice in New York?"

"Not yet. I've been _interne_ up to now. I expect it'll end in the East Side. A friend of mine has a settlement there, and I'd like to join him if I can. There's always plenty to do."

"I know," she nodded. "I've seen something of it. Do you know a man named Herrick, there?"

"Herrick!" I sat upright. "If you mean Jack Herrick, that's the friend I was speaking of. Then you----"

"Then _you_," she corrected, "are the college chum he was always talking about. Why, I've known Jack Herrick ever since I used to play dolls!"

"Three and a half years..." I said pensively. "The world's a small place."

"You are rude, Doctor Haverill. It's a long enough time, anyway."

She was looking at the branches overhead, and in her upturned face I caught fleetingly a likeness that had puzzled me more than once before. I knew now. On Herrick's mantelshelf, in his shabby comfortable room at the settlement, there had stood always a photograph in a silver frame. It was the portrait of a child of perhaps thirteen, in a gingham overall, and with her hair braided in two short tails down her back. Herrick had said once: "That's an old sweetheart of mine."

Singularly enough, the recollection did not at this moment greatly please me. But I merely said:

"You wore your hair in two pig-tails."

She brought her eyes to earth swiftly. "Who told you?"

"All proper little girls do at that age," I reminded her shamelessly.

"I see. But we were talking of John Herrick."

"Go on."

"Don't you think he's splendid?" she continued, turning to me. "He's done no end of good. And he works ... I don't believe he ever takes a real holiday. Doctor Haverill, you ought to get him----"

"To come down here for a while? I will--if it would please you."

She looked at me so frankly that I was at once ashamed.

"Why, of course it would! But I don't know why I said that. I don't suppose he'd take the time."

I watched a dragon-fly that was wheeling over the stream.. She sat near me, her hands locked about her knees.

"My brother was at your house last night," she said after a moment.

"Yes."

I could feel her eyes fixed on me, and I knew what was in her mind.

"He told you something?"

"We were talking about chemistry," I said. "It's a subject your brother is very interested in."

"Chemistry!" She put out her hand with a little gesture. "Doctor Haverill, do you take me for a child? What is the matter? You can tell me; he has spoken to you. I want to know."

"What do you want to know?" I said, lamely enough.

"The whole thing--what is happening here. I know something threatens him, that he is in danger, and neither he nor you will tell me what it is."

"How can I tell you," I fenced, "what I don't even know myself?"

She was quick. "Then there is something?"

I ignored the unfinished sentence.

"Miss Lessing, why can't you get your brother to go away from here, for a time?"

"I can't. I've tried. He wouldn't leave, now. You don't know him. He's the last person in the world to give a thing up until he's proved it down to the ground, one way or another. Whatever's at the bottom of this, he won't rest till he's found it out. It's just a scientific problem to him, and nothing else."

"And you?" I said.

"I?" She moved her shoulders. "What can I think? I had hoped just now--But I only know what he has told me, what I have seen. If one began to think----"

"Listen to me," I said. "You must not think! You and I are two sane people. Look at these wood around! I ask you, is it possible to feel anything but sane and incredulous in a place like this? I want you to get into your head, right now, that there is nothing--nothing at all in this world--that a man has any reason to be afraid of. And there are very few things in the world, to my belief, that cannot be explained. Has it ever occurred to you that this whole conviction of your brother's may be nothing more than hallucination?"

"But the injuries----"

"I have known hysteric patients, before now, inflict as severe injuries upon themselves without consciousness or recollection. I don't say it is your brother's case; I'm only trying to form a possible rational explanation such as any doctor would put forward. I have had one or two such cases within my own experience. What I propose to do is this, but I shall do it only with your consent. I will write to Herrick and ask him down here for a fortnight. It will be a new brain to bear on the problem, and I shall ask your brother to let us join these investigations with him."

"You'll do that." She put out her hand to me impulsively.

"I'll do it to-night. Only ... I shall have to give Herrick a detailed account of everything that has happened, so far as we know it, and I can't do that without your brother's approval."

"Yes ... I see."

"You will excuse one question. Are they on good terms?"

It struck me that I had never heard Lessing mention his name.

"Yes." She paused doubtfully. "It's funny you should ask that. They had a disagreement, about two years ago. It was when my brother first took up this ... this kind of study. Having séances and that. Doctor Herrick wanted him to give it up."

I moved involuntarily. Here was a new light on Lessing's attitude of mind, which he himself had been at pains, it seemed to me, to touch on very lightly. I remembered stray references of his, the signed article I had noticed on my first evening at the house.

"Your brother used to attend séances often?"

"Didn't he tell you? I don't know that I would have mentioned it, but I don't see that it matters. It was before I came to live with them. He and some friends of his were very interested, and Doctor Herrick used to join them too sometimes. They met at a friend's studio. Doctor Herrick was rather against it from the first, but I know he used to be there. Of course I understand very little about it, but ... things did happen. I don't mean that they banged on tambourines or rapped out the alphabet or anything like that. It wasn't spiritualism. And then Doctor Herrick stopped. I think he knew more than any of them, but he said it was dangerous and it didn't lead to anything, and he wanted my brother to give it up altogether. Kate--that's my sister-in-law, you know--was their medium, and I think it was on her account. Doctor Herrick thought it was bad for her. And then one night something happened, I don't know just what, but Kate got some sort of a shock. She's very highly strung at any time, and I always supposed something frightened her, but anyway she was quite ill for a long time after that. She used to get queer sort of nervous spells, and she couldn't be left alone, and that was why I first came to live with them, on her account. Of course my brother gave the whole business up then. The physician who attended her said simply that she was in poor health, and had had a nervous breakdown, and he told her she must live in the country awhile till she got stronger, but I know Doctor Herrick thought at the time that the séances had been the cause of it. He told my brother so."

I listened attentively. It was news to me that Herrick, the essential level-headed, should have lent himself at any time to experiments of this order. He had never mentioned the subject to me in our many talks, and I had even gathered, as one gathers an impression without any very definite grounds, that he was a confirmed sceptic on all matters of occultism.

"You say they had a disagreement?"

"It was exactly that," she made haste to say, "They didn't quarrel, but I know Herrick was very much opposed to Dick's views, and they used to have arguments. But it didn't amount to more than that."

"Good!"

She had risen to her feet, and at her movement the setter himself lazily rose and came towards us.

"Then we're going to see this thing out?" I said.

"We'll see it out."

We shook hands, and I fancied that her fingers rested in mine a moment voluntarily before she drew them away.

"Are you coming up to see my brother today?" she asked.

"Presently ... I'd like to." I looked at my watch. "I thought of taking a stroll up to the dam, as I'm so close; I've never been there. You say it's only a few minutes?"

"Not more than ten, through the woods."

"Let's walk up together," I suggested, "if you aren't too tired."

She assented readily, and we struck off up a little footpath, barely traceable, that followed the course of the stream. It was, as she had said, a scant ten minutes before the sound of the sluice broke on our ears, and through a sudden clearing of the woods the dam lay before us, a black sinister sheet of water, covered with masses of floating weed and pond-lilies, and darkened by the trees and underbrush that grew closely down to its edge. An old scow, long past use and sunken low in the water, lay pad-locked to a slimy stump near the shore.

Following an old cart-track, we skirted the edge of the dam in the direction of the saw-mill, a dilapidated building with broken roof, that seemed to have stood for many years of disuse. To reach it we had to cross the sluice itself, and Mary Lessing, who was a few paces ahead of me, paused to look down over the single rough handrail that protected one from a misstep.

There is something forbidding about a mill-sluice at any time, especially when dissociated, as this was, from the companionable sound of human labour. The sheer depth, the knowledge of the vast imprisoned force behind one, the sound of water gushing here and there between the slimy weed-grown timbers, give always, to me at least, an indefinable sense of the sinister.

I leaned my rod against the railing, and we looked down side by side at the black oozing wall below.

"I like this place," Mary Lessing said. "There's something queer and creepy about it. I often come here. I suppose they haven't worked the sluice for years."

"I doubt if the machinery would move now," I said. "Of course this is never opened. There should be a smaller sluice for the millstream further on."

I glanced as I spoke at the clumsy wooden levers near me that controlled the sluice. They looked to be rotting in their place, but as I pushed one, idly, a sudden change in the sound of escaping water below warned me that the machinery was not in such ill repair as it would seem. I exerted my strength to pull the lever back, and my attention was momentarily distracted from the girl beside me. She was leaning out over the hand-rail, and when I turned it was with a sudden cry of warning.

"Look out!" I said. "That may not be safe!"

I caught her arm instinctively as I spoke, and on the instant the rail bent outward with a slight sound of cracking. In another moment she would have been over the edge. We looked at one another, and Mary laughed, a little nervously on the stillness. Her face had flushed.

"I thought that rail was all right," she said rather awkwardly.

"Dick walked over here with me not a week ago, and we tested it then to see."

"It isn't all right now," I returned sharply.

I put my two hands on the rail, giving it a slight wrench outward. It gave easily to my touch, and looking closer, I saw that the surface towards the water had been half cut through. Someone had tampered with it deliberately and within the last few days.

"What is it?" Mary Lessing asked.

"Merely rotten, as I thought!"

I turned away, and walked thoughtfully on towards the saw-mill. The thing puzzled me, but it had an ugly look. It was no idle mischief that had prompted the act. Whoever had done it, had done it maliciously, and the purpose was not very far to seek. Hitherto I had not attached much importance to the Lessings' occasional laughing references to their unpopularity in the village. Now it assumed suddenly a significance.

I turned to Mary Lessing, walking beside me.

"I want you to promise me something," I said, "whether it seems to you irrelevant or not. I want you not to come here again by yourself, at any time. It's a lonely place and it isn't particularly safe. If you come at all, bring your brother with you."

The smile that was on her lips at first faded abruptly, leaving her face serious.

"The rail was cut," she said quietly. "Is that what you mean? It must have been, because it was perfectly solid a few days ago."

"Someone has been up to mischief. If there are characters of that kind in the neighbourhood, it's best to run no risks, that's all."

We walked on a few paces, silently. The mill was on our right, a desolate-looking building enough, with its surrounding litter of sodden chips and piles of cut logs lying here and there In the open. A heavy smell of decaying wood was in the air, added to the stagnant odour of the dam itself.

The setter was in front of us, sniffing to and fro on the trail of the rats that infested the wood piles. Suddenly he stood still, his ears laid back, growling ominously. A short, thick-set figure slipped from the angle of the mill wall and vanished in the woods on the farther side of the cart-track.

"Aaron Menning," Miss Lessing said. She put her hand and called the dog back. I was staring up the track where the chicken-huckster had so adroitly disappeared.

"Does he live near here?"

"Not very far off. I suppose he comes here to fish. There are a good many in the dam."

"Very probable," I said.

"I dislike that man," Mary said after a moment. "I guess it's mutual, too. The other one, Jake, you know, had a quarrel with my brother one time. He was always loitering round the house, and Dick turned him away. Aaron's always very civil when we meet, but I don't believe he likes us any more than Jakey did."

We took a turning past the mill that led us, without further event, to the Lessings' bungalow. Within sight of the house I parted from her. I wanted to see Lessing again, but there were a few points that needed readjustment in my own mind first. As I walked slowly home down the familiar slope of Dutchman's Hill I was thinking that the industrious and chapel-going Aaron might very well bear a little watching.

IX

PROBLEMS

I wrote to Herrick that same evening and his answer came a couple of days later, saying that he hoped to get away towards the end of the month. I had said nothing in my letter about the events of the summer, but merely mentioned that the Lessings were my neighbours for the time being.

Herrick wrote: "I shall be glad to meet Lessing again. He seems to have buried himself in obscurity for the last twelve months. Is he still as enthusiastic a theorist as ever, or has the country sobered his ideas? In any case you are to be congratulated on having for neighbours three of the most charming people it has ever been my luck to meet."

I smiled at the "three." In my own mind I could have substituted another numeral which would explain much of Herrick's promptitude in accepting my invitation. He was very much mistaken if he thought that any such artless device would put me off the track. In imagination I already saw myself playing the rôle of a reluctant gooseberry during his visit.

Lessing, when I mentioned my expected guest, made a comment almost identical with Herrick's own.

"Herrick?" he said. "Good! We shall have some arguments, Haverill, that will eclipse even your own. If Herrick gets to the bottom of this by any of his cut-and-dried theories and deductions I'll give him best once and for all!"

One thing at least pleased me. I gathered from both their remarks that whatever difference had occurred between them had been purely a battle of opinion, and had no influence on their fundamental regard for one another. Meantime my meeting with Mary Lessing, and the subsequent incident of the broken hand-rail, had settled my mind on one point at least. There was some malicious influence at work in the neighborhood which was distinctly and obviously human, whether it bore any relation to the laboratory experiences or not, and at any cost, even if necessary in the face of Lessing's opposition, she must be kept clear of it.

Three-fourths of the neighbouring population were Pennsylvania Dutch, and I had learned enough, in my own infrequent dealings with them, to recognize their sullen aloofness, amounting almost to a hostility, towards any stranger settled in their midst. The Lessings were for some reason disliked in the village, and I fancied that much of the distrust towards them was due to their having chosen for their dwelling a spot which already had a sufficiently bad reputation in the eyes of the country people about. Lessing was by no means the sort of man to make himself popular here, or even friendly. He was more or less of a recluse; he had erected a mysterious building in which, engaged upon equally mysterious pursuits, he chose to isolate himself until all hours of the night, and he displayed an open indifference towards all the current gossip and superstition of the neighbourhood. Following the primitive psychology of these people, narrow-minded to a degree and distrustful of anything unfamiliar, his habits alone were sufficient to brand him as an ungodly character. According to his sister, he had already fallen foul of Jake Menning soon after his arrival, and I had no doubt whatever that Aaron, out of revenge, had since done his best to foster the already antagonistic feeling towards him. The huckster's trade lends itself to all the back-door gossip of the countryside, and it seemed to me that I could trace easily enough the fruit of Aaron's house-to-house visits. Aaron himself was civil-spoken, industrious, religious to all accounts, and a highly respected member of the community; but all this did not weigh very far against the man's face. Whatever ill blood ran in the Menning family, it was certainly not confined to the deceased Jakey.

I mentioned my suspicions to Lessing a day or two later, when I was at the bungalow.

"Oh, the man's right enough," he returned. "I don't like his kind, that's all. I had a row with Jakey because I didn't want him hanging round the place and I told him so. Aaron has never annoyed us in any way; on the contrary, he takes pains to be particularly civil. I think he's like all the rest around, glad enough to keep clear of Dutchman's Hill and all its inhabitants, dead or living!"

Mary Lessing had asked me, on our homeward walk, not to mention the cut railing to her brother, and I had not done so. It was sufficient for the moment that she had agreed to keep away from the mill-dam and its immediate neighbourhood. She was a sensible girl and I had no fear that she would break her promise out of any spirit of bravado or curiosity.

We were in the sitting-room. Mary had gone down to the village on an errand, and Mrs. Lessing was as usual invisible. For the time being we were free from interruption, and it struck me as a good moment to tell Lessing what I had heard from the reporter concerning the two mysterious cycling 'fatalities.

He took it even more seriously than I had expected. It was even with scant patience that he heard me out.

"But good heavens, man," he cried, "why didn't you tell me all this sooner? Don't you see that it's what I've been expecting, what I've been watching the papers for month after month? It puts my experience clear of all doubt. I have felt certain--as certain as I am standing here--that sooner or later some accident of this sort would turn up."

"It was a good fifteen miles from here," I said. "Besides----"

"What's fifteen miles? I don't care if it was fifty! Have you got the cutting with you?"

I had. I had torn off the corner with the paragraph, unobserved of my reporter friend, and I took the fragment now from my pocketbook and gave it to Lessing. He read it through eagerly.

"The facts correspond. The man was killed in the open; he had no chance of shelter. The thing hit him as he was riding."

"It's not proved."

"There's the damage to the bicycle."

"There's exactly that," I said, "which to my mind puts a different light on the whole thing. If the impact of the blow was sufficient to damage the bicycle to that extent, how was it that the rider escaped all injury except a single scratch on the face? It's out of all reason. There were no marks on the body. That is testified to. If a man is knocked off his bicycle while riding at even an average speed, he'll have some marks to show for it. He died from heart failure, probably resultant upon fright and the shock of the wound. Very good. But that doesn't account for the bicycle. It seems to me that whatever attacked him wreaked its spite on the machine afterwards."

"He had time to dismount?"

"Possibly. It doesn't say how near to the bicycle he was lying. If he fell at all he must have fallen clear of it. The lamp was picked up several yards away."

"The lamp..." said Lessing.

The same thought was in both our minds.

"What date did this happen?" he asked.

"It was a week-old paper. I was there ... wait a moment." I made a rough calculation in my mind. "This happened, apparently, on the Thursday previous. That should bring it to about the third of the month."

"The third was a Thursday," said Lessing. He pulled out an almanac from the bookshelves and ran the pages over. I saw him frown.

"There was a full moon on that evening. It is just possible he was riding without a light at all. If so, that throws my whole theory out."

"The whole thing," said I, "looks to me like the work of a maniac. Take the lamp. It was picked up some yards away. Now a bicycle lantern isn't merely hung on; it's screwed on, and you can't imagine any sort of blow struck from above that would dislodge it and throw it that distance. It must have been either unscrewed or torn off, deliberately, and that in itself suggests human agency."

Lessing barely heard me. He was staring at the scrap of paper spread out on his knee.

"The first man, according to your reporter was killed actually in the woods. The second was picked up some twenty feet from the edge of the woods, on the open road. That's important. It was a clear night. Why should he be attacked in the open when there were woods within half a dozen yards that would have given ample ambush?" Unconsciously he was repeating the reporter's argument. "That doesn't look like the work of a human being. Besides, the man wasn't robbed. I tell you, Haverill, there's something that doesn't satisfy me in all this. Either they made some extraordinary mistake, or ... but he was riding _towards_ the woods!"

"Apparently."

"On what evidence?"

"I suppose the position of the bicycle," I said lamely.

"There had been no rain for some days. The roads are hard about here, and a bicycle wouldn't be likely to leave tracks, especially on the edge of the path. You're a doctor, Haverill. Suppose a man died from heart failure, would he necessarily die at the instant of the shock?"

"Only in romances. Actually, there would be several seconds' interval at least."

"He might run, say, twenty feet and then drop?"

"Quite possibly. But I don't see how that helps."

"It means just this," said Lessing, "that according to my idea the man was not riding towards the woods at all. He was attacked actually in the woods or at the edge of them, and he ran the twenty feet to where his body was found. Listen. The moon did not rise that evening until 10.30. Anyone riding through the woods the earlier part of the evening would have used a lamp. He was a stranger in the district and was identified only by papers. No one in Coopersville knew him or had apparently ever seen him before. Coopersville is not a large place, and a case like this makes sufficient talk. If he had passed through there during the evening someone would have seen him, and it would have been mentioned at the inquest. The chances are that he had come from a distance, and that he was riding _towards_ Coopersville with the idea of putting up there for the night. Assuming that, and that he was carrying a lamp at the time, we have our facts fairly clear. He was attacked just within cover of the woods, that is to say, where the light would be more clearly noticeable than on an open stretch of moonlit road. The overhanging trees would break the attack more or less, which accounts for the comparative slightness of his own injury. The primary object of attack being the lamp, the rider would have the chance of escape, whereas if he had been struck actually in the open, at full force, he would have been probably killed on the spot."

The whole theory was fairly ingenious, but it didn't account for the wrecking of the bicycle, for its being found where it was, some distance clear of the woods and near the man's own body. I told Lessing so. He looked at me queerly.

"Have you ever seen a dog worry a stick?" he asked.

"We aren't dealing with dogs."

"Whatever wrecked the bicycle could have dragged it that distance."

"If your theory has anything in it the bicycle was carried. If it had been dragged they would have found traces. Don't tell me that any animal capable of such insensate fury as you suggest would have had the intelligence to conceal its tracks!"

We were both getting rather heated over the argument. It seemed to me that Lessing was bent obstinately on maintaining his own views, to the point of extravagance. For my part, I was equally positive that the affair was due to some human agency. Neither of us, therefore, was aware of a shadow in the doorway until Mary Lessing's pleasant mocking voice broke in upon our discussion.

"What on earth," she said, "are you two people scrapping about so vehemently?"

"We weren't scrapping," I smiled. "We were discussing a problem--you might call it a scientific riddle. It concerns the law which governs the movement of bodies through space."

Mary turned on me her invariable reproachful glance when she suspected that anyone was making fun of her. She sat down, pulling the pins from her hat, and let the sunlight strike on her roughened bronze-coloured hair.

"Is it anything," she inquired, "with which my inferior feminine mind might be capable of grappling?"

"Certainly," I returned promptly. "We will illustrate it with the simple objects now before us. How would it be possible, for instance, for that extremely solid book-case to be moved, say, to the other end of the room, without being dragged or carried?"

Mary affected to consider, her head on one side.

"Simple enough," she said, laughing. "It would have to fly through the air, that's all."

There was a moment's silence in the room, while I looked at Lessing and he looked at me.

"Suppose we have some tea?" he said then.

X

THE CHICKEN-HUCKSTER'S HOUSE

It was the last week-end in August that Herrick arrived. For nearly two days before it had rained steadily, and I had spent the time indoors, discounting old scores in the shape of letters, and enlivened only by a visit from Lessing, who walked over in oilskins on the Thursday afternoon to spend a couple of hours smoking on a sheltered corner of the front porch. The weather lifted on Friday night, and by Saturday morning the roads were passable. As I did not expect Herrick before the 5.40 train I took my bicycle out after lunch and went for a spin to stretch my limbs.

I set out by way of the village, posting my letters on the way, and intending to make a circuit that would bring me home from the opposite direction. I managed, however, to lose my bearings, and after some fruitless bungling stopped at a farmhouse to ask my way. The farmer seemed rather less taciturn than most of the folk about, and readily pointed me out a short cut which, according to him, would bring me out at the cross roads just above the dam.

The road, which lay for the first few miles through cultivated land, entered eventually upon a stretch of sparsely wooded country, desolate and inhospitable enough. Stunted spruce trees, powdered with blue berries, clung tenaciously to the barren ground, and everywhere the grey monotonous boulders cropped out, scattered as though in the idle finish to some giant's play. Their uncouth rounded outlines suggested from a distance a field dotted with grey misshapen sheep, for ever movelessly browsing. The road was bad; a horse would have had difficulty in picking his way, and I cursed the well-meaning farmer roundly as I dismounted to push my heavy machine.

A little distance on, however, things became better. I reached the beginning of a wood, gaunt ragged hickories interspersed with tangles of wild grape-vine, and matted creepers, and a few hundred yards beyond a broken snake-fence suggested the whereabouts of a house.

I came upon it at the turn of the road, a square, red-painted frame house and barn, surrounded by a medley of small sheds and outhouses in every degree of dilapidation. There was no gate, merely a couple of bars let down in the fencing, and I left the bicycle a moment and went inside.

The yard upon which I entered was a litter of old junk of every description, ancient packing-cases, broken barrels, scrap-iron, and bones flung into piles. The wagon-ruts leading up to the house were sunken deep in filth, and an indescribable odour filled the air, in which the smell of badly kept fowls predominated. They ran everywhere, a ragged nondescript crew, scratching, cackling, gazing at me from evil yellow-rimmed eyes. Many more were confined in the coops, mere oblong boxes of lath from which protruded gaunt heads and outstretched necks, whose mournful protest mingled with the clamour of their untrammelled brethren. So far as I could see, every shed held its prisoners, all in the same state of filth and neglect, a sore to the eyes and offence to the nostrils. There was that in the look and smell of the place that stuck in my throat, used as I was to poverty in both town and country. There seemed no one about, and after a moment's hesitation I retraced my steps across the black mire of the yard and regained the roadway.

On the opposite side of the way a little ragged girl of about thirteen watched my retreat with keen eyes. She had been in the woods gathering the small uneatable nuts that children call pig-hickories; her apron was filled with the green unripe hulls. She grinned, backing a little at my approach.

"Hello, sis," I said. "Who lives in that house there?"

"'S Mister Menning's."

"Ah!" I took another backward glance at the ill-kept yard, with its indescribable litter. As I did so a low moan, almost human in its misery, came from the barn behind the jumbled sheds. It was repeated, long-drawn and mournful, the protest of a dumb thing exhausted by suffering. I turned to the child sharply.

"What's the matter there?"

"It's the cow." She shuffled her bare toes in the dust, looking with a fascinated curiosity towards the place whence the sound came. "She hollers awful sometimes."

"Is it ill?"

"Mennin beats her." She said with the curious indifference of the country-bred child towards animal suffering. "He's allus beatin' her. Gran'pap's spoke to him, onct. He says she don't make no profit an' Gran'pa says she can't make no profit if he's allus beatin' her."

I remembered her face suddenly.

"Aren't you Mrs. Nevill's little girl, from the Bend?"

"Yep. Gran'pa's house is jest back there." She jerked her head up the road.

"How's your mother? I'll step in and see her, as I'm here."

"Mother's up. She's been washin'."

She began to retreat up the road, with the sudden movement of a half-wild thing, and I followed her, glad enough to turn my back on the chicken-huckster's dwelling. The moaning of the cow was in my ears again as I walked on.

I knew the Nevills' cottage, and my road from there lay straight enough. I had never approached the Bend before from this side, and so the lie of the land was unfamiliar to me. The Nevills were one of the few Irish families about. The household consisted of a rheumatic old grandfather, his daughter, whom I had attended a short while ago, and her husband, a steady young fellow who worked at a harness factory in the village.

Paddy was an old sinner if there ever lived one, but now, along in the green seventies, he confined himself to the cultivation of religion and the smoking of a particularly vile corncob pipe. He had been employed most of his life on the railway, and his rheumatism was the result of six weeks' work in a flooded cutting. Providence had released him some two years ago from a vituperative wife, whose latter years had been soured by the burden of an invalid husband; I gathered from the old man's talk that she had to her last day regarded his rheumatism as a form of criminal idleness, and since her death Paddy had taken a fresh lease of life.

I found him on his usual corner of the cottage porch, his square old head with its bristly jaws--Paddy still shaved once a week--framed by the window-ledge and its row of flowering plants in tin cans. His daughter was inside, getting supper, and the new baby lay in a ramshackle baby-coach near Paddy's elbow. He was rocking the coach with one toe on the wheel while he smoked, the smell of his unspeakable tobacco mingling with that of the frying onions in the kitchen, through the open door.

I always felt like holding my breath when I approached the Nevill cottage. The stuffiness was of that permanent, impenetrable sort which seems to encompass the house solidly for a radius of five yards at least.

I sat down on the porch step and asked after Paddy's rheumatism. He looked down at his feet, shapeless in list slippers, like fearsome parcels.

"I ain't long fur this world, doctor, and that's truth I'm tellin' yer. Don't I know it? We ain't a long-lived fam'ly. Me father died at seventy-eight an' me brother at eighty, an' I'm thinkin' I won't be long after thim." He raised his voice suddenly to a shout, without turning, "Mary, git a cheer out fur th' doctor!"

I refused the chair hastily; the porch step at least bordered on fresh air.

"I've just come round by Aaron Menning's place," I said. "I met the little girl there."

Paddy's face darkened.

"Ain't I allus tellin' the young limb I won't hev her hangin' round the likes of thim dirrty Dutchmen! It's her mother'll be after takin' the strap to her fur that. The place ain't fit fur a dog these days. Did ye take heed to the cow there?"

I nodded.

"The poor baste do be after cryin' day an' night, like a Christian. I've told him again an' again, but he's a bad man is Aaron. He's took after his brother, an' that's sayin' ill enough of anyone. Ye wouldn't mind Jake Mennin', doctor?"

"No. It was before I came here."

"Sure I've lived neighbors to thim fifteen years, an' I've seen things to turn your stomach on yer. He had a bad streak in him, Jake, an' it was the devil took him in the end. They had a little girl there workin', the year before Jake died.... That's why I tell Lizzie I'll break her neck before I see her hangin' round there. The ould mother's a decent woman, or used to be. God knows the poor soul's had enough to turn her crazy."

"There is a mother, then?"

"Sure, but ye don't see her nowadays. 'Tis Aaron keeps her to the house, most like. I used to be civil spoke to Aaron a while back, but sence Jake died there ain't no good to him at all. Would any Christian man treat a dumb baste the way he does? An' he treats his ould mother the same, if all's known."

He pulled on his pipe.

"Two weeks ago, it would be, as we saw her last. Yes, I mind now it was the day I was thinkin' of puttin' the new winder-pane in. She come over to borry a half-cup o' sugar, an' I says to Mary to let her have it, the poor soul. She had her hand all wrapped up to here"--he measured a space on his gaunt grimy wrist--"an' she says to Mary as she'd scalded it in the kitchen. Aaron was away with the wagon, or she wouldn't 'a' come then."

"I suppose Aaron does a good business," I said casually.

"By the talk he does. I do be thinkin' he does most of it in the next county, fur I don't see him drivin' the village way more'n onct in a week or so. He'll be gone three days on a stretch wid the wagon, an' Lizzie's seen him come home mornin's wid the poor baste in a lather. Lizzie says he has hundreds o' chickens there, an' he can't be after sellin' thim all. They die on him all the time, fur she's seen him pull 'em out o' the coops and throw 'em to the pigs."

I asked after his son and rose to go, after turning the half of my tobacco pouch into Paddy's old tin box. It was getting on toward five o'clock, and I would have just time to clean up, get the mare put in, and drive to the depot for the afternoon train.

XI

JAKEY WALKS

It did me good to see Herrick's cheery face on the platform, and to feel the hand-grip he gave me. Our friendship dated back to college days, and unlike so many of those early intimacies, it had strengthened instead of decreased with the passage of time. Then, as now, Herrick had been the same curious mixture of enthusiast and practical hard-headed worker, and in spite of the inevitable schooling of experience and years of exacting and often discouraging labour, he had carried into the early forties a certain boyish confidence, a freshness of outlook, which gave to one instinctively, on meeting him, the impression of indomitable health and vitality.

When we had tucked his valise into the back of the buggy and turned the mare about, he looked at me with a laugh.

"Well, Haverill, you look quite the country practitioner already! Seven weeks' change--ye gods! But you haven't grown a beard yet!"

"I'm keeping the beard for my leisure moments," I told him. "So far they haven't been many."

"Don't tell me this place is in the throes of an epidemic! It looks like one of those ideal Sleepy Hollows where you get about one call for whooping-cough every six months. I came here for repose, you know."

"Oh, you'll get it," I assured him. "You'll get the kind of repose that keeps you awake nights wondering where it's going to hit you next. They don't want a doctor down here; they want a new lunacy commission officer, and the first suspect will be me. Oh, I'm going to make you work, Jack! Have no idle dreams on the subject."

"Work! You look as if you'd forgotten the meaning of the word! If ever a man had the luck to stumble on a good excuse for a holiday it's you. This air, this sky, these woods to fish and loaf in---- Hello, what's up? The whooping-cough I spoke of, or have you arranged a little semblance of business for my benefit! That good lady seems about to welcome us with open arms."

A woman was hurrying down the road toward us, from the direction of my house. She had a gingham sunbonnet on which flapped at each step as she walked, and on catching sight of the buggy with the familiar roan mare in the shafts she waved her hand in unmistakable signal. I pulled Bess up, and by the time the woman came pantingly abreast of us I recognized her for Mrs. Sliefer, who lived in the first farm-house beyond the Bend, past the cross roads.

"I been to your house, doctor," she began, "an' Mis' Searle told me you weren't to hum, so I come right on. My niece is took bad an' she's been queer sence the mornin', and I'd like you to come straight back with me an' see her."

She spoke with an air somewhat of indignation, born of her toilsome walk. Mrs. Sliefer was a stout lady, to put it at the mildest, and the heat and exercise had obviously tried her. I leaned from the buggy.

"Get right up, Mrs. Sliefer! There's plenty of room, and you can tell me as we drive."

She hoisted herself laboriously into the buggy, with our combined help, and collapsed, rather than sat down, between us. Luckily the seat was a broad one. As it was, her generous proportions all but crushed us.

I kept the mare at a walk while Mrs. Sliefer told her errand. Briefly, as I gathered from her rather spasmodic utterance, the facts were these.

Her niece, Rebecca Durn, who lived with Mr. and Mrs. Sliefer at the farm, was keeping company with the young man from Haskell's grocery store. The young couple were in the habit of meeting of an evening, after Rebecca had washed her supper dishes, in the woods near the sawmill, some fifteen minutes from the farm-house and in the line of the short cut which the young man used to walk up from the village. They usually took a short stroll about the dam before returning to the farm, to finish the evening in the older folks' company on the home porch. Yesterday, as I have said, was rainy, and Rebecca had expected her sweetheart at the house. As he did not arrive, however, and the weather had lifted since five o'clock, Rebecca, thinking he might possibly have gone to the usual trysting-place, put on a shawl and her rubber shoes and went out to find him. He was not to seen, and she loitered a few moments in the neighborhood of the dam before returning home. It was then just getting dusk. According to her account, she was strolling near the saw-mill when the ghost of Jakey Menning, surrounded by light and with flames coming from his mouth, sprang out from the bushes and yelled at her. Rebecca, struck of a heap, as she expressed it, had still the sense to turn and run, and being a sturdy young woman she speedily outdistanced the alleged ghost and gained the shelter of her own home. Once on the porch, however, she collapsed in hysterics, and it was not until she came to, a good half-hour after, that her aunt and uncle could learn what had happened. Rebecca's sweetheart had meantime arrived, and being a strong-minded young man had at once induced Mr. Sliefer to set out with him, armed with a stout cudgel and the farmer's shotgun, to investigate. They patrolled the neighborhood of the saw-mill thoroughly, but needless to say nothing was found.

Rebecca recovered, but this morning, on the matter being mentioned at breakfast, had promptly gone off again into hysterics, a state which had lasted all day, off and on, and which her aunt had been unable to check. The hysteria had brought on sickness, and the girl, so Mrs. Sliefer told me, was now in bed in a state of utter collapse.

I told Herrick I would drop him at the house.

"On the contrary," he returned, "I'll come along, with Mrs. Sliefer's permission."

We drove on accordingly, the three of us, covering the distance past Dutchman's Hill and the Lessing's bungalow at a smart trot. A few minutes beyond the saw-mill, along the road Mary Lessing and I had taken some mornings ago, the Sliefer's farm-house came in sight, a comfortable low-built dwelling standing back in a good-sized orchard with the barn and out-buildings clustered near it.