Chapter I: Go Fishing (2)

We found Rebecca in an upper bedroom, watched over by a mute and scared-looking neighbor, who had been fetched in to sit with her while her aunt was away. The girl lay in bed, her eyes rolling, her hands twitching nervously on the covers. There was nothing alarming in her condition, which had been brought about as much by Mrs. Sliefer's well-meant home physicking as by the original fright.

I went to the bedside and put my hand on her wrist.

"Now then," I said, "what's all this nonsense about bogies? A big strong girl like you ought to have better sense than to imagine such things."

She began to whimper.

"I seen it--I seen it! It was all spoutin' fire! It was Jakey Menning as sure as there's a livin' God! Oh-h--I don't want to look at it ... I don't want to!"

She went off into another hysterical spasm, and it took all my force to hold her still while her aunt went for water. When it was over, and she lay back on the pillows, still sobbing exhaustedly, I took Mrs. Sliefer aside.

"Give me pen and ink," I said, "and have someone drive down to the drug store with this prescription at once. I'll wait here till it's brought back. Your niece will probably be all right tomorrow, after a night's sleep, but keep her in bed a day in any case."

She took the prescription and gave it to her husband. We heard his heavy boots creaking out to the back door. I turned to Mrs. Sliefer.

"And now," I said, "you're a clever, sensible woman. What's your idea of all this nonsense?"

Mrs. Sliefer was obviously flattered by my description. She mopped her flat round face, still shining from the walk.

"Rebecca ain't no liar," she said. "She's a good up-standin' girl, an' she ain't never showed no foolishness before this. We was talking about Dutchman's Hill on'y a few nights ago, and Rebecca was the first to laugh about it. 'I'd like to see the ghost'd scare me!' she said, right there. No. Rebecca seen suthin, or she wouldn't ha' come home the state she did. An' as for it's bein' Jakey, she'd oughter know Jakey Mennin' well enough, seein' he's brought the wagon round here time an' ag'n when Aaron was busy."

"You don't tell me you believe in the foolish talk there's been, Mrs. Sliefer!"

She stiffened.

"No, an' I ain't sayin' I do, but sperrits or no sperrits, Mr. Sliefer's goin' to get to the bottom of this. Seems to me there' a law had ought to deal with respectable girls bein' frightened out of their wits ten yards from their own door-step!"

"Listen," I said. "It seems that your niece has been the victim of a very cruel and foolish practical joke, but there's no good going into the matter here and now. Only look after her. If anyone is playing tricks around the saw-mill, keep her away from there. She's in no state to risk any more shocks. Don't let her go wandering about alone."

"I wouldn't ha' let her last night, on'y she was so sure of findin' George Freeman there. Rebecca was born an' brought up here, and she knows the woods as well as our own front yard. But there'll be an end of these doin's, an' I told her so."

"That's right." I paused a moment. "Who was here, the evening that your niece spoke of not being frightened?"

"Only us an' Mis' Scholl there, an' George Freeman. There wasn't one of 'em would play a trick on her. An' George Freeman was in at the house a'ready when Rebecca come runnin' back."

I did not leave until the farmer returned, and I had seen Rebecca already quiet and subdued under the influence of the sleeping draught I had prescribed for her. Then Herrick and I drove home through the dusk to the ruined supper which Mrs. Searle had prepared so painstakingly for six o'clock.

"Well," I said to him, "what do you make of it?"

Herrick smiled.

"Ghosts don't usually 'holler,'" he said, "and Rebecca seems to have been very clear on the hollering, if on nothing else. I think we may dismiss the theory of the defunct Jakey. And by the way, who was Jakey Menning, and what is this extraordinary tangle about a place called Dutchman's Hill?"

I gave the mare a light touch with the whip.

"We are passing Dutchman's Hill at this moment," I said, "and I'll give you the history over our supper."

XII

MR. CROWFOOT

I outslept Herrick by a good hour the next morning; in fact, he was already up and out by the time I came down to a belated breakfast. I had one call to make in the village, and after that, Herrick being still absent, I sat down on the porch with my pipe and a newspaper to await his return.

There was no mail for me at the office, only a couple of letters for Herrick, forwarded from New York, and as I slipped these in my pocket I wondered again at the curious silence of Lennox. Since that short note from Queenstown I had heard nothing from him, and he had neglected even to provide me with the promised address by which I could communicate with him in case of need, an oversight by which he had certainly secured to himself a free and uninterrupted holiday, and which left me no choice meantime but to await his return or such news as he might ultimately choose to send. I must admit that Lessing's phrase "bolted" stuck unpleasantly in my mind, little as it accorded with my estimate of Lennox's character. His haste to be off, the lack of any communication from him since, had more than a look of flight, but why, or from what he had bolted I was still at a loss to understand.

I was still turning this over in my mind when Herrick sauntered into view down the road, accompanied by a stranger. Visitors were sufficiently rare in the neighbourhood, and as the two approached the house leisurely I studied the new-comer with some curiosity. He was a small man, of apparently some fifty years, sparsely bearded, and dressed in a very shabby knickerbocker suit of greenish tweeds. A soft felt hat covered his head and at least half his forehead; he wore dark glasses and carried a botanical collecting-box slung over his shoulder. There was something quaintly rabbit-like in his appearance, enhanced by the air of timidity with which he hung back while Herrick strode forward to the porch to greet me.

"I want to introduce Mr. Crowfoot," Herrick said, with a gesture which had an effect of herding the mild little man up to the porch step as he might have herded some curious and inoffensive zoological specimen. "He is down here hunting orchids, and I came across him in the woods and brought him along to have a chat with you. You might be able to give him some hints about the country."

I shook hands with the little man and gave him a chair on the porch, where he settled himself shyly, his collecting-box across his knee.

"I'm afraid I don't know much about the flora round here," I said, "but I imagine Mr. Crowfoot will find a good deal to interest him."

"Oh, I am only an amateur," said the little man. "I s---- I s---- I s-s----"

He undoubtedly did, and the reason for his shyness stood forthwith revealed. He stammered, and had more than the usual sensitiveness of his infirmity.

"S-simply indulge a hobby," he finished heroically. "It gives me an object for my leisure time. I s-s---- _presume_ you have lived here some time, Mr.----?"

"Haverill--Doctor Haverill," Herrick prompted.

"Haverill." He repeated it in a certain child-like way, as though to place the name definitely in his memory, and immediately I was conscious of a liking for him. He was at once so diffident and so meticulously polite.

"On the contrary, I've been here only a month or so, taking a friend's place for the time. The country about is delightful, so far as I know it."

"Delightful!" he echoed, and lapsed into a pleased silence, which lasted so long that Herrick rose.

"I want to change my shoes," he said. "I've been up to the neck in bog. I don't know our resources, Austin, but I guess we can offer Mr. Crowfoot a drink?"

"Water--I should l-like very much a plain glass of water," said the little botanist.

"And a cigar at all events," I supplemented. "I should have some pretty decent cigars somewhere around that my predecessor left here. Look in the drawer in the surgery, Jack, will you?"

Herrick reappeared a moment later with the box.

"Excellent," said our new friend as he helped himself. "Excellent! Apparently you d-d-don't care for these cigars then, Doctor Haverill?"

I laughed. "Oh, I only smoke a pipe, as a rule!"

"You make, if I may s-say so, a great error," he said gravely.

He smoked for a few moments tranquilly, his gaze, behind the dark glasses, seeming to rest dreamily on the stretch of road before the house.

"I suppose you are staying in the village?" I asked.

"Over there." He made a vague gesture which included half the visible landscape. "With some excellent people of the name of S-S-Sliefer."

"Oh, Sliefer's," I said, interested. "I know them slightly. The big farm-house past the saw-mill."

"Precisely," he agreed, and gave me a look before relapsing again into silence.

Our conversation, if it could be called so, languished. It was evident to me that his shyness was battling with the desire to be off--I judged that Herrick had fairly dragged him here out of a mistaken cordiality--and after the exchange of a few more spasmodic sentences I accepted his courteous and timid explanation that the Sliefers dined at midday and would be expecting him back, and rose to shake hands.

"A queer chicken!" said Herrick as we watched his jerky little figure disappear down the road. "I picked him up back in the woods there, grubbing around the saw-mill, and brought him along for your benefit--a quaint example of the Pennsylvanian fauna! Timidicus professus, or ground-dwelling goo-goo bird. Difficult of approach and does not thrive in captivity. Guess he's more than a bit batty, by his looks."

"Mrs. Sliefer never mentioned a boarder," I remarked. "He must be a new arrival. It's to be hoped he won't come to any grief in his grubbing around, as you call it."

"Oh, the gods protect the innocent," laughed Herrick. "Even the alleged ghost of Jakey Menning would have pity. By the way, the fair Rebecca's tale is still firmly believed in, by the Sliefers at any rate. The latest village version is that she was chased clear to the garden fence and that her skirt still shows five scorched prints where the ghostly fingers clutched. The neighbourhood must have been quite worked up. It was bad enough when Jakey had the decency to keep to one place at least, but now he has taken, like the wind, to blowing where he listeth, folks are getting scary. I got that much from our guileless little friend, though he professes himself to be quite indifferent on the subject. Of course you, as the village doctor, are above such gossip, so I thought I'd go gleaning for you."

"Someone's doing it," I said.

"Of course someone did, in the case of Rebecca at least. Real ghosts don't holler, as I said before, and the blue-fire details smell strongly of the common or garden matchbox. But as our little professor-bird spends most of his time in the woods about there, I thought his observations might come in useful."

"Private detective, eh?"

Herrick smiled.

"Oh, I'm sufficiently interested in the Lessing problem to be anxious to clear out the undergrowth, if you follow me. That done, one can judge a bit more clearly. If there's any foolery going on we'll run it to the ground, and Crowfoot may come in useful there."

"I've a good notion," I said, knocking my pipe out, "to try some watching round that locality myself one of these nights."

"It wouldn't be any good," he returned, "for the simple reason that Jakey wouldn't demonstrate to you or me any more than he's demonstrated to Lessing. He chooses those he wants to favour. As a matter of fact, by the aid of my bedroom window, the convenience of which you have probably under-estimated, Austin, I spent last night prowling myself. No, I didn't let you into it because I wanted to be alone. Needless to say, there was nothing doing. But I've found out one thing. There's someone else interested in the game besides us. I don't know who. But we narrowly escaped collision, and gave each other mutually a wide berth."

"It couldn't have been the ghost himself, whoever he is?"

"I think not. It was too obvious we were both out on the same errand. Like the Irishman, we each thought we were someone else and when we met it was neither of us!" He smiled at the recollection. "Well, I suppose we'll get at the root of the thing some day!"

XIII

AN AFTERNOON DRIVE

It was towards the end of that week that we drove over to the bungalow, one afternoon, for tea. The teacups were set out on the porch, and Mary Lessing, in a white frock, sprang up from one of the big basket-chairs to greet us with a comical dismay.

"I've dragged you over here," she began promptly, "and now I'll tell you the worst at once. There is not--one--lump--of sugar in the entire house. I've looked. So either you will drink your tea sugarless, smile sweetly, and say it doesn't matter, or else one of you has got to come right down to the village with me and get some. You can take your full choice about it. I'm glad to see you had the thoughtfulness to drive, anyway."

Herrick sat down with alacrity.

"I am a tired man," he announced, "supposed to be on a holiday, and I'm not going to the village to get anything till I've had tea, and I'm not going to drink tea without sugar, not even if you promise to smile in the teacup, Mary Lessing. So I guess it's up to you and Haverill. And I think that after all my excellent instructions of the past fourteen years you ought to be a better housekeeper. It's scandalous and disgusting of you. Where's Dick?"

"In the laboratory."

"A day like this! I'll rout him out of that in just two seconds. Ho, Dick!"

There was no response, and he rose grumbling, and trailed round to the laboratory door. Mary looked at me.

"Do you mind?" she said meekly.

I slipped off the mare's hitching-strap, and Mary climbed into the buggy beside me. We took the road past Sliefer's, and it is to be admitted that I made no effort to hurry. Our errand might reasonably be supposed to take an hour, and since chance had so obligingly given me that hour I was going to make the most of it.

As a matter of fact, I got precious little good out of it.

Romance probably demands, here, that I should describe how Mary and I drove side by side through the mellow autumn-tinted woods, how we spoke of the beauty of nature around us, and how gradually a sweet sense of companionship grew up in our young and sympathetic souls.

Instead Mary spoilt the whole thing by her hurry to get that sugar. If the life of the whole household, including Herrick, had depended upon it, she couldn't have been more sternly anxious to get to the village, to buy that sugar and to convey that sugar swiftly and relentlessly home. Looking back, I can see now that her attitude in the matter was only part of a constraint that had been growing between us subtly ever since Herrick's arrival. A certain frank comradeship, as I had been pleased to think it, that had sprung into being on the morning of our impromptu picnic, had wavered and dropped, leaving nothing in its place. I could not decide that she actually avoided me, though she certainly devoted a good deal of attention to Herrick when we were all together. Be that as it may, her professed anxiety on the sugar question that afternoon justly irritated me. We began with constraint, and ended in something very like open warfare.

It was probably not the first time that a perverse imp of circumstance, or call it what you will, has induced two young people, who started out on apparently good terms, to waste the precious moments of each other's uninterrupted company in being pointedly and deliberately disagreeable, and that for no reason that either of them could frame. The imbecility of that drive stands out in my memory now. We should both of us have known better. The whole thing had begun in such a meaningless way as to have no possible excuse. We had started, as I say, on good terms, with every equipment for a pleasant hour, and instead we each, in our own way, chose to behave abominably.

After one unique and disastrous attempt at conversation, I remember, we said no more, but drove on side by side in a ridiculous and stony silence, each thinking how disagreeable the other was, and wondering mutually what we had ever liked in one another.

There was the usual group of loafers gathered on the porch of Haskell's grocery store when we reached the village. I left Mary seated in the buggy outside while I went in to buy the sugar. A brisk-mannered young man, with fair hair, served me, and it was my fancy that he dawdled a little over making up the parcel. The proprietor was busy near by at the time, and from the side-glance the assistant gave him I gathered that the latter was purposely stretching out his task to gain time. I was not wrong. Upon the proprietor crossing to the back of the store, where the cash register stood, the young man leaned forward across the counter.

"Doctor," he began, "I would like a few words with you sometime when you aren't busy."

"Why, certainly," I answered. "Any time you like. You want advice about something?"

It was almost the first time I had had occasion to go into the store, and the assistant was quite a stranger to me. I was probably known to him by sight, but I wondered at his choosing such a confidential way to approach me if he merely wanted medical advice; I kept the same office hours as Lennox had done, and everyone in the village knew where and when to find me.

"I'm George Freeman," he said. "It wasn't advice exactly. I just ... wanted to see you."

George Freeman ... suddenly I remembered. It was the name of Rebecca Burn's sweetheart, the young man who had shown such decision on the evening of the ghost scare at Sliefer's farm. I looked at him with new interest.

"I shall be in this evening after nine o'clock," I said. "Come round to the house. You know where it is?"

"Yes. I'll be round."

"All right." I put down a quarter on the counter, taking up the parcel he held out to me. As I did so a step creaked behind me and I turned quickly.

Aaron Menning stood near us. For a second his eyes moved shiftily from one to the other; then he put up a hand to the greasy peaked cap he wore.

"Arternoon, doctor," he drawled; "arternoon, F-Freeman. Gimme some p-plug terbaccer."

His face was impassive and stupid, but when he pushed his cap back I noticed the veins on his temples stand out. He approached the counter with something of a swagger, his hands in the pockets of his black oilskin coat, and spat on the floor. There was something in the movements of the man which I disliked, at that moment, more intensely than ever. He had a curious shambling way when he walked, which, added to his thick-set figure, gave me the feeling of something half animal, almost simian. It amounted to an actual repugnance. I gave him a curt nod while I waited for my change, and lost no time in hastening out to the buggy.

I put the parcel under the seat and took the reins from Mary's hands. Curiously, my mood of a few moments ago was all but forgotten as I climbed in beside her.

"Did the fellow say anything to you?" I asked her as we drove off. A sudden suspicion had struck me when I came out and found her waiting there.

"Who?"

"Aaron Menning."

"No. I just saw him go into the store."

She spoke with a studied indifference that put me on the alert. Instantly I was sure that he had spoken.

"Why do you ask?"

I set my teeth.

"Because if he had," I answered rashly, "I'd take the occasion to break his neck next time we meet."

Mary gave a soft little laugh.

"Really, Doctor Haverill, I didn't know you were so violent."

"I'm not," I retorted, "at least, not as a rule. But the sight of that man always rouses in me a peculiar and earnest desire to kick him."

"I dare say he's really quite a simple and kind-hearted man," said Mary, with no other purpose, I felt sure, than to irritate me.

"The rugged exterior that hides a beautiful soul," I suggested, remembering that sinister farmyard beyond the Bend. "That's as it may be. The exterior is good enough for me, or bad enough, as you choose to put it. If I get the report of a S.P.C.A. inspector on that farm of his, as I intend to do one of these days, we'll see how Aaron's simple kind-heartedness stands out."

The words slipped out almost without my knowledge. Mary looked at me quickly.

"What's wrong at the place?"

"Merely that the condition of it isn't particularly pretty. I shouldn't have mentioned it. Only a man that keeps animals in the filth and neglect that he does ought to be made an example of in any civilized community. I don't know that there's anything to be gained by interfering at the present moment, but I've seen enough to make me keep an eye on him."

For a little time we drove in silence. Mary's face was grave and troubled. I was angry with myself. I was a fool to mention Menning or his place at all. Presently I turned to her.

"Look here, you're not upset by what I said just now? Because you've no need to think twice about it. I said it because ... well, because I hated to hear you speak about him that way, even for a minute."

"No. I wasn't thinking about Aaron just then." She gave me a queer little smile. "Doctor Haverill, I guess I've behaved pretty abominably this afternoon."

I flicked the mare with the whip.

"Shall we say we both did, and call it quits? I suppose it was in the air, somehow."

"In the air," she repeated, smiling again, then shivered suddenly. "Things are in the air ... that's just it. I had a dream last night. I suppose you'll call it silly nonsense, but it's made me queer and restless all day. Doctor Haverill, has Herrick said anything to you about my brother yet?"

"We talked one evening."

"Well?"

"We ... didn't get to any conclusions, that's all. He has some theory. He hasn't told me yet what it is."

She looked at me steadily.

"If he said that, it is because he knows something. I am absolutely certain of that. And if he knows ... Doctor Haverill, you are keeping something back from me, you and Herrick together!"

"I am not. I wouldn't do it." I looked at the girl beside me. "If you want me to swear."

"No." She put out a hand. "Yes, one thing. Can you swear to me that to your knowledge there is no suspicion in his mind of any ... brain trouble with Dick?"

"Yes, I can swear to that, absolutely!"

"I am glad." She was looking straight ahead, down the road before us. "I don't think even Herrick would have kept that from me, if he thought it. Well ... I suppose I've got to wait."

We spoke of other things during the rest of the drive, and she did not once mention Herrick's name, or her brother's, again. We were passing Sliefer's place when I caught sight once of our queer little acquaintance of the morning. He was just turning in at the gateway, his hat pulled well forward, his little tin box under his arm, and I nodded to him as we drove by. He jerked his head in response, peering short-sightedly up at the buggy through his round dark glasses.

"What a funny little man!" said Mary, after we had passed by. "Is he staying down here?"

"At the Sliefers'. Herrick found him in the woods this morning. He appears to spend his time orchid-hunting in the neighbourhood."

"Orchid-hunting..." said Mary. She turned her head and looked back at Mr. Crowfoot rather deliberately. Following her gaze, I was surprised to see that he too had turned, and was standing looking after us from the Sliefers' gateway. Seeing himself observed, he moved hurriedly, and disappeared in the direction of the house like a disturbed rabbit going abruptly to earth.

XIV

THE CRY IN THE NIGHT

A few minutes after we reached the bungalow Mrs. Searle appeared. She brought a letter for Herrick which had come by the afternoon mail.

"It had a special-delivery stamp on, so I thought it might be important," she said. "Pete was busy, so I took the liberty of bringin' it over myself. I was glad of the walk, anyway."

I had my own opinion of Pete's busyness, when it came to an errand up the hill, and I tried to catch Mrs. Searle's eye, but her gaze was discreetly lowered.

"It's awfully good of you," said Herrick. He slipped the envelope in his pocket, with a glance at the writing. "Won't you rest a minute, Mrs. Searle? I'm sure Miss Lessing would like you to."

Mary was getting tea at the moment, but Lessing seconded him promptly. Mrs. Searle shook her head.

"I'll be gettin' back, sir, thanks just the same. There's things to see to. It's done me good to get the walk."

"You needn't walk back, anyway," I put in. "I'd be glad for the mare to be home, and Mr. Herrick and I can walk over, later. You can drive yourself, Mrs. Searle, can't you?"

"Certainly, sir, if you'd rather."

She untied the mare and turned the buggy carefully around before getting in. "Ask Pete to give her a good rub down," I called. "Mr. Herrick and I will be back by supper-time."

As it happened, we stayed fairly late. The tea resolved itself into a semi-supper, with the addition of chocolate cake, canned pineapple, and sardines prepared by some special and deadly recipe of Lessing's in a chafing-dish. It was a combination that induced a certain languor afterwards in soul and body. Later, Lessing having re-engaged Herrick in the game of chess that our return had interrupted, Mary and I found ourselves once more left to each other's company at the far end of the porch. She had attempted some quite ridiculous excuse about dish-washing, but either the sense of Herrick's near presence or the meal just finished lent me moral courage to vanquish her objections on the spot.

"Either you invite people to your house," I said, "or you don't invite them. If you do, it's your business to entertain them. I'm not an exacting person, but if it comes to contesting my rights against those of mere crockery, I warn you that I'm going to be exceedingly disagreeable."

Our talk on the homeward drive had broken the aloofness of the past week, and I was minded not to let her slip back into it at will. She sat down on the wicker armchair opposite me, her hands folded on her lap.

"Would you like to see the family photograph album?" she suggested. "We none of us collect picture-postcards, so I'm afraid that's the only interesting object I can offer you. Or I might take you round the garden and show you the site for next year's rose bushes."

"I should be delighted!" I said ruthlessly.

She made a mouth at me.

"I don't think you are in a mood to appreciate the exquisite sentiment of next year's rose bushes," she returned. "It calls for a totally different range of sympathies from yours."

I lit a cigarette.

"You don't know anything about my range of sympathies," I remarked. "For all you know, they may extend to objects even more ethereal than unborn roses."

"Impossible!" She pulled a spray off the woodbine that grew round the porch pillar, and began to pull it to pieces, leaf by leaf. "By the way," she said after a moment, "did you tell me that that queer little friend of yours was a botanist?"

"Of Herrick's," I corrected. "I entirely disclaim him. He described himself as an amateur, whatever he may mean by that. I gather that it's his way of amusing himself on a holiday. There are a good many people who seem to feel lost unless they have some definite hobby for their vacations. I suppose really it gives him mild exercise and an excuse for grubbing about in the open."

"He takes other mild exercise," said Mary, her mouth curving in sudden recollection. "He was engaged in some the other morning, and that's what made me so interested. I'm afraid I interrupted him."

"You'd seen him before, then?"

She laughed.

"I was taking Leo for a run before breakfast, down the hill, the other morning, and I came upon him just in the hollow there near where the stream is, and I'd give you a hundred dollars to guess his occupation. I don't know if you've ever noticed a cedar there, Doctor Haverill, growing quite near the road, on the right-hand side? It branches off some little way from the ground. Well, there he was engaged, of all things in the world, in solemnly climbing up into this tree and jumping out again. I was walking along the footpath where the ground is soft, so he never heard me coming, and the performance struck me as so interesting that I stood still for a minute and watched him. He did it four or five times, and it looked as if he was trying to see how far he could jump. The last time he landed quite near to the edge of the stream, and that seemed to satisfy him, for he didn't try any more after that. Then he looked about on the ground and began to smooth over all the footprints he'd made. He'd just finished when he caught sight of me. He had taken his glasses off for jumping, I suppose in case he smashed them, and as soon as he saw me he grabbed them out of his pocket and walked off. It was for all the world as if he was ashamed at having been caught doing it. I suppose it did look ridiculous for a man of his age to go doing stunts like a schoolboy. I guess it was some sort of an exercise, and he does it pretty often, for he was certainly active at it. I thought maybe he was a physical-culture crank."

"A mild lunatic, more like!" I smiled. "Perhaps the giddiness of youth returns to him at times and he has to work it off. Maybe it's a religious exercise--some obscure sect of jumping Baptists. I'll ask him when we meet."

Mary laughed, but her brows were drawn in a puzzled frown.

"Do you know," she said, "I have a conviction that I have seen that man before. I don't know in the least why. Generally I remember people quite well. I feel that I have not only seen him, but spoken to him. A thing like that bothers me, because I ought to remember it. I will sometime."

"You'd remember if you had spoken to him," I said. "He stammers quite badly."

"Then that settles it," returned Mary gaily. "I have only known two people who stammered in my whole life, with the exception of Aaron Menning, and one was a chemistry professor at school and the other a spinster aunt!"

My appointment with George Freeman was at nine, and it was nearly that hour when we left the bungalow. Herrick and I walked briskly down the hill, and as we passed Dutchman's Hollow I cast a curious glance at the tree which had been the scene of Mr. Crowfoot's acrobatic performances. It stood, as Mary had said, almost overhanging the footpath, a strong twisted-limbed cedar, noticeable as being the only tree of its kind along the road. The fork was a good six feet from the ground, and I reflected that Crowfoot must possess more agility than his appearance warranted.

Herrick followed my glance.

"A queer tree, that," he said. "Looks as if it had been stuck there for some purpose. Do you ever notice, Haverill, how some inanimate things--if I may call a tree inanimate--strike one unpleasantly? Now that tree, to me, suggests a suicide every time I look at it. A man might hang himself among the upper branches, and you'd merely take his body for a part of the tree."

"Another horror to the mystery of Dutchman's Hill!" I said lightly. "Heaven's sake, Jack, but you're in a cheerful mood tonight! You seem to have creepy things on the brain. It you stood and looked at any tree long enough you could hypnotize yourself into seeing things."

"I merely called it unpleasant," returned Herrick argumentatively. "To me it is. You think that because I have taken a fancy to dislike a tree I'm ready to imagine unpleasant things about it. I believe that if it impresses me that way, for no apparent reason, it is because the unpleasant things have in all probability already happened."

"Oh, argue that stuff with Lessing," I protested good-humoredly. "It's more in his line. I heard you at it tonight. I'm a normal man, and I object to having my free imagination harrowed over things that don't count. That tree is a tree, and that's all about it."

Our fooling had brought us to a pause at the beginning of the little plank bridge, and Herrick, leaning against the rail, had employed the interval in making a cigarette. He smiled, slipping his tobacco pouch back, and began to feel through his pockets for the little automatic tinder-box he always carried. He was methodical over trifling things to a degree that occasionally irritated me.

"Then go up and touch it," he said. "I would like to test that sensitiveness which you boast that you don't possess."

"All right."

I walked up to the tree, impatient at my own encouragement of such nonsense, and laid my hand on the trunk. Almost as my fingers touched the bark I heard distinctly a low cry, cut suddenly and horribly short. The woods, especially at night, are deceptive both as to direction and distance, and, already half-expectant of some trick, I could have sworn that Herrick himself had done it. I wheeled on him angrily. He was standing in the roadway, the cigarette at his lips, the tiny flame of the tinder-box flickering in his lifted hand, and by its light I saw his face white and startled.

"Did you do that?"

"Do you think I'm a fool?" He caught my arm and swung me round, facing the woods, of a sudden ominously silent. For a moment we listened acutely. Then Herrick flung his unlighted cigarette away. "Come on. It was over there."

He started forward, in the direction where the dam lay, breaking through the underbrush. I followed at his heels. Along the road there had been still a glimmer of light, but once under cover of the trees we stumbled through dense blackness, with nothing to guide us save Herrick's vague sense of direction. Once he stood still to shout. There was no answer.

"Follow the stream," I said.

We had struck the edge of it again; I felt my boots sink in marshy ground, and thereafter we made quicker pace. The brook was narrow at this time of year, running a mere trickle in its bed. It branched off from the creek just below the mill sluice, and in spring carried off some of the excess of water when the creek itself was swollen. Just now, as I knew, there was a scant foot of water at its deepest. I was taking no particular heed therefore to my steps when Herrick, a few paces to my left, called out.

"Take care!" he said. "We're nearly in the creek!"

As he spoke I heard, somewhere near us in the darkness, the unmistakable sound of rushing water. I stopped abruptly, bewildered, with the sense of having somehow lost my bearings. As we were going, the creek should have been a good hundred yards on our left.

And the sound was not the sound of the creek. I had paused at the moment near the edge of the brook; I could feel soft, saturated moss underfoot, and I fancied that it grew even softer and damper as I stood. Something swirled at my ankles, and taking a step forward I was knee-deep in sudden icy flood.

Incredible as it seemed, the stream was rising. I had barely grasped the meaning of it when Herrick shouted again. This time he was answered. A strong shout caught up the echo of his voice.

"Hello, there! Where are you?" It was Herrick.

And the answer came promptly, near at hand now in the darkness:

"Hello! By the dam. Keep clear of the stream; the sluice-gate is giving!"

XV

SUSPICIONS

The warning came just in time. Herrick sang out and sprang, and I could hear the splash as he landed close beside me. Together we forced a way through the bushes and tall weeds and began to scramble up the sloping bank. It was a thicket of alders and brambles; the briars caught and tore at our clothes as we pushed through. We came out not far from the sluice, with the rush of escaping water still in our ears, and above the turmoil of it I called again.

"Where are you? Is there something wrong?"

"I want help here!"

The voice answered almost from under our feet, midway down the bank up which we had just scrambled. In a cleared space of the little thicket a man was standing; my eyes, used by now to the darkness, could make out his figure outlined against the surrounding bushes. It was Mr. Crowfoot, and he was bending over something that lay stretched and ominous among the trampled weeds at his feet. I had not recognized his voice in the darkness, though it sounded vaguely familiar. Herrick reached him first, and was on his knees beside the prostrate figure when I came up.

"An accident, Haverill. I thought so. No, he's alive. How did it happen?"

"He must have fallen off the gate," said Crowfoot. In the excitement he forgot to stammer. "I heard him call out and went down after him. I had only just time to drag him out."

Herrick wiped his hand on the grass.

"Cut his head open," he said briefly. "I think there's an arm broken. Give me a hand, Austin. We must get him up to the top."

"Compound fracture and a broken collar-bone," said Crowfoot in his precise tones, oddly precise even in this moment. "I'm glad you gentlemen came along. The head wound isn't much, but there's probably a slight concussion. If you will help me----"

It struck me that he took the man's injuries with a remarkable coolness, utterly at variance with the impression of nervousness he had given me that morning. It was as if he were the medical man and we mere lay beings who had happened along. Herrick growled. He had found his tinder-box, and it flashed a tiny glimmer on the man's face.

"George Freeman!" I exclaimed.

"You know him?" said Herrick quickly.

"The sweetheart of that girl at Sliefer's. He had an appointment with me this evening. He must have been on his way----"

I stopped short. I thought Crowfoot gave a faint exclamation, but he said nothing. Together we got the limp figure to the roadway at the top of the bank, and laid him down. Herrick turned to Crowfoot.

"Was he with you?"

"No. I was walking along the side of the dam. I often take a stroll of an evening; I sleep rather badly without. He was lying at the bottom of the sluice-gate when I found him, half in the water, and I dragged him out. I supposed he had missed his footing in the dark and cried out as he fell."

Herrick and I exchanged glances. So far the story might be true; we had both heard the cry.

"Isn't there a railing?" Herrick asked.

"It was broken," said Crowfoot, "and has never been properly repaired. I have spoken about it several times at the farm, but Mr. Sliefer has neglected to mend it."

"That's so," I confirmed. "It's been broken a good three weeks. Hardly anyone passes this way, now the mill isn't working, so I suppose they haven't bothered."

"Well..." said Herrick. He rose from his knees. "As he's known at the farm he'd better be taken there. He must be properly moved. We can't handle him like this."

"I'll go and get help," said Crowfoot.

Herrick looked at him squarely.

"I prefer that we should go together," he said drily. "Austin, do you mind staying here for ten minutes? I suppose you haven't your revolver?"

I hadn't. I carried one usually in accordance with Lessing's suggestion, but at this moment it was locked in one of the surgery drawers.

"Never mind," I said. "I don't need it."

Mr. Crowfoot hesitated. Then his hand slipped to his pocket. Herrick had been cleverer than I gave him credit for.

"If you allow me, Doctor Haverill," he said gravely, "I will leave you my own. I should much prefer it. We are two, and it would be better that you should not remain here unarmed."

Again Herrick and I glanced at one another.

"Do you usually carry a revolver when you take your evening strolls, Mr. Crowfoot?" he asked.

"It is a precaution," replied the little botanist, "which I consider to be quite harmless. As you put a similar question to your friend just now I presume the habit is not confined to myself."

"Take it," said Herrick curtly. "We'll be back in a quarter of an hour." And he disappeared with Crowfoot along the path toward Sliefer's farm.

Left alone, my first and perhaps pardonable impulse was to examine the chambers of the revolver Mr. Crowfoot had just given me. One of the cartridges had been discharged. I slipped it back into my jacket pocket, where it would be ready to hand, and took out my cigarette case. There was nothing to be done for the man beside me until further help arrived. I reassured myself as to his condition. It was as Crowfoot had said. The head wound had bled freely, but we had already partially stanched it with Herrick's handkerchief. The right arm and shoulder were fractured, and I suspected a rib as well. He could not have fallen directly from the sluice-gate, but from one side, with the bushes and the water to break his fall. If he had struck one of the heavy timbers immediately below he would have had his back broken on the spot. As it was he was in no immediate danger, unless from a concussion the extent of which we could not as yet ascertain.

I sat down on the beam which marked the beginning of the sluice-wall, and fell to thinking. The thing had not, to me, entirely the look of an accident. Crowfoot, on a moment's consideration, and in spite of the empty cartridge, I exonerated. Freeman had not been shot, and Crowfoot could have had no object in pushing him over only to rescue him afterwards, and undoubtedly he had saved his life. Possibly they had quarrelled, and Freeman had lost his footing, which would account for Crowfoot's prompt action. Crowfoot was staying at the Sliefers', in the same house with Freeman's sweetheart, and where a young woman like Rebecca is concerned there is always a possibility of misunderstandings; but the idea of little Crowfoot playing the rustic Don Juan seemed rather absurd. And that question of the sluice-gate worried me. It had been a dry season, the water in the dam was even lower than usual; there was no earthly reason why the gate should give way just then with no extra pressure to account for it.

Sitting on the wall, swinging my feet, with the sound of the water in my ears, I found myself listening mechanically to its rush. Suddenly a thought occurred to me. There had been no increase in the volume of sound since I had been sitting there. If the sluice-gate had given way only in part, the force of the escaping water would by this time have widened the fissure.

I rose, and walked the few paces to the top of the gate.

It was as I thought. The lever that controlled the sluice had been pulled half over. Bracing my feet firmly, I threw all my strength against it. I had the force of the water to contend with; as I pushed, the whole neglected structure of the gate seemed to vibrate and tremble, but little by little I could hear the gush gradually decreasing, the seething and bubbling below me quieted.

I pushed the lever back as far as I could; it refused to go the whole way, and I feared to do further damage unwittingly by forcing it. But the greater part of the escape was checked. I went back to the wall again and waited.

The minutes dragged. It was a relief to see presently the glimmer of a light through the trees and to hear Mr. Sliefer's anxious deep-throated hail. They had taken one of the stable doors off its hinges, and Herrick and the farmer carried it between them while Crowfoot walked ahead with the lantern.

I saw Crowfoot glance toward the sluice, but he said nothing. With as little jarring as might be we lifted Freeman's unconscious weight on to the door, and I took Herrick's place in the slow procession back to the farmhouse.

Mrs. Sliefer, with Rebecca, white-faced and stricken, met us in the yard. They had prepared a room upstairs, and there we got Freeman to bed and did all that was possible for him. Unconsciousness spared him the pain of our handling; the fracture was as ugly a one as I have seen. The concussion was graver even than we had supposed; it would be days certainly, possibly weeks, before he would be in a state to answer any questions.

I decided to stay the night, and Herrick, with the Sleifers' hired man, drove over in the buggy to take a message to Mrs. Searle and bring back what was needful from the surgery.

In his absence I set myself to gather what information I could from the Sliefers themselves. George Freeman had been there that evening. He had arrived earlier than usual, it being his weekly evening off, and stayed only a short time, saying that he had an appointment in the village. On Rebecca teasing him, he had said that it was a business appointment and that she should hear all about it in good time.

He had left the house at a quarter-past eight. His appointment was for nine, and it would have taken him nearly that time to walk over, even by the short cut. It was already close upon nine when we left the Lessing's cottage to walk home, and at least twenty minutes must have elapsed before we heard Freeman's cry. How had he employed that interval, and with what object had he lingered nearly three-quarters of an hour near the dam? Instinctively I thought of Crowfoot. He was not in the room, and in the light of what had happened I felt no hesitation in questioning the Sliefers about their guest.

He had come to them a fortnight ago, engaging his room by letter. They often took a boarder in the summer, and someone who once stayed there had recommended them to him. He was quiet and pleasant-mannered, and anxious to give no trouble, an ideal boarder from Mrs. Sliefer's point of view, though Rebecca inclined to consider him "queer." He had stipulated for a ground-floor room, explaining that for some heart affection he was forbidden to mount stairs. (I smiled, thinking of the acrobatic exercises Mary Lessing had witnessed.) They had accordingly arranged the back parlor for him, which had a door opening directly on the side porch. His meals were served to him there. Beyond the necessary service they had very little to do with him. He was not at all talkative on account of his infirmity, but always pleasant in manner. To their knowledge, George Freeman had never so much as spoken to him, though it was his unfailing joke to tease Rebecca about the "handsome young city gentleman."

So much for Mr. and Mrs. Sliefer's account. Rebecca differed. Rebecca didn't hold with "queerness," nor with mucking one's room up with rubbishy weeds, nor with going out at night to hunt toadstools.

"Toadstools?" I said.

"Fungy, he calls 'em. It's the same thing. He says there's some that shines in the dark, like rotten wood. I've never seen 'em, nor I wouldn't go touchin' 'em if I did. Anything would need to shine good and hard for him to see it with those blue goggles on!"

"Rebecca's jest set against him because he wears glasses," said Mrs. Sliefer.

"I like to see a folk's eyes," Rebecca insisted. "I hate to have 'em lookin' at you when you think they ain't."

For some reason she seemed to distrust Crowfoot, but there was certainly no suspicion, even in her mind, of any possible quarrel between the two men. Rebecca herself admitted his courage in having pulled Freeman out. No mention was made of the sluice, and I concluded that neither Herrick nor Crowfoot had spoken of it at the house.

Mrs. Sliefer volunteered to sit up with Freeman the first part of the night, and having seen her settled in a capacious armchair near his bed, I returned to Herrick in the parlor below. There was a couch in the room, but we were neither inclined to make use of it. It was my first chance of speaking privately to Herrick since his return to the house, and having closed the staircase door leading upstairs, I told him briefly all that I had learned that evening.

"Crowfoot couldn't have opened the sluice," he said when I had finished. "How does the thing work? Do you suppose Freeman could have caught at the lever as he fell and pulled it over on him? It doesn't sound likely."

"Impossible. The lever works in the opposite direction."

Herrick pondered.

"He might have been fooling with the thing and opened it, and then lost his balance trying to get it back."

I shook my head.

"He knows the dam well enough, and he doesn't strike me as the sort of man to go fooling with a thing like that out of mischief. Besides, he didn't fall from where the lever is. If he had, and the sluice was already open, he'd have been soaked through and probably drowned to boot. Remember the rush of that water! Crowfoot got him out, and Crowfoot was only wet to the knees. He must have fallen partially clear of the pool, across one of the timbers. The thing looks much more to me as though someone had deliberately opened the sluice on them while they were both down there. Either the machinery stuck, or they were interrupted before they could do the worst. In any case Crowfoot knows more than he has chosen to tell us. He may be shielding someone; the whole business looks ugly."

"I'm going to handle Crowfoot in the morning," said Herrick grimly. "It's a case where he'll find it best to tell all he knows. A man who goes hunting toadstools at night with a revolver lays himself open to misconstruction." He stared a moment at the purple crocheted mat on which the Sleifers' parlor lamp sat enthroned. "Why on earth was he so keen on your keeping that revolver, I wonder?"

"Possibly for the same reason that had caused him to fire one of the cartridges himself, this evening," I said drily.

"He had?" Herrick looked up. "Why didn't we hear the shot?"