Chapter I: Catch a Burglar (2)

"Lennox is crazy," Dick said when I had finished. "The thing doesn't hang together. And when he gets to a point where he can't trust his judgment as to the identity of a man in one case, how can he trust it in another? What did Herrick think?"

"He didn't say definitely."

"So like Herrick! What?"

"He seemed to lay more stress on the dogs' footprints and the button Lennox picked up than on anything else. Oddly enough, someone else spoke of dogs, now I think of it." And I told him what the chauffeur had said last night.

"Queer," said Lessing. "You'd think he'd know a dog when he saw one. I'd like to have a look at that button."

"Herrick has it."

"He has..." Lessing was silent a moment. "Even if Jakey did kill Aaron, and Aaron is really his brother--hang it all, the thing's so mixed--I don't see that that gets us any further on. Does Lennox think he's at the back of everything? What's he playing at?"

"He was at the back of Rebecca's scare, and that business of Freeman. If Freeman were only well enough to speak.... I don't know that he could tell us much then, that we haven't found out for ourselves."

"Grant that Jakey did kill his brother, and has succeeded in putting it over. He was at the bottom of all these Dutchman's Hill scares, and that business with Rebecca. Freeman found out something, and he laid for Freeman ... and got him. That doesn't explain the cyclist affair, nor what happened to me."

"And it doesn't explain another thing, either," said Mary, breaking in for the first time. "It doesn't explain what the one point was that Lennox himself was unwilling to face, what it was he tried to avoid by ridiculous explanations that wouldn't satisfy a child. I don't mean recently, I mean further back, almost in the beginning, the second time he was here to attend Dick." She turned to her brother. "Perhaps I haven't told you this before. But it did strike me at the time, and afterwards I've been thinking of it more and more.

"I was standing out here on the porch, wondering whether I could leave you with Kate and slip over to Lennox's house, or whether I could get hold of anyone to send, when Lennox himself came by, driving. I ran out to stop him and tell him what had happened. He pulled up as soon as he saw me, before I had time to call out, and I tell you if I ever saw a man frightened it was then. He was afraid, and he was afraid before he saw me, or even knew what I had to say. Something had happened, something that gave him a shock, before he came up the road there. He tried to pass it off, but I'm not a fool; I know when a person is just puzzled, and I know when he is afraid, and I tell you that Lennox was afraid. And I'd like to know just what it was that frightened him."

"Where was he coming from?" Lessing asked.

"Down the road here, the way Austin came just now. He came from the Bend."

"From Menning's place."

"It might have been. I don't know. He didn't say and I didn't ask him. But something, that morning, had happened to upset him before he got here. And it was as if he knew--or at least expected, what he was going to find."

"Did you ask him?"

"I said something about it. He told me he'd been up all night on a case some miles away, that he'd only left at daybreak to drive back, and that he felt all in. But it was something more than that, I feel certain, to have thrown him into the state he was in."

"I shall ask him tonight," I said. "If he's keeping anything back----"

"Ask him!" said Mary. "Ask him, and get the truth! You can tell him just what I said."

I had promised to look in at the Sliefers' again, later in the evening, and instead of doing so on my way back, Mary proposed that I should walk across with her, after tea, while Lessing got some letters written.

"I want some cream for supper," she said, "and I want to see Rebecca too. I meant to go this morning. If you don't mind the walk we'll take Leo along. He hasn't had a run today yet."

She called the setter and he came bounding up, glad enough of the prospect of a walk.

"Poor old Leo!" Mary said. "He doesn't get half enough exercise. We'll take the leash, Austin, if you don't mind. There's a collie at the farm and the two are sworn enemies. I always have to fasten him if I go there."

I put the leash in my pocket and we set off through the woods by a short cut that brought us out eventually upon the cart-track near the old saw-mill. On the other side of this road the Sliefers' land began, and only a couple of pasture fields, with low snake-fences, separated us from the farm. Leo had dropped behind after we passed the mill, and as we stopped by the fence to wait for him we saw a woman coming along the path. She wore a faded check cotton dress and a sunbonnet that almost hid her face, and she was carrying a basket filled with chips, evidently gathered near the mill. As she drew near I caught a flash of very keen eyes, set in a dark wrinkled face, directed upon us in a glance that was by no means friendly.

Mary stepped forward and spoke to her, and I saw her slip something into the old woman's hand. The gnarled fingers closed on it unwillingly; she muttered something and passed on.

"Do you know her?" I asked.

"It's old Mrs. Menning," Mary said. "Poor old soul! She's crotchety, but I can't help feeling sorry for her. Is it true they are sending her to the poorhouse?"

"I've no idea. Old Paddy Nevill told me she'd moved her things up to some little empty shack near her old place. I suppose they'll let her stay there till something can be arranged."

I watched the bent, dragging figure out of sight. As Paddy had said, she covered the ground fairly spryly, for all her feebleness of gait. It was my first acquaintance with this woman to whose personality Herrick had particularly drawn my attention the night before. If Lennox were right, she had played an almost incredibly cunning part throughout, even if her brain had not itself evolved the whole plot.

"You'd think she could find chips nearer than the saw-mill," Mary said. "It's a good walk from the Nevills' place, if she's near there. I wouldn't wonder if the old body were unhinged by the fire altogether. She's never friendly at her best, but she looked quite queer just now. Did you notice how she was muttering to herself?"

I let down the bars and we passed through into the field.

"Austin," Mary said, as we picked our way over the boulder-strewn pasture, "do you know that I've got a confession to make, and it's worrying me."

I smiled.

"Anything very dreadful?"

"I don't just know," she said. "It's about last night. You know I stayed out on the porch while you were all over at the fire. Well, it was while I was sitting there, about a quarter of an hour after you went, I saw Menning come up by the road. I don't think he even saw me. He was going at a sort of shambling trot, and he never looked up when he passed the house. I am sure it was he, though."

"And you never told us!" I exclaimed.

"I knew you'd be angry, but I couldn't help it. I didn't know about this whole story then, and--and I hate the idea of any man being hunted that way, no matter what he's done. I thought he might have some sort of chance to get away, and that's why I didn't say anything last night, even to Dick!"

"Which way was he going?"

"Toward the hill. Your chauffeur must surely have met him. That's what I couldn't make out."

"He saw no one at all. The man may have turned off into the woods when he saw the car. I suppose you know what the sheriff would say to this?"

"Compounding a felony!" Mary laughed. "Anyway he never asked me, so I didn't have to tell any lies about it. Only after what you said last night it worried me, and I thought I'd better own up. Now if he is caught it won't be on my conscience that I had a direct hand in it."

"Oh, woman!" I exclaimed.

"You'd have done the same in my case," she retorted. "Besides, I wasn't supposed to know. You never told me anything."

"You are sure it was Menning?"

"Quite sure. I had left the house door open, and he passed right into the light. I wondered why he was going away from the fire instead of toward it, and I thought at first he might be going to get more help. I didn't know then. He hadn't been there all along."

We reached the farm, and I left her below while I saw my patient. Either I was longer than I thought, or we must have loitered unconsciously on our way over, for when I joined her again on the porch the light was already fading. Then there was a delay about the cream. Rebecca had to fetch it, and while she was gone Mary turned to me.

"This farm is still bewitched," she said. "It's the cream-pans now. Rebecca swears that the milk has gone, these last few nights. Last night she set out three pans in the spring-house and this morning one of them was two-thirds empty. I suspect cats, but anyway the problem takes Rebecca's mind off her other trouble, poor girl. Here she is. Can you spare this, Rebecca?"

"It's a bit scant, Miss Lessing, but it's the best I can do. We'll be short for churning this week, as it is. Whatever ails the milk I don't know! I've never had it go before."

"Well, it isn't witches' work;" Mary smiled. "They turn the milk, you know, Rebecca, they don't steal it! I'd keep an eye on the cat. If you'll take Leo a moment, Austin, till we're out of the grounds, I'll carry the pail--no, it isn't heavy, and I don't trust men anyway. They spill everything. Good night, Rebecca!"

"Carry your old cream yourself," I retorted. "I won't help you--not after that. And the way I've condoned your offences, too! Come on, Leo! Can I let him loose here, do you think?"

"Wait till we're quite clear of the house. He had a dreadful fight here once. It'll be all right now. We'd better take the path along the dam; it's a little shorter."

We followed the footpath along which they had carried Freeman that night to the house. Given any other time and place, I should have been tempted to do my best in prolonging this stroll, but I had none too pleasant associations with the place and its surroundings, and with twilight closing rapidly upon us I was in no mind to loiter. A stagnant weedy smell rose from the dam, a gloomy stretch of water with enclosing trees that darkened it still more effectually. Frogs croaked in monotonous chorus from the weeds at the edge and the midges were thick. In the end Mary had to give in ignominiously, and I carried the pail while she fought their attacks off with a handkerchief.

It was here that Rebecca and her sweetheart used to walk of an evening, and I wondered at their choice of a trysting-place.

"It's romantic," said Mary, "in a way. Can't you imagine this the deserted moat, with the ruined castle of Lord Thingummy in the background? I am sure that Rebecca reads Laura Jean Libbey on the sly. What spot more suggestive of lovers' vows and maidens palely loitering! Rebecca's too healthy not to be romantic at her age."

"Romance?" I said. "Fiddlesticks! The Sliefers ought to have this place drained if they aren't going to work the mill any more. As a plain medical man I have no use for picturesque sheets of water that smell bad after sunset."

"So you'd sacrifice all this----" she waved the hand that was not occupied in keeping nudges at bay--"and plant cabbages on it!"

"Why cabbages?"

"Aren't they the symbol of all that is practical?"

"Including myself!" I snapped. I was getting badly bitten, and with no opportunity for redress.

"Oh, I didn't say that!" She stopped short. "Did you see that big fish jump just then? Right beyond the pond-lilies there. This place must be full of them."

"Carp, most likely. It's pretty deep up at this end."

She stopped to watch the circle widen and disappear, leaving the water black. "Austin ... do you suppose I ought to have spoken about Menning before?"

"I don't know that it matters. They'll get him anyhow."

There was no good in mere speculation, and I didn't want to enlarge on the subject of Menning. She had come into contact with sufficient ugliness this summer already. "It's more than probable that he has cleared out altogether by this time. In any case, until we know, I think it would be better that you kept near the house unless one of us is with you. There's no good running any risks."

We had passed the mill and were just turning into the little path that would bring us to the road near the bungalow, when Lessing met us.

"I thought you two would never turn up," he said. "I'm dying of hunger. How's the patient, Austin?"

"Getting on. You can carry the pail if you want to work. Where's that dog got to?"

I had released the setter some little way back, and he had kept within sight nearly all the way. Missing him now, I turned to whistle, and saw Leo, a pale shadow in the dusk, nosing eagerly about the scattered logs that lay in the clearing near the mill. Lessing called him several times by name, sharply, but he paid no attention.

"Got a rabbit, most likely. Wait a minute. I'll soon fetch him out of that."

He walked back the few paces to the clearing, and Mary sat down at the edge of the path with a little sigh of resignation. I offered her a cigarette, and for some minutes we smoked in silence, listening for her brother's step. Presently Mary stood up.

"I'm not going to wait here all evening! We'll go on to the house and let him catch up to us."

We had nearly reached the bungalow before Lessing overtook us. He was holding Leo by a handkerchief knotted through his collar. The dog came unwillingly, cringing against his master's legs, the hair along his spine bristling and his ears kid back.

"Why, look at that!" Mary exclaimed. "I've never seen him act that way before. You haven't been beating him, Dick?"

"I'd like to!" Lessing stooped to take a fresh grip on the dog's collar. "Be quiet, you brute! You aren't going back there now."

Mary patted the setter's head. "Poor old boy! Did he get a rat, and wouldn't they let him have it! Was it a good rat, Leo?"

But the dog only twisted impatiently from her touch, his head turned backwards and his nose working.

"It was a darn good rat," said Lessing, "but he won't have it now. Go open the shed door, Mary, till I get him in."

She threw open the door of the tool-shed, and Lessing thrust the dog inside, pushing him in with his foot, and fastened the latch.

"That's that! Aren't you staying for supper, Austin?"

"Wish I could! I must get the mare back, and I want to be there when Herrick gets in."

I untied the mare and backed her around. Mary was standing on the porch.

"Do you notice you can smell that stagnant water at the dam? We seem to get it in whiffs, every once in a while. I noticed it very strongly last night, sitting out here. I wonder the Sliefers can stand it, living as close as they do."

There was a slight taint on the air. As Mary said, it seemed to come in whiffs. It might have been the dam, but it carried my mind back, as a smell will do, to some vague recollection I could not quite place.

"There's a lot of rotting vegetation there. Maybe it isn't so bad at their end. Sometimes you smell things much more at a distance."

"It just comes and goes. I don't notice it now. You'll be over this evening?"

"I'll bring Herrick along if he's back."

I paused, held by a vague trouble in her eyes.

"You aren't worried, Mary?"

"Worried? No. I just feel ... restless. It's the sort of feeling you get before a storm. As if we were all waiting for something, and you don't know what."

"You've been upset about this Menning affair."

"It isn't that. I don't know what it is. The place, maybe ... I always liked woods before, and now I feel as if I should never like them again." Her grave clear eyes held mine. "Austin, I wish I knew. If only ... sometimes I almost wish we'd never come to this place at all."

"Mary, you don't really wish that?"

"No, I don't. I ought to, but I can't. But ... I do wish we were all away--out of here--somewhere else."

"We shall be, soon enough." I was thinking of the end of my holiday, the breaking-up of a summer that, if it had brought danger and ugliness and all but tragedy, had brought also something infinitely precious into my life--something I was far from ready to lose.

"The summer has done Kate good, anyway. We had a letter from her this morning."

"Where is she?" I knew that Mrs. Lessing had left a few days before, to stay with some friends.

"On Long Island. A place on the Sound. We'll probably join her there in a couple of weeks. I wish you could come--you and Jack both. I think the sea air would blow sense into all of us!" She laughed. "I'm talking like an old woman, and I've got Dick's supper to get and nothing ready! Well, we'll see you tonight."

"Would you rather I stayed?"

"Nonsense! You'll begin to think I'm developing nerves, next!"

She waved her hand as I climbed into the buggy. Gathering up the reins, I turned the mare's head homeward. It was already nearly dark, but I could still see the road before me. Was it presage, or only the desire for Mary's company that made me wish, even before I had turned the corner by Dutchman's Hill, that I had after all accepted Lessing's invitation and stayed on?

As I reached the point where the road dipped to the hollow it seemed to me that I could smell once more that queer unplaceable odour of which Mary had spoken.

XX

WHAT WE FOUND IN THE SAW-MILL

Herrick had not yet returned when I reached the house. Lennox was just sitting down to supper, in which I joined him. While we were lingering over our coffee I remembered what Mary had said that morning, and asked him point-blank about it.

He gave me a curious look before replying:

"So Mary Lessing told you that, did she? Well, I give her credit for observation. I remember that morning perfectly. She was quite right; something _had_ happened."

He paused to light a cigar over the lamp-chimney before saying: "Shall we go into the surgery, Haverill?"

I followed him in, leaving the dining-room to Mrs. Searle, and closed the door between us, while Lennox threw himself back into the armchair and smoked for a few moments in silence.

"I've told you, Haverill, that between one thing and another my nerves were in a pretty unreliable state early this summer. I mention that now, because I still think it had a certain bearing on what happened. When Mary Lessing stopped me that morning in the road it was just a case of one shock on top of another."

"Then----"

"Wait a minute," Lennox said. "If I tell this thing I've got to tell it my own way. I'll tell you just what happened and I haven't got any explanation of it at all. You can take it or leave it. And you'll understand that I don't even claim to be telling you facts. The whole thing might have been just an impression in my own mind. That's what I want to make clear, regardless of any effect it may have had on me at the time.

"I had been out on an all-night case. I was physically tired, and through a particular anxiety in this instance, just about all in. I had a seven-mile drive home, and I could almost have fallen asleep there in the buggy. I had left my patient out of danger, and coming back I remembered that Mrs. Searle wanted a couple of chickens from Aaron and that I'd told her the day before I would stop in some time and get them. It was very little after daybreak, but I chanced the Mennings being early risers and turned out of my way to go by the Bend. There was smoke coming from the chimney, so I got out and knocked at the door, and the old woman opened it. I guess she was just dressing; she looked half asleep, and she told me Aaron wasn't up yet, but that the chickens were ready, and she'd get them for me if I didn't mind waiting a minute.

"I stood about outside. It was a chilly morning, and a bit foggy. I guess I had my mind more on a cup of hot coffee than anything else, and I wondered if the old woman would give me some if I asked for it when she came back, though I'd be needing coffee pretty badly before I'd drink it in that house. You knew the Menning place, before it was burned?"

I nodded.

"There are a lot of tumble-down outbuildings there where they used to keep the chickens he bought, and one in particular--I don't know if you noticed it--a sort of lean-to near the open wagon shed, painted green. I don't know what it was built for, but it had a door and a square window-hole, high up, about the height of a man's head. I don't suppose the whole floor space inside would be more than about eight foot square, about the size of a calf-pen, and I shouldn't wonder if that was what it was. I'd walked over to it because I wanted to get my pipe started, out of the breeze. The door was shut, and I'm certain there wasn't anything moving in there, or I'd have heard it.

"I'd struck a match, and was just bending over to draw on my pipe when something shot past me. It seemed to come out of the uncleared patch of woods back of the sheds. I didn't get more than a half glimpse of it, and I can't even tell you what it looked like, except that it was biggish, and it seemed to shamble on all fours, and it panted, the way an animal does that's been running, and it _smelt_ like an animal too--I seemed to get a whiff of it as it went past. It came by me so close I could almost have touched it, and flung itself straight at that window-hole and slithered through, and I could hear the thud of its body on the inside.

"I'm a short man. That window-hole was well above the level of my head. My first thought was to pull myself up and look through, and then--well, you can put it down to what you like, but the thing had given me such a queer turn when it shot past, like cold water down my spine, and I believe if I could have touched that window I wouldn't have had the physical strength to pull myself up and look through. Instead I backed away and just stood there, staring. The door was tight shut. It had all happened in such a flash that I began to wonder, then, if I'd imagined the whole thing. I might have stood there for a couple of minutes, though it seemed to me longer, and then suddenly the door was flung wide open and Aaron himself--or as I know now, Jakey--walked out.

"The door opened outward, and I could see straight past into the shed. There was a heap of broken harness and some rags lying in one corner, and except for that the place was as bare as my hand.

"I daresay I must have looked queer--I know I felt it--for Menning gave me a pretty surly look. He asked me what I wanted, and I told him I'd stopped for the chickens. He said they weren't ready, that he'd bring them over, but just at that minute his mother came out from the house with them in her hand, and I tell you I was glad enough to grab those chickens and drive off. I didn't want to ask questions or to stop near the place."

"This thing--what did you think it looked like?"

"I can't even tell you. It--it didn't look like anything."

"But it ran?"

"Yes, it ran. It's no good trying to tell you what my impression was, any more than I have done."

"Do you suppose Menning kept something shut up there?"

"If he did, where was it when he opened the door? I tell you the shed was empty."

"There was no trapdoor?"

"I went back to see. I didn't just give it up, either. I went back a few days later, one time when Menning had passed our house and I knew he'd be away on his rounds some time. I saw the old woman. She was surly in a way, but friendly to me. You see, I'd tended her before when Menning had been beating her up--oh, yes, he'd done that more than once to my knowledge. The Nevills knew it, but there was no good interfering; she'd deny it, and no one dared tackle Menning. But she had to come to me, once, and though she put up some story, I could tell what had happened. Well, I chatted with her there, and just to see what she'd say I asked her if they didn't keep some sort of a dog on the place. She said no, that they'd had a dog and her son shot it because it howled at night. After a while I left her settled there in the kitchen and before I left I took my chance to go over every hole and corner out of doors. Except for the cow and a couple of pigs there wasn't the sign of any animal round the place bigger than a cat. And there was no opening in that shed except the window and the door Menning came out by.

"So now you know the whole thing--all Mary Lessing claimed I was keeping back from you--and I imagine you're about as wise as I am, and that isn't much."

"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" I asked.

"What could I do? If I went telling that around anyone would have a right to say I was crazy and that I'd imagined the whole thing. You might say--and I've tried to think myself--that what I heard was just something running in the bushes and what I saw was an old hen fluttering in at the window. And maybe it was. And I've known men who've been just as startled, and have told circumstantial tales, over nothing more."

"You could have told it at its face value."

"No," said Lennox, "I couldn't. My mind doesn't work that way. I've got to weigh things. And I've got to exhaust every possible reasonable explanation, including my own physical state at the time, before I'll admit that a thing is so when I know it can't be so. If I've kept this to myself it's because I wanted to find some sort of explanation in my own mind first."

He faced me, stolid and obstinate. Even in that moment I admired his self-possession, his dogged, common sense determination not to be drawn into admission of the existence of any thing that, as Lessing said, he couldn't stick a pin into and label. And I knew, too, that it had cost him something to tell me that story.

"Well," I said, "that's only one more to the list of things we don't seem able to clear up. There's one point; that whatever the explanation may be, it all seems to centre, in the end, round Menning himself."

Lennox rose and went to his desk. "It's what I've always said," he threw back over his shoulder. "Get Menning, and you get the root of all this mystery."

I sat pondering his story. It was not long before my ears caught the sound of a motor cycle along the road, and a few minutes after Herrick appeared. He looked as if he had ridden far and fast; his clothes were covered with dust and there were grimy circles round his eyes.

"No, I don't want to eat," he said. "I got a sandwich coming along. Just let me get this dirt off, that's all."

He went through to the kitchen, and we could hear him splashing at the sink. When he came back, still vigorously towelling his face, Lennox had already mixed him a drink at the sideboard.

"Well," Herrick said, settling himself in the chair Lennox had vacated, "let's begin at the beginning. When I left this morning, Austin, I couldn't tell you where I was going, because I didn't know myself. I had to pick up my information on the way. I was on the track of something which, it seems to me, none of us has so far taken into account, and that is, Jakey Menning's early life."

"He was born right in this county," said Lennox.

"He was not. That's where you make your mistake. He was between eight and nine years old when he first came here. His mother, when we first hear of her, was employed with a travelling show, owned by a German Jew called Goldstein, a sort of fourth rate circus that used to do one-night stands in the small towns and villages. She cooked for the men and looked after the wardrobe. While she was working with them Jakey was born. No one seems to have known just who his father was. The mother passed as a kind of half-wit. She was cunning under an appearance of heavy stupidity, spoke a poor English, was easily teased and enraged, and seems to have been treated as the butt of the company. They wintered usually in Pottsville, where the proprietor's brother kept a saloon. The proprietor's wife took rather a fancy to Jakey, and later on, when Jakey's mother, during the slack season, took a job as cook in a cheap eating-joint there, she simply abandoned the baby to the circus people. While she was employed there she met Menning, married him, and doesn't seem to have troubled about Jakey for several years. Probably she never told Menning of his existence.

"They settled in the country, where Aaron was born, and a few years after, for reasons unknown, Menning deserted her. Then, for the first time, she seems to have remembered Jakey, now growing to an age when he might begin to make himself useful about the farm. She set about claiming him. The circus people, from what I could hear, made some opposition. Jakey was being trained as an acrobat and showed some promise, though he was a difficult child to manage. Moreover, they had kept him all this time and expected some return. Times, however, were slack, they probably foresaw trouble with the school inspectors also, and in the end they let the boy go.

"He worked about the farm, off and on, for some eight or ten years, and got himself thoroughly disliked, as you know, by all the Mennings' neighbours. The criminal streak in him was already apparent, though in those days it only took the form of spitefulness and mental deficiency. He was idle and vagrant and finally, at about seventeen years old, took himself off one fine day and went back to the travelling show, which he managed to trace up through the Pottsville saloon-keeper. They took him back as an extra hand, to help with the wagons. He was not good enough for a performer, his training being interrupted, but the proprietor about that time had the idea of running one or two freak side-shows, and they tried Jakey out as the hoary old fake of 'wild man.'"

Herrick paused a moment to light a fresh cigarette, and in that instant I saw Lennox's eye turn to me with something very like relief.

"It seems," Herrick went on, "that he was quite a successful attraction and I can certainly believe it. There was naturally something apish and uncouth about him, and very little make-up would have turned the trick most naturalistically. He stayed with the show nearly two years, doing odd jobs by day and playing his wild-man stunt at the performances. And then some sort of queer thing must have happened.

"I couldn't get the whole truth of it from the Pottsville brother, who told me most of the story. Either he didn't know or he was unwilling to tell, but the gist of it is that there was some row and Jakey got suddenly fired. From what the Pottsville brother 'guessed,' Jakey played his rôle too realistically, and the proprietor refused then and there to keep him another day. He had a little money in his pockets, he turned up in Pottsville, where he hung about for two or three days, and then made his way back to the farm.

"I would give a great deal to have ten minutes with Goldstein himself, and know exactly what did happen and why Jakey was fired. I gathered that it was something pretty unpleasant. But Goldstein is somewhere out in Ohio, and try as I would, I could get nothing more from the brother than what I have told you. I think myself there was something hushed up at the time, and that he is afraid even now of its coming out. But I got enough I think to throw some interesting light on what has happened since."

"Did you get any idea," Lennox asked, "of Jakey's make-up when he was with these people?"

"No. Why?"

"Tell him your story, Lennox," I said.

He repeated briefly what he had already told me. Herrick listened, his face intent.

"So that was----" He pulled himself up short. "Well, it isn't difficult to put two and two together. The obvious explanation is that Jakey has fallen back on his old circus stunt as a means of terrorizing the neighbourhood. It wouldn't be difficult. No one here, from what I can make out--possibly not even his own family--knew how he spent those two years while he was away. There is a form of mania which takes just that expression, and it is possible that in Jakey's case it began out of sheer maliciousness, and developed later into something a great deal worse--a fixed mania which, with the rousing of the homicidal instinct, turned him actually, at moments, into the wild beast he pretended to be."

"You think it was Menning--it was--well, what I saw--that attacked Lessing?"

"I am certain of it. Go over the thing carefully, Lennox. There was no stunt outside the possibility of a man with unusual physical strength and ability, who had had acrobatic training in boyhood. And remember that a maniac can perform feats that in his sane moments might be outside his powers. We are not dealing with a normal person. That's the one thing in this whole business we've got to remember." He rose. "Austin, will you come over to the bungalow with me? I'd like to see Lessing tonight."

I looked at my watch. "Ten o'clock. I told them I'd be over. We'll take the cycle. It'll carry two of us."

He had left the motor cycle outside the porch. As we wheeled it out to the roadway I said: "You think that is the explanation of the whole thing?"

Herrick gave me a quick look.

"I said it was the obvious explanation. It is. But there's more mixed up with it than that. And it's the other side of it that we shall never get to the truth of until we get hold of Menning himself."

I thought of Lennox's description of what he had seen, in that fleeting glimpse, and in spite of myself a shudder went over me.

"Do you mean that mania can actually transform a human being to that degree?"

"Haven't you see enough, Austin, in your own experience, to answer that question?"

I was silent. Every doctor, I imagine, has had experiences which he is glad enough to put out of his mind, and though my own were limited so far, I had heard enough tales of abnormality, at second hand, to know that there was truth in Herrick's words.

I took my seat on the back of the motor cycle, and in a few minutes we had reached the rise of hill. Turning the corner, we could see the bungalow through the trees. There was still a light burning. As we approached, the deep melancholy howl of the dog broke on our ears. Evidently Lessing had not yet let him out.

We left the cycle against a tree and went up to the porch. The door stood wide open, the light streaming through it from the lamp on the table inside. Of Lessing or his sister there was no sign. Except for the steady howling of the dog in the shed, the place was absolutely silent.

We went through the empty rooms, came out again on the porch. A chair was drawn up near the doorway, with a book dropped in it face-downward, as though someone had risen in haste. That, and the lamp left flaring on the table, gave me for the first time a definite thrill of uneasiness.

Herrick went back and lowered the flame. "They can't have gone far," he said. "They wouldn't have left the light that way. Let's try the studio."

We crossed the little space of ground beside the house. The studio was dark; the door was locked and the key on the outside. As we passed the tool-shed there was a tumult within. The dog, hearing our footsteps, flung himself against the door in a frenzy of eagerness, whining, scratching, tearing at the wood with his nails. There was something in the deep, agonized, almost human anxiety in his voice, raised, not in yelps, but in steady entreaty, that sent a queer thrill down by spine. Herrick felt it too. He stopped short.

"What's _got_ that dog?"

"Lessing shut him in this evening. It was after----"

I paused. All at once there came back to my mind the dog's behaviour that afternoon, when Lessing dragged him back from the saw-mill, bristling and rebellious--Lessing's own face when he joked about the rat. It was near the identical spot where we had missed the dog before, when he broke away from us on our way down, just before we saw Menning's mother. Menning's mother ... and Menning himself had been seen in the neighbourhood the night before. In a flash I saw the whole thing clearly--Freeman's action, the ghost that haunted the milldam, Rebecca's rifled cream-pans and the old woman with her basket of chips. What a fool I had been!

In a moment I had drawn the bolt and the setter was free. He barely stopped to notice us; with a flash of his white chest and a wide-flung yelp of relief he was off across the road and into the woods.

I caught Herrick's arm. "Lessing is at the saw-mill. Come on--I'll tell you later!"

"The saw-mill?"

I saw his hand slip down to his pocket as we ran. The same thought was in both our minds. We broke through the underbrush on the far side of the road, stumbled by chance on the footpath and were racing along it, shoulder to shoulder, while the setter's barking still echoed in our ears.

For a while his voice guided us. Then, abruptly, he was silent. We paused on the edge of the clearing to take breath. All was still--that closed-in stillness of the woods at night, when all daytime life hushed. Before us loomed the old mill, its broken roof and ruined timbers black against the sky. For a moment there was no sound but the pounding of the blood in our ears, the dry rustle of a dead bush as Herrick leaned forward, listening.

Then suddenly, from somewhere in the recesses of the old building itself, there broke on that tense stillness another sound--more horrible to me than anything else--the hoarse choking breaths and muffled worrying of a dog at grips with his enemy. It came, not from the main floor of the mill, but from the basement where the water-wheel hung. There was a doorway on the near side of the mill, formerly used for carting away the sawdust, but it had been nailed up, and remembering this I called to Herrick as I ran directly for the steep slope on the side by the sluice. Here there was open space to squeeze through, and with Herrick close on my heels I trampled a way through the breast-high weeds and bushes round the corner of the building and gained an entrance.

Within all was pitch black. The water was shut off, but a little trickle still flowed through, dripping from the slimy motionless bulk of the great wheel above us. The air was warm, heavy with the smell of rotting sawdust and of something else, fetid and nauseous. The worrying had ceased; we could hear the broken rapid breathing of two bodies, there, unseen, somewhere within a few feet of us in the darkness. I made a step forward, but Herrick clutched my arm, and as he did so the fight broke out again with renewed fury, somewhere it seemed up in the far corner, among the drifted sawdust. I could recognize the setter's deep-throated snarls, the snap of teeth seeking a grip, and with it was another voice, deeper and more guttural--something wholly strange and horrible--something that snarled and panted and coughed in choking gasps. The darkness moved; there came the breath of a warm animal body, the straining of a heavy weight flung against resisting wood, and then the nailed planks gave way, the sudden square of the doorway was obscured by a tumbling, heaving mass and the next instant we were alone--alone in the darkness with silence round us and that fetid unforgettable smell on the air.

It was the same smell that Mary had complained of that evening, wafted to us as we sat on the porch--the smell, I knew now, that I had first noticed on the day I passed the Mennings' place in the early summer.

"Phew!" said Herrick.

He struck a match, shielding the flame with his hands. The little flicker threw out shadows high on the piled sawdust and gray ruined walls. We could make out the huge mass of the wheel, the shafts that ran to the story above, the great beams supporting the broken flooring over our heads. The match spluttered and went out, but in that instant it had shown us what we sought, a dark motionless figure lying huddled in the far corner, where the sawdust sloped up in a shadowy drift under the rafters.

Herrick reached it first, his feet sinking deep at every step as he scrambled up. I heard him draw his breath in sharply as I struck another match, and by its gleam saw Lessing, one arm doubled under him and the clothes nearly torn from his body, lying unconscious in a saturated pool of blood.

Of Mary there was no sign.

XXI

THE THING IN THE WOODS

Together we managed to get Lessing back to the house and laid him on the couch, and while Herrick held the lamp I did the best I could for his injuries with the means at my disposal. It was an ugly job. One arm and shoulder were badly mangled and the collar bone broken; he had lost a great deal of blood and there was a nasty contused wound above the temple. A flicker of consciousness came back while I was working over him, but the loss of blood told, and he lapsed back again almost immediately. There were stitches to be taken; nothing much could be done except to check the bleeding with temporary bandages and as soon as I could manage single-handed Herrick rode off to Lennox for help.

In reality it was not long, though it seemed to me an eternity that I kept that nightmare vigil, my ears strained for any sound from without, bending all my will-power on my task to keep me from the one thought that I dared not face, Mary. Where had she gone--what had happened to her? I went over a thousand possibilities, trying to find some reasonable explanation to which I might cling, though as each moment went by the stillness became more and more a torture. If she had merely missed her brother and gone down the road to call for him we should have met her, or she would be back by now. If she had been with him at the mill, or had followed there ... I thought of the deep blackness of the water at the end of the dam, where we had passed that evening, the sheer drop blow the sluice-gates, and shuddered.

It was with infinite relief I caught the approaching noise of the motor cycle and saw Herrick reappear, followed only a few moments later by Lennox with the light spring-wagon. It was decided to take Lessing straightway to the doctor's house, where he could be better looked after than in the bungalow. We laid a mattress in the bottom of the wagon and lifted him on to this, and Herrick and I on the motor cycle accompanied Lennox beyond the hollow at the foot of the hill. Before we started Herrick, his face grim and set in the lamplight, pulled out the revolver I had lent him that morning and handed it to me.

"Keep that, Austin. I bought another today. Lennox has his own."

"There was an extra box of cartridges," I said, "in the table-drawer."

"Lennox gave them to me."

When we had seen the wagon well along the road we turned, and rode back to the bungalow.

"Now," said Herrick, when we stood once more in the lighted room, "the first thing is to find Mary. And then ... there has got to be an end to this. Are you ready to face it?"

He did not need to ask me. I looked round on the little room, gay and friendly with its rugs and books and the great bowls of wildflowers that Mary loved--the countless little signs of her occupation, a sweater flung across a chair, her work-basket of Indian grass on the table--the room in which I had spent so many happy hours, now suddenly sinister in its desertion. And then my eye fell on the couch where we had laid Lessing, and the hideous litter I had left in my haste--stained wads of cotton and the torn strips from his shirt with which we had striven to check the blood before we carried him up from the mill.

"For God's sake," I exclaimed impulsively, "let's get that cleared away before she gets back!"

Before Mary got back ... the words died in my throat. But I gathered up the telltale evidence all the same--every last scrap and fragment--and thrust them out of sight behind the kitchen woodbox, before I turned to Herrick.

"We'll try Sliefers' first," he said. "There's just the possibility she is there."

It was a slight chance, and as it proved, fruitless. The farmer was still up, and opened the door to us in stockinged feet. No one there had seen Mary since the afternoon. Sliefer heard our errand with a grave face.

"There's no house she'd have come to but this," he said. "There's only Scholl's and Nevill's at the Bend, and they were both asleep as you passed? They're a-bed by ten. Besides, if there was anything out of the way they'd either one of them have sent over here straight. No. Unless the young lady's missed her way, or met with some accident...."

He looked at us doubtfully. It was no time to mince matters. We told him, as briefly as we could, what had happened that evening and how we had found Lessing at the mill.

He heard us out, his jaw set grimly. When we had finished he rose without a word, a tall, still stalwart figure in his stockinged feet, and crossing the kitchen took down his gun that hung on a rack above the door.

"I guess I'm coming with you," he said.

I glanced at Herrick. He nodded.

"Three are better than two, Austin. We may be glad of an extra hand before the night's out." He turned to Sliefer, who had laid his gun on the table, and was pulling on a pair of heavy boots. "Have you got a good dog? I don't mean the collie."

"Aye. There's old Spot, back in the barn. He'd pick up a trail anywheres. Nor he ain't none too friendly to Menning, either, that's one reason we've kep' him tied up, most of the time. Now I guess I'll step up an' leave word with Mother."

He opened the stairway door and tip-toed up, curiously noiseless on his heavy feet. We heard whispering, a smothered exclamation; then he came down, gently closing the door behind him.

"I ain't told her nothing, only that you'd missed Miss Lessing and we was going out to hunt her up. There's no need she should know about the rest of it. This ain't no woman's job, nor it ain't no sheriff's job either. If they'd come to me first off I know every track in these woods back an' forth, and it won't be easy for anyone to get away from me, not once we pick his trail up. Menning can run these woods like a fox, but he won't run far, not when I got a gun in my hand. Not that I'd be scared to meet him anywheres, gun or no gun, and I bet he knows it."

A strange expression flitted across Herrick's face as he measured the farmer's sturdy figure with his eye. But he only said gravely: "You're a good neighbour, Mr. Sliefer. As you say, this is no sheriff's job now; it's up to us. And we're going to see it through."

We closed the door behind us.

"I told Mother to bolt that, once we're gone," Sliefer said. "Reckon we don't need no lantern."

"Better not," Herrick said.

The old man crossed to the barn and came back a few minutes later with the dog on a chain, a cross-bred hound by the look of him, heavily built and brindled white and brown.

"That's what they used to call a bear-dog," the farmer said, "when I was a boy. The breed's pretty well died out now. I've had old Spot here eleven years, and I had his mother an' grandmother before him. You don't see 'em nowadays, any more. They raise these light-built hounds now, but they ain't the fighters these dogs were."

The farmer was a brisk walker. He picked his way through the woods, turning here, pausing there, at what seemed to us invisible signs and landmarks, making his way unerringly through the trees and undergrowth, the hound close to his heels, till presently we stood once more on the open road a little below the bungalow. I looked eagerly towards the house, only to see the turned down light burning just as we had left it.

"We'll try here first," Sliefer said.

He took two or three turns about the road and clearing, but the dog took no interest. We recrossed the road to the farther side, and here, among the underbrush near the path Herrick and I had taken, he showed the first signs of keenness, sniffing to and fro, his nose laid close to the ground. In a few moments he was off at a leisurely trot along the path.

"Picked up the other dog's scent, most like," said Sliefer, watching him. "Come on. We'll find him at the mill."