Part 11

"We'd better walk it. There's no good wasting time. Get your job through, Jackson, bring the car on to the top of the hill and wait for us there, along the road. I suppose..."

Lennox caught my eye.

"I can rely on Doctor Haverill," he said promptly. "As we are one man short already I don't think it advisable that we should divide."

"Very good. Have either of you gentlemen an extra revolver?"

I pulled mine out and gave it to the chauffeur. He grinned cheerfully as he slipped it in his pocket.

"Right, sir! If any spook puts a game on me I won't start tellin' my beads! Give me twenty minutes, Mr. Keary, and I'll have the car right there!"

We left him at his task and set off up the hill, following the little footpath at the side of the road, Lennox and the sheriff in front, the inspector and myself at the rear. When we were nearly at the top the inspector paused.

"There's fire somewhere," he said. "I can smell it."

"Someone been burning bush, most likely," said Lennox. "We can tell further on."

At the top of the hill it was unmistakable, a sickly charred odor that hung heavily on the air. Lennox gave an exclamation and quickened his pace involuntarily. A moment later the Lessing bungalow came in sight; there were lights in the windows, and I caught sight of a slim shawl-wrapped figure on the porch. Lennox and the sheriff were well ahead, and as they reached the bungalow someone stepped out and joined them in the roadway. I heard Lessing's voice raised in amazement. "Lennox, by all that's holy!"

"It's Menning's place," said Lennox as we came up. "I thought as much! The game's up."

"Burned to tinder an hour ago," said Lessing cheerfully. "Hello, Haverill! Have you all joined the local fire-brigade?" He caught sight of the inspector's square shoulders behind me, and whistled. "So that's it! Well, if you're wanting an interview with Menning, I guess his present address is somewhere in the woods between here and Coopersville!"

We ran on hastily to the Bend, taking a short cut across the fields behind the bungalow. It was as Lessing had said. The fire had broken out some three hours ago, and his first intimation had been the sudden lurid glare across the tree-tops as he sat on the porch smoking a final cigarette before turning in. The house, a dilapidated structure at best, had caught from the basement upward, and by the time he arrived on the scene it was already beyond hope of saving. He had given what help he could to the neighbours, hastily collected, but with the limited appliances at hand the task was hopeless from the first.

The huckster's yard with its strewn debris, desolate enough by daylight, was made doubly sinister by the red wavering light that still played and flickered among the broken boxes and tumble-down sheds, lit up the loathsome scrap-heaps and the trampled mire underfoot. The prisoned chickens, startled from sleep, kept up a mournful squawking, pushing and struggling in their coops. The efforts of the men had been directed to the barn and cowshed. They stood now, an awed, strangely silent little group, gathered near a broken bureau and a pile of household goods that had been dragged somewhere from the burning and huddled forlornly in the open yard. I remember that a wooden clock, still ticking, and a filthy and ancient foot-tub were among the collection. I spoke to one of the men; it was old Paddy's son-in-law.

"We done all we could; the old place was no better'n tinder. Pop was fur lettin' it burn an' not lift a hand. We got Miss Mennin' out. Hiram Scholl he bust the door in an' got her. She's over to the house now. Aaron ain't here. It's funny about him. He ain't took the horse anyway. They was sayin'..."

He stopped short and looked at me, the glare of the fire on his sweat-streaked face.

"They was sayin' he started it. I dunno. It broke out downstairs. They ain't no one seen Aaron."

And after a moment he added: "He'd oughter be insured. There's no savin' anything."

I went back to Lennox and the sheriff, standing a little apart.

"Aaron's gone," I said.

"I know. There's nothing to be done here. We'll go and see the old woman."

I stayed behind with the inspector and Lessing while the other two went over to the Nevills' cottage, and together we made a thorough search of the barn and outhouses. There was nothing to be learned. Filth and disorder reigned everywhere. To describe the condition of the place, as we found it, would only be to recall the actual physical sickness that overtook me during the task.

The neighbours had gradually dispersed during our search. By the time the others rejoined us the place was deserted. The fire had completely burned itself out; only a tiny smouldering flame pulsed up here and there, to die down again immediately into blackness.

McWade and the sheriff exchanged a few words, and the latter turned. "Well, gentlemen, I think there's nothing more to be done," he said. "I expect Jackson has the car ready by now. We'll walk back to the house, and if Mr. Lessing has no objection I should like a few words with him before we go."

We did not meet the car, nor was it in sight when we reached the bungalow. Mary Lessing was on the porch, and while the others went indoors I stayed outside to smoke a cigarette in the open air and watch the road in case Jackson turned up.

"I'm glad it was Menning's house, if it had to be somebody's," said Mary, with really feminine lucidity. "I wanted to go, but Dick wouldn't let me. I guess I wouldn't have been much use. Doctor Haverill, is it ... Aaron they're after?"

"They think he had something to do with that business last spring. It's Lennox's story. I haven't had a chance to talk to him yet. Anyway I'll take back all I said against him last night."

She had heard nothing of the accident at the dam, and I told her as briefly as I could all that had happened since we left the bungalow last evening. She listened breathlessly.

"So it was Doctor Lennox all the time! Now I know why he didn't want to meet me that morning. I was sure I knew him, somehow."

"You were smarter than we were," I admitted. "He took us in. Only I don't see why, now."

"Sliefer's is near to Aaron's place," said Mary, "and if he was watching Aaron he wouldn't want anyone to know who he was. You think it was Aaron who attacked Freeman last night?"

"I am nearly sure of it."

Mary shivered. "It's horrible," she said. "It's horrible! I wish now----"

"What?"

"I wish I'd known," she said quickly. "That poor girl! I shall go over and see her first thing tomorrow. I know Rebecca quite well. We get our milk from there."

"Do," I said. "You'll cheer her up a bit." I rose as I spoke and peered down the road. "It's time that car put in an appearance."

"Your car? Where did you leave it?"

"Just down the hill there. It had a breakdown," I explained. "The man was going to catch us up."

"I thought I heard a car," she said, "a little while ago. It was while you were over at the fire. It didn't come past here. Do you suppose Menning knew what you came for?"

"Lennox thinks he must have suspected it. Anyhow he's far enough away by this time."

She looked at me, as I thought, a little uneasily.

"You aren't afraid of Menning?" I exclaimed. "Far or near, he'll take good enough care to keep out of anyone's way just now. Well, I'll go and see if I can find the car. He may have misunderstood the directions. You might tell the others if they're looking for me."

As it happened, I had barely gone a dozen paces up the road before I heard the cheerful approaching throb of a motor, and a moment later the car, with Jackson in it, swung into sight.

"I was just coming along to look for you," I said as he drew up. "I thought you'd missed us."

"Thought the spooks had got me!" He grinned appreciatively. "No, sir! I just pulled up the road a bit--didn't know which way you'd gone. I guess they weren't huntin' company tonight." He laughed. "Mighty thick these woods are. I don't know this part of the country much. Do you get any big animals, round about?"

"Nothing bigger than a badger," I said. "Why?"

"There was something crossed my path, coming up the hill there. It might have been a dog, now I think of it, but it didn't look like no dog I've ever seen. Rather high in the hindquarters, and grayish ... I on'y saw the back of it. It slunk off in the bushes as I come up."

"There aren't any very big dogs that I know," I said, "except Mr. Lessing's setter, and that's generally chained up at night."

"It weren't no setter," said Jackson. "Weren't the build of a setter. And it weren't no badger, for I've seen 'em. Low-running, brownish beasts they are.... Is this the house, sir?"

We drew up outside the bungalow, and I jumped down to join the others, waiting on the porch.

"It wasn't anything _like_ a dog, now I think of it," said Jackson.

XVIII

LENNOX'S STORY

Lennox's face, when the car had deposited us once more at our door, expressed utter chagrin and annoyance. He flung himself down in the surgery arm-chair and lit a cigar.

"That's what comes of not acting on the minute," he said. "I had my hand on the man last night. I tell you, Haverill, you can't drive plain facts into people's heads. There's formality and formality, and the end is your man gets a clear twelve hours to lay his plans and the game's up."

"Bad luck," I rejoined.

He sat staring moodily down at the carpet.

"While I think of it," I remembered, "I've got some property of yours. You might as well have it back."

I pulled out the envelope he had left for me that morning. Lennox took it without a glance and thrust it into his pocket.

"Considering that I didn't have the opportunity to open it," I remarked, "I think you might let me into the story now."

He pulled out his watch. "Well, I don't know but what sleep's out of the question, anyway, tonight. Get the whisky out, Haverill, there's a good chap, and we'll go into it."

"One moment," I said as I unlocked the cupboard. "Have you any objection if I fetch Herrick down?"

"Not in the least."

I roused Herrick accordingly, and he bundled sleepily into a dressing-gown and joined us below, where his sleepiness rapidly vanished in the few moments that it took to grasp the new turn of events, and the part that Lennox himself had played in last night's happenings.

Put briefly, this was the story as Lennox put it to us, gathered round the surgery table in the chilly half-hour that precedes dawn.

The Menning household, when Lennox first came here, had consisted of the two half-brothers, Jake and Aaron, and the old mother, who kept house for them and helped more or less in the business. They were of Westphalian origin, but had settled in this country for two generations. The mother, according to Lennox, was a curious survival of the original peasant stock. Stolid, hard-working, and uncommunicative, she preserved always a certain aloofness from her neighbours, a taciturnity that marked her out even among the Dutch families about. She had preserved a great deal of her native superstition and traditions, and was reputed to have a great knowledge of herbs and some skill in home doctoring and decoctions, when she could be induced to use it, by reason of which the neighbours, ready enough in such gossip, believed her to have actual powers of witchcraft. Superstition dies hard, even in a new country, and there was at all events a marked unwillingness among them to annoy or "cross" her in any way. About thirty years ago she had married a young Pennsylvania Dutchman, Menning by name, who had deserted her shortly after. Aaron, their son, had his mother's characteristics in a modified degree. He was inclined to be friendly, if not sociable, a good business man, thrifty but honest-dealing, and very religious. Jake, the half-brother, was some years older than Aaron, and, in Lennox's phrase, a "throw-back." There was considerable mystery and gossip about his birth. Some said that he was born before the mother's marriage, some after. He was certainly only half related to Aaron, and the wide difference between them was in curious contrast to their strong physical resemblance, a result in both cases of the virile persistence of the mother's peasant type. Jakey was mentally deficient, but not enough to debar him from ordinary tasks. He occupied himself in the huckstering business, and took the wagon round in turn with Aaron, week and week about. In many ways he could be trusted, but he was malicious and cunning, and the bad streak seemed to predominate with age. Lennox never considered him safe. There was always the possibility, in his opinion, of a serious outbreak, and he had even gone so far as to suggest to Aaron the advisability of having him put under definite restraint. At first Aaron had been disposed to consider the idea favourably, then later, for no given reason, he changed his mind. His manner, at about this time, in regard to any discussion about Jakey, changed also so noticeably that Lennox supposed there must have been words between Aaron and the mother about his (Lennox's) interference in the matter, and that Aaron had perhaps been naturally induced to range himself upon the mother's side. Lennox urged him at least to have his brother medically examined, but he always met with a dogged refusal.

"Jakey's all right in the daytime," Aaron persisted. "He ain't doin' harm to nobody. Nights we lock him in."

Once only he went so far as to say that if it became necessary he would take his own steps in the matter, rather implying a resentment at outside interference, and Lennox, to avoid making further bad blood, was forced to let the matter drop. So things went on till last March, and the events which led to the finding of Jakey's body by the creek at Dutchman's Hill.

Lennox saw the body, and there was no doubt in his mind at the time that death was due to an epileptic seizure. There were no marks of any sort on the body. The ground was fairly soft at the time--a thaw had set in that same afternoon--but there were no footprints to be found other than those of the man himself, leading down to the creek, and the tracks of some large dog which had evidently passed that way in the night, sniffed at the body and gone on. At the word "large dog" I saw Herrick shift in his chair.

"Do the Mennings keep a dog?" he asked.

"A watchdog, I believe. Most people do."

"Nothing else was found near the place?"

"Nothing but this, which I myself happened on a few days later. Either of the brothers might have dropped it, or it might have been dropped by another person altogether. It was lying some little distance from the creek, beyond the bridge there. The inspector attached no particular importance to it. There is a certain amount of traffic along this road, and there is no indication that this wasn't dropped by some passing person a day or two after the body was found."

He drew from his waistcoat pocket a small round silver object, slightly larger than a pea.

"Looks like some boy's treasure," I said. "A button, isn't it?"

"It has been a button," Herrick said. "The shank has been broken off and it's been hammered. Well, Lennox, go on."

"Of course there was an inquest," Lennox said. "They found that the man died during an epileptic seizure, which carried out my own conclusions. And now I am coming to the queer part of my tale. It was Aaron who formally identified the body. I saw him and spoke with him at the inquest, and I saw him again the day after Jakey's funeral."

He paused.

"Six weeks after the inquest, Haverill, I was walking down the short cut from the Bend, and I met Jake Menning face to face. I am as certain of it as that I am sitting here. He made off without giving me a chance to speak to him. But that it was Jake, in solid flesh and blood, I had no shadow of a doubt.

"The next day I went to the house. I asked for Aaron. The old woman met me. She said that Aaron was away with the wagon. I asked when I could see him, and she became evasive. It seemed that he was very busy, that he was away a good deal of the time; she could not say at all when he was likely to be found.

"Her answers, and more particularly her manner, set me to thinking. I had not seen Aaron since the day after Jakey's funeral. No one, so far as I could learn without pushing inquiries unduly, had seen much of Aaron since the inquest. His trade had always lain further afield than the immediate neighbourhood, where most people raised their own chickens for use, and few in sufficient quantity to sell. Mrs. Searle had seen him, certainly, and Mrs. Searle had remarked a change in him. She said that he was queer and silent; she thought that the shock of his brother's death had preyed on his mind. In her own words, he was 'getting just like Jakey in his ways.'

"It was about this time that the talk first began about the haunting of Dutchman's Hill. I am not a credulous man where ghosts are concerned, and I scoffed any idea of the supernatural. One stranger, a pedlar, said that a 'something' had jumped out and chased him to the bridge, where it stopped. Others declared that it was the ghost of Jakey that haunted the place. On top of all this came the--er--the very singular attacks upon Mr. Lessing. I don't want to go into Lessing's case now. His own story was of course untenable, and I strongly believe that he knew a great deal more than he chose to tell me at the time--in other words, that he found amusement in trying, deliberately, to see how much I would believe. We were always strongly opposed on certain questions, though in general I found him a most courteous and charming man, and I am afraid he was not above trying, in this matter, to take a rise out of me, as they say. If he had taken me into his confidence then, instead of inventing the ridiculous sort of bogy-tale he did, we should have been at the truth of this matter much earlier."

Herrick and I exchanged glances. I fancied he was about to speak, but on second thoughts changed his mind. Lennox continued.

"The problem resolved itself into this. If Jakey was still alive, and I could swear to it that he was, whose was the body that had been identified and buried in March, and how was it that no one, save myself, guessed at his continued existence? _Who was Aaron Menning?_

"I tell you, Haverill, the thing became a nightmare. I had no proof to go upon, nothing but my own instinct. The more I thought over it, the more clear it grew to me. The man whose body had been found at Dutchman's Hill was not Jakey at all, it was Aaron."

"But----"

"Listen here, Haverill," Lennox said. "I know what I am saying sounds incredible to you. But consider for a moment, on what superficial observations we base our recognition of people, every day. Remember the very strong likeness which existed between the two brothers, even to the scarring and thickening of the skin by smallpox, which in itself blunts the individuality of a face. The face of the dead man was swollen both by the manner of death and the partial immersion in mud. Remember that there were no intimate relatives to impose upon, for the mother undoubtedly knew the truth. The farmer who found the body identified it as that of a huckster named Menning who had called upon him the week before. Aaron was away from home that night, and he did not return with the wagon till the afternoon. It was the mother who first identified the body as that of Jakey, and the news was already spread when I arrived on the scene. Aaron appeared at the inquest, but with the exception of myself there were not three men there who knew him at all intimately, or who could have sworn to his actual identity unless they saw the two brothers side by side. Both Aaron and the mother opposed the inquest strongly, and the neighbours told me that she would let no one help her in preparing the body for burial. She had always kept herself rather aloof, as I said, and at the time her refusal did not strike me as peculiar.

"Given the clue, the thing was easy enough to construct. I believe myself it was fear of his brother's placing him under restraint that first suggested the attack. He must have concealed himself in the tree near the footbridge, knowing that Aaron had an errand in the village and would pass that way, and so sprung out upon him. The impact of his body bore them both down to the edge of the stream. There was no struggle. The shock brought on the seizure in which Aaron died, and Jakey, leaving him there, had sufficient cunning either to follow the stream or swing himself up by the bridge, and so avoid leaving any traces. He returned to the house, and with his mother concocted the story of Aaron's absence with the wagon, harnessed the horse and made off ready to return the following afternoon, when the dead man's identity would have been safely established. People might have suspected Jakey of killing Aaron, but no one would suspect Aaron of killing Jakey.

"I think now that he was on his guard against me at the inquest, and that his suspicion must have deepened as time went on. I was morally convinced that the man was a dangerous homicidal lunatic, but I had no evidence to convict him. He would have been cunning enough to defeat me, since no one would have credited my story. Aaron was known and respected. It would have been folly to bring any hasty charge against him. Convinced that he already mistrusted me, and that my only safety was in disarming his suspicion, I took the only course possible. I determined to go away for a time, and I took the precaution of letting it be supposed that I went for my health. I wanted Menning to think that he had driven me away, and I believe I succeeded. Up to last night he had no suspicion of my identity with Crowfoot. I counted on his relaxing his caution once I was out of the way, and I was right.