Part 13

"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.