Part 15

For a moment the hound eyed him. Then, with the same abruptness with which he had entered the mill he raised his head, gave a low whine, and was off in a straight line through the underbrush. Almost immediately we heard his first call, the warning bell-like note of a hound on the found trail.

"He's picked it up all right," the farmer said. "Come on. I back Spot to keep a scent once he's got it."

We started after him, keeping as steady a pace as we could in the darkness. It was well that Sliefer was with us. He made his way with the unerring ease of a man used to the woods from boyhood, to whom night is almost the same as day, and all we needed to do was to follow in his tracks. The hound seemed to be keeping an even course, some couple of hundred yards ahead of us; his deep warning cry, pitched always on the same two notes, rang out at intervals and Sliefer had no difficulty in guiding his way by the sound.

Once, in the neighbourhood of the Menning house, the dog was at fault; he hesitated and all but turned aside towards the out-buildings, but in the end picked up the scent again and struck out in a northerly direction through the woods.

For nearly an hour we followed him, through tracts of dense second growth and across spaces of stony pasture, out again on a back road, with an occasional darkened house tranquil in its grassy yard, looping and turning here and there, but on the whole keeping a fairly straight course. We crossed two sloping pastures, plunged into a thicket of young trees, and presently found ourselves on a space of rising ground, strewn with huge boulders and set with stunted juniper and spruce.

Ahead of us the hound's voice rang out clear and mournful, as it seemed to me with a deepening note. Sliefer paused and looked about him. The moon was rising. It showed the sharp line of hills, densely wooded on either side, with the dark cleft of a gorge between. Through the gap in a ruined stone fence we could see a cart track, all but obliterated, that wound into obscurity.

"I know this place," the farmer said. "It's near what they call Rocky Hollow. I haven't been here in years, but I used to know it well when I was a boy. I sort of suspicioned he was heading for here, right along. Once in them big rocks in there you won't trap a man easy, not if he knows his way. If we'd had time to head him off, now."

I glanced at Herrick. He was staring straight at that narrow closed-in gorge, his eyes keen and fixed.

"Is there any other outlet there?"

"Not easy. It's straight-up rock at the far end and the woods are pretty thick. A man would have to make slow going, either way he took it. If he's in there----"

We followed the cart track till it ended in a little grassy clearing from which a few steps brought us to the spot Sliefer had called "Rocky Hollow." It was a small, narrow valley, filled with masses of piled boulders, some enormous, some small, the remains evidently of some ancient moraine. They looked as if giant hands had flung them there in sport, one upon another. Seen by daylight, with the black wooded hillside shutting it in, the place would be desolate enough; by the faint growing moonlight it had a look indescribably grim and sinister. Here, one felt, among those barren stones and piled boulders, that took fantastic shapes in the play of light and shadow, would be a fit hiding-place for anything evil.

Higher up the ravine, near us but hidden from sight, the hound was baying furiously, no longer the bell-like note that had guided us through the woods, but a hoarse deep voice of warning and anger. We made our way towards the sound, scrambling over the stones, and found him standing before an opening between two boulders, where an overhanging rock formed a sort of rough cavern. There was a glimpse of something white within, and for a moment my heart turned sick with fear. But it was only a sheet of crumpled greasy newspaper that had evidently contained food. There were the charred remains of a small campfire and an old tin can lay in one corner.

Sliefer caught the dog by his collar as we peered inside. He picked up the crumpled sheet.

"A week old," he said. "Here's where he hung out, all right. No tramp ever comes here; it's too far off the main road."

Stooping forward, I had rested my hand on the rock at one side. It was warm to the touch, and I turned quickly to the blackened embers near.

"He's not far off, either. That fire----"

"Is cold," returned Herrick quickly, touching the ashes.

The stone was warm, I could have sworn it. Somebody, only a moment ago, had lain there. There was a sudden oath from Sliefer, and I turned to see, a hundred feet down the gorge, something that twisted and moved, a stealthy misshapen shadow, between the gray boulders. It was a bare glimpse, seen in a flash and blotted out immediately against the grayish rocky background, but in that second I thought of Lennox and I too felt cold down my spine.

The farmer's face had gone a curious sickly white. He stood holding his gun stupidly, with fingers that shook.

"That ... that weren't no man ... that...."

"Did you see?" cried Herrick.

There was a sharp note of excitement in his voice. I nodded. "It ... went off down there."

Sliefer had pulled himself together. He swung round, his face suddenly savage.

"Man or beast, by God, we'll get him now! _That_ shan't run the woods another night, not if I drop in my tracks!"

He shouted to the dog, but the hound, with the rare stupidity of his race, was still snuffing round the cave. Dragged away, he tried one scent and another in and out the boulders, but the tracks had been crossed and confused a dozen times and we lost precious minutes before he picked up his right trail at last, halfway down the gorge, and was off again on his slow loping gait.

He ran silently, this time, and in deadly earnest. Only occasionally his voice came back to us, low-pitched and warning. Downhill, over the shoulder of that same sloping pasture we had crossed before, then a wide detour to the right, skirting a swamp where our feet sunk deep between the tussocks--more open fields and then again back to the woods. On we kept doggedly, through hours it seemed to me--more slowly now, for the steady pace was beginning to tell on us--in silence only broken by Sliefer's heavy breathing as he forged ahead, his ear bent always for the sound of the dog's voice. By his old hunter's instinct he knew which way the hound was running, and was able to save many a turn by short cuts which we followed unquestionably, relying on that seventh sense of his which never seemed to fail us.

It was getting on towards dawn when Sliefer paused finally at a cross-road which seemed to me familiar.

"See that?" he said. "There's the right-hand fork that turns back to the Bend, past the old Sullivan house. He's circling back on his old tracks. A while back I thought he was trying to make that tract of woods the other side of the State road, but the dog's headed him out of that. It's getting on for daylight now, and the way I figure it he'll try and make for some place he knows. He daren't show up round the village and I reckon he'll keep clear of the old house, for he knows that's been watched. By the way he's headed now, it's either the saw-mill or some other place near it. He knows he can't give Spot the slip again in the woods and he's hard pushed--ain't got much chance now to pick an' choose. I say we won't waste time but jest chance it and cut in right here towards the mill. There's an old wood-road just a little ways further up that'll be easier going than if we took the long way round."

"Right," said Herrick. He loosened the revolver in his belt. "Are we agreed? Whatever we see, close in on it, but don't fire unless you have to."

Sliefer gave him a quick, grim look.

"I reckon nothin'll get by me again. That don't happen twice. We ain't any bunch of girls that he can fool with his damn play-acting."

Again that queer look flitted across Herrick's face, but he said nothing, only fell in silently beside me as we followed Sliefer into the path.

It was darker here. The trees shut in close about us. Sliefer was a few paces ahead. Presently I felt Herrick's hand on my arm.

"Less than half an hour to daybreak! God, Austin, if we can only beat him to it!"

He quickened pace as he spoke.

"What do you mean? We'll get him anyhow."

"We'll get Menning, yes ... but we mayn't get the thing that attacked Dick. Yes, they're the same, but--Austin, I can't explain to you now, but I tell you we've got to make every effort in these last few minutes. If Sliefer's right, and he's doubled back, we're all right. Otherwise...."

"But he must know----"

"He _knows_. He isn't playing for safety; he knows that's over. He wasn't playing for safety when he made that big detour, he's playing for time. It's time that matters, and it's there we've got to beat him. Austin, Sliefer talks of play-acting, but is it play-acting that can keep a man ahead of a dog for the best part of the night? Was it play-acting that half-killed Lessing? No, if we're ever to know the truth we've got to know it now, within these next twenty minutes. Ah!"

It was the hound again, sudden, sharp, and near at hand. Sliefer had been right after all. We were within a few steps of the saw-mill clearing, but the dog was there before us. He was circling the ground, barking furiously as he had done in the gorge, his attention divided between the mill itself and the group of trees, with an old dead chestnut among them, that stood within a dozen feet of the building and a little nearer the sluice gate. But he left the trees when we came up and flung himself savagely against the boarded doorway.

"That was open when we left it, Herrick--do you remember?"

He took out his revolver.

"Go round to the back, Sliefer, and take the dog with you. Austin, watch this end from outside. I'll go through; I've got the flashlight."

"I'm coming with you," Sliefer said.

"All right. One must stay outside, in case ... Austin, it'll be you, then. If anything--_anything_, you understand--tries to get past you, shoot to cripple it. Fire low. Remember what I told you!"

He flung the door open; I heard the quick rush of the dog's feet. With every nerve tense to straining-point I listened, but the seconds slowly passed and there was no further sound. I moved a few paces back, to get a clearer view of the building and waited.

From within I fancied once I could hear Sliefer's voice. The flashlight moved to and fro, its gleam visible through the cracks of the old walls. Now they were going through the upper floor.

There was a stillness in the air, that chill hush which comes just before dawn. Already the light was changing, becoming faintly clear and shadowless. Somehow, with this drawing-near of daylight, of the return to common day shapes and things, the nightmare feeling of those dark hours dropped from me; I seemed to see it as something fantastic, monstrous, a bad dream. All the events of the last few hours crowded in upon me--the finding of Lessing, Mary's disappearance, our grim chase through the night woods. How far were these things connected--what was Herrick's idea? What were we after--a criminal, hunted and desperate, endowed with animal strength and cunning, but yet a man like ourselves--or a figment of Herrick's brain?

From within the building I heard an exclamation, the dog's sharp whine. Nerves suddenly taut, I waited, my eyes fixed on the broken doorway. And then some instinct--I don't know what--made me turn and look up.

I was standing almost directly under the old dead chestnut, near which the dog had been nosing when we arrived. Its bare greyish limbs, gnarled and twisted, stretched above me, bare in the growing light. Bare--but as I looked one of those twisted boughs seemed to stir and change, heave slowly, detach itself in some monstrous way from the rest and take living shape. I tried to cry out, dragged helplessly at my revolver, but before I could get it free something fell on me, clutching, I was borne to the ground beneath a hairy living weight, bestial, loathesome, an unnameable horror.

For an eternity, it seemed to me, we struggled there. The thing was stronger than I, and strive as I would I could get no clear view of it. Coarse long fur, indescribably filthy, was against my mouth and nose, and my clutching hands met in it helplessly. I made a supreme effort and twisted my head to one side till my face pressed the earth, in a blind instinct of preservation. Long curved nails caught at my throat, and once I fancied a hand that was partly human. Strangely, through it all, I kept my mind somehow clear; the fear of losing consciousness was stronger in me than any other. This, I remember thinking, was the Thing that had attacked Lessing, that had killed the two cyclists, falling on them as it had fallen on me. Herrick was right ... I would tell Herrick ... and I wondered what they would say when they found me. Darkness shut down; I was lying under a heavy mountain, and then the mountain lifted, I heard the hoarse snarl of the dog and an oath and Herrick's voice crying sharply: "Don't shoot!"

There was a blinding report close to me. Somehow I staggered to my feet. Herrick was supporting me. The smoke cleared away, and through it I could see Sliefer, the gun in his hands, and on the ground something that writhed and twisted in beastlike shape and yet cried out with a human voice and dragged itself, still dreadfully crying, up the slope to the water's edge, swayed there for a sickening instant and fell with a splash into the black depths below.

XXII

THE SILVER BULLET

Pale clear sunlight; early twittering of birds; the clean freshness of dawn....

The lamp was still burning on the table when we reached the bungalow. Herrick put it out. Then he laid a hand on my shoulder.

"Austin----"

There was a clatter of wheels on the road outside. Someone had pulled up outside the house. It was a boy--Hiram Scholl's boy--taking his load of milk-cans over to the creamery.

"I don't know as you've missed that yeller dog that belongs here," he called out, "but if the folks were looking for him I thought I'd tell you. He's over to the little house back on our wood-lot up the road. I called to him, an' I dunno but he's hurt or something, for he's just layin' there an' he wouldn't come. So if you want to go after him I guess he's still there."

"Leo!" I exclaimed.

Herrick turned to me quickly as the boy drove off. "What house is that?"

"Hiram Scholl's. It was empty, but someone said that Menning's mother--Herrick, there's just a chance!"

I sprang for the motor-cycle, leaning where we had left it the night before, by the side of the house. In a moment I had it out on the road and Herrick swung to the seat behind me as I started the engine up.

Five minutes brought us to the spot where the house stood, a tiny frame shack set on a space of half-cleared woodland back from the road. To reach it we had to climb the slope of stony pasture that divided Scholl's land from the woods, and as we came in sight of the house, half-hidden among the stunted spruce and juniper trees my eyes caught a yellowish spot stretched on the doorstone.

It was the setter. He whined as I called to him, but without turning, his gaze fixed on the closed door. His fine coat was draggled and matted with blood about the throat; he sprang to his feet as we came near and began to paw at the doorway.

I knocked. No one moved within. The one window was close shuttered, but I fancied, listening, I could hear a faint crooning sound from inside.

Together we set our shoulders to the door. It gave way, and we found ourselves in the one tiny living-room of the house. It was dark and close there was a disorder of household things piled here and there. On a small broken rocker in the middle of the floor, Mrs. Menning sat huddled, swaying to and fro, with the low crooning mutter we had heard from outside. She had an old coloured handkerchief tied over her head and a small silver cross was hung on a thin chain round her wrinkled neck. Her aged face was impassive; her eyes, uncannily keen and bright, seemed to look straight through us into distance.

"Where is Miss Lessing?" I asked.

She made no sign of having heard me, only kept up that faint unintelligible muttering. Herrick went over and shook her gently by the shoulder.

"Where is Miss Lessing? You got to tell us."

She twisted her shoulder from his grasp and sunk lower into the chair, her eyes averted. My ears had caught a sound overhead. There was no stairway in the room, but behind a pile of furniture a wooden button betrayed a door that I had taken for an ordinary closet. Hastily, I began to drag the things aside. The old woman saw my purpose and slipped with sudden agility to her feet, her eyes blazing with anger, but Herrick thrust her aside and in an instant we had the door open and were upstairs, the dog at our heels.

"Mary!"

I caught her in my arms--unhurt, thank God--and carried her down, through the shuttered room, past the old muttering woman--out into the open and the clean air.

"Oh, Austin, that old woman! She met me on the road--I had gone to call for Dick, and she said she was looking for me; that Dick had had an accident and they'd brought him to this house and sent for me. She told me to go upstairs, that he was there, and she shut the door and wouldn't let me out. There was no window; no one could have heard me from outside. And then Leo found me, I heard him barking and she tried to drive him away, but he wouldn't go. Good old Leo!" She put her arm round the setter, who was trying hard to reach her face with his tongue. "I knew he'd help you to find me. Austin, where _is_ Dick?"

I had to tell her, breaking it as gently as I could.

"Will you take me to him at once, please--now! Austin, I knew something was going to happen--I felt it. That's why I was worried, last night--I couldn't explain. And then shut up alone there, not knowing what it was.... That old woman--she was dreadful, but she wasn't unkind to me. Do you suppose she _knew_--that she just wanted to get me somewhere safe?"

Who knew? Was there perhaps a spark of human feeling in that strange warped soul, half unhinged by her own troubles, something that Mary's chance kindness, that afternoon by the saw-mill, had reached and touched? It might have been.

We walked down the hill, and I took Mary on the motor-cycle behind me as far as Lennox's, leaving Herrick to follow on foot. Dick was better. He had passed a feverish night, Lennox said, but the fever had left him with dawn and he was in an exhausted but normal sleep when we arrived.

I left Mary with him, and walked back along the road to meet Herrick.

"And now," I said, "tell me--tell me the whole thing. Jack, what was it?"

We were near the old twisted cedar by the hollow, the tree by which Aaron had met his death that spring. Herrick sat down on a boulder by the roadside and began to scrape slowly at his pipe.

"I told you about Menning and his wild-man stunt--all that I found out the other day. Menning had a criminal twist and he knew how to turn that trick to his own ends. It is far easier to simulate the grotesque--the superhuman, if you like--than most people suppose. Isn't that, after all, the basis of the witch-doctors' power? Even an ordinary man becomes horrible if you put a mask on him. And remember that Menning had a streak of abnormality to start with, and the thing may very easily, as I said, have become an obsession with him. Anyway that's the best explanation one can put on it, and the one that Lennox and our friend Sliefer, and Lessing himself, will agree upon. After all, it pretty well covers the facts."

I remembered his words the night before.

"Then what did you mean about the dawn?"

Herrick was silent a moment.

"We're all well out of a bad business, Austin," he said then. "Don't you think we'd better let it go at that?"

"But you had another theory. You had it that morning, after the fire. You wouldn't tell me what it was. But I don't imagine you've changed your mind altogether."

"No, I didn't change my mind," Herrick said. He put his hand into his pocket. When he withdrew it there lay, on his palm, the little battered silver button that Lennox had first shown us.

"You remember, Austin," he said, "that I recalled one or two facts to your mind that evening. This was One of them. I want you to look at it again."

"It is a button," I said. "A button such as you find on some European peasants' costumes."

"Westphalian peasants, such as Menning's mother came from. Lennox overlooked that fact, though as the button is badly defaced we can excuse him. I'll help you out, Austin. It is of pure silver, very soft, and it has been hammered to form a rough bullet that could be fired from an old-fashioned muzzle-loading gun."

"I don't see how that helps you."

"I want you to think," he said, "what particular associations there are with a silver bullet."

I stared at the little pellet in my hand, striving with some vague recollection at the back of my mind.

"They were used against ... against ... some sort of witchcraft," I said at last. "I don't see----"

"They were used against lycanthropy," said Herrick.

I stared at him. I suppose I looked stupid. I felt it. It was as though some spectre, strange, ghastly, altogether of another world, had risen up suddenly there before us in these quiet Pennsylvania woods.

"A mania--subject imagines himself some beast, resulting in actual physical transformations--exhibits depraved appetites--frequently homicidal..." I recalled haltingly the words of an old treatise.