Part 4

"If I meet one on this, Pete, it'll give him such fits he won't do any han'ting for a week. Give me that monkey-wrench."

He eyed me gloomily.

"Dat ar thing's got a debbil in 'um sure, an' yoh ain' git no better er one debbil by mixin' 'um up wid anuffer--no, _sah_!"

"Peter," I said, "you are too conservative."

"I d'know dat. I d'know dat! De debbil's de dibbil, an' dar ain' no good yet come er mixin' up wid him. 'Tain' in de Bible nor 'tain' in nature, an' I ain' holdin' wid no such dealin's."

"Well, Pete, I'm going to back my devil against your rabbit's foot, anyhow."

Pete looked suspicious.

"Who's been talkin' 'bout rabbit's foots, doctah?"

"No one. Turn your pockets out, Pete!"

His hand clapped involuntarily to the side of his trousers.

"I got ter put dat harness away, an' I ain' got the time t' be hindered in! Sholy to Gawd, doctah, yoh ain' s'pose _I_ carry no trash like that!"

He straightened himself with dignity, hanging the harness up on its pegs. I finished my job and went into the surgery. I had written to the city for the drug I wanted for Lessing. It arrived yesterday, and I had made up the powders. They were lying on the desk with a rubber band about them, and the packet caught my eye as I came in. I called to Pete.

"I want you to take a prescription over to Mr. Lessing," I said. "You can take the buckboard and bring back that sack of feed from Sliefer's at the same time."

I held the packet out to him. He eyed first it, then me.

"Well?" I said impatiently.

"I'se gwine, I'se gwine. I was thinkin' on'y dis mawnin' how dat feed done oughter be fetched. Yessir, I was sayin' dat out in de car'ge-house. It done oughter be fetched _today_."

"It'll be right on your road after you leave Mr. Lessing's."

"Yessir, dat so! On'y dat packet, doctah ... I was jest considerin' dat packet. Ef I was to put dat packet in de buckboard longer de feed sack I'd be right scared 'er losing it. It don't seem to me, doctah, dat 'ar packet gwine t' be very safe dat way."

"But you've got a pocket, you old idiot!"

"Yessir, I done got pockets. I was on'y jest a-studyin', doctah. I don' recommend pockets, not when a pusson's got a commission to 'tend to. When a pusson puts suthin' in his pocket, it happens sometime dat a pusson's gwine _forget_ it."

"If it happens to you," I assured him, "I'll find a way of operating on your memory, so you'd better be careful!"

He took the packet without more ado and went off to get the buckboard ready. It was too fine a day to waste about the house, and I had it in mind to take the cycle out for a spin. Telling Mrs. Searle I would probably be away for lunch, I got into my cycling suit and set off.

I followed the road for some distance past the Bend, and then branched off to the right, joining the Pike. The machine was in good running order, and I did some twenty miles before I slowed up finally at a little village with the hope of getting something to eat.

There was the usual hotel and saloon combined, with its array of spruce bushes in tubs before the entrance. I leaned my cycle against the porch and went in to interview the landlord about a meal.

Dinner was by luck just ready. I cleaned off some of the grime of my ride and wandered into the commercial room, which was garnished with horsehair furniture, a mildewed engraving of Washington, and two plates of sticky fly-paper, buzzing and noxious, set out on the soiled tablecloth. There was one other midday guest, a young man in a gray suit who sat watching the struggles of the latest addition to the fly-paper colony while he waited for dinner. I placed him immediately as a newspaper man, and the first dozen words we exchanged, as I took my place opposite to him at the table, proved me right. He had been sent down on the trial of one of those dull and elusive scandals which serve to lighten the papers during the dead season, and had to put in two hours' waiting for his train back to the city.

He had a considerable fund of anecdote which needed only the barest encouragement to set going, and he transferred his interest from the fly-paper to myself with complimentary promptitude. He had a trick of raising his voice a full three tones at the beginning of each sentence, and as his dissertations were lengthy I found myself speculating at to what new and rasping height his voice might next reach.

There was a week-old copy of a local paper lying on the table, and in a pause of the meal he pushed it over to me.

"There's a thing that might interest you, being a cyclist," he said. "What do you make of that kind of an accident?"

I read the paragraph he pointed out. It was the account of an inquest held on the body of a young man identified as one George Powell, salesman in a Philadelphia dry-goods store. He had been found on a stretch of road a few miles beyond Coopersville by a farmer taking an early load of milk to the Coopersville creamery. The handle-bars and front part of his wheel, near by, were damaged, and the broken lamp was picked up a few yards further on. The man was dead, but the curious part, which had evidently struck my acquaintance also, was that there were no injuries found on the body except a single diagonal scratch across the face, which was of sufficient depth to have destroyed one eye and to lay the entire cheek open. This in itself had not produced death, and the coroner's autopsy had revealed no symptom of concussion. The medical officer's verdict had been death from heart failure.

The injuries suggested attack, but there had been no robbery, and though the man's clothing was torn his pockets were apparently untouched. They contained thirty-five dollars in notes, in a pocket-book, some small change, and the papers that had led to his identification.

"Well?" said my acquaintance.

"It looks queer."

He laid a finger on the paragraph.

"You see the body was picked up fifteen yards from the edge of the wood. If anyone had laid for him, they'd have laid right in the woods, where there was cover. But whatever hit him, it hit him before he reached there."

"He might have run into something."

"As what?"

"I don't know." And there struck me instantly the thought that my companion put into words. "If you run into anything on a bicycle, at full speed, it doesn't generally happen that the handle-bars get the worst injury. You see that the front wheel was not much broken. And he was riding toward the woods, and it's going to take a pretty phenomenal shock to throw a man and his bicycle fifteen yards backwards. I'll tell you another thing. I happen to know that stretch of road, because I spent part of last summer near there, with some people. It's a level stretch, cleared both sides, and there isn't anything larger than a stone to run into."

I waited, wondering what he was driving at. He chose a toothpick from the holder and began to employ it, leisurely.

"You'd reckon those things would strike the jury, wouldn't you? But they're so dam' simple down here that they're content to come up against facts like that, and they say: Well, here's a man got killed and we don't know what hit him. Guess we'll let it go at misadventure and go get a drink!' That's their mental attitude, and there isn't anything going to shake them out of it."

"What's your theory?" I asked.

He revolved the toothpick meditatively.

"If I knew, I guess I'd be up against a story that would make every newspaper in the country sit up. There's something queer there, and I'll tell you why, and you'll see just how enterprising these country juries are. Last April"--he raised his voice again, giving the toothpick an extra twirl in emphasis--"precisely the same thing happened to another man, not twelve miles from where this was. He was killed under much about the same circumstances, and the jury then returned the same old verdict, with a caution about the dangers of scorching. I happen to know, because I was down there on some story the time the thing occurred. I saw the man." He paused, and without knowing why I felt my pulses quicken suddenly in anticipation. "He had marks on his body that a wild-cat couldn't have made! He was picked up at the side of the path, among some stiff under-brush, so of course they said the fall did it. I tell you he was ripped, like I've seen a dog's face ripped by a badger. I've seen murder cases and I've seen accidents, but I've never seen the precise accident that would leave that kind of marks."

"You think it was murder?"

"The man wasn't murdered. He hit his head against a stone and died of concussion that time, right enough. But it was near enough to murder, if you assume an assailant who'd strap two-inch steel claws on to his hands." He laughed. "It's an original outfit! But that's what I'm asking _you_? What's the animal that goes round in these woods that's strong enough to wreck the steel tubing of a bicycle, that attacks with its claws and not with its teeth, and that's quick enough to knock a man down without the chance of a struggle?"

"There were no traces?"

"None. Not a single footprint."

All the while he spoke there had been before my mind the picture of Lessing--Lessing with those inexplicable scratches on his chest. Whatever had attacked these two had attacked Lessing also; that I would swear to. I was conscious that the young man was watching me rather closely.

"Heard something of this before, have you?"

"No. It interests me. But I think you're on a wrong tack."

"How?"

"Man alive, you don't suppose there could conceivably be any animal of that kind loose in the country without people knowing it! Someone would have seen it."

"I guess two people did see it," he suggested.

"If anything escaped from a menagerie there'd be a hue and cry raised. The woods around here couldn't give cover to any animal of that size and ferocity for three months without some track of it being found."

He said: "How about the murders in the Rue Morgue?"

"Those scratches weren't made by a monkey!"

I was unguarded. He looked up sharply.

"You didn't see them."

"You have described them," I reminded him. "Besides, an ape's instinct is to strangle."

"Not necessarily."

"Put the first down as a murder. The second might not have had any connection. There is nearly three months between. The medical officer suggested himself that the injuries might have been caused by falling on the broken bicycle framework."

"Medical officers aren't infallible. They've got to say something."

I laughed. "Well, stick to your escaped simian theory! If a third case turns up we'll see who's right."

I rose, paid my bill and went out, leaving him, I have no doubt, with the impression that I was a particularly hidebound idiot. But I had my own reasons for making no further contribution to his data. I would see this thing through without any assistance from a too enterprising press.

VI

A BOYCOTTED HOUSEHOLD

Thursday evening found me at the Lessing's bungalow. Mrs. Lessing was in evidence this time, in a soft black gown that accentuated the pallor of her face. The evening did not correct my first impressions of her. She shook hands limply, contributed a few remarks about the weather, and then subsided on the couch in silence. Dinner was laid on a small round table near the window, and Mary Lessing came in from the kitchen with uprolled sleeves and a big apron tied about her.

"We do our own chores here, Doctor Haverill," she said. "Do you want to make yourself useful?"

I rose promptly. Lessing had not yet appeared and my _tête-à-tête_ with his wife was not exhilarating. I followed her out into the kitchen, where she gave me a can-opener and a box of sardines.

"Turn those out for me, please. And if you have any hygienic aversion to canned goods, smother it. We live on them here."

"You find it far from the village?"

She smiled, quizzically. "A good way. Besides, the tradespeople here aren't exactly genial. So we subsist on boxes from the city. It gives you all the real pleasure of a desert island without the risks. Put them on that plate, will you? You see, by the time the box arrives and gets hauled up from the station we've generally forgotten what we ordered, so there's all the excitement of discovery as well. This time it was olives. Do you realize the joy of unexpected olives in the wilderness?"

"I'm going to."

"That's the right spirit! Living in the country teaches one a becoming humility. There are more things to open. Perhaps it was a mistake to ask you out here, but in any case I could hardly have palmed off these peaches as grown in our own garden, because we haven't got one."

She was standing at the table, drying crisp salad on a white cloth. The position showed me only her profile, with a little wave of bronze hair escaping near one ear. "Do you think gardening is worth the trouble?"

"When things like this grow in every department store? Perhaps not. Good heavens, Doctor Haverhill, but you must _wash_ that can-opener! Give it to me!"

I gazed at the jagged gash already achieved in the peach-can.

"Don't tell anyone and they won't taste it!"

"I thought bachelors knew how to do everything."

"Sardines and peaches go excellently together," I maintained. "They call it _salade de fruits poissonnés_."

Lessing lounged in.

"I admire the way Mary sets you to work," he said. "She has a talent for being industrious by proxy. Here----" He pulled a parcel out of his pocket "I've brought your cheese, but I won't answer for the state of it."

Miss Lessing cast a quick glance at me. "Where----?"

"_Not_ at Johnson's. I don't know if my sister has explained to you, Doctor Haverhill, that we are a boycotted household? We find it quite amusing. It leads to a practice of expedience which is excellent training for the young. Mary has learned to make quite creditable bread already."

"Out of the sawdust they pack the canned goods in," put in his sister promptly. "Carry that dish in without spilling it, Dick, and don't talk nonsense!"

We sat down to one of the most cheerful meals four young people have ever enjoyed. I would except Mrs. Lessing, but that even her limp and monosyllabic presence failed to dampen our spirits. Afterwards Lessing made Turkish coffee over a spirit lamp while the two girls cleared the table, refusing my assistance high-handedly.

I moved about the room in the familiarity which our informal meal had fostered, looking at the knick-knacks, the row of books on the shelves. They were a pretty varied collection, poetry, some modern French scientific books and novels, and one of the most complete collections of detective literature I have ever encountered, side by side with a few text-books on chemistry and some volumes on occultism and black magic, some familiar to me by title, others unknown. There was a monthly magazine lying near which I recognized as occupying itself largely with the subject of psychic phenomena, and turning it over I noticed Lessing's name in the index.

"You write?" I asked.

"Once in a blue moon!" He looked up from a critical stage in his coffee-making. "Does that sort of thing interest you?"

"Indifferently--if it happens to be genuine."

"There's so little genuine." He withdrew the coffee deftly, blowing out the lamp, and stood the little copper pot aside. "That's the worst of it. One endures hours of boredom for no result."

"You belong to the P.R.S.?"

"A most respectable and unexciting body." He smiled. "I would give in my demission, only they afford me a patient hearing from time to time. Besides, it gives me the opportunity of wrangling with someone, and contention is the spice of life, as I was saying. It was with that truism that I strove to console Lennox, when I bored him to extinction."

Involuntarily my ears pricked.

"Was that often?"

"No, I can't say the boredom predominated, in the long run." He surveyed his coffee with the air of an artist, his boyish head on one side.

"Where are those cups, Mary?"

"Your system of boredom seemed to have a remarkable effect on Lennox, anyway," slipped from me involuntarily.

Lessing laughed. "Oh, that was when the boredom ended! He stood it nobly to a point." He turned toward me. "Would you like to see what frightened Lennox, sometime?"

Before I could answer Mary Lessing came in with the coffee-cups, and the subject was dropped.

It was ten o'clock when I rose to leave, my departure hastened by a suspicion that Mrs. Lessing had glanced several times of purpose at the clock. They all came out on the porch to say good night, and at the last moment Lessing added: "I'll walk down the hill with you."

"I've got my bicycle," I said quickly, as Miss Lessing looked up. "There's no need to bring you out."

"Oh, it'll do me good!"

It was a still, sultry night, with a humidity in the air that had arisen since nightfall. We walked leisurely, smoking, as far as the crossroad at the top of Dutchman's Hill. The hollow below was alive with fireflies, gleaming and vanishing alternately in the soft dusk. There should be a moon, but within the past hour premonitory rainclouds had gathered, blotting it out. Lessing glanced at the sky.

"How long will it take you to get back?"

"Ten minutes, more or less. It won't rain till I get there."

I scratched a match, stooping toward my bicycle lantern.

"Is it necessary to light that?" he asked.

"Why not? There's a bad bit of road at the bottom there."

"I find the glare of a lamp like that always makes it worse. What is it, acetylene?"

He bent over the lantern to examine it, and in the pause the match burned down and went out. I felt for the box again in my pocket, and as I did so Lessing let go his hold on the bicycle. The machine slipped by its weight, and reaching quickly to catch it I heard the unmistakable sound of escaping air.

"Now you've done it!" cried Lessing boyishly.

"Damn!" I groped for the rear tire. It was flat. "Here's a cheerful business. How the dickens----"

Lessing laughed. "We'll have to walk it now! Never mind. I know the road."

"I'm not going to bring you all that way," I said. "I shall be all right."

"Nonsense! I like a walk before I turn in."

He took hold of the bicycle on one side, I on the other, and together we set off to walk down the hill. There is an exhilaration in walking through woods at night, even tempered by the necessity of pushing a heavy motor-cycle before you, and my brief annoyance at the accident rapidly vanished. Lessing was boyishly high-spirited; between us we made a fairly rowdy trip of it. We had just finished the ascent of the other side of the hollow when he laid a sudden hand on my arm.

"Did you hear anything?"

"No. Why?"

I thought he was still joking, but his cloak of nonsense had dropped from him abruptly. He pulled me to the side of the road.

"Listen!"

There seemed nothing to listen for. I waited, rather impatiently. Lessing threw back his head, scanning the line of the trees that shut us in. "There!"

It was still in my mind that he was trying to play some game on me.

"It's nothing but a bird," I said.

"Bird? You heard nothing else?"

"No."

"Come on," Lessing said. He seemed abruptly sobered, and I fancied he was at pains to quicken our pace over the remaining stretch of road. When we sighted the glimmer of the orchard palings I pulled up.

"Come on into the house and have a drink," I said.

"No, thanks. I must get back. By the way, do you carry a revolver?"

"What on earth for?"

"I only wondered. I should advise you to, around here." His hand slipped down to his pocket, and I heard a soft click.

"What are you going to do?"

"Have a pot at the birds, going back." He smiled. "Good night. Look in sometime during the week."

And he went off without further delay, whistling softly.

VII

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE LABORATORY

Instead, it was Lessing who came a day or two later to see me. He lounged in one evening when I was sitting smoking on the porch, after supper, and my first advice of his presence was the clatter of a zinc pail which Pete let fall promptly in the side yard. When Lessing rounded the corner of the porch he was grinning.

"Your nigger must have a bad conscience," he said. "I never saw anyone so afraid of the devil in all my life!"

I made a sound of annoyance. Evidently I had not finished with Pete yet. "He's a born idiot!" I said.

"I'm not so sure," Lessing returned. "He has a very practical regard for his own skin. I appreciate that."

"You ought to."

He gave me one of those habitual quick looks, his head on one side.

"Thanks! Do you find the mosquitoes bad around here? I got all bitten up coming past Dutchman's Hollow."

I took the hint.

"We'll sit indoors," I said. "It's pretty cool in the surgery."

He followed me into the room, glancing curiously about him.

"So this is where old Lennox hung out ... the place has a look of him. What's that, butterflies? He always had a weakness for things he could stick a pin into and label nicely!"

"Have you never been here before?"

"Never. He used to come to my place. I have an idea you know, that Lennox still thinks I'm not right in the head."

I lit the student lamp on the table and set out whisky and a couple of glasses. Lessing settled himself in the shabby armchair opposite me, and for a little while we smoked in silence. In the half-shadow beyond the ring of lamplight I could see his face, fine and clear cut against the shabby morocco of the chair back, the dark hair tumbled over his forehead. He was staring up at the smoke wreaths in a curious intensity of abstraction.

"I suppose," he began at last, "that I owe you some sort of an explanation, as things go."

I made a little gesture of indifference. I was beginning to know my man. If it pleased him to work upon my curiosity I was prepared to give him the least possible satisfaction.

"You offered me one," I corrected him. "I believe we decided to let it go at that."

He turned his gaze upon me, with a rather charming impertinence.