The thing in the woods
nervous breakdown, and he told her she must live in the country
awhile till she got stronger, but I know Doctor Herrick thought at
the time that the séances had been the cause of it. He told my
brother so."
I listened attentively. It was news to me that Herrick, the
essential level-headed, should have lent himself at any time to
experiments of this order. He had never mentioned the subject to me
in our many talks, and I had even gathered, as one gathers an
impression without any very definite grounds, that he was a confirmed
sceptic on all matters of occultism.
"You say they had a disagreement?"
"It was exactly that," she made haste to say, "They didn't quarrel,
but I know Herrick was very much opposed to Dick's views, and they
used to have arguments. But it didn't amount to more than that."
"Good!"
She had risen to her feet, and at her movement the setter himself
lazily rose and came towards us.
"Then we're going to see this thing out?" I said.
"We'll see it out."
We shook hands, and I fancied that her fingers rested in mine a
moment voluntarily before she drew them away.
"Are you coming up to see my brother today?" she asked.
"Presently ... I'd like to." I looked at my watch. "I thought of
taking a stroll up to the dam, as I'm so close; I've never been
there. You say it's only a few minutes?"
"Not more than ten, through the woods."
"Let's walk up together," I suggested, "if you aren't too tired."
She assented readily, and we struck off up a little footpath, barely
traceable, that followed the course of the stream. It was, as she
had said, a scant ten minutes before the sound of the sluice broke on
our ears, and through a sudden clearing of the woods the dam lay
before us, a black sinister sheet of water, covered with masses of
floating weed and pond-lilies, and darkened by the trees and
underbrush that grew closely down to its edge. An old scow, long
past use and sunken low in the water, lay pad-locked to a slimy stump
near the shore.
Following an old cart-track, we skirted the edge of the dam in the
direction of the saw-mill, a dilapidated building with broken roof,
that seemed to have stood for many years of disuse. To reach it we
had to cross the sluice itself, and Mary Lessing, who was a few paces
ahead of me, paused to look down over the single rough handrail that
protected one from a misstep.
There is something forbidding about a mill-sluice at any time,
especially when dissociated, as this was, from the companionable
sound of human labour. The sheer depth, the knowledge of the vast
imprisoned force behind one, the sound of water gushing here and
there between the slimy weed-grown timbers, give always, to me at
least, an indefinable sense of the sinister.
I leaned my rod against the railing, and we looked down side by side
at the black oozing wall below.
"I like this place," Mary Lessing said. "There's something queer and
creepy about it. I often come here. I suppose they haven't worked
the sluice for years."
"I doubt if the machinery would move now," I said. "Of course this
is never opened. There should be a smaller sluice for the millstream
further on."
I glanced as I spoke at the clumsy wooden levers near me that
controlled the sluice. They looked to be rotting in their place, but
as I pushed one, idly, a sudden change in the sound of escaping water
below warned me that the machinery was not in such ill repair as it
would seem. I exerted my strength to pull the lever back, and my
attention was momentarily distracted from the girl beside me. She
was leaning out over the hand-rail, and when I turned it was with a
sudden cry of warning.
"Look out!" I said. "That may not be safe!"
I caught her arm instinctively as I spoke, and on the instant the
rail bent outward with a slight sound of cracking. In another moment
she would have been over the edge. We looked at one another, and
Mary laughed, a little nervously on the stillness. Her face had
flushed.
"I thought that rail was all right," she said rather awkwardly.
"Dick walked over here with me not a week ago, and we tested it then
to see."
"It isn't all right now," I returned sharply.
I put my two hands on the rail, giving it a slight wrench outward.
It gave easily to my touch, and looking closer, I saw that the
surface towards the water had been half cut through. Someone had
tampered with it deliberately and within the last few days.
"What is it?" Mary Lessing asked.
"Merely rotten, as I thought!"
I turned away, and walked thoughtfully on towards the saw-mill. The
thing puzzled me, but it had an ugly look. It was no idle mischief
that had prompted the act. Whoever had done it, had done it
maliciously, and the purpose was not very far to seek. Hitherto I
had not attached much importance to the Lessings' occasional laughing
references to their unpopularity in the village. Now it assumed
suddenly a significance.
I turned to Mary Lessing, walking beside me.
"I want you to promise me something," I said, "whether it seems to
you irrelevant or not. I want you not to come here again by
yourself, at any time. It's a lonely place and it isn't particularly
safe. If you come at all, bring your brother with you."
The smile that was on her lips at first faded abruptly, leaving her
face serious.
"The rail was cut," she said quietly. "Is that what you mean? It
must have been, because it was perfectly solid a few days ago."
"Someone has been up to mischief. If there are characters of that
kind in the neighbourhood, it's best to run no risks, that's all."
We walked on a few paces, silently. The mill was on our right, a
desolate-looking building enough, with its surrounding litter of
sodden chips and piles of cut logs lying here and there In the open.
A heavy smell of decaying wood was in the air, added to the stagnant
odour of the dam itself.
The setter was in front of us, sniffing to and fro on the trail of
the rats that infested the wood piles. Suddenly he stood still, his
ears laid back, growling ominously. A short, thick-set figure
slipped from the angle of the mill wall and vanished in the woods on
the farther side of the cart-track.
"Aaron Menning," Miss Lessing said. She put her hand and called the
dog back. I was staring up the track where the chicken-huckster had
so adroitly disappeared.
"Does he live near here?"
"Not very far off. I suppose he comes here to fish. There are a
good many in the dam."
"Very probable," I said.
"I dislike that man," Mary said after a moment. "I guess it's
mutual, too. The other one, Jake, you know, had a quarrel with my
brother one time. He was always loitering round the house, and Dick
turned him away. Aaron's always very civil when we meet, but I don't
believe he likes us any more than Jakey did."
We took a turning past the mill that led us, without further event,
to the Lessings' bungalow. Within sight of the house I parted from
her. I wanted to see Lessing again, but there were a few points that
needed readjustment in my own mind first. As I walked slowly home
down the familiar slope of Dutchman's Hill I was thinking that the
industrious and chapel-going Aaron might very well bear a little
watching.
IX
PROBLEMS
I wrote to Herrick that same evening and his answer came a couple of
days later, saying that he hoped to get away towards the end of the
month. I had said nothing in my letter about the events of the
summer, but merely mentioned that the Lessings were my neighbours for
the time being.
Herrick wrote: "I shall be glad to meet Lessing again. He seems to
have buried himself in obscurity for the last twelve months. Is he
still as enthusiastic a theorist as ever, or has the country sobered
his ideas? In any case you are to be congratulated on having for
neighbours three of the most charming people it has ever been my luck
to meet."
I smiled at the "three." In my own mind I could have substituted
another numeral which would explain much of Herrick's promptitude in
accepting my invitation. He was very much mistaken if he thought
that any such artless device would put me off the track. In
imagination I already saw myself playing the rôle of a reluctant
gooseberry during his visit.
Lessing, when I mentioned my expected guest, made a comment almost
identical with Herrick's own.
"Herrick?" he said. "Good! We shall have some arguments, Haverill,
that will eclipse even your own. If Herrick gets to the bottom of
this by any of his cut-and-dried theories and deductions I'll give
him best once and for all!"
One thing at least pleased me. I gathered from both their remarks
that whatever difference had occurred between them had been purely a
battle of opinion, and had no influence on their fundamental regard
for one another. Meantime my meeting with Mary Lessing, and the
subsequent incident of the broken hand-rail, had settled my mind on
one point at least. There was some malicious influence at work in
the neighborhood which was distinctly and obviously human, whether it
bore any relation to the laboratory experiences or not, and at any
cost, even if necessary in the face of Lessing's opposition, she must
be kept clear of it.
Three-fourths of the neighbouring population were Pennsylvania Dutch,
and I had learned enough, in my own infrequent dealings with them, to
recognize their sullen aloofness, amounting almost to a hostility,
towards any stranger settled in their midst. The Lessings were for
some reason disliked in the village, and I fancied that much of the
distrust towards them was due to their having chosen for their
dwelling a spot which already had a sufficiently bad reputation in
the eyes of the country people about. Lessing was by no means the
sort of man to make himself popular here, or even friendly. He was
more or less of a recluse; he had erected a mysterious building in
which, engaged upon equally mysterious pursuits, he chose to isolate
himself until all hours of the night, and he displayed an open
indifference towards all the current gossip and superstition of the
neighbourhood. Following the primitive psychology of these people,
narrow-minded to a degree and distrustful of anything unfamiliar, his
habits alone were sufficient to brand him as an ungodly character.
According to his sister, he had already fallen foul of Jake Menning
soon after his arrival, and I had no doubt whatever that Aaron, out
of revenge, had since done his best to foster the already
antagonistic feeling towards him. The huckster's trade lends itself
to all the back-door gossip of the countryside, and it seemed to me
that I could trace easily enough the fruit of Aaron's house-to-house
visits. Aaron himself was civil-spoken, industrious, religious to
all accounts, and a highly respected member of the community; but all
this did not weigh very far against the man's face. Whatever ill
blood ran in the Menning family, it was certainly not confined to the
deceased Jakey.
I mentioned my suspicions to Lessing a day or two later, when I was
at the bungalow.
"Oh, the man's right enough," he returned. "I don't like his kind,
that's all. I had a row with Jakey because I didn't want him hanging
round the place and I told him so. Aaron has never annoyed us in any
way; on the contrary, he takes pains to be particularly civil. I
think he's like all the rest around, glad enough to keep clear of
Dutchman's Hill and all its inhabitants, dead or living!"
Mary Lessing had asked me, on our homeward walk, not to mention the
cut railing to her brother, and I had not done so. It was sufficient
for the moment that she had agreed to keep away from the mill-dam and
its immediate neighbourhood. She was a sensible girl and I had no