The thing in the woods
professor-bird spends most of his time in the woods about there, I
thought his observations might come in useful."
"Private detective, eh?"
Herrick smiled.
"Oh, I'm sufficiently interested in the Lessing problem to be anxious
to clear out the undergrowth, if you follow me. That done, one can
judge a bit more clearly. If there's any foolery going on we'll run
it to the ground, and Crowfoot may come in useful there."
"I've a good notion," I said, knocking my pipe out, "to try some
watching round that locality myself one of these nights."
"It wouldn't be any good," he returned, "for the simple reason that
Jakey wouldn't demonstrate to you or me any more than he's
demonstrated to Lessing. He chooses those he wants to favour. As a
matter of fact, by the aid of my bedroom window, the convenience of
which you have probably under-estimated, Austin, I spent last night
prowling myself. No, I didn't let you into it because I wanted to be
alone. Needless to say, there was nothing doing. But I've found out
one thing. There's someone else interested in the game besides us.
I don't know who. But we narrowly escaped collision, and gave each
other mutually a wide berth."
"It couldn't have been the ghost himself, whoever he is?"
"I think not. It was too obvious we were both out on the same
errand. Like the Irishman, we each thought we were someone else and
when we met it was neither of us!" He smiled at the recollection.
"Well, I suppose we'll get at the root of the thing some day!"
XIII
AN AFTERNOON DRIVE
It was towards the end of that week that we drove over to the
bungalow, one afternoon, for tea. The teacups were set out on the
porch, and Mary Lessing, in a white frock, sprang up from one of the
big basket-chairs to greet us with a comical dismay.
"I've dragged you over here," she began promptly, "and now I'll tell
you the worst at once. There is not--one--lump--of sugar in the
entire house. I've looked. So either you will drink your tea
sugarless, smile sweetly, and say it doesn't matter, or else one of
you has got to come right down to the village with me and get some.
You can take your full choice about it. I'm glad to see you had the
thoughtfulness to drive, anyway."
Herrick sat down with alacrity.
"I am a tired man," he announced, "supposed to be on a holiday, and
I'm not going to the village to get anything till I've had tea, and
I'm not going to drink tea without sugar, not even if you promise to
smile in the teacup, Mary Lessing. So I guess it's up to you and
Haverill. And I think that after all my excellent instructions of
the past fourteen years you ought to be a better housekeeper. It's
scandalous and disgusting of you. Where's Dick?"
"In the laboratory."
"A day like this! I'll rout him out of that in just two seconds.
Ho, Dick!"
There was no response, and he rose grumbling, and trailed round to
the laboratory door. Mary looked at me.
"Do you mind?" she said meekly.
I slipped off the mare's hitching-strap, and Mary climbed into the
buggy beside me. We took the road past Sliefer's, and it is to be
admitted that I made no effort to hurry. Our errand might reasonably
be supposed to take an hour, and since chance had so obligingly given
me that hour I was going to make the most of it.
As a matter of fact, I got precious little good out of it.
Romance probably demands, here, that I should describe how Mary and I
drove side by side through the mellow autumn-tinted woods, how we
spoke of the beauty of nature around us, and how gradually a sweet
sense of companionship grew up in our young and sympathetic souls.
Instead Mary spoilt the whole thing by her hurry to get that sugar.
If the life of the whole household, including Herrick, had depended
upon it, she couldn't have been more sternly anxious to get to the
village, to buy that sugar and to convey that sugar swiftly and
relentlessly home. Looking back, I can see now that her attitude in
the matter was only part of a constraint that had been growing
between us subtly ever since Herrick's arrival. A certain frank
comradeship, as I had been pleased to think it, that had sprung into
being on the morning of our impromptu picnic, had wavered and
dropped, leaving nothing in its place. I could not decide that she
actually avoided me, though she certainly devoted a good deal of
attention to Herrick when we were all together. Be that as it may,
her professed anxiety on the sugar question that afternoon justly
irritated me. We began with constraint, and ended in something very
like open warfare.
It was probably not the first time that a perverse imp of
circumstance, or call it what you will, has induced two young people,
who started out on apparently good terms, to waste the precious
moments of each other's uninterrupted company in being pointedly and
deliberately disagreeable, and that for no reason that either of them
could frame. The imbecility of that drive stands out in my memory
now. We should both of us have known better. The whole thing had
begun in such a meaningless way as to have no possible excuse. We
had started, as I say, on good terms, with every equipment for a
pleasant hour, and instead we each, in our own way, chose to behave
abominably.
After one unique and disastrous attempt at conversation, I remember,
we said no more, but drove on side by side in a ridiculous and stony
silence, each thinking how disagreeable the other was, and wondering
mutually what we had ever liked in one another.
There was the usual group of loafers gathered on the porch of
Haskell's grocery store when we reached the village. I left Mary
seated in the buggy outside while I went in to buy the sugar. A
brisk-mannered young man, with fair hair, served me, and it was my
fancy that he dawdled a little over making up the parcel. The
proprietor was busy near by at the time, and from the side-glance the
assistant gave him I gathered that the latter was purposely
stretching out his task to gain time. I was not wrong. Upon the
proprietor crossing to the back of the store, where the cash register
stood, the young man leaned forward across the counter.
"Doctor," he began, "I would like a few words with you sometime when
you aren't busy."
"Why, certainly," I answered. "Any time you like. You want advice
about something?"
It was almost the first time I had had occasion to go into the store,
and the assistant was quite a stranger to me. I was probably known
to him by sight, but I wondered at his choosing such a confidential
way to approach me if he merely wanted medical advice; I kept the
same office hours as Lennox had done, and everyone in the village
knew where and when to find me.
"I'm George Freeman," he said. "It wasn't advice exactly. I just
... wanted to see you."
George Freeman ... suddenly I remembered. It was the name of Rebecca
Burn's sweetheart, the young man who had shown such decision on the
evening of the ghost scare at Sliefer's farm. I looked at him with
new interest.
"I shall be in this evening after nine o'clock," I said. "Come round
to the house. You know where it is?"
"Yes. I'll be round."
"All right." I put down a quarter on the counter, taking up the
parcel he held out to me. As I did so a step creaked behind me and I
turned quickly.
Aaron Menning stood near us. For a second his eyes moved shiftily
from one to the other; then he put up a hand to the greasy peaked cap
he wore.
"Arternoon, doctor," he drawled; "arternoon, F-Freeman. Gimme some
p-plug terbaccer."
His face was impassive and stupid, but when he pushed his cap back I
noticed the veins on his temples stand out. He approached the
counter with something of a swagger, his hands in the pockets of his
black oilskin coat, and spat on the floor. There was something in
the movements of the man which I disliked, at that moment, more
intensely than ever. He had a curious shambling way when he walked,
which, added to his thick-set figure, gave me the feeling of
something half animal, almost simian. It amounted to an actual
repugnance. I gave him a curt nod while I waited for my change, and
lost no time in hastening out to the buggy.
I put the parcel under the seat and took the reins from Mary's hands.
Curiously, my mood of a few moments ago was all but forgotten as I
climbed in beside her.
"Did the fellow say anything to you?" I asked her as we drove off. A
sudden suspicion had struck me when I came out and found her waiting
there.
"Who?"
"Aaron Menning."
"No. I just saw him go into the store."
She spoke with a studied indifference that put me on the alert.
Instantly I was sure that he had spoken.
"Why do you ask?"
I set my teeth.
"Because if he had," I answered rashly, "I'd take the occasion to
break his neck next time we meet."
Mary gave a soft little laugh.
"Really, Doctor Haverill, I didn't know you were so violent."
"I'm not," I retorted, "at least, not as a rule. But the sight of
that man always rouses in me a peculiar and earnest desire to kick
him."
"I dare say he's really quite a simple and kind-hearted man," said
Mary, with no other purpose, I felt sure, than to irritate me.
"The rugged exterior that hides a beautiful soul," I suggested,
remembering that sinister farmyard beyond the Bend. "That's as it
may be. The exterior is good enough for me, or bad enough, as you
choose to put it. If I get the report of a S.P.C.A. inspector on
that farm of his, as I intend to do one of these days, we'll see how
Aaron's simple kind-heartedness stands out."
The words slipped out almost without my knowledge. Mary looked at me
quickly.
"What's wrong at the place?"
"Merely that the condition of it isn't particularly pretty. I
shouldn't have mentioned it. Only a man that keeps animals in the
filth and neglect that he does ought to be made an example of in any
civilized community. I don't know that there's anything to be gained
by interfering at the present moment, but I've seen enough to make me
keep an eye on him."
For a little time we drove in silence. Mary's face was grave and
troubled. I was angry with myself. I was a fool to mention Menning
or his place at all. Presently I turned to her.
"Look here, you're not upset by what I said just now? Because you've
no need to think twice about it. I said it because ... well, because
I hated to hear you speak about him that way, even for a minute."
"No. I wasn't thinking about Aaron just then." She gave me a queer
little smile. "Doctor Haverill, I guess I've behaved pretty
abominably this afternoon."
I flicked the mare with the whip.
"Shall we say we both did, and call it quits? I suppose it was in
the air, somehow."
"In the air," she repeated, smiling again, then shivered suddenly.
"Things are in the air ... that's just it. I had a dream last night.
I suppose you'll call it silly nonsense, but it's made me queer and
restless all day. Doctor Haverill, has Herrick said anything to you
about my brother yet?"
"We talked one evening."
"Well?"
"We ... didn't get to any conclusions, that's all. He has some
theory. He hasn't told me yet what it is."
She looked at me steadily.
"If he said that, it is because he knows something. I am absolutely
certain of that. And if he knows ... Doctor Haverill, you are
keeping something back from me, you and Herrick together!"
"I am not. I wouldn't do it." I looked at the girl beside me. "If
you want me to swear."
"No." She put out a hand. "Yes, one thing. Can you swear to me
that to your knowledge there is no suspicion in his mind of any ...
brain trouble with Dick?"
"Yes, I can swear to that, absolutely!"
"I am glad." She was looking straight ahead, down the road before