The thing in the woods
"A watchdog, I believe. Most people do."
"Nothing else was found near the place?"
"Nothing but this, which I myself happened on a few days later.
Either of the brothers might have dropped it, or it might have been
dropped by another person altogether. It was lying some little
distance from the creek, beyond the bridge there. The inspector
attached no particular importance to it. There is a certain amount
of traffic along this road, and there is no indication that this
wasn't dropped by some passing person a day or two after the body was
found."
He drew from his waistcoat pocket a small round silver object,
slightly larger than a pea.
"Looks like some boy's treasure," I said. "A button, isn't it?"
"It has been a button," Herrick said. "The shank has been broken off
and it's been hammered. Well, Lennox, go on."
"Of course there was an inquest," Lennox said. "They found that the
man died during an epileptic seizure, which carried out my own
conclusions. And now I am coming to the queer part of my tale. It
was Aaron who formally identified the body. I saw him and spoke with
him at the inquest, and I saw him again the day after Jakey's
funeral."
He paused.
"Six weeks after the inquest, Haverill, I was walking down the short
cut from the Bend, and I met Jake Menning face to face. I am as
certain of it as that I am sitting here. He made off without giving
me a chance to speak to him. But that it was Jake, in solid flesh
and blood, I had no shadow of a doubt.
"The next day I went to the house. I asked for Aaron. The old woman
met me. She said that Aaron was away with the wagon. I asked when I
could see him, and she became evasive. It seemed that he was very
busy, that he was away a good deal of the time; she could not say at
all when he was likely to be found.
"Her answers, and more particularly her manner, set me to thinking.
I had not seen Aaron since the day after Jakey's funeral. No one, so
far as I could learn without pushing inquiries unduly, had seen much
of Aaron since the inquest. His trade had always lain further afield
than the immediate neighbourhood, where most people raised their own
chickens for use, and few in sufficient quantity to sell. Mrs.
Searle had seen him, certainly, and Mrs. Searle had remarked a change
in him. She said that he was queer and silent; she thought that the
shock of his brother's death had preyed on his mind. In her own
words, he was 'getting just like Jakey in his ways.'
"It was about this time that the talk first began about the haunting
of Dutchman's Hill. I am not a credulous man where ghosts are
concerned, and I scoffed any idea of the supernatural. One stranger,
a pedlar, said that a 'something' had jumped out and chased him to
the bridge, where it stopped. Others declared that it was the ghost
of Jakey that haunted the place. On top of all this came
the--er--the very singular attacks upon Mr. Lessing. I don't want to
go into Lessing's case now. His own story was of course untenable,
and I strongly believe that he knew a great deal more than he chose
to tell me at the time--in other words, that he found amusement in
trying, deliberately, to see how much I would believe. We were
always strongly opposed on certain questions, though in general I
found him a most courteous and charming man, and I am afraid he was
not above trying, in this matter, to take a rise out of me, as they
say. If he had taken me into his confidence then, instead of
inventing the ridiculous sort of bogy-tale he did, we should have
been at the truth of this matter much earlier."
Herrick and I exchanged glances. I fancied he was about to speak,
but on second thoughts changed his mind. Lennox continued.
"The problem resolved itself into this. If Jakey was still alive,
and I could swear to it that he was, whose was the body that had been
identified and buried in March, and how was it that no one, save
myself, guessed at his continued existence? _Who was Aaron Menning?_
"I tell you, Haverill, the thing became a nightmare. I had no proof
to go upon, nothing but my own instinct. The more I thought over it,
the more clear it grew to me. The man whose body had been found at
Dutchman's Hill was not Jakey at all, it was Aaron."
"But----"
"Listen here, Haverill," Lennox said. "I know what I am saying
sounds incredible to you. But consider for a moment, on what
superficial observations we base our recognition of people, every
day. Remember the very strong likeness which existed between the two
brothers, even to the scarring and thickening of the skin by
smallpox, which in itself blunts the individuality of a face. The
face of the dead man was swollen both by the manner of death and the
partial immersion in mud. Remember that there were no intimate
relatives to impose upon, for the mother undoubtedly knew the truth.
The farmer who found the body identified it as that of a huckster
named Menning who had called upon him the week before. Aaron was
away from home that night, and he did not return with the wagon till
the afternoon. It was the mother who first identified the body as
that of Jakey, and the news was already spread when I arrived on the
scene. Aaron appeared at the inquest, but with the exception of
myself there were not three men there who knew him at all intimately,
or who could have sworn to his actual identity unless they saw the
two brothers side by side. Both Aaron and the mother opposed the
inquest strongly, and the neighbours told me that she would let no
one help her in preparing the body for burial. She had always kept
herself rather aloof, as I said, and at the time her refusal did not
strike me as peculiar.
"Given the clue, the thing was easy enough to construct. I believe
myself it was fear of his brother's placing him under restraint that
first suggested the attack. He must have concealed himself in the
tree near the footbridge, knowing that Aaron had an errand in the
village and would pass that way, and so sprung out upon him. The
impact of his body bore them both down to the edge of the stream.
There was no struggle. The shock brought on the seizure in which
Aaron died, and Jakey, leaving him there, had sufficient cunning
either to follow the stream or swing himself up by the bridge, and so
avoid leaving any traces. He returned to the house, and with his
mother concocted the story of Aaron's absence with the wagon,
harnessed the horse and made off ready to return the following
afternoon, when the dead man's identity would have been safely
established. People might have suspected Jakey of killing Aaron, but
no one would suspect Aaron of killing Jakey.
"I think now that he was on his guard against me at the inquest, and
that his suspicion must have deepened as time went on. I was morally
convinced that the man was a dangerous homicidal lunatic, but I had
no evidence to convict him. He would have been cunning enough to
defeat me, since no one would have credited my story. Aaron was
known and respected. It would have been folly to bring any hasty
charge against him. Convinced that he already mistrusted me, and
that my only safety was in disarming his suspicion, I took the only
course possible. I determined to go away for a time, and I took the
precaution of letting it be supposed that I went for my health. I
wanted Menning to think that he had driven me away, and I believe I
succeeded. Up to last night he had no suspicion of my identity with
Crowfoot. I counted on his relaxing his caution once I was out of
the way, and I was right.
"Freeman must have suspected something of the truth, since that
Rebecca swore she had seen Jakey's ghost near the mill-dam, and if it
had not been for Freeman's well-meant imprudence we should have had
Jakey under lock and key at this moment. He got suspicious of
Freeman, laid up for him last night, and pushed him over the sluice.
I heard Freeman's cry and the splash, and guessed instinctively what
had happened. It was then that Jakey's mania came out. He
disappeared when Freeman fell, but in a paroxysm of rage and fear
came back and tried to pull the gate open on us while we were both
down there. I had to fire on him in defence, and he made off. He
had taken the alarm, however, and instead of waiting the one more day
I had intended, I judged it best to post straight off and lay my
facts as I knew them before the sheriff then and there. The rest of
course you know."
"Then you had no intention of going to Europe?" I asked.
"Not in the least. A friend posted my note from Queenstown, a wise
precaution, since Menning would undoubtedly hear of it through the
postmaster's gossip. I went to the Sliefers' because they were near
enough to the Bend to enable me to carry out a few investigations
without arousing too much interest, and also because they happened to
be about the only people in the village whom I never attended
professionally, and they would therefore be less likely to recognize
me. You were the only person I was afraid of, Haverill, and you I
had to chance. We spent only a few hours together before I left, and
before that we hadn't met for years; it was only my voice that
troubled me, and there I took a leaf out of Jakey's book. Mr.
Herrick would make a better detective than you. He played me a neat
trick over that revolver last night!"
Herrick smiled. "You must admit that things looked ugly for you!
Now I see why you were so reluctant to be dragged up to the house
that morning."
"My old training in college theatricals came in useful anyway!" He
looked at his watch. "Give me another of those cigars of which you
are so lavish, Haverill, and I'll turn in. I'm dog-tired, and
there's plenty before me tomorrow, yet."
He betook himself with a blanket to the dining-room sofa, to get a
few hours' sleep. The first violet light of dawn was already
filtering between the curtains, and Herrick stood up abruptly and
extinguished the lamp.
"Lord," he said, "it's stuffy in here! Well, Austin, what do you
make of it all?"
"It may be true," I said. "It throws sufficient doubt anyway for the
arrest of this man. They might prove manslaughter. Lennox's idea
evidently is that if he can be once arrested on this charge they can
have him medically examined, and the whole truth will come out."
"Exactly." He walked to the window, pulling aside the curtains, and
threw up the sash. The clean fresh air of the dawn, faintly cold,
swept past him into the room. "Austin, what points struck you
particularly in this story?"
"If he really saw Jakey that disposes of the ghost tales. Only one
doesn't know..."
"His doubts about his own judgment, in the earlier case, weakens
this," Herrick supplemented. "I agree. He seems certain at one
moment and uncertain at another. But he is more positive, I take it,
on that point, than on any other. It was _apparently_ Jakey's body,
it was _apparently_ Aaron at the inquest, but it was definitely Jakey
himself whom he saw and recognized later."
"Jakey is alive. Whether Aaron was actually killed, or whether Jakey
in some extraordinary way came to life again.... There have been
cases."
"There have been cases," Herrick said. "The inquest was held the
next day, and no one apparently saw the body after the inquest.
People have been buried alive before now. And we must remember that
Lennox, for all the skill and ingenuity he has brought to bear in
this matter afterwards, has only the experience of the average
country practitioner. You know what that's worth."
"It seems to me," I said, grappling with an idea which had somehow
forced itself upon me all through Lennox's narrative, "that--I don't
want to criticize unduly--but I do feel that Lennox's tale has been