The thing in the woods
called him several times by name, sharply, but he paid no attention.
"Got a rabbit, most likely. Wait a minute. I'll soon fetch him out
of that."
He walked back the few paces to the clearing, and Mary sat down at
the edge of the path with a little sigh of resignation. I offered
her a cigarette, and for some minutes we smoked in silence, listening
for her brother's step. Presently Mary stood up.
"I'm not going to wait here all evening! We'll go on to the house
and let him catch up to us."
We had nearly reached the bungalow before Lessing overtook us. He
was holding Leo by a handkerchief knotted through his collar. The
dog came unwillingly, cringing against his master's legs, the hair
along his spine bristling and his ears kid back.
"Why, look at that!" Mary exclaimed. "I've never seen him act that
way before. You haven't been beating him, Dick?"
"I'd like to!" Lessing stooped to take a fresh grip on the dog's
collar. "Be quiet, you brute! You aren't going back there now."
Mary patted the setter's head. "Poor old boy! Did he get a rat, and
wouldn't they let him have it! Was it a good rat, Leo?"
But the dog only twisted impatiently from her touch, his head turned
backwards and his nose working.
"It was a darn good rat," said Lessing, "but he won't have it now.
Go open the shed door, Mary, till I get him in."
She threw open the door of the tool-shed, and Lessing thrust the dog
inside, pushing him in with his foot, and fastened the latch.
"That's that! Aren't you staying for supper, Austin?"
"Wish I could! I must get the mare back, and I want to be there when
Herrick gets in."
I untied the mare and backed her around. Mary was standing on the
porch.
"Do you notice you can smell that stagnant water at the dam? We seem
to get it in whiffs, every once in a while. I noticed it very
strongly last night, sitting out here. I wonder the Sliefers can
stand it, living as close as they do."
There was a slight taint on the air. As Mary said, it seemed to come
in whiffs. It might have been the dam, but it carried my mind back,
as a smell will do, to some vague recollection I could not quite
place.
"There's a lot of rotting vegetation there. Maybe it isn't so bad at
their end. Sometimes you smell things much more at a distance."
"It just comes and goes. I don't notice it now. You'll be over this
evening?"
"I'll bring Herrick along if he's back."
I paused, held by a vague trouble in her eyes.
"You aren't worried, Mary?"
"Worried? No. I just feel ... restless. It's the sort of feeling
you get before a storm. As if we were all waiting for something, and
you don't know what."
"You've been upset about this Menning affair."
"It isn't that. I don't know what it is. The place, maybe ... I
always liked woods before, and now I feel as if I should never like
them again." Her grave clear eyes held mine. "Austin, I wish I
knew. If only ... sometimes I almost wish we'd never come to this
place at all."
"Mary, you don't really wish that?"
"No, I don't. I ought to, but I can't. But ... I do wish we were
all away--out of here--somewhere else."
"We shall be, soon enough." I was thinking of the end of my holiday,
the breaking-up of a summer that, if it had brought danger and
ugliness and all but tragedy, had brought also something infinitely
precious into my life--something I was far from ready to lose.
"The summer has done Kate good, anyway. We had a letter from her
this morning."
"Where is she?" I knew that Mrs. Lessing had left a few days before,
to stay with some friends.
"On Long Island. A place on the Sound. We'll probably join her
there in a couple of weeks. I wish you could come--you and Jack
both. I think the sea air would blow sense into all of us!" She
laughed. "I'm talking like an old woman, and I've got Dick's supper
to get and nothing ready! Well, we'll see you tonight."
"Would you rather I stayed?"
"Nonsense! You'll begin to think I'm developing nerves, next!"
She waved her hand as I climbed into the buggy. Gathering up the
reins, I turned the mare's head homeward. It was already nearly
dark, but I could still see the road before me. Was it presage, or
only the desire for Mary's company that made me wish, even before I
had turned the corner by Dutchman's Hill, that I had after all
accepted Lessing's invitation and stayed on?
As I reached the point where the road dipped to the hollow it seemed
to me that I could smell once more that queer unplaceable odour of
which Mary had spoken.
XX
WHAT WE FOUND IN THE SAW-MILL
Herrick had not yet returned when I reached the house. Lennox was
just sitting down to supper, in which I joined him. While we were
lingering over our coffee I remembered what Mary had said that
morning, and asked him point-blank about it.
He gave me a curious look before replying:
"So Mary Lessing told you that, did she? Well, I give her credit for
observation. I remember that morning perfectly. She was quite
right; something _had_ happened."
He paused to light a cigar over the lamp-chimney before saying:
"Shall we go into the surgery, Haverill?"
I followed him in, leaving the dining-room to Mrs. Searle, and closed
the door between us, while Lennox threw himself back into the
armchair and smoked for a few moments in silence.
"I've told you, Haverill, that between one thing and another my
nerves were in a pretty unreliable state early this summer. I
mention that now, because I still think it had a certain bearing on
what happened. When Mary Lessing stopped me that morning in the road
it was just a case of one shock on top of another."
"Then----"
"Wait a minute," Lennox said. "If I tell this thing I've got to tell
it my own way. I'll tell you just what happened and I haven't got
any explanation of it at all. You can take it or leave it. And
you'll understand that I don't even claim to be telling you facts.
The whole thing might have been just an impression in my own mind.
That's what I want to make clear, regardless of any effect it may
have had on me at the time.
"I had been out on an all-night case. I was physically tired, and
through a particular anxiety in this instance, just about all in. I
had a seven-mile drive home, and I could almost have fallen asleep
there in the buggy. I had left my patient out of danger, and coming
back I remembered that Mrs. Searle wanted a couple of chickens from
Aaron and that I'd told her the day before I would stop in some time
and get them. It was very little after daybreak, but I chanced the
Mennings being early risers and turned out of my way to go by the
Bend. There was smoke coming from the chimney, so I got out and
knocked at the door, and the old woman opened it. I guess she was
just dressing; she looked half asleep, and she told me Aaron wasn't
up yet, but that the chickens were ready, and she'd get them for me
if I didn't mind waiting a minute.
"I stood about outside. It was a chilly morning, and a bit foggy. I
guess I had my mind more on a cup of hot coffee than anything else,
and I wondered if the old woman would give me some if I asked for it
when she came back, though I'd be needing coffee pretty badly before
I'd drink it in that house. You knew the Menning place, before it
was burned?"
I nodded.
"There are a lot of tumble-down outbuildings there where they used to
keep the chickens he bought, and one in particular--I don't know if
you noticed it--a sort of lean-to near the open wagon shed, painted
green. I don't know what it was built for, but it had a door and a
square window-hole, high up, about the height of a man's head. I
don't suppose the whole floor space inside would be more than about
eight foot square, about the size of a calf-pen, and I shouldn't
wonder if that was what it was. I'd walked over to it because I
wanted to get my pipe started, out of the breeze. The door was shut,
and I'm certain there wasn't anything moving in there, or I'd have
heard it.
"I'd struck a match, and was just bending over to draw on my pipe
when something shot past me. It seemed to come out of the uncleared
patch of woods back of the sheds. I didn't get more than a half
glimpse of it, and I can't even tell you what it looked like, except
that it was biggish, and it seemed to shamble on all fours, and it
panted, the way an animal does that's been running, and it _smelt_
like an animal too--I seemed to get a whiff of it as it went past.
It came by me so close I could almost have touched it, and flung
itself straight at that window-hole and slithered through, and I
could hear the thud of its body on the inside.
"I'm a short man. That window-hole was well above the level of my
head. My first thought was to pull myself up and look through, and
then--well, you can put it down to what you like, but the thing had
given me such a queer turn when it shot past, like cold water down my
spine, and I believe if I could have touched that window I wouldn't
have had the physical strength to pull myself up and look through.
Instead I backed away and just stood there, staring. The door was
tight shut. It had all happened in such a flash that I began to
wonder, then, if I'd imagined the whole thing. I might have stood
there for a couple of minutes, though it seemed to me longer, and
then suddenly the door was flung wide open and Aaron himself--or as I
know now, Jakey--walked out.
"The door opened outward, and I could see straight past into the
shed. There was a heap of broken harness and some rags lying in one
corner, and except for that the place was as bare as my hand.
"I daresay I must have looked queer--I know I felt it--for Menning
gave me a pretty surly look. He asked me what I wanted, and I told
him I'd stopped for the chickens. He said they weren't ready, that
he'd bring them over, but just at that minute his mother came out
from the house with them in her hand, and I tell you I was glad
enough to grab those chickens and drive off. I didn't want to ask
questions or to stop near the place."
"This thing--what did you think it looked like?"
"I can't even tell you. It--it didn't look like anything."
"But it ran?"
"Yes, it ran. It's no good trying to tell you what my impression
was, any more than I have done."
"Do you suppose Menning kept something shut up there?"
"If he did, where was it when he opened the door? I tell you the
shed was empty."
"There was no trapdoor?"
"I went back to see. I didn't just give it up, either. I went back
a few days later, one time when Menning had passed our house and I
knew he'd be away on his rounds some time. I saw the old woman. She
was surly in a way, but friendly to me. You see, I'd tended her
before when Menning had been beating her up--oh, yes, he'd done that
more than once to my knowledge. The Nevills knew it, but there was
no good interfering; she'd deny it, and no one dared tackle Menning.
But she had to come to me, once, and though she put up some story, I
could tell what had happened. Well, I chatted with her there, and
just to see what she'd say I asked her if they didn't keep some sort
of a dog on the place. She said no, that they'd had a dog and her
son shot it because it howled at night. After a while I left her
settled there in the kitchen and before I left I took my chance to go
over every hole and corner out of doors. Except for the cow and a
couple of pigs there wasn't the sign of any animal round the place
bigger than a cat. And there was no opening in that shed except the
window and the door Menning came out by.
"So now you know the whole thing--all Mary Lessing claimed I was
keeping back from you--and I imagine you're about as wise as I am,
and that isn't much."