The thing in the woods
and one or two recent pathological treatises that I knew only by
title. There was a well-known medical work on criminology among them
also, and from their number and disposition, and the several paper
bookmarks that caught my eye here and there, I judged that this
particular study must have had some attraction for Lennox. There was
nothing, however, that interested me for the moment, or that promised
cheerful reading. I had not come down here to dive into works on
mental disorders or the bound reports of Lunacy Commissions as
preliminary to passing a healthful holiday, and I fell back on a
month-old magazine that was lying on the surgery table.
When I had finished it I turned the lamp slightly down and went out
on the porch, with the idea of trying to locate again the noise that
had caused such catastrophe that evening.
The woods about were very still; not a leaf moved. The silence had
an intensity that was almost oppressive. Clouds had gathered,
obscuring the moon, and it was quite dark.
Presently, above the line of the farther tree-tops, a gleam of light
shot up. It moved and swept, like a white arm outstretched against a
black curtain. So near as I could judge, it came from the direction
of Sliefer's dam, a point some two miles away, and at first glimpse I
thought it might be a fire, but the whiteness of it put that out of
the question. It had the appearance of a crude searchlight, but it
was less definite in ray and moved less steadily. More than anything
else, it reminded me of those "jackies" that children love to make
with a bit of prism refracted on a wall.
For several minutes I watched it, then, as suddenly, it was
extinguished, twitching back into darkness, and I turned and went
indoors.
III
A MYSTERIOUS CALL
I had prepared a stern lecture for Pete while I was shaving next
morning, but I was destined not to give it. While I was yet in my
room Mrs. Searle called me from below stairs.
"You're wanted over to the Bend, doctor, for Mr. Lessing."
I finished my dressing quickly and went downstairs. Coffee was on
the table. Mrs. Searle sniffed as she set a cup before me.
"You'd best take something to eat before you start, doctor. It's a
two'n-a-half-mile drive.
"Who is this Mr. Lessing? Did they say what it was for?"
I fancied she looked at me rather curiously.
"He has the new bungalow in the woods there. It's just before the
turnin' to Sliefer's dam."
She spoke as though with a reluctance to name either the house or its
owner, and there flashed across my mind instantly a remembrance of
the first day Peter had driven me to the Bend, a few clustered
cottages, hardly enough to be called a village, situated some few
miles up the road. We had passed near the house then, just visible
through the trees, and I had asked him who lived there. He had
answered with the same reluctance I traced in Mrs. Searle's reply.
Evidently this Mr. Lessing had for some reason managed to make
himself unpopular in the district.
Peter had the buggy ready, and I started off. The mare was fresher
than usual this morning, and covered the two and a half miles at a
brisk pace.
The road ran level for some distance, then dipped to the little
hollow known as Dutchman's Hollow, where it crossed a shallow stream,
nearly dry in the summer. At the top of the hill, when you had
crossed the stream, was the turning to the new bungalow.
The woods were emerald with early sunlight, and the dew hung heavily
on brambles and undergrowth. Birds were everywhere, and I saw a
Baltimore oriole, a rare flash of black and orange, fly across my
path as we neared the stream. Above the marshy space at the foot of
the hollow many dragon-flies were glancing, jewelled and wonderful,
and a small spotted turtle flopped from his stone in midstream at the
near crunch of wheels.
I let the mare take her own pace climbing the hill. The morning was
too fine for hurry, even on an unknown errand. When we reached the
top a glint of unpainted timber through the trees led me to the left,
and a few yards up the cross-road I came out on a little clearing in
which the house stood.
It was an ordinary one-story cottage, newly built, and as yet with no
attempt at garden or enclosure. What struck my eye immediately was a
curious sort of annex, standing near it. It was a rather high,
square building, windowless, but with one big skylight like an
artist's studio. Yet it had not the look of a studio, and the
skylight was so raised on four glass sides as to suggest a rude
attempt at an observatory.
I tied the mare to a sapling in the shade, and went up to the house.
The front door stood open, and the interior showed the usual
living-room of a summer cottage. It was furnished scantily but
artistically. There were a few good rugs on the floor, a divan
heaped with cushions, a piano, and a set of low bookshelves
supporting a great bronze jar filled with wild-flowers. There were
few ornaments about, but those few were chiefly of Eastern origin and
good of their kind. It looked a room belonging to people of taste
rather than wealth.
The divan was so placed in one corner, near a window screened by
drawn curtains, that it was a full moment before I realized that it
was occupied. A man lay there face downward among the tumbled
cushions, in what seemed the apathy of complete exhaustion. He was
clothed only in a suit of thin woolen pyjamas, that showed the
meagreness of his frame. He was so thin and slight that he seemed to
fill scarcely any space on the wide couch. He was evidently not
asleep, but he had not turned his head at my entrance--I could see
only a patch of rumpled dark hair against the pillows--and I crossed
the room and paused beside him.
"Mr. Lessing...."
He moved, looking at me with petulant, questioning eyes from a face
that showed every sign of physical and nervous exhaustion.
"Who are you? I sent for Doctor Lennox."
"My name is Haverill. I am taking Doctor Lennox's place for a few
months."
"The devil you are!" He lifted his head, regarding me again intently
with those queer dark eyes, the eyes of a boy set in a prematurely
worn face. "Then Lennox has bolted!"
"He has gone to Europe for the summer," I said, looking him full in
the face. "He told me he needed a change, and I gathered from his
looks he was pretty overworked. So I'm afraid you'll have to put up
with me for a while."
"That's like old Lennox! I thought he'd do it some day." He slipped
back again among the cushions. "Where are you from?"
I told him. He repeated the name of the hospital after me
mechanically. "I didn't know Lennox had gone when I sent over."
The tone was ungracious, but it was more the ungraciousness of a
child than a rational being. I could see that the man's nerves were
fairly on the raw. Judging roughly, I should say that he had not
slept for several nights. I ignored the hint.
"As I'm here," I said pleasantly, "I might as well look you over,
don't you think? What's the trouble?"
For a full minute he did not answer. I fancied he was turning me
over very closely in his mind.
"The usual thing," he said then. "Overwork--like Lennox's!" A grim
smile flashed momentarily on me. "I've been scratched up. That's
what I want you to see to."
"An accident?"
"You may call it a dog!"
He turned, with a visible effort. Until now he had been lying almost
upon his face. The light came obscured from the window, but as I
bent forward I realized with a thrill of what extraordinary physical
endurance that slight body was capable. The right sleeve of his
pyjamas had been torn down--it seemed at one single rip--and the
edges of the flannel were caked and sodden with blood. As he threw
open the jacket with the other hand I saw two long parallel scratches
of the same depth running transversely across his chest.
My first act was to draw the curtain aside. He lay there blinking at
me in the full light, watchful to see what change my face betrayed.
"What you think, eh?"
"I think," I said quietly, "that the sooner that dog is shot the
better."
I made a movement to draw the jacket down, but at the touch of my
hand on his shoulder he winced for the first time.
"I must have warm water," I said. "I suppose you are not alone here?"
Almost as I spoke a woman came into the room by a second door;
evidently his wife. She was young, and her face would have been
noticeably beautiful but for its expressionlessness. She had deep
eyes, well-moulded features, and a very clear pallid complexion, but
her whole appearance suggested a slatternliness, evinced in the
tumbled silk wrapper, the carelessly combed-back hair. I think I
have never seen a woman, least of all in any crisis, look so utterly
stupid and bewildered. Her eyes were pink about the edges, where
powder had been hastily dabbed to hide recent tear-marks. I imagined
that her first impulse in any emergency would be to weep.
"Have you warm water in the house?"
"I'll get it."
She disappeared toward the kitchen, and I followed her in. I wanted
for the moment to be out of range of the man on the couch, and I
thought it would give her a chance to say something to me herself of
what had happened.
She took up a bowl haphazard from the dresser, put it down again and
took another, always with the scurrying half-frightened movement with
which she had entered the room; went finally through a doorway into
what appeared to be an outer kitchen to fetch the water. There I
heard another woman's voice, clear-cut, decisive, with what seemed an
undertone of forced cheerfulness to it. Scraps of a conversation
reached me while I waited.
"They won't send it up. I'll have to go down later. And Scholl will
let us have bread if I fetch it. I thought I'd better bring three
now."
"Mary, it's awful!"
"Did that new man get here?"
Mrs. Lessing's voice was discreetly dropped, drowned by the
accompanying splash of water from a kettle. But I heard the other
say: "Is he any good?"
"Mary, sh-h!"
She fluttered back, and I took the bowl of water from her hands.
Lessing was stretched on the divan just as I had left him, waiting my
return. There was no chair near, and I looked about me impatiently
for something on which to set the bowl, while the woman stood by in a
sort of helpless indecision. Just as I was about to put it on the
floor someone pushed Mrs. Lessing gently but promptly aside and came
forward. It was the girl whose voice I had heard in the kitchen, and
I saw in the second's glance I gave her that it was she whom I had
seen on the road the first morning I came down.
"Give me the bowl," she said. "You can manage better if I hold it."
I stripped Lessing's jacket off as gently as I could, sponging the
sleeve where it adhered to the torn flesh. He must have been lying
untended there for some considerable time before my arrival. When I
had laid bare his chest and shoulder to the light I set my lips to an
involuntary whistle. The man looked as if he had been fighting with
some wild animal. No dog had made those wounds. They were not
bites; they were long raking cuts, as if the flesh had been torn by
heavy blunt-pointed claws. A bear might have done it, but there was
no sign of bruising or tooth-prints. The scratch on the shoulder was
a good half-inch deep in one place--it nearly laid bare the bone.
He had bled freely; the jacket sleeve was soaked and stiff. I set to
work to cleanse the blood from his chest, and as I did so I saw other
wounds of the same order, some old cicatrices, others newly healed
scars of perhaps a month old, but none so deep as the present ones.
I glanced sharply at the man's hands. They were well kept, the