The thing in the woods
Jake Menning and the alleged ghost of Dutchman's Hill were ordinary
enough features in a village drama, but they could have no direct
bearing on the problem that occupied my mind.
After lunch I told Peter to put the mare in. He lingered about the
buggy when I came out, making unnecessary adjustments to the harness.
I could see he was anxious to learn the outcome of yesterday's visit,
and where I was going now.
"Is yoh gwine by de village, doctah?" he asked finally, with the air
of one with a commission to request.
"No, I'm going to the Bend. There is no need for you to drive me," I
added as I took the reins up.
I could have sworn the old sinner looked relieved as he went back to
the coach-house. When I reached the bungalow I found Lessing himself
on the porch. As he rose to greet me I saw that he was taller than I
had thought; there was a certain wiry strength about him when he
stood upright. What amazed me was the man's extraordinary endurance
and resiliency; his face showed scarcely a sign of the exhaustion of
yesterday. He was dressed in corduroy trousers and a soft silk
shirt, under which the outline of the bandaging was visible as he
moved.
"Well, how are you?" I asked as we shook hands.
"All right. Come into the house--or shall we stay here?"
"I'll have a look at you first." I followed him into the room. "A
bit stiff?"
"Nothing much."
"Sleep?"
"Like a log."
I need hardly have asked him. He stripped up his shirt and I made a
brief readjustment of the dressings. The wounds were going on all
right. He must have had a magnificent constitution despite his
slightness of build. We sat down on the divan, and Lessing produced
a box of cigarettes.
There was a small wooden table near the window, littered with
test-tubes and odds and ends, and I nodded toward it.
"Been busy?"
"I was just working out something. I have a sort of laboratory
fitted outside, though. I had it built."
"That sort of studio place?"
"It's just like a workshop--where I muddle occasionally! I'll show
you sometime, if you like."
"I should be delighted."
"My experiments have, unfortunately, given rather a bad name to the
place. They had a bad effect on old Lennox, too. I believe I was
too progressive for him. You wouldn't expect that from a medical
man, would you? Did you know Lennox very well?"
He knocked the ash off his cigarette, waiting for my reply. If he
was guarded, so was I.
"I knew him at the University, a good while ago. Since then I had
not seen him till the other day."
"He's a queer old bird! I used to tell him he made the ideal country
practitioner. It made him mad because it was so exactly true. We
used to disagree frightfully, you know. It's the only relaxation in
a place like this. I shall miss Lennox...."
It struck me he was trying, in a casual way, to find out how far
Lennox had spoken of him to me, and whether we had been at any time
since his departure in correspondence.
"Lennox has quaint theories," he went on, leaning back against the
cushions. "One of them is that nothing exists outside the
pharmacopœia and Burton's 'North American Fauna.' We used to
argue it at great length. I don't believe he's convinced yet."
"He was never an easy man to convince."
"So? It's habit that survives. How do you like it down here, by the
way?"
"Oh, I'm putting in a good time," I smiled. "I fish a little, tramp
a little. There ought to be good shooting in these woods by and by."
"They are interesting," said Lessing drily.
"Have you been here long?" I asked.
"Over a year." He rose and went into the kitchen, whence he returned
a moment later, saying: "I thought I heard my wife there. We might
as well have some tea."
It was Miss Lessing who brought the tea in, a few minutes later. She
greeted me pleasantly, setting the tray down on the little table I
pulled forward for her.
"Kate is lying down for a while," she said to her brother. "She has
a headache. Do you take sugar, Doctor Haverill?"
I sat chatting there for nearly an hour. Lessing seemed at all
events disposed to be friendly. All the while I was trying to
reconcile this man who sat talking boyishly on trivial subjects with
the outstretched figure I had seen twenty-four hours ago. If I had
felt any resentment for his treatment of me yesterday it would have
vanished utterly, and his complete absence of restraint now showed
me, if I had needed it, how all memory of that mood had changed with
his physical condition.
When I rose to go it was under promise to dine with them the
following week. I fancied that Miss Lessing glanced hesitatingly at
her brother before she seconded his invitation. It might have been
only fancy; she was certainly cordial enough as we shook hands.
"Next Thursday, then," Lessing called after me from the doorway. I
drove home no less mystified than before.
V
THE DEAD CYCLIST
Lennox sent me a note from Queenstown. I wondered, reading the brief
cheerful account of his crossing, if he guessed how much I would give
to have him cornered for a half-hour's interview. That he could
throw considerable light on the puzzle I did not doubt, any more than
that he had promptly put the ocean between us with a view to avoiding
the very question I wanted to put to him. Anyway he was securely out
of reach, and there was no use in wasting speculation.
My motor-cycle had arrived some time ago, but up to now I had not
made use of it. It was housed in the carriage-shed, to Peter's great
curiosity. Once I had caught him meddling with it surreptitiously,
and my lecture, garnished with many lies as to what would happen to
him if he pursued investigations, wrought the desired effect on his
superstitious mind. Devils offered to Peter the most natural
explanation for anything he failed to understand. Having a free
morning, it occurred to me to put the engine in order, and Peter,
cleaning harness nearby, watched my proceedings with distrustful
curiosity.
"Is yoh gwine _ride_ dat 'ar thing, doctah?" he asked me.
"Sure!" I stood up, wiping my grimed hands on a piece of cotton
waste. "Don't you think it's a likely thing to scare the ha'nts
with, Pete?"
"Yoh talk er de ha'nts, doctah, 'cause yoh ain' done _seen_ 'em.
When yoh's done seen 'em, doctah, I raikon yose gwine talk er suthin'
eke."
"If I meet one on this, Pete, it'll give him such fits he won't do
any han'ting for a week. Give me that monkey-wrench."
He eyed me gloomily.
"Dat ar thing's got a debbil in 'um sure, an' yoh ain' git no better
er one debbil by mixin' 'um up wid anuffer--no, _sah_!"
"Peter," I said, "you are too conservative."
"I d'know dat. I d'know dat! De debbil's de dibbil, an' dar ain' no
good yet come er mixin' up wid him. 'Tain' in de Bible nor 'tain' in
nature, an' I ain' holdin' wid no such dealin's."
"Well, Pete, I'm going to back my devil against your rabbit's foot,
anyhow."
Pete looked suspicious.
"Who's been talkin' 'bout rabbit's foots, doctah?"
"No one. Turn your pockets out, Pete!"
His hand clapped involuntarily to the side of his trousers.
"I got ter put dat harness away, an' I ain' got the time t' be
hindered in! Sholy to Gawd, doctah, yoh ain' s'pose _I_ carry no
trash like that!"
He straightened himself with dignity, hanging the harness up on its
pegs. I finished my job and went into the surgery. I had written to
the city for the drug I wanted for Lessing. It arrived yesterday,
and I had made up the powders. They were lying on the desk with a
rubber band about them, and the packet caught my eye as I came in. I
called to Pete.
"I want you to take a prescription over to Mr. Lessing," I said.
"You can take the buckboard and bring back that sack of feed from
Sliefer's at the same time."
I held the packet out to him. He eyed first it, then me.
"Well?" I said impatiently.
"I'se gwine, I'se gwine. I was thinkin' on'y dis mawnin' how dat
feed done oughter be fetched. Yessir, I was sayin' dat out in de
car'ge-house. It done oughter be fetched _today_."
"It'll be right on your road after you leave Mr. Lessing's."
"Yessir, dat so! On'y dat packet, doctah ... I was jest considerin'
dat packet. Ef I was to put dat packet in de buckboard longer de
feed sack I'd be right scared 'er losing it. It don't seem to me,
doctah, dat 'ar packet gwine t' be very safe dat way."
"But you've got a pocket, you old idiot!"
"Yessir, I done got pockets. I was on'y jest a-studyin', doctah. I
don' recommend pockets, not when a pusson's got a commission to 'tend
to. When a pusson puts suthin' in his pocket, it happens sometime
dat a pusson's gwine _forget_ it."
"If it happens to you," I assured him, "I'll find a way of operating
on your memory, so you'd better be careful!"
He took the packet without more ado and went off to get the buckboard
ready. It was too fine a day to waste about the house, and I had it
in mind to take the cycle out for a spin. Telling Mrs. Searle I
would probably be away for lunch, I got into my cycling suit and set
off.
I followed the road for some distance past the Bend, and then
branched off to the right, joining the Pike. The machine was in good
running order, and I did some twenty miles before I slowed up finally
at a little village with the hope of getting something to eat.
There was the usual hotel and saloon combined, with its array of
spruce bushes in tubs before the entrance. I leaned my cycle against
the porch and went in to interview the landlord about a meal.
Dinner was by luck just ready. I cleaned off some of the grime of my
ride and wandered into the commercial room, which was garnished with
horsehair furniture, a mildewed engraving of Washington, and two
plates of sticky fly-paper, buzzing and noxious, set out on the
soiled tablecloth. There was one other midday guest, a young man in
a gray suit who sat watching the struggles of the latest addition to
the fly-paper colony while he waited for dinner. I placed him
immediately as a newspaper man, and the first dozen words we
exchanged, as I took my place opposite to him at the table, proved me
right. He had been sent down on the trial of one of those dull and
elusive scandals which serve to lighten the papers during the dead
season, and had to put in two hours' waiting for his train back to
the city.
He had a considerable fund of anecdote which needed only the barest
encouragement to set going, and he transferred his interest from the
fly-paper to myself with complimentary promptitude. He had a trick
of raising his voice a full three tones at the beginning of each
sentence, and as his dissertations were lengthy I found myself
speculating at to what new and rasping height his voice might next
reach.
There was a week-old copy of a local paper lying on the table, and in
a pause of the meal he pushed it over to me.
"There's a thing that might interest you, being a cyclist," he said.
"What do you make of that kind of an accident?"
I read the paragraph he pointed out. It was the account of an
inquest held on the body of a young man identified as one George
Powell, salesman in a Philadelphia dry-goods store. He had been
found on a stretch of road a few miles beyond Coopersville by a
farmer taking an early load of milk to the Coopersville creamery.
The handle-bars and front part of his wheel, near by, were damaged,
and the broken lamp was picked up a few yards further on. The man
was dead, but the curious part, which had evidently struck my
acquaintance also, was that there were no injuries found on the body
except a single diagonal scratch across the face, which was of
sufficient depth to have destroyed one eye and to lay the entire