The thing in the woods
cheek open. This in itself had not produced death, and the coroner's
autopsy had revealed no symptom of concussion. The medical officer's
verdict had been death from heart failure.
The injuries suggested attack, but there had been no robbery, and
though the man's clothing was torn his pockets were apparently
untouched. They contained thirty-five dollars in notes, in a
pocket-book, some small change, and the papers that had led to his
identification.
"Well?" said my acquaintance.
"It looks queer."
He laid a finger on the paragraph.
"You see the body was picked up fifteen yards from the edge of the
wood. If anyone had laid for him, they'd have laid right in the
woods, where there was cover. But whatever hit him, it hit him
before he reached there."
"He might have run into something."
"As what?"
"I don't know." And there struck me instantly the thought that my
companion put into words. "If you run into anything on a bicycle, at
full speed, it doesn't generally happen that the handle-bars get the
worst injury. You see that the front wheel was not much broken. And
he was riding toward the woods, and it's going to take a pretty
phenomenal shock to throw a man and his bicycle fifteen yards
backwards. I'll tell you another thing. I happen to know that
stretch of road, because I spent part of last summer near there, with
some people. It's a level stretch, cleared both sides, and there
isn't anything larger than a stone to run into."
I waited, wondering what he was driving at. He chose a toothpick
from the holder and began to employ it, leisurely.
"You'd reckon those things would strike the jury, wouldn't you? But
they're so dam' simple down here that they're content to come up
against facts like that, and they say: Well, here's a man got killed
and we don't know what hit him. Guess we'll let it go at
misadventure and go get a drink!' That's their mental attitude, and
there isn't anything going to shake them out of it."
"What's your theory?" I asked.
He revolved the toothpick meditatively.
"If I knew, I guess I'd be up against a story that would make every
newspaper in the country sit up. There's something queer there, and
I'll tell you why, and you'll see just how enterprising these country
juries are. Last April"--he raised his voice again, giving the
toothpick an extra twirl in emphasis--"precisely the same thing
happened to another man, not twelve miles from where this was. He
was killed under much about the same circumstances, and the jury then
returned the same old verdict, with a caution about the dangers of
scorching. I happen to know, because I was down there on some story
the time the thing occurred. I saw the man." He paused, and without
knowing why I felt my pulses quicken suddenly in anticipation. "He
had marks on his body that a wild-cat couldn't have made! He was
picked up at the side of the path, among some stiff under-brush, so
of course they said the fall did it. I tell you he was ripped, like
I've seen a dog's face ripped by a badger. I've seen murder cases
and I've seen accidents, but I've never seen the precise accident
that would leave that kind of marks."
"You think it was murder?"
"The man wasn't murdered. He hit his head against a stone and died
of concussion that time, right enough. But it was near enough to
murder, if you assume an assailant who'd strap two-inch steel claws
on to his hands." He laughed. "It's an original outfit! But that's
what I'm asking _you_? What's the animal that goes round in these
woods that's strong enough to wreck the steel tubing of a bicycle,
that attacks with its claws and not with its teeth, and that's quick
enough to knock a man down without the chance of a struggle?"
"There were no traces?"
"None. Not a single footprint."
All the while he spoke there had been before my mind the picture of
Lessing--Lessing with those inexplicable scratches on his chest.
Whatever had attacked these two had attacked Lessing also; that I
would swear to. I was conscious that the young man was watching me
rather closely.
"Heard something of this before, have you?"
"No. It interests me. But I think you're on a wrong tack."
"How?"
"Man alive, you don't suppose there could conceivably be any animal
of that kind loose in the country without people knowing it! Someone
would have seen it."
"I guess two people did see it," he suggested.
"If anything escaped from a menagerie there'd be a hue and cry
raised. The woods around here couldn't give cover to any animal of
that size and ferocity for three months without some track of it
being found."
He said: "How about the murders in the Rue Morgue?"
"Those scratches weren't made by a monkey!"
I was unguarded. He looked up sharply.
"You didn't see them."
"You have described them," I reminded him. "Besides, an ape's
instinct is to strangle."
"Not necessarily."
"Put the first down as a murder. The second might not have had any
connection. There is nearly three months between. The medical
officer suggested himself that the injuries might have been caused by
falling on the broken bicycle framework."
"Medical officers aren't infallible. They've got to say something."
I laughed. "Well, stick to your escaped simian theory! If a third
case turns up we'll see who's right."
I rose, paid my bill and went out, leaving him, I have no doubt, with
the impression that I was a particularly hidebound idiot. But I had
my own reasons for making no further contribution to his data. I
would see this thing through without any assistance from a too
enterprising press.
VI
A BOYCOTTED HOUSEHOLD
Thursday evening found me at the Lessing's bungalow. Mrs. Lessing
was in evidence this time, in a soft black gown that accentuated the
pallor of her face. The evening did not correct my first impressions
of her. She shook hands limply, contributed a few remarks about the
weather, and then subsided on the couch in silence. Dinner was laid
on a small round table near the window, and Mary Lessing came in from
the kitchen with uprolled sleeves and a big apron tied about her.
"We do our own chores here, Doctor Haverill," she said. "Do you want
to make yourself useful?"
I rose promptly. Lessing had not yet appeared and my _tête-à-tête_
with his wife was not exhilarating. I followed her out into the
kitchen, where she gave me a can-opener and a box of sardines.
"Turn those out for me, please. And if you have any hygienic
aversion to canned goods, smother it. We live on them here."
"You find it far from the village?"
She smiled, quizzically. "A good way. Besides, the tradespeople
here aren't exactly genial. So we subsist on boxes from the city.
It gives you all the real pleasure of a desert island without the
risks. Put them on that plate, will you? You see, by the time the
box arrives and gets hauled up from the station we've generally
forgotten what we ordered, so there's all the excitement of discovery
as well. This time it was olives. Do you realize the joy of
unexpected olives in the wilderness?"
"I'm going to."
"That's the right spirit! Living in the country teaches one a
becoming humility. There are more things to open. Perhaps it was a
mistake to ask you out here, but in any case I could hardly have
palmed off these peaches as grown in our own garden, because we
haven't got one."
She was standing at the table, drying crisp salad on a white cloth.
The position showed me only her profile, with a little wave of bronze
hair escaping near one ear. "Do you think gardening is worth the
trouble?"
"When things like this grow in every department store? Perhaps not.
Good heavens, Doctor Haverhill, but you must _wash_ that can-opener!
Give it to me!"
I gazed at the jagged gash already achieved in the peach-can.
"Don't tell anyone and they won't taste it!"
"I thought bachelors knew how to do everything."
"Sardines and peaches go excellently together," I maintained. "They
call it _salade de fruits poissonnés_."
Lessing lounged in.
"I admire the way Mary sets you to work," he said. "She has a talent
for being industrious by proxy. Here----" He pulled a parcel out of
his pocket "I've brought your cheese, but I won't answer for the
state of it."
Miss Lessing cast a quick glance at me. "Where----?"
"_Not_ at Johnson's. I don't know if my sister has explained to you,
Doctor Haverhill, that we are a boycotted household? We find it
quite amusing. It leads to a practice of expedience which is
excellent training for the young. Mary has learned to make quite
creditable bread already."
"Out of the sawdust they pack the canned goods in," put in his sister
promptly. "Carry that dish in without spilling it, Dick, and don't
talk nonsense!"
We sat down to one of the most cheerful meals four young people have
ever enjoyed. I would except Mrs. Lessing, but that even her limp
and monosyllabic presence failed to dampen our spirits. Afterwards
Lessing made Turkish coffee over a spirit lamp while the two girls
cleared the table, refusing my assistance high-handedly.
I moved about the room in the familiarity which our informal meal had
fostered, looking at the knick-knacks, the row of books on the
shelves. They were a pretty varied collection, poetry, some modern
French scientific books and novels, and one of the most complete
collections of detective literature I have ever encountered, side by
side with a few text-books on chemistry and some volumes on occultism
and black magic, some familiar to me by title, others unknown. There
was a monthly magazine lying near which I recognized as occupying
itself largely with the subject of psychic phenomena, and turning it
over I noticed Lessing's name in the index.
"You write?" I asked.
"Once in a blue moon!" He looked up from a critical stage in his
coffee-making. "Does that sort of thing interest you?"
"Indifferently--if it happens to be genuine."
"There's so little genuine." He withdrew the coffee deftly, blowing
out the lamp, and stood the little copper pot aside. "That's the
worst of it. One endures hours of boredom for no result."
"You belong to the P.R.S.?"
"A most respectable and unexciting body." He smiled. "I would give
in my demission, only they afford me a patient hearing from time to
time. Besides, it gives me the opportunity of wrangling with
someone, and contention is the spice of life, as I was saying. It
was with that truism that I strove to console Lennox, when I bored
him to extinction."
Involuntarily my ears pricked.
"Was that often?"
"No, I can't say the boredom predominated, in the long run." He
surveyed his coffee with the air of an artist, his boyish head on one
side.
"Where are those cups, Mary?"
"Your system of boredom seemed to have a remarkable effect on Lennox,
anyway," slipped from me involuntarily.
Lessing laughed. "Oh, that was when the boredom ended! He stood it
nobly to a point." He turned toward me. "Would you like to see what
frightened Lennox, sometime?"
Before I could answer Mary Lessing came in with the coffee-cups, and
the subject was dropped.
It was ten o'clock when I rose to leave, my departure hastened by a
suspicion that Mrs. Lessing had glanced several times of purpose at
the clock. They all came out on the porch to say good night, and at
the last moment Lessing added: "I'll walk down the hill with you."
"I've got my bicycle," I said quickly, as Miss Lessing looked up.
"There's no need to bring you out."
"Oh, it'll do me good!"
It was a still, sultry night, with a humidity in the air that had
arisen since nightfall. We walked leisurely, smoking, as far as the
crossroad at the top of Dutchman's Hill. The hollow below was alive