Part 7

I found him on his usual corner of the cottage porch, his square old head with its bristly jaws--Paddy still shaved once a week--framed by the window-ledge and its row of flowering plants in tin cans. His daughter was inside, getting supper, and the new baby lay in a ramshackle baby-coach near Paddy's elbow. He was rocking the coach with one toe on the wheel while he smoked, the smell of his unspeakable tobacco mingling with that of the frying onions in the kitchen, through the open door.

I always felt like holding my breath when I approached the Nevill cottage. The stuffiness was of that permanent, impenetrable sort which seems to encompass the house solidly for a radius of five yards at least.

I sat down on the porch step and asked after Paddy's rheumatism. He looked down at his feet, shapeless in list slippers, like fearsome parcels.

"I ain't long fur this world, doctor, and that's truth I'm tellin' yer. Don't I know it? We ain't a long-lived fam'ly. Me father died at seventy-eight an' me brother at eighty, an' I'm thinkin' I won't be long after thim." He raised his voice suddenly to a shout, without turning, "Mary, git a cheer out fur th' doctor!"

I refused the chair hastily; the porch step at least bordered on fresh air.

"I've just come round by Aaron Menning's place," I said. "I met the little girl there."

Paddy's face darkened.

"Ain't I allus tellin' the young limb I won't hev her hangin' round the likes of thim dirrty Dutchmen! It's her mother'll be after takin' the strap to her fur that. The place ain't fit fur a dog these days. Did ye take heed to the cow there?"

I nodded.

"The poor baste do be after cryin' day an' night, like a Christian. I've told him again an' again, but he's a bad man is Aaron. He's took after his brother, an' that's sayin' ill enough of anyone. Ye wouldn't mind Jake Mennin', doctor?"

"No. It was before I came here."

"Sure I've lived neighbors to thim fifteen years, an' I've seen things to turn your stomach on yer. He had a bad streak in him, Jake, an' it was the devil took him in the end. They had a little girl there workin', the year before Jake died.... That's why I tell Lizzie I'll break her neck before I see her hangin' round there. The ould mother's a decent woman, or used to be. God knows the poor soul's had enough to turn her crazy."

"There is a mother, then?"

"Sure, but ye don't see her nowadays. 'Tis Aaron keeps her to the house, most like. I used to be civil spoke to Aaron a while back, but sence Jake died there ain't no good to him at all. Would any Christian man treat a dumb baste the way he does? An' he treats his ould mother the same, if all's known."

He pulled on his pipe.

"Two weeks ago, it would be, as we saw her last. Yes, I mind now it was the day I was thinkin' of puttin' the new winder-pane in. She come over to borry a half-cup o' sugar, an' I says to Mary to let her have it, the poor soul. She had her hand all wrapped up to here"--he measured a space on his gaunt grimy wrist--"an' she says to Mary as she'd scalded it in the kitchen. Aaron was away with the wagon, or she wouldn't 'a' come then."

"I suppose Aaron does a good business," I said casually.

"By the talk he does. I do be thinkin' he does most of it in the next county, fur I don't see him drivin' the village way more'n onct in a week or so. He'll be gone three days on a stretch wid the wagon, an' Lizzie's seen him come home mornin's wid the poor baste in a lather. Lizzie says he has hundreds o' chickens there, an' he can't be after sellin' thim all. They die on him all the time, fur she's seen him pull 'em out o' the coops and throw 'em to the pigs."

I asked after his son and rose to go, after turning the half of my tobacco pouch into Paddy's old tin box. It was getting on toward five o'clock, and I would have just time to clean up, get the mare put in, and drive to the depot for the afternoon train.

XI

JAKEY WALKS

It did me good to see Herrick's cheery face on the platform, and to feel the hand-grip he gave me. Our friendship dated back to college days, and unlike so many of those early intimacies, it had strengthened instead of decreased with the passage of time. Then, as now, Herrick had been the same curious mixture of enthusiast and practical hard-headed worker, and in spite of the inevitable schooling of experience and years of exacting and often discouraging labour, he had carried into the early forties a certain boyish confidence, a freshness of outlook, which gave to one instinctively, on meeting him, the impression of indomitable health and vitality.

When we had tucked his valise into the back of the buggy and turned the mare about, he looked at me with a laugh.

"Well, Haverill, you look quite the country practitioner already! Seven weeks' change--ye gods! But you haven't grown a beard yet!"

"I'm keeping the beard for my leisure moments," I told him. "So far they haven't been many."

"Don't tell me this place is in the throes of an epidemic! It looks like one of those ideal Sleepy Hollows where you get about one call for whooping-cough every six months. I came here for repose, you know."

"Oh, you'll get it," I assured him. "You'll get the kind of repose that keeps you awake nights wondering where it's going to hit you next. They don't want a doctor down here; they want a new lunacy commission officer, and the first suspect will be me. Oh, I'm going to make you work, Jack! Have no idle dreams on the subject."

"Work! You look as if you'd forgotten the meaning of the word! If ever a man had the luck to stumble on a good excuse for a holiday it's you. This air, this sky, these woods to fish and loaf in---- Hello, what's up? The whooping-cough I spoke of, or have you arranged a little semblance of business for my benefit! That good lady seems about to welcome us with open arms."

A woman was hurrying down the road toward us, from the direction of my house. She had a gingham sunbonnet on which flapped at each step as she walked, and on catching sight of the buggy with the familiar roan mare in the shafts she waved her hand in unmistakable signal. I pulled Bess up, and by the time the woman came pantingly abreast of us I recognized her for Mrs. Sliefer, who lived in the first farm-house beyond the Bend, past the cross roads.

"I been to your house, doctor," she began, "an' Mis' Searle told me you weren't to hum, so I come right on. My niece is took bad an' she's been queer sence the mornin', and I'd like you to come straight back with me an' see her."

She spoke with an air somewhat of indignation, born of her toilsome walk. Mrs. Sliefer was a stout lady, to put it at the mildest, and the heat and exercise had obviously tried her. I leaned from the buggy.

"Get right up, Mrs. Sliefer! There's plenty of room, and you can tell me as we drive."

She hoisted herself laboriously into the buggy, with our combined help, and collapsed, rather than sat down, between us. Luckily the seat was a broad one. As it was, her generous proportions all but crushed us.

I kept the mare at a walk while Mrs. Sliefer told her errand. Briefly, as I gathered from her rather spasmodic utterance, the facts were these.

Her niece, Rebecca Durn, who lived with Mr. and Mrs. Sliefer at the farm, was keeping company with the young man from Haskell's grocery store. The young couple were in the habit of meeting of an evening, after Rebecca had washed her supper dishes, in the woods near the sawmill, some fifteen minutes from the farm-house and in the line of the short cut which the young man used to walk up from the village. They usually took a short stroll about the dam before returning to the farm, to finish the evening in the older folks' company on the home porch. Yesterday, as I have said, was rainy, and Rebecca had expected her sweetheart at the house. As he did not arrive, however, and the weather had lifted since five o'clock, Rebecca, thinking he might possibly have gone to the usual trysting-place, put on a shawl and her rubber shoes and went out to find him. He was not to seen, and she loitered a few moments in the neighborhood of the dam before returning home. It was then just getting dusk. According to her account, she was strolling near the saw-mill when the ghost of Jakey Menning, surrounded by light and with flames coming from his mouth, sprang out from the bushes and yelled at her. Rebecca, struck of a heap, as she expressed it, had still the sense to turn and run, and being a sturdy young woman she speedily outdistanced the alleged ghost and gained the shelter of her own home. Once on the porch, however, she collapsed in hysterics, and it was not until she came to, a good half-hour after, that her aunt and uncle could learn what had happened. Rebecca's sweetheart had meantime arrived, and being a strong-minded young man had at once induced Mr. Sliefer to set out with him, armed with a stout cudgel and the farmer's shotgun, to investigate. They patrolled the neighborhood of the saw-mill thoroughly, but needless to say nothing was found.

Rebecca recovered, but this morning, on the matter being mentioned at breakfast, had promptly gone off again into hysterics, a state which had lasted all day, off and on, and which her aunt had been unable to check. The hysteria had brought on sickness, and the girl, so Mrs. Sliefer told me, was now in bed in a state of utter collapse.

I told Herrick I would drop him at the house.

"On the contrary," he returned, "I'll come along, with Mrs. Sliefer's permission."

We drove on accordingly, the three of us, covering the distance past Dutchman's Hill and the Lessing's bungalow at a smart trot. A few minutes beyond the saw-mill, along the road Mary Lessing and I had taken some mornings ago, the Sliefer's farm-house came in sight, a comfortable low-built dwelling standing back in a good-sized orchard with the barn and out-buildings clustered near it.

We found Rebecca in an upper bedroom, watched over by a mute and scared-looking neighbor, who had been fetched in to sit with her while her aunt was away. The girl lay in bed, her eyes rolling, her hands twitching nervously on the covers. There was nothing alarming in her condition, which had been brought about as much by Mrs. Sliefer's well-meant home physicking as by the original fright.

I went to the bedside and put my hand on her wrist.

"Now then," I said, "what's all this nonsense about bogies? A big strong girl like you ought to have better sense than to imagine such things."

She began to whimper.

"I seen it--I seen it! It was all spoutin' fire! It was Jakey Menning as sure as there's a livin' God! Oh-h--I don't want to look at it ... I don't want to!"

She went off into another hysterical spasm, and it took all my force to hold her still while her aunt went for water. When it was over, and she lay back on the pillows, still sobbing exhaustedly, I took Mrs. Sliefer aside.

"Give me pen and ink," I said, "and have someone drive down to the drug store with this prescription at once. I'll wait here till it's brought back. Your niece will probably be all right tomorrow, after a night's sleep, but keep her in bed a day in any case."

She took the prescription and gave it to her husband. We heard his heavy boots creaking out to the back door. I turned to Mrs. Sliefer.

"And now," I said, "you're a clever, sensible woman. What's your idea of all this nonsense?"

Mrs. Sliefer was obviously flattered by my description. She mopped her flat round face, still shining from the walk.

"Rebecca ain't no liar," she said. "She's a good up-standin' girl, an' she ain't never showed no foolishness before this. We was talking about Dutchman's Hill on'y a few nights ago, and Rebecca was the first to laugh about it. 'I'd like to see the ghost'd scare me!' she said, right there. No. Rebecca seen suthin, or she wouldn't ha' come home the state she did. An' as for it's bein' Jakey, she'd oughter know Jakey Mennin' well enough, seein' he's brought the wagon round here time an' ag'n when Aaron was busy."

"You don't tell me you believe in the foolish talk there's been, Mrs. Sliefer!"

She stiffened.

"No, an' I ain't sayin' I do, but sperrits or no sperrits, Mr. Sliefer's goin' to get to the bottom of this. Seems to me there' a law had ought to deal with respectable girls bein' frightened out of their wits ten yards from their own door-step!"

"Listen," I said. "It seems that your niece has been the victim of a very cruel and foolish practical joke, but there's no good going into the matter here and now. Only look after her. If anyone is playing tricks around the saw-mill, keep her away from there. She's in no state to risk any more shocks. Don't let her go wandering about alone."

"I wouldn't ha' let her last night, on'y she was so sure of findin' George Freeman there. Rebecca was born an' brought up here, and she knows the woods as well as our own front yard. But there'll be an end of these doin's, an' I told her so."

"That's right." I paused a moment. "Who was here, the evening that your niece spoke of not being frightened?"

"Only us an' Mis' Scholl there, an' George Freeman. There wasn't one of 'em would play a trick on her. An' George Freeman was in at the house a'ready when Rebecca come runnin' back."

I did not leave until the farmer returned, and I had seen Rebecca already quiet and subdued under the influence of the sleeping draught I had prescribed for her. Then Herrick and I drove home through the dusk to the ruined supper which Mrs. Searle had prepared so painstakingly for six o'clock.

"Well," I said to him, "what do you make of it?"

Herrick smiled.

"Ghosts don't usually 'holler,'" he said, "and Rebecca seems to have been very clear on the hollering, if on nothing else. I think we may dismiss the theory of the defunct Jakey. And by the way, who was Jakey Menning, and what is this extraordinary tangle about a place called Dutchman's Hill?"

I gave the mare a light touch with the whip.

"We are passing Dutchman's Hill at this moment," I said, "and I'll give you the history over our supper."

XII

MR. CROWFOOT

I outslept Herrick by a good hour the next morning; in fact, he was already up and out by the time I came down to a belated breakfast. I had one call to make in the village, and after that, Herrick being still absent, I sat down on the porch with my pipe and a newspaper to await his return.

There was no mail for me at the office, only a couple of letters for Herrick, forwarded from New York, and as I slipped these in my pocket I wondered again at the curious silence of Lennox. Since that short note from Queenstown I had heard nothing from him, and he had neglected even to provide me with the promised address by which I could communicate with him in case of need, an oversight by which he had certainly secured to himself a free and uninterrupted holiday, and which left me no choice meantime but to await his return or such news as he might ultimately choose to send. I must admit that Lessing's phrase "bolted" stuck unpleasantly in my mind, little as it accorded with my estimate of Lennox's character. His haste to be off, the lack of any communication from him since, had more than a look of flight, but why, or from what he had bolted I was still at a loss to understand.

I was still turning this over in my mind when Herrick sauntered into view down the road, accompanied by a stranger. Visitors were sufficiently rare in the neighbourhood, and as the two approached the house leisurely I studied the new-comer with some curiosity. He was a small man, of apparently some fifty years, sparsely bearded, and dressed in a very shabby knickerbocker suit of greenish tweeds. A soft felt hat covered his head and at least half his forehead; he wore dark glasses and carried a botanical collecting-box slung over his shoulder. There was something quaintly rabbit-like in his appearance, enhanced by the air of timidity with which he hung back while Herrick strode forward to the porch to greet me.

"I want to introduce Mr. Crowfoot," Herrick said, with a gesture which had an effect of herding the mild little man up to the porch step as he might have herded some curious and inoffensive zoological specimen. "He is down here hunting orchids, and I came across him in the woods and brought him along to have a chat with you. You might be able to give him some hints about the country."

I shook hands with the little man and gave him a chair on the porch, where he settled himself shyly, his collecting-box across his knee.

"I'm afraid I don't know much about the flora round here," I said, "but I imagine Mr. Crowfoot will find a good deal to interest him."

"Oh, I am only an amateur," said the little man. "I s---- I s---- I s-s----"

He undoubtedly did, and the reason for his shyness stood forthwith revealed. He stammered, and had more than the usual sensitiveness of his infirmity.

"S-simply indulge a hobby," he finished heroically. "It gives me an object for my leisure time. I s-s---- _presume_ you have lived here some time, Mr.----?"

"Haverill--Doctor Haverill," Herrick prompted.

"Haverill." He repeated it in a certain child-like way, as though to place the name definitely in his memory, and immediately I was conscious of a liking for him. He was at once so diffident and so meticulously polite.

"On the contrary, I've been here only a month or so, taking a friend's place for the time. The country about is delightful, so far as I know it."

"Delightful!" he echoed, and lapsed into a pleased silence, which lasted so long that Herrick rose.

"I want to change my shoes," he said. "I've been up to the neck in bog. I don't know our resources, Austin, but I guess we can offer Mr. Crowfoot a drink?"

"Water--I should l-like very much a plain glass of water," said the little botanist.

"And a cigar at all events," I supplemented. "I should have some pretty decent cigars somewhere around that my predecessor left here. Look in the drawer in the surgery, Jack, will you?"

Herrick reappeared a moment later with the box.

"Excellent," said our new friend as he helped himself. "Excellent! Apparently you d-d-don't care for these cigars then, Doctor Haverill?"

I laughed. "Oh, I only smoke a pipe, as a rule!"

"You make, if I may s-say so, a great error," he said gravely.

He smoked for a few moments tranquilly, his gaze, behind the dark glasses, seeming to rest dreamily on the stretch of road before the house.

"I suppose you are staying in the village?" I asked.

"Over there." He made a vague gesture which included half the visible landscape. "With some excellent people of the name of S-S-Sliefer."

"Oh, Sliefer's," I said, interested. "I know them slightly. The big farm-house past the saw-mill."

"Precisely," he agreed, and gave me a look before relapsing again into silence.

Our conversation, if it could be called so, languished. It was evident to me that his shyness was battling with the desire to be off--I judged that Herrick had fairly dragged him here out of a mistaken cordiality--and after the exchange of a few more spasmodic sentences I accepted his courteous and timid explanation that the Sliefers dined at midday and would be expecting him back, and rose to shake hands.

"A queer chicken!" said Herrick as we watched his jerky little figure disappear down the road. "I picked him up back in the woods there, grubbing around the saw-mill, and brought him along for your benefit--a quaint example of the Pennsylvanian fauna! Timidicus professus, or ground-dwelling goo-goo bird. Difficult of approach and does not thrive in captivity. Guess he's more than a bit batty, by his looks."

"Mrs. Sliefer never mentioned a boarder," I remarked. "He must be a new arrival. It's to be hoped he won't come to any grief in his grubbing around, as you call it."

"Oh, the gods protect the innocent," laughed Herrick. "Even the alleged ghost of Jakey Menning would have pity. By the way, the fair Rebecca's tale is still firmly believed in, by the Sliefers at any rate. The latest village version is that she was chased clear to the garden fence and that her skirt still shows five scorched prints where the ghostly fingers clutched. The neighbourhood must have been quite worked up. It was bad enough when Jakey had the decency to keep to one place at least, but now he has taken, like the wind, to blowing where he listeth, folks are getting scary. I got that much from our guileless little friend, though he professes himself to be quite indifferent on the subject. Of course you, as the village doctor, are above such gossip, so I thought I'd go gleaning for you."

"Someone's doing it," I said.

"Of course someone did, in the case of Rebecca at least. Real ghosts don't holler, as I said before, and the blue-fire details smell strongly of the common or garden matchbox. But as our little professor-bird spends most of his time in the woods about there, I thought his observations might come in useful."

"Private detective, eh?"

Herrick smiled.

"Oh, I'm sufficiently interested in the Lessing problem to be anxious to clear out the undergrowth, if you follow me. That done, one can judge a bit more clearly. If there's any foolery going on we'll run it to the ground, and Crowfoot may come in useful there."

"I've a good notion," I said, knocking my pipe out, "to try some watching round that locality myself one of these nights."

"It wouldn't be any good," he returned, "for the simple reason that Jakey wouldn't demonstrate to you or me any more than he's demonstrated to Lessing. He chooses those he wants to favour. As a matter of fact, by the aid of my bedroom window, the convenience of which you have probably under-estimated, Austin, I spent last night prowling myself. No, I didn't let you into it because I wanted to be alone. Needless to say, there was nothing doing. But I've found out one thing. There's someone else interested in the game besides us. I don't know who. But we narrowly escaped collision, and gave each other mutually a wide berth."

"It couldn't have been the ghost himself, whoever he is?"

"I think not. It was too obvious we were both out on the same errand. Like the Irishman, we each thought we were someone else and when we met it was neither of us!" He smiled at the recollection. "Well, I suppose we'll get at the root of the thing some day!"

XIII

AN AFTERNOON DRIVE

It was towards the end of that week that we drove over to the bungalow, one afternoon, for tea. The teacups were set out on the porch, and Mary Lessing, in a white frock, sprang up from one of the big basket-chairs to greet us with a comical dismay.

"I've dragged you over here," she began promptly, "and now I'll tell you the worst at once. There is not--one--lump--of sugar in the entire house. I've looked. So either you will drink your tea sugarless, smile sweetly, and say it doesn't matter, or else one of you has got to come right down to the village with me and get some. You can take your full choice about it. I'm glad to see you had the thoughtfulness to drive, anyway."

Herrick sat down with alacrity.

"I am a tired man," he announced, "supposed to be on a holiday, and I'm not going to the village to get anything till I've had tea, and I'm not going to drink tea without sugar, not even if you promise to smile in the teacup, Mary Lessing. So I guess it's up to you and Haverill. And I think that after all my excellent instructions of the past fourteen years you ought to be a better housekeeper. It's scandalous and disgusting of you. Where's Dick?"

"In the laboratory."

"A day like this! I'll rout him out of that in just two seconds. Ho, Dick!"

There was no response, and he rose grumbling, and trailed round to the laboratory door. Mary looked at me.

"Do you mind?" she said meekly.