The Thing in the Woods 15 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 15Suspicions
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 15
Suspicions
WilliamsEnglish
The warning came just in time. Herrick sang out and sprang, and I could hear the splash as he landed close beside me. Together we forced a way through the bushes and tall weeds and began to scramble up the sloping bank. It was a thicket of alders and brambles; the briars caught and tore at our clothes as we pushed through. We came out not far from the sluice, with the rush of escaping water still in our ears, and above the turmoil of it I called again.
"Where are you? Is there something wrong?"
"I want help here!"
The voice answered almost from under our feet, midway down the bank up which we had just scrambled. In a cleared space of the little thicket a man was standing; my eyes, used by now to the darkness, could make out his figure outlined against the surrounding bushes. It was Mr. Crowfoot, and he was bending over something that lay stretched and ominous among the trampled weeds at his feet. I had not recognized his voice in the darkness, though it sounded vaguely familiar. Herrick reached him first, and was on his knees beside the prostrate figure when I came up.
"An accident, Haverill. I thought so. No, he's alive. How did it happen?"
"He must have fallen off the gate," said Crowfoot. In the excitement he forgot to stammer. "I heard him call out and went down after him. I had only just time to drag him out."
Herrick wiped his hand on the grass.
"Cut his head open," he said briefly. "I think there's an arm broken. Give me a hand, Austin. We must get him up to the top."
"Compound fracture and a broken collar-bone," said Crowfoot in his precise tones, oddly precise even in this moment. "I'm glad you gentlemen came along. The head wound isn't much, but there's probably a slight concussion. If you will help me----"
It struck me that he took the man's injuries with a remarkable coolness, utterly at variance with the impression of nervousness he had given me that morning. It was as if he were the medical man and we mere lay beings who had happened along. Herrick growled. He had found his tinder-box, and it flashed a tiny glimmer on the man's face.
"George Freeman!" I exclaimed.
"You know him?" said Herrick quickly.
"The sweetheart of that girl at Sliefer's. He had an appointment with me this evening. He must have been on his way----"
I stopped short. I thought Crowfoot gave a faint exclamation, but he said nothing. Together we got the limp figure to the roadway at the top of the bank, and laid him down. Herrick turned to Crowfoot.
"Was he with you?"
"No. I was walking along the side of the dam. I often take a stroll of an evening; I sleep rather badly without. He was lying at the bottom of the sluice-gate when I found him, half in the water, and I dragged him out. I supposed he had missed his footing in the dark and cried out as he fell."
Herrick and I exchanged glances. So far the story might be true; we had both heard the cry.
"Isn't there a railing?" Herrick asked.
"It was broken," said Crowfoot, "and has never been properly repaired. I have spoken about it several times at the farm, but Mr. Sliefer has neglected to mend it."
"That's so," I confirmed. "It's been broken a good three weeks. Hardly anyone passes this way, now the mill isn't working, so I suppose they haven't bothered."
"Well..." said Herrick. He rose from his knees. "As he's known at the farm he'd better be taken there. He must be properly moved. We can't handle him like this."
"I'll go and get help," said Crowfoot.
Herrick looked at him squarely.
"I prefer that we should go together," he said drily. "Austin, do you mind staying here for ten minutes? I suppose you haven't your revolver?"
I hadn't. I carried one usually in accordance with Lessing's suggestion, but at this moment it was locked in one of the surgery drawers.
"Never mind," I said. "I don't need it."
Mr. Crowfoot hesitated. Then his hand slipped to his pocket. Herrick had been cleverer than I gave him credit for.
"If you allow me, Doctor Haverill," he said gravely, "I will leave you my own. I should much prefer it. We are two, and it would be better that you should not remain here unarmed."
Again Herrick and I glanced at one another.
"Do you usually carry a revolver when you take your evening strolls, Mr. Crowfoot?" he asked.
"It is a precaution," replied the little botanist, "which I consider to be quite harmless. As you put a similar question to your friend just now I presume the habit is not confined to myself."
"Take it," said Herrick curtly. "We'll be back in a quarter of an hour." And he disappeared with Crowfoot along the path toward Sliefer's farm.
Left alone, my first and perhaps pardonable impulse was to examine the chambers of the revolver Mr. Crowfoot had just given me. One of the cartridges had been discharged. I slipped it back into my jacket pocket, where it would be ready to hand, and took out my cigarette case. There was nothing to be done for the man beside me until further help arrived. I reassured myself as to his condition. It was as Crowfoot had said. The head wound had bled freely, but we had already partially stanched it with Herrick's handkerchief. The right arm and shoulder were fractured, and I suspected a rib as well. He could not have fallen directly from the sluice-gate, but from one side, with the bushes and the water to break his fall. If he had struck one of the heavy timbers immediately below he would have had his back broken on the spot. As it was he was in no immediate danger, unless from a concussion the extent of which we could not as yet ascertain.
I sat down on the beam which marked the beginning of the sluice-wall, and fell to thinking. The thing had not, to me, entirely the look of an accident. Crowfoot, on a moment's consideration, and in spite of the empty cartridge, I exonerated. Freeman had not been shot, and Crowfoot could have had no object in pushing him over only to rescue him afterwards, and undoubtedly he had saved his life. Possibly they had quarrelled, and Freeman had lost his footing, which would account for Crowfoot's prompt action. Crowfoot was staying at the Sliefers', in the same house with Freeman's sweetheart, and where a young woman like Rebecca is concerned there is always a possibility of misunderstandings; but the idea of little Crowfoot playing the rustic Don Juan seemed rather absurd. And that question of the sluice-gate worried me. It had been a dry season, the water in the dam was even lower than usual; there was no earthly reason why the gate should give way just then with no extra pressure to account for it.
Sitting on the wall, swinging my feet, with the sound of the water in my ears, I found myself listening mechanically to its rush. Suddenly a thought occurred to me. There had been no increase in the volume of sound since I had been sitting there. If the sluice-gate had given way only in part, the force of the escaping water would by this time have widened the fissure.
I rose, and walked the few paces to the top of the gate.
It was as I thought. The lever that controlled the sluice had been pulled half over. Bracing my feet firmly, I threw all my strength against it. I had the force of the water to contend with; as I pushed, the whole neglected structure of the gate seemed to vibrate and tremble, but little by little I could hear the gush gradually decreasing, the seething and bubbling below me quieted.
I pushed the lever back as far as I could; it refused to go the whole way, and I feared to do further damage unwittingly by forcing it. But the greater part of the escape was checked. I went back to the wall again and waited.
The minutes dragged. It was a relief to see presently the glimmer of a light through the trees and to hear Mr. Sliefer's anxious deep-throated hail. They had taken one of the stable doors off its hinges, and Herrick and the farmer carried it between them while Crowfoot walked ahead with the lantern.
I saw Crowfoot glance toward the sluice, but he said nothing. With as little jarring as might be we lifted Freeman's unconscious weight on to the door, and I took Herrick's place in the slow procession back to the farmhouse.
Mrs. Sliefer, with Rebecca, white-faced and stricken, met us in the yard. They had prepared a room upstairs, and there we got Freeman to bed and did all that was possible for him. Unconsciousness spared him the pain of our handling; the fracture was as ugly a one as I have seen. The concussion was graver even than we had supposed; it would be days certainly, possibly weeks, before he would be in a state to answer any questions.
I decided to stay the night, and Herrick, with the Sleifers' hired man, drove over in the buggy to take a message to Mrs. Searle and bring back what was needful from the surgery.
In his absence I set myself to gather what information I could from the Sliefers themselves. George Freeman had been there that evening. He had arrived earlier than usual, it being his weekly evening off, and stayed only a short time, saying that he had an appointment in the village. On Rebecca teasing him, he had said that it was a business appointment and that she should hear all about it in good time.
He had left the house at a quarter-past eight. His appointment was for nine, and it would have taken him nearly that time to walk over, even by the short cut. It was already close upon nine when we left the Lessing's cottage to walk home, and at least twenty minutes must have elapsed before we heard Freeman's cry. How had he employed that interval, and with what object had he lingered nearly three-quarters of an hour near the dam? Instinctively I thought of Crowfoot. He was not in the room, and in the light of what had happened I felt no hesitation in questioning the Sliefers about their guest.
He had come to them a fortnight ago, engaging his room by letter. They often took a boarder in the summer, and someone who once stayed there had recommended them to him. He was quiet and pleasant-mannered, and anxious to give no trouble, an ideal boarder from Mrs. Sliefer's point of view, though Rebecca inclined to consider him "queer." He had stipulated for a ground-floor room, explaining that for some heart affection he was forbidden to mount stairs. (I smiled, thinking of the acrobatic exercises Mary Lessing had witnessed.) They had accordingly arranged the back parlor for him, which had a door opening directly on the side porch. His meals were served to him there. Beyond the necessary service they had very little to do with him. He was not at all talkative on account of his infirmity, but always pleasant in manner. To their knowledge, George Freeman had never so much as spoken to him, though it was his unfailing joke to tease Rebecca about the "handsome young city gentleman."
So much for Mr. and Mrs. Sliefer's account. Rebecca differed. Rebecca didn't hold with "queerness," nor with mucking one's room up with rubbishy weeds, nor with going out at night to hunt toadstools.
"Toadstools?" I said.
"Fungy, he calls 'em. It's the same thing. He says there's some that shines in the dark, like rotten wood. I've never seen 'em, nor I wouldn't go touchin' 'em if I did. Anything would need to shine good and hard for him to see it with those blue goggles on!"
"Rebecca's jest set against him because he wears glasses," said Mrs. Sliefer.
"I like to see a folk's eyes," Rebecca insisted. "I hate to have 'em lookin' at you when you think they ain't."
For some reason she seemed to distrust Crowfoot, but there was certainly no suspicion, even in her mind, of any possible quarrel between the two men. Rebecca herself admitted his courage in having pulled Freeman out. No mention was made of the sluice, and I concluded that neither Herrick nor Crowfoot had spoken of it at the house.
Mrs. Sliefer volunteered to sit up with Freeman the first part of the night, and having seen her settled in a capacious armchair near his bed, I returned to Herrick in the parlor below. There was a couch in the room, but we were neither inclined to make use of it. It was my first chance of speaking privately to Herrick since his return to the house, and having closed the staircase door leading upstairs, I told him briefly all that I had learned that evening.
"Crowfoot couldn't have opened the sluice," he said when I had finished. "How does the thing work? Do you suppose Freeman could have caught at the lever as he fell and pulled it over on him? It doesn't sound likely."
"Impossible. The lever works in the opposite direction."
Herrick pondered.
"He might have been fooling with the thing and opened it, and then lost his balance trying to get it back."
I shook my head.
"He knows the dam well enough, and he doesn't strike me as the sort of man to go fooling with a thing like that out of mischief. Besides, he didn't fall from where the lever is. If he had, and the sluice was already open, he'd have been soaked through and probably drowned to boot. Remember the rush of that water! Crowfoot got him out, and Crowfoot was only wet to the knees. He must have fallen partially clear of the pool, across one of the timbers. The thing looks much more to me as though someone had deliberately opened the sluice on them while they were both down there. Either the machinery stuck, or they were interrupted before they could do the worst. In any case Crowfoot knows more than he has chosen to tell us. He may be shielding someone; the whole business looks ugly."
"I'm going to handle Crowfoot in the morning," said Herrick grimly. "It's a case where he'll find it best to tell all he knows. A man who goes hunting toadstools at night with a revolver lays himself open to misconstruction." He stared a moment at the purple crocheted mat on which the Sleifers' parlor lamp sat enthroned. "Why on earth was he so keen on your keeping that revolver, I wonder?"
"Possibly for the same reason that had caused him to fire one of the cartridges himself, this evening," I said drily.
"He had?" Herrick looked up. "Why didn't we hear the shot?"
"It happens to be one of those special revolvers which are built to make as slight a report as possible. I know the pattern. The sound carries practically no distance. If Crowfoot carries that revolver habitually it is because he has good reason to be afraid of someone, and he wouldn't have used it without serious cause."
"Have you any idea," asked Herrick, "what Freeman wanted to see you about tonight?"
"Yes," I said slowly, "I have. You know the night you came down here, Jack? It was Freeman who was the most determined to sift that ghost story to the bottom, if you remember. From all accounts, he is not the young man to take half-way measures in a thing that concerns his sweetheart. I think that he has been working on his own initiative, that he found out something, and it was about that that he wanted to see me. He made the appointment for after dark, at an hour when he was not likely to be seen coming or going from my house, and he even took the precaution of coming by way of the woods. Someone had an interest in preventing him from keeping the appointment. They watched him to the Sliefers' house, and laid up for him by the sluice, which he would have to cross on his way to me."
"You mean Crowfoot himself?"
"Crowfoot wasn't here at the time of the ghost scare, and he didn't know of Freeman's appointment tonight. Moreover, I don't think he had even an idea who the man was till you flashed your lamp on him. Remember it was pretty dark there. But two people might have known of it. They were both in the store at the time. One was Mr. Haskell, whom I think we may dismiss immediately. The other was Aaron Menning."
"Aaron Menning...." There was that in Herrick's tone that confirmed instantly my own conclusions. "Then if that's so, Aaron Menning is at the bottom of the ghost business, and of the whole Dutchman's Hill story. Aaron, the pious chapel member! But why in heaven's name----?"
"There's a streak of insanity in the whole family," I said. "Don't forget that Jakey was said to be half crazy. Aaron has the look of a criminal degenerate. How on earth he has maintained his reputation in the village so long I can't think. He is cunning and malicious, if no worse."
"I'd like to know just what hold that type of man could have over Crowfoot," Herrick said. "Crowfoot comes in somewhere. If it was Aaron pushed Freeman over, what reason could Crowfoot have for shielding him deliberately? There's more behind it yet than we can lay hand on."
There was, but our plans for finding out were destined to receive a rude shock in the morning.
About two o'clock I left Herrick on the couch and went to take Mrs. Sliefer's place upstairs. Against my will I half dozed in the chintz-covered arm-chair, and through my brain there chased puzzling dreams in which Herrick and I were trying feverishly to conceal George Freeman's body in the mill-dam, while Crowfoot, continually changing and rechanging into the likeness of Aaron, leapt up and down from the dizzy heights of a butternut tree and chattered at us angrily as he sprang.
Herrick was already drinking coffee when I came downstairs. Rebecca had brought it in, and with it a note addressed to me.
I broke it open. There was a second bulkier envelope inside with the note. Both note and address were printed in small neat capitals, such as a child might use.
"MY DEAR HAVERILL,
"I REGRET THAT I HAVE BEEN OBLIGED TO LEAVE FOR THE CITY BY AN EARLY TRAIN, AND SO MUST POSTPONE THE PLEASURE OF MEETING YOU AND YOUR FRIEND AGAIN TILL A LATER DATE.
"ALEXANDER CROWFOOT."
On the second envelope was printed:
"TO BE OPENED ONLY IF NOT RECLAIMED WITHIN THREE DAYS."
