The Thing in the Woods 19 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 19The Mill Dam
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 19
The Mill Dam
WilliamsEnglish
I could get nothing further from Herrick just then. He went back to his room, but not to sleep, for I could hear him pacing up and down overhead. For myself, I dozed fitfully in the surgery arm-chair, and when I finally opened my eyes with a start it was to find the room filled with sunlight and Herrick standing over me, fully dressed, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand.
"Wake up, Austin," he said. "I've stolen a march on Mrs. Searle. It's hot, if it isn't otherwise drinkable."
I rubbed my eyes.
"Where's Lennox?"
"Sleeping the sleep of the just. By the look of him he won't wake up till midday. That's the reward of an easy conscience for you---- 'Something accomplished, something done.' Which reminds me. Are you using your motorcycle today?"
"I don't think so." I drank the coffee--it was strong and scalding hot, and it pulled me together. "Why, do you want it?"
"I'd like it for today, yes."
"Sure." I looked at him curiously. "Have you got something in mind?"
"Only a little tour of investigation. You needn't look injured, Austin! Just something I want to check up on. Are you going over to Sliefer's today?"
"Later on. I've got two calls in the village."
"Well, if you see the Lessings tell them I'll be over tomorrow--or tonight if I get back in time."
We got the cycle out without rousing Pete, and I watched Herrick off down the road. When he had gone I lit my pipe and set out for a little stroll until such time as the household should be awake.
There had been a heavy fall of dew, and the weeds by the roadside were drenched and silvered. Spider webs like jewel-work upon the brambles. I was reminded of the first time I had driven over to the bungalow, early in the summer, on just such a morning as this, and of how little thought had been in my mind then of what I should find at my journey's end. To me, then, these far stretching woods, dense and close-grown, the hollow with its rank growth of teeming insect life, the little creek that followed threadlike among the emerald mosses and tufts of sedge, suggested nothing more than the idle peace and pleasure of a summer's holiday. I had envied whoever lived here all the year round. These cool depths of shadow, with the freckled at nothing more dreadful than the tragedy of play of sunlight through the branches, hinted weasel and rabbit, of hawk and thrush. Now their aspect was to me indefinably changed. I felt them sinister, secretive, their peace a mere deceptive veil for the evil that lurked beneath.
What was the secret that overshadowed the place? What had Herrick meant by his insistence upon the silver button and those queer footprints by the cedar where Aaron had met his death? Did Lennox's story after all explain anything? I felt that it did not and yet I felt, in a strange, unexplained way, that somehow, in connection with the Mennings, and the Menning homestead, loathsome and sinister, was to be found the answer to our whole problem. But how?
Retracing my steps, I reached the house to find smoke curling cheerfully from the chimney and Lennox, contrary to Herrick's prophecy, dressed and on the porch. Mrs. Searle had breakfast ready, bacon, buckwheat cakes and coffee which obliterated the lingering taste of the decoction Herrick had pressed upon me before starting out.
Lennox was not very communicative. I think he was still inwardly chagrined by the failure of last night's expedition.
After breakfast Pete hitched the mare and I set out on my rounds. The news of the fire had already spread. Everyone was talking about it, and from what I could gather no one had any sympathy over it, unless it was for the old woman now rendered houseless. The current belief was that Menning, heavily insured, had fired the place himself. There was even a suggestion that he had intended the old woman to perish with the house. Disaster works strangely in loosening people's tongues, and I gathered that though the supposed Aaron had outwardly enjoyed the respect of the community there was inwardly very little liking lost between him and his neighbours. At all events they were ready enough now to speak of his queerness, his surliness, the way the farm was kept--in itself a sufficient ground of condemnation in a hard-working neighbourhood--and above all of the way he had, of late months, neglected and ill-treated his old mother. Odds and ends of scandal, restrained up to now I imagined through a lurking fear of Menning himself, found free tongue. But in all this talk there was no clear idea as yet of the real reason for the sheriff's visit. Menning was "wanted" for something, but no one quite knew what, and gossip confined itself so far to dark hints and speculations which fell very wide of the real mark.
I reached the Sliefers' house about midday. Freeman was progressing favorably, though not yet out of danger. Mrs. Sliefer pressed me to eat dinner with them, and over the meal the talk turned naturally on the excitement of the night before. Mrs. Sliefer was very definite in her opinion of the Menning household, almost as vehement as old Paddy had been that day I talked to him of his neighbours.
"If there was ever call for a place to be burned," she declared, "it was that one, though I ain't one for wishing ill to my neighbours without cause. But there's a bad streak in that family an' always has been. The old woman's grown feeble of late and I'm sorry enough for her, poor soul, by all I hear, but there was a day when I'd 'a crossed the road sooner than pass the time of day with her, and so would many another. I never believed all these ignorant tales of old Ma Menning bein' a witch, for there ain't no witches and we well know it, but there was something about her that wasn't like other folks, and though we was neighbours in a way, she never took to me nor I to her. Things did get better in the two years Jakey was away, an' then it did seem like Aaron had a chance to take hold an' run things decent, till he come back again. And after his death one would have thought there'd been a turn for the better, but it didn't last. I guess the bad streak was in the whole family, an' after Jakey died I suppose it preyed on Aaron's mind, in a way, an' he got to goin' the same road as his brother."
It was on my tongue to mention the truth, but I checked myself in time. Evidently the police hoped to gain something by keeping the real facts dark, at least until after Jakey's arrest.
After dinner I drove round, by way of the Bend, to the Lessings' bungalow. The Menning place was a mere charred ruin, except for the outhouses which stood empty and deserted. The few remaining chickens--Menning had sold out the greater part of his stock a few days before the fire, which was another reason why his neighbours thought it premeditated--had been taken elsewhere; the cow, filthy and gaunt from weeks of neglect, poor brute, was grazing hungrily in a small stony pasture adjoining, thankful to be at liberty.
Old Paddy, with a greasy, old velvet cap on and his feet in slashed shoes, was leaning over his fence-railing, smoking his black pipe. I asked about Menning's mother.
"The old woman, she's took an' cleared out. Scared er Aaron, I guess. She got a wheelbarrer an' loaded her bits o' truck on it, an' carted it up to that little empty shack back off the road yonder, what belongs to Scholl. Reckon the Scholls don't mind her usin' it. She wouldn't have no help neither--carted the lot herself, in two journeys, an' I'll say she's still pretty spry on her feet fur an old lady, though she does look so feeble. My darter, she was sorry fur the old soul, an' she gives her some potatoes an' a bag o' flour, but she didn't git so much as a thank you for it. Jest chucked 'em on the barrer an' went off. Kinder dazed that night, she was, but she come round pretty quick once the excitement was over."
He paused to spit, with precision, at a white stone by the fence rail.
"No one ain't seen nothin' of Aaron."
"No," I said.
"Guess they won't, neither. He's cleared out for good, by the looks of it."
"Maybe it's well."
"No one round here ain't grumblin'. It's a case o' good riddance. I don't trust Aaron. My darter, she ain't lettin' her young 'un run through the woods, neither. He'd orter be jailed an' done with it."
I found Mary and Lessing on the porch. They hailed me cheerfully, and I hitched the mare in the shade and joined them.
"Poor old Crowfoot," said Lessing. "I don't think the arm of the law was best pleased at being fetched out on a wild goose chase last night. It's my private opinion that Lennox has solaced his loneliness by reading up on detective novels. I always thought he had some bats in his belfry. Did he tell you anything more last night?"
"Quite a lot."
I told them the story as briefly as I could.
"Lennox is crazy," Dick said when I had finished. "The thing doesn't hang together. And when he gets to a point where he can't trust his judgment as to the identity of a man in one case, how can he trust it in another? What did Herrick think?"
"He didn't say definitely."
"So like Herrick! What?"
"He seemed to lay more stress on the dogs' footprints and the button Lennox picked up than on anything else. Oddly enough, someone else spoke of dogs, now I think of it." And I told him what the chauffeur had said last night.
"Queer," said Lessing. "You'd think he'd know a dog when he saw one. I'd like to have a look at that button."
"Herrick has it."
"He has..." Lessing was silent a moment. "Even if Jakey did kill Aaron, and Aaron is really his brother--hang it all, the thing's so mixed--I don't see that that gets us any further on. Does Lennox think he's at the back of everything? What's he playing at?"
"He was at the back of Rebecca's scare, and that business of Freeman. If Freeman were only well enough to speak.... I don't know that he could tell us much then, that we haven't found out for ourselves."
"Grant that Jakey did kill his brother, and has succeeded in putting it over. He was at the bottom of all these Dutchman's Hill scares, and that business with Rebecca. Freeman found out something, and he laid for Freeman ... and got him. That doesn't explain the cyclist affair, nor what happened to me."
"And it doesn't explain another thing, either," said Mary, breaking in for the first time. "It doesn't explain what the one point was that Lennox himself was unwilling to face, what it was he tried to avoid by ridiculous explanations that wouldn't satisfy a child. I don't mean recently, I mean further back, almost in the beginning, the second time he was here to attend Dick." She turned to her brother. "Perhaps I haven't told you this before. But it did strike me at the time, and afterwards I've been thinking of it more and more.
"I was standing out here on the porch, wondering whether I could leave you with Kate and slip over to Lennox's house, or whether I could get hold of anyone to send, when Lennox himself came by, driving. I ran out to stop him and tell him what had happened. He pulled up as soon as he saw me, before I had time to call out, and I tell you if I ever saw a man frightened it was then. He was afraid, and he was afraid before he saw me, or even knew what I had to say. Something had happened, something that gave him a shock, before he came up the road there. He tried to pass it off, but I'm not a fool; I know when a person is just puzzled, and I know when he is afraid, and I tell you that Lennox was afraid. And I'd like to know just what it was that frightened him."
"Where was he coming from?" Lessing asked.
"Down the road here, the way Austin came just now. He came from the Bend."
"From Menning's place."
"It might have been. I don't know. He didn't say and I didn't ask him. But something, that morning, had happened to upset him before he got here. And it was as if he knew--or at least expected, what he was going to find."
"Did you ask him?"
"I said something about it. He told me he'd been up all night on a case some miles away, that he'd only left at daybreak to drive back, and that he felt all in. But it was something more than that, I feel certain, to have thrown him into the state he was in."
"I shall ask him tonight," I said. "If he's keeping anything back----"
"Ask him!" said Mary. "Ask him, and get the truth! You can tell him just what I said."
I had promised to look in at the Sliefers' again, later in the evening, and instead of doing so on my way back, Mary proposed that I should walk across with her, after tea, while Lessing got some letters written.
"I want some cream for supper," she said, "and I want to see Rebecca too. I meant to go this morning. If you don't mind the walk we'll take Leo along. He hasn't had a run today yet."
She called the setter and he came bounding up, glad enough of the prospect of a walk.
"Poor old Leo!" Mary said. "He doesn't get half enough exercise. We'll take the leash, Austin, if you don't mind. There's a collie at the farm and the two are sworn enemies. I always have to fasten him if I go there."
I put the leash in my pocket and we set off through the woods by a short cut that brought us out eventually upon the cart-track near the old saw-mill. On the other side of this road the Sliefers' land began, and only a couple of pasture fields, with low snake-fences, separated us from the farm. Leo had dropped behind after we passed the mill, and as we stopped by the fence to wait for him we saw a woman coming along the path. She wore a faded check cotton dress and a sunbonnet that almost hid her face, and she was carrying a basket filled with chips, evidently gathered near the mill. As she drew near I caught a flash of very keen eyes, set in a dark wrinkled face, directed upon us in a glance that was by no means friendly.
Mary stepped forward and spoke to her, and I saw her slip something into the old woman's hand. The gnarled fingers closed on it unwillingly; she muttered something and passed on.
"Do you know her?" I asked.
"It's old Mrs. Menning," Mary said. "Poor old soul! She's crotchety, but I can't help feeling sorry for her. Is it true they are sending her to the poorhouse?"
"I've no idea. Old Paddy Nevill told me she'd moved her things up to some little empty shack near her old place. I suppose they'll let her stay there till something can be arranged."
I watched the bent, dragging figure out of sight. As Paddy had said, she covered the ground fairly spryly, for all her feebleness of gait. It was my first acquaintance with this woman to whose personality Herrick had particularly drawn my attention the night before. If Lennox were right, she had played an almost incredibly cunning part throughout, even if her brain had not itself evolved the whole plot.
"You'd think she could find chips nearer than the saw-mill," Mary said. "It's a good walk from the Nevills' place, if she's near there. I wouldn't wonder if the old body were unhinged by the fire altogether. She's never friendly at her best, but she looked quite queer just now. Did you notice how she was muttering to herself?"
I let down the bars and we passed through into the field.
"Austin," Mary said, as we picked our way over the boulder-strewn pasture, "do you know that I've got a confession to make, and it's worrying me."
I smiled.
"Anything very dreadful?"
"I don't just know," she said. "It's about last night. You know I stayed out on the porch while you were all over at the fire. Well, it was while I was sitting there, about a quarter of an hour after you went, I saw Menning come up by the road. I don't think he even saw me. He was going at a sort of shambling trot, and he never looked up when he passed the house. I am sure it was he, though."
"And you never told us!" I exclaimed.
"I knew you'd be angry, but I couldn't help it. I didn't know about this whole story then, and--and I hate the idea of any man being hunted that way, no matter what he's done. I thought he might have some sort of chance to get away, and that's why I didn't say anything last night, even to Dick!"
"Which way was he going?"
"Toward the hill. Your chauffeur must surely have met him. That's what I couldn't make out."
"He saw no one at all. The man may have turned off into the woods when he saw the car. I suppose you know what the sheriff would say to this?"
"Compounding a felony!" Mary laughed. "Anyway he never asked me, so I didn't have to tell any lies about it. Only after what you said last night it worried me, and I thought I'd better own up. Now if he is caught it won't be on my conscience that I had a direct hand in it."
"Oh, woman!" I exclaimed.
"You'd have done the same in my case," she retorted. "Besides, I wasn't supposed to know. You never told me anything."
"You are sure it was Menning?"
"Quite sure. I had left the house door open, and he passed right into the light. I wondered why he was going away from the fire instead of toward it, and I thought at first he might be going to get more help. I didn't know then. He hadn't been there all along."
We reached the farm, and I left her below while I saw my patient. Either I was longer than I thought, or we must have loitered unconsciously on our way over, for when I joined her again on the porch the light was already fading. Then there was a delay about the cream. Rebecca had to fetch it, and while she was gone Mary turned to me.
"This farm is still bewitched," she said. "It's the cream-pans now. Rebecca swears that the milk has gone, these last few nights. Last night she set out three pans in the spring-house and this morning one of them was two-thirds empty. I suspect cats, but anyway the problem takes Rebecca's mind off her other trouble, poor girl. Here she is. Can you spare this, Rebecca?"
"It's a bit scant, Miss Lessing, but it's the best I can do. We'll be short for churning this week, as it is. Whatever ails the milk I don't know! I've never had it go before."
"Well, it isn't witches' work;" Mary smiled. "They turn the milk, you know, Rebecca, they don't steal it! I'd keep an eye on the cat. If you'll take Leo a moment, Austin, till we're out of the grounds, I'll carry the pail--no, it isn't heavy, and I don't trust men anyway. They spill everything. Good night, Rebecca!"
"Carry your old cream yourself," I retorted. "I won't help you--not after that. And the way I've condoned your offences, too! Come on, Leo! Can I let him loose here, do you think?"
"Wait till we're quite clear of the house. He had a dreadful fight here once. It'll be all right now. We'd better take the path along the dam; it's a little shorter."
We followed the footpath along which they had carried Freeman that night to the house. Given any other time and place, I should have been tempted to do my best in prolonging this stroll, but I had none too pleasant associations with the place and its surroundings, and with twilight closing rapidly upon us I was in no mind to loiter. A stagnant weedy smell rose from the dam, a gloomy stretch of water with enclosing trees that darkened it still more effectually. Frogs croaked in monotonous chorus from the weeds at the edge and the midges were thick. In the end Mary had to give in ignominiously, and I carried the pail while she fought their attacks off with a handkerchief.
It was here that Rebecca and her sweetheart used to walk of an evening, and I wondered at their choice of a trysting-place.
"It's romantic," said Mary, "in a way. Can't you imagine this the deserted moat, with the ruined castle of Lord Thingummy in the background? I am sure that Rebecca reads Laura Jean Libbey on the sly. What spot more suggestive of lovers' vows and maidens palely loitering! Rebecca's too healthy not to be romantic at her age."
"Romance?" I said. "Fiddlesticks! The Sliefers ought to have this place drained if they aren't going to work the mill any more. As a plain medical man I have no use for picturesque sheets of water that smell bad after sunset."
"So you'd sacrifice all this----" she waved the hand that was not occupied in keeping nudges at bay--"and plant cabbages on it!"
"Why cabbages?"
"Aren't they the symbol of all that is practical?"
"Including myself!" I snapped. I was getting badly bitten, and with no opportunity for redress.
"Oh, I didn't say that!" She stopped short. "Did you see that big fish jump just then? Right beyond the pond-lilies there. This place must be full of them."
"Carp, most likely. It's pretty deep up at this end."
She stopped to watch the circle widen and disappear, leaving the water black. "Austin ... do you suppose I ought to have spoken about Menning before?"
"I don't know that it matters. They'll get him anyhow."
There was no good in mere speculation, and I didn't want to enlarge on the subject of Menning. She had come into contact with sufficient ugliness this summer already. "It's more than probable that he has cleared out altogether by this time. In any case, until we know, I think it would be better that you kept near the house unless one of us is with you. There's no good running any risks."
We had passed the mill and were just turning into the little path that would bring us to the road near the bungalow, when Lessing met us.
"I thought you two would never turn up," he said. "I'm dying of hunger. How's the patient, Austin?"
"Getting on. You can carry the pail if you want to work. Where's that dog got to?"
I had released the setter some little way back, and he had kept within sight nearly all the way. Missing him now, I turned to whistle, and saw Leo, a pale shadow in the dusk, nosing eagerly about the scattered logs that lay in the clearing near the mill. Lessing called him several times by name, sharply, but he paid no attention.
"Got a rabbit, most likely. Wait a minute. I'll soon fetch him out of that."
He walked back the few paces to the clearing, and Mary sat down at the edge of the path with a little sigh of resignation. I offered her a cigarette, and for some minutes we smoked in silence, listening for her brother's step. Presently Mary stood up.
"I'm not going to wait here all evening! We'll go on to the house and let him catch up to us."
We had nearly reached the bungalow before Lessing overtook us. He was holding Leo by a handkerchief knotted through his collar. The dog came unwillingly, cringing against his master's legs, the hair along his spine bristling and his ears kid back.
"Why, look at that!" Mary exclaimed. "I've never seen him act that way before. You haven't been beating him, Dick?"
"I'd like to!" Lessing stooped to take a fresh grip on the dog's collar. "Be quiet, you brute! You aren't going back there now."
Mary patted the setter's head. "Poor old boy! Did he get a rat, and wouldn't they let him have it! Was it a good rat, Leo?"
But the dog only twisted impatiently from her touch, his head turned backwards and his nose working.
"It was a darn good rat," said Lessing, "but he won't have it now. Go open the shed door, Mary, till I get him in."
She threw open the door of the tool-shed, and Lessing thrust the dog inside, pushing him in with his foot, and fastened the latch.
"That's that! Aren't you staying for supper, Austin?"
"Wish I could! I must get the mare back, and I want to be there when Herrick gets in."
I untied the mare and backed her around. Mary was standing on the porch.
"Do you notice you can smell that stagnant water at the dam? We seem to get it in whiffs, every once in a while. I noticed it very strongly last night, sitting out here. I wonder the Sliefers can stand it, living as close as they do."
There was a slight taint on the air. As Mary said, it seemed to come in whiffs. It might have been the dam, but it carried my mind back, as a smell will do, to some vague recollection I could not quite place.
"There's a lot of rotting vegetation there. Maybe it isn't so bad at their end. Sometimes you smell things much more at a distance."
"It just comes and goes. I don't notice it now. You'll be over this evening?"
"I'll bring Herrick along if he's back."
I paused, held by a vague trouble in her eyes.
"You aren't worried, Mary?"
"Worried? No. I just feel ... restless. It's the sort of feeling you get before a storm. As if we were all waiting for something, and you don't know what."
"You've been upset about this Menning affair."
"It isn't that. I don't know what it is. The place, maybe ... I always liked woods before, and now I feel as if I should never like them again." Her grave clear eyes held mine. "Austin, I wish I knew. If only ... sometimes I almost wish we'd never come to this place at all."
"Mary, you don't really wish that?"
"No, I don't. I ought to, but I can't. But ... I do wish we were all away--out of here--somewhere else."
"We shall be, soon enough." I was thinking of the end of my holiday, the breaking-up of a summer that, if it had brought danger and ugliness and all but tragedy, had brought also something infinitely precious into my life--something I was far from ready to lose.
"The summer has done Kate good, anyway. We had a letter from her this morning."
"Where is she?" I knew that Mrs. Lessing had left a few days before, to stay with some friends.
"On Long Island. A place on the Sound. We'll probably join her there in a couple of weeks. I wish you could come--you and Jack both. I think the sea air would blow sense into all of us!" She laughed. "I'm talking like an old woman, and I've got Dick's supper to get and nothing ready! Well, we'll see you tonight."
"Would you rather I stayed?"
"Nonsense! You'll begin to think I'm developing nerves, next!"
She waved her hand as I climbed into the buggy. Gathering up the reins, I turned the mare's head homeward. It was already nearly dark, but I could still see the road before me. Was it presage, or only the desire for Mary's company that made me wish, even before I had turned the corner by Dutchman's Hill, that I had after all accepted Lessing's invitation and stayed on?
As I reached the point where the road dipped to the hollow it seemed to me that I could smell once more that queer unplaceable odour of which Mary had spoken.
