The Thing in the Woods 4 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 4Dutchman'S Hill
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
The Thing in the Woods 4
Dutchman'S Hill
WilliamsEnglish
To say the thing puzzled me would be to put it lightly enough. For the rest of the day my thoughts kept turning to that enigmatic household at the Bend. The most puzzling point of all, to my mind, was why Lennox, in speaking of the people about, had not so much as mentioned Lessing's name. Here was a patient to whom he had, as I surmised, been called once before at least on the same mysterious errand as my own that morning, with whom he was more or less on terms of intimacy, and who must have provided almost his sole educated companionship in the village, and yet he had not seen fit so much as to touch upon Lessing's existence in my talk with him. Considering the words with which my own advent had been that morning greeted, I would have given much to be able to corner Lennox just then for ten minutes' conversation.
I had heard nothing from him so far, and the following morning, on the chance of there being a letter, I drove down to the village after breakfast. As I entered the post office Miss Lessing was just coming out. She had a brown-paper parcel--an obvious butcher's parcel--in her hand, together with a couple of mail packets, and as I stood aside to let her pass she stopped to exchange a few words with me. Her brother was better, she said; he looked forward to seeing me that afternoon. We chatted a moment, and when she turned to go I said naturally:
"You might let me give you a lift up the road. I'm going straight back."
She smiled. "I'm used to walking, thanks all the same! Besides, there's a short cut through the woods I've found. It takes off nearly half the distance."
"You don't mind the woods alone?"
"I've got the dog with me."
I watched her straight slim little figure up the street, the dog following at her heels, and turned into the post office. The clerk had grown familiar during our daily intercourse. He handed me two letters with a ready grin--Lennox's handwriting was not among them--then leaned his elbows on the shabby counter and spat reflectively into the space below.
"Mr. Lessing had another attack, ain't he?"
"What do you mean," I said curtly.
"I heer'd you was called over thar, yesterday. Reckon you'll have enough to do if you take on with all the crazy folks round here."
I looked at him hard.
"Oh, I ain't got nothing special against Mr. Lessing. He's a pleasant-spoken chap, all I've seen of him. On'y when a man gits to meddlin' with things it ain't no person's business to meddle with he's liable to git called crazy--ef not worse. I ain't holdin' with what people say when they get to talkin'--no sir! I got enough to do tendin' my own business. But there's plenty won't go near Mr. Lessing's place after dark nor no other time, an' if you was to listen to them I reckon they got their reasons. They say his wife's as crazy as he is. Seems when he ain't traipsin' round the woods all hours o' the night he's shut up there in that stoodio place doin' his vivisectin'----"
"What?"
I laughed in spite of myself. Mr. Johnson looked sulky.
"Ain't that what they call it? I ain't no doctor."
"Mr. Lessing happens to be a student of chemistry, not a medical student, so if anyone's been trying to get round you with bogy tales they're talking nonsense. I'm surprised at a man of your education, Mr. Johnson, listening to such absurdities!"
"Then what does he shut himself up for, with a lamp you can see two miles off, unless he's up to suthin' he don't want folks to know?"
"Probably because he doesn't want a pack of ignoramuses meddling with his affairs."
"Well, that's what they say, and there's folks as believes it," he said sullenly. "An' as fur his walkin' in the woods, I ain't tellin' you anything but what's so. He was seen the same night as Jake Menning got killed goin' down Dutchman's Hill. It was Jakey's half-brother as seen him, an' Aaron ain't one to be tellin' lies. No, sir! An' if Doctor Lennox was here now he would tell you the same, for he was called out to see a sick child at the Bend that same night and it was him as found Jake Menning there the next mornin'."
"Do you know you're saying things you might get into trouble over?" I asked sternly.
"Oh, I ain't sayin' he had no hand in it," he returned promptly. "Everyone knows Jakey got killed through bein' too drunk to look whar he was goin'!"
I pushed a quarter over to him.
"Well, give me some stamps, Mr. Johnson. If you take my advice you won't pay quite so much attention to idle gossip."
I drove home, thinking. Lennox, or someone, had been chattering; that was clear. How far I had no means at present of knowing, for I was not going to pursue any further conversation with Johnson, ready as he was. A doctor who gives himself to gossip is no better than an old hen. I felt a sharp contempt for Lennox that overrode whatever interest I might once have had for him. If he had got himself into any tangle down here he deserved it thoroughly.
A light covered wagon, such as hucksters use, was outside the gate when I got back, and a man, who had evidently been bargaining with Mrs. Searle at the back door, came round and climbed into it. I had to pull the mare up to one side to give him room to drive off, and as I waited I happened to notice him rather closely, the more so as he gave me a civil but obvious scrutiny himself as he climbed over the wagon-wheel. He was a man of about forty, in a tightly buttoned coat of greasy black oilskin and a peaked cap, which might have belonged earlier in its career to a seafaring man, pulled down over his forehead. His face, with unpleasantly close-set eyes, was scarred by smallpox, and apart from the repugnance which this disfigurement always inspires more or less, I think I have seldom seen a countenance which impressed me more disagreeably. He was a man whom I would have ordered off my own premises anywhere at first sight, and I replied with a curt nod to his over-subservient greeting.
I left the mare in the yard and went into the parlor. Mrs. Searle had evidently been interrupted in her morning tidying, and she came back, duster in hand, as I stood there. I had enough experience to know her for a woman who did not give herself to gossip, though she probably knew all that was afoot, by the curious intuitive sense so highly developed in all women of her class. With her I would be perfectly safe in any inquiries I chose to make.
She apologized for her intrusion and set about completing her tour of the furniture, with noiseless briskness.
"I see you've been down to the village, sir," she said after a moment. "I was going to ask whether you'd order some more coal up for tomorrow, from Harkness's. It's most finished."
"I'll send Pete this afternoon. He can walk in. By the way, Mrs. Searle, what was this story about Jake Menning? I just heard something of it in the village today."
"Jake Menning..." She paused in her dusting, setting back a vase carefully on the mantelshelf. "I suppose you'd have heard of it, sir. He was killed last March, goin' down Dutchman's Hill. There isn't much water now, but it's generally deep there, long after the spring rains. Some did say it was done a-purpose, but the most of 'em thinks he jest had a fit an' fell in. Doctor Lennox found him, about six o'clock in the mornin', driving back from a night call. He was lyin' jest at the foot of the hollow, where them planks begin, with his face in the water. It wasn't deep enough to drown anyone ordinarily, an' that's why they thought it was a seizure.
"There was two half-brothers, Jake an' Aaron, both livin' over near the Bend. Aaron's took the whole business over now. Jake was always kind o' queer; they called him crazy sometimes, round the village. They was as like as two peas, which was queer, seein' they was on'y half related, so to speak. Down to the smallpox scars an' all. They'd both took the smallpox, but Jake took it worse, and they said that was what affected his brain some. You couldn't tell 'em apart, on'y for Aaron's stutterin'.
"Aaron was the best of the two. He's a good chapel member, and he's done a lot better in the business since Jakey's out of it. I heard they used to quarrel a lot in Jake's lifetime. Aaron's savin', and a bit close with his money too, and I recon he kep' Jake under some. He was an awful ill-lookin' man, Jake Menning--not that I like to say wrong of the dead, but I know a bad-lookin' man when I see one, an' Jake was that, for all his craziness. There weren't anyone liked him much, so they said he was harmless as a child, and right smart in business, an' now they ain't content with his being dead but they must get to startin' nonsense about his walking---excuse me mentionin' any such silly talk to you, sir!"
"Walking?" I stared.
"What they call it, sir," she explained apologetically. "You see," she went on, taking up her duster again, "Dutchman's Hill always did have a bad name, account of a pedlar bein' drowned there years ago, and now with this other business they try to make out the place is haunted again.. They don't seem to know rightly whether it's Crazy Jake or the pedlar I told you of, but there's quite a lot of folks now won't go nigh the place after dark, no more'n if it had the plague."
"So that's what all this nonsense has been about!" I said, a light beginning to dawn on me. "I suppose Pete is right in it all?"
"Pete is like all the niggers, sir. They ain't happy unless they've got some sort of a ha'nt to tell about. Not that the other folks here is any better, an' I will say that of 'em. I never met such a gossipin' set in my life till I come here!"
Mrs. Searle herself was originally from New England, and eight years' residence here had not altered her original opinion of the people. For this reason, if for none other, I knew that she kept herself very sternly aloof from the minor scandal-making of the place.
"I suppose there was an inquest on this man?"
"Oh, yes, sir. They brought it in accidental causes, an' Doctor Lennox seemed to think the man died of heart-failure, an' he must have been dead before he fell in. Anyway it wasn't drownin', simple. I don't know. It was Aaron had heart-weakness in the family, as I heard, so it was queer Jake bein' the one took off that way!"
I rose.
"Well, I suppose the people here have precious little to gossip about, and they like to make a mystery of whatever does happen!"
"That's about as I take it, sir." She moved toward the door. "An' now I think, it was funny your asking me about Jake Menning, just this moment. That was Aaron as came round to the back door a while ago, as you drove up. He wanted to know if we'd like any chickens, so I took one for Sunday, seen' he only gets round once a fortnight now he has the whole business to attend to. I don't know whether it's thinkin' over it, but it seems to me he's getting to look more like Jakey every day. If it wer'n't for his stutterin' I could take him for a ghost myself!"
So that was Aaron Menning. Well, he might be a good chapel member, but he had a face that would hang him if my impressions went for anything. All the same, this put me no nearer to clearing up the mystery at the Bend, which was what interested me at the moment. 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.
