III

III

It was a small room into which Dreeme ventured and one in which the walls seemed to push forward, an aspect intensified, perhaps, by the tall lurching cases of books which surrounded the square table at which Jeffrey Westcott sat. There were books everywhere, in the cases, scattered over the table, and piled in slumping heaps on the floor. The greater portion of them were huge tomes, bound in old buckrams, in worm-eaten moroccos, or in yellow vellum. The dull gold lettering, subdued in the glow of Westcott’s kerosene-lamp, seemed like the sleepy half-shut eyes of somnolent beasts waiting patiently for the word of the master who should bring them to life. But there was no word now. They rested, these mysterious beasts of ancient knowledge, holding their secrets close to their muted hearts. Dreeme paused just inside the door staring about him in amazement.

An impatient exclamation roused him to his professional duties and he turned toward Jeffrey Westcott, observing him closely for the first time.

“Good evening or good morning,” remarked the man seated by the table. “I have lost count of the hours, doctor.”

Westcott was a heavily-built man, smooth-faced, and with a shaven head. This round skull, blue with an incipient growth of dark hair, reminded Dreeme irresistibly of the tonsured cranium of some medieval friar. It was curiously ridged in the center, as though the two sides of the skull had been pressed together while molten and so joined, leaving a cloven line where the bone had bulged upward on either side. The ears were long and rose thin and prominent on either side of this curious head. The broad brow slanted back at an obvious angle and the chin, blue also with incipient hair, thrust forward aggressively, the ensemble giving the impression of semi-malignant imperiousness. Westcott’s nose was broken and this accident accentuated the curious profile which he presented when he turned his head, a profile almost apelike but redeemed by a certain vitality of knowledge. His eyes, large, coal-black and motionless, glittered dully, but it was not the dull glitter of stupidity. Rather was it a repressed but unceasing watchfulness that was somehow mocking in its semblance of indifference. Dreeme was reminded of the eyes of a cat when it permits a bird to flutter within a few feet of its curved claws.

“It is a very fine library, I assure you,” continued the farmer with a casual flutter of one sunburned hand toward the lurching cases. Dreeme sensed a purring irony in the man’s voice. “I should like to show it to you but just now I am somewhat inconvenienced by this cursed bullet wound.”

Dreeme with a muttered apology, hurried forward fumbling at the catch to his black bag.

“It is not often⁠—at least in this part of the world⁠—that one sees so many books,” he said. “You must excuse me.”

His amazement was frank and he made no attempt to conceal it.

“You are freely pardoned,” replied the ironic voice.

The doctor knelt and began to remove the bloodstained bandage that swathed the plump calf of the farmer.

“How did this happen?” he inquired as the wrapping slipped away and he saw the black bullet-hole surrounded by a crusted clot of blood.

“Experiment,” returned Westcott shortly.

“Experiment?” echoed Dreeme questioningly, glancing up into the still black eyes. Westcott reached deliberately for a cigar, drawing one from the large box that stood on the table at his elbow. He said nothing but stared blandly at the doctor as he lighted the long dark weed. Dreeme, flushed and feeling foolish, turned back to his labor. He decided that Westcott was an offensive brute.

“I want a pan of hot water,” he said, after inspecting the wound. “I shall have to probe for the bullet. It may pain you a bit.”

He felt a moment’s elation at the idea of giving Westcott pain.

The farmer turned his head and shouted toward the door.

“Wagner!” he cried. “Wagner!”

In the short pause that ensued, Dreeme, still kneeling before the stocky Westcott, studied the worn backs of the books in the case opposite him. They seemed to emanate an atmosphere that was ominous. There was something dark and forbidding about them, an intangible suggestion of an evil culture. The crowding walls advanced stealthily, bringing an aura of suffocation with them.

The farmer cursed softly and pleasantly to himself.

“My dear doctor,” he began, “I am afraid you will have to.⁠ ⁠…”

“What is it, Jeff?” inquired a feminine voice, low and husky, behind them.

Both men turned at this unexpected sound. Westcott was plainly put out and for a moment his large eyes glittered angrily. Dreeme gazed upward at the woman who had so quietly entered the room with a curiosity which almost instantly merged into amazement. There are women who at a first glance arrest the attention not so much by any ulterior beauty or unique qualities of bearing as by an inward spirit which seems to beat fiercely against the thin walls of flesh and strive vehemently to liberate itself from its entangling disguises. These women may not be beautiful in the fleshy sense of the word, but somehow they achieve more than the semblance of beauty in the eyes of the sensitive observer. Dreeme saw such a woman before him and knew instantly and instinctively that it was not alone the comeliness of her features that so casually and indifferently subdued and betrayed the deliberate impartiality of his reason. He saw immediately an extraordinary inward impulse that climbed in her bosom and all but trembled on her bloodred mouth. It was her eyes and mouth that first seized his imagination. These eyes were dark and they glowed beneath large white lids that drooped somewhat as with the ennui of identical days. They seemed endless in depth like half-concealed forest springs and yet a quickening spark glimmered in these unfathomable lakes of hushed amber fire. The mouth was full with curling lips almost archaic in their contour, and Dreeme was vaguely reminded of his adolescent ideas of the snaky-haired Medusa. There was a subtle cruelty in this mouth.

“I told you to stay in your own room, my dear helpful Martha,” said Westcott, his chin thrusting forward, “but since you are here, permit me to present my invaluable friend, Doctor⁠—er⁠—Dreeme, I think. This is my wife, doctor.”

She did not glance toward Dreeme.

“Wagner has gone to the⁠—” She left the sentence unfinished. “I thought you would need hot water.”

“Your mind is always acute, Martha,” remarked Westcott, giving her a malicious look. “And who sent Wagner to the⁠—”

“I did,” she responded coolly, placing the basin of hot water on the floor close by Dreeme who still remained on one knee gazing at her. Westcott smiled sourly and turned to the doctor.

“Come, doctor,” he said. “You must be wanting to get back to your comfortable bed.”

Dreeme flushed and turned confusedly to his labors.

For a moment there was silence.

“The age of amazement,” said Westcott softly to the air, “is worthy of a study in itself. There are so many ways of considering it.”

He winced as the probe touched the raw flesh.

“Softly, doctor, softly,” he begged. “Now take the age of amazement as it affects the individual. Is it not true, my dear doctor, that if we knew why a man was amazed and each time that he was amazed we should know a great deal about him?”

Dreeme, intent on his work, said nothing.

“The question is merely theoretical,” proceeded Westcott. “I do not expect an answer. I, for my own part, mingle so seldom in the world of men that I have but small opportunity to put my theory in practice but whenever I do see a man I strive to observe his surprised reactions to things. It tells me something about him.”

The bullet slipped from the wound and Dreeme busied himself for a moment in washing the torn flesh. At length he looked up for the silence seemed to invite him to speak, to carry on a conversation that was rather meaningless. He stared into Westcott’s dark expressionless eyes.

“And me?” he said, smiling. “What have you learned about me in the few minutes that I have been here?”

Westcott was obviously waiting for the question.

“Your reactions of surprise were obvious,” he answered, cocking his head on one side. He began to count the points off on his fingers.

“Number one. You were amazed at finding so excellent and unexpected a library here. I gather from that that your idea of the literacy of this part of the world is not high. I agree with you in the main⁠—but there are exceptions everywhere, doctor. You were also amazed at finding in me a man not wholly a stranger to the subtleties of the mind. I may be flattering myself in this assumption but I do not think so. In other words, you had thought of me as a mysterious, surly, country clodhopper.”

There was a soft snarl in his voice. Before Dreeme could expostulate he went on with his enumeration.

“Number two. You were amazed to hear that my little wound was the result of an experiment. It piqued a curiosity which, unfortunately for you, I shall not satisfy.”

“I assure you, I⁠—” began Dreeme stiffly, but the soft voice proceeded.

“Number three. You were amazed to see my wife. Well, I hardly blame you. She amazes me at times.”

Again the soft snarl permeated his voice.

Dreeme instinctively glanced at Mrs. Westcott. She was standing by a small window gazing out on the darkness and he could see no more than the cool oval of her face. She seemed to be looking upward toward the rainy sky with a strained attentiveness that suggested the listener. It was, perhaps, the rain to which she was listening, for Dreeme could hear the soft gurgle and suck of the water as it dripped outside the window. With a final skillful twist he fastened the new bandage about Westcott’s calf and stood upright. The farmer looked at him calmly, his lips slightly apart, and Dreeme could see the man’s long yellow teeth.

“I should say from the casual glimpse I have had of you,” remarked Westcott, “that you are a capable doctor, a painstaking man, a sensitive person perhaps a little stiff in reactions to unexpected things, and an individual who must fight against the impulse of being⁠—well, not a busybody but one who is driven too far sometimes by the itch of curiosity.”

Dreeme laughed aloud and picked up his bag. Absurdly enough, he could feel the presence of Mrs. Westcott behind him, a presence like the soft invisible approach of some great feline through the impenetrable darkness of a forest.

“Your analysis is amusing,” he said. “But must I take it too seriously?”

“You must take it for what it is worth,” replied Westcott, fastening his yellow teeth upon his cigar and puffing meditatively. “Be good enough, my dear doctor, to send your little bill by mail. I can dress the wound myself or have it done for me by⁠ ⁠… Wagner.”

He looked up sharply, removing his cigar as the hint of a smile died from his face.

“Doctor Dreeme,” he said. “I am a peculiar man. I am a student who has found a secluded harborage. I do not care to make acquaintances. They are unpleasant responsibilities and they deprive me of that leisure which I owe to my researches. I live my own life in my own way. I do not want to be disturbed by the curiosity of⁠—er⁠—neighbors.”

Dreeme bowed silently, his face flushed, and turned to the door. Yes, he decided, Westcott was an offensive brute. The farmer smiled faintly, his cloven head bending forward in the lamplight.

“You must pardon my abruptness,” he remarked. “I am a solitary anchorite except for my little circle and am not, perhaps, as courteous as I should be.”

Dreeme said nothing. He could sense the faint mockery in the farmer’s stiff speech.

“Will you show the doctor to the door?” said Westcott gently to his wife.

She started from her attitude of rapt listening and turned toward Dreeme, her heavy-lidded casual eyes flitting coolly across his face. Then she moved slowly toward the door. Dreeme’s last picture of Westcott was of a curiously cloven head suddenly bowed above a huge tome. He could hear the soft rustling of Mrs. Westcott’s skirt as she crossed the sitting room floor. His heart pounded rapidly as he moved through the closeness of the room after her. It was as though a strange drug that affected his breathing filled the air. He heard her unbar the door, and, as it opened, a rush of cool rain-washed air swept across his face bringing instant relief from the choked sensation that had overpowered him in the room. It was still raining, a desultory and gloomy patter that rattled on the trees and the tiny roof of the back porch. The wet air was filled with the fresh scent of water and soaked grass. Dreeme drew in long breaths of it as he stepped bareheaded into the rain, wondering somewhat vaguely how he was to be conducted back to town. Just as he was about to bid Mrs. Westcott goodbye and was turning toward her he felt her arm fall sharply against his shoulder.

“Do you hear anything?” she asked in her low husky voice.

He strained his ears in some surprise and for a moment in the patter of rain he seemed to hear a thin rushing overhead as though a flock of heavy-winged birds were beating through the night air. The sound swept into nothingness so suddenly that he decided it was no more than the blood beating in his own ears or the upper whir of the rain. It was as though a door had been suddenly closed.

“No,” he answered, “I don’t hear anything but the rain.”

Her hand pressed against him and he could sense in the darkness the soft rise and fall of her bosom. The blood started to race through his pulses again and the choked feeling that had persisted during the short space of time while they had crossed the dark room to the door filled him. He felt his lips trembling as though with a faint palsy. As he strained his eyes violently toward her he could dimly note the outline of her face turned toward his and he knew that her heavy-lidded eyes were wide open and fixed with a disturbing intensity upon him. Her full bloodred lips moved slowly. Then her hand dropped from his arm, and it was as though a strange power had been removed from him.

“Good night,” she said in her low muffled tones.

The door closed softly and he heard the bolts being shot into place. Still he stood there, knowing that she, too, was standing just on the other side of the bolted door. After a moment’s pause he heard her footsteps passing slowly and evenly through the room. Dreeme turned to the rain, a bewildered smile at his own impressionability creeping to his lips. At the same moment he heard Miles clucking to the horse. Blundering through the dark, he stumbled toward the road. Before he reached the gate it began to rain furiously, a heavy roaring downpour that soaked him to the skin.