II

II

The Reverend George Burroughs stretched his long yellow hand out and grasped a slice of bread. He made it a point to take the fattest cut. Dreeme, watching from beneath lowered lids, noted that the preacher’s hand was shaped like a claw. The fingers curled back like the crazy-shaped bits of driftwood he had seen washed up on the tip of Cape Cod years ago, when, as a boy, he had made a vacation trip to those rolling dunes of white sand. Indeed, the Reverend George Burroughs himself was very like something that had been washed up on the beach. Some sort of skinny sea-monster, an old merman who was half seahorse. It was time to keep an eye on the preacher. Dreeme looked up at Burroughs and discovered that the man of God apparently was thinking the same thought, for his expressionless eyes were fastened upon the young doctor over the bread that he was cramming into his capacious mouth. Burroughs masticated loudly and continued to stare at Dreeme. The pupils of his eyes were like two black shoe buttons. He had never done that before. He had always averted his eyes or dropped them to the heaped plate above which he constantly hovered so eagerly. Dreeme was less startled than amused. If he had entered into the old hypocrite’s line of vision at last so much the worse for the old hypocrite. He would give him something to look at. Something to think about. The old night-wanderer! The old fool who poked his horse-like face into burned mills to see what he might see! The withered employment agency for the Westcott farm! Dreeme remarked calmly:

“You enjoy evening strolls, preacher.”

Burroughs, his mouth clogged with bread, nodded slowly.

Dreeme awaited an answer, and as none was forthcoming apparently, he transferred his attention to the rest of the table. He had sat so many times at this board and had seen nothing and understood everything. Now he saw everything and understood nothing. This noon, for instance, it was simple enough to perceive that a general unrest pervaded the secretive diners. It was even communicated to the children, who gazed frightenedly from face to face, seeking for the reassurance of an unslipped mask, for a visage that did not suggest the complexities of perturbation. Mrs. Slater, her cheeks heightened in color⁠—tiny scarlet flags mutely calling for aid⁠—and her eyes fluttering, was plainly disaffected and at odds with circumstances. Walden Slater was so upset that he ate meagerly. His long camel-like upper lip closed half-heartedly over the mouthfuls that he balanced precariously on the flat blade of his knife. The preacher was puzzled, a bit startled, perhaps, to find Dreeme thrust into his scheme of things for he must have heard all about the young doctor’s championship of Deborah. Deborah! She, at least, was real. Though Dreeme did not know these other people he knew her. She smiled briefly across the table at him, and it was as though she had flung him a flower. A small blue flower with a starry heart tossed across a table of strangers. A flower as blue as her eyes were blue, as starry as the pupils of her eyes. He smiled back at her broadly. The smile was intercepted by everybody at the table. He enjoyed their reactions to it. Mrs. Slater nipped at it as a parrot nips at a cracker. The children thrust little faces of ice between it and Deborah. Walden Slater retreated from it in a bewildered manner, and then, to Dreeme’s pleasant surprise, wrung the doleful ghost of an accompanying smile from his long lip and tossed it gingerly to Deborah. The Reverend George Burroughs observed it impassively and blew a little cloud of darkness over it. The busy knives and forks played a greedy melody.

“In the cool of the evening it is good to walk,” announced the preacher. He spoke as though he were delivering the text for a sermon.

“And much may be seen by night that is invisible by day,” returned Dreeme facetiously. He felt in a high good humor, light-minded, puffed up with a malicious playfulness. He was quite fearless of the community and its inhabitants, “I will not be here long,” he thought to himself. He, after all, was but a sojourner. He did not belong in Marlborough and he was glad of it.

“The true heart of man is often bared to the darkness,” agreed Burroughs in a sententious voice. For an instant Dreeme thought the preacher was laughing at him, and he gazed at the yellow face before him suspiciously. There was no hint of a smile upon that long countenance. It was a sober blank, quite clear of any subtle writing. Indeed, it was a little too guileless. “Perhaps,” Dreeme thought, “I am not as self-sufficient as I think I am.” His eyes returned to Deborah. She was looking at him brightly. Well, he would have to be self-sufficient for her sake. Still, these people were accepting his interpositions too quiescently. He knew that they could not be as weak-willed as that. Humphrey Lathrop had intimated too much. He, himself, had observed too much. Did not Burroughs know that he had met Martha Westcott in the burned mill? Had not Burroughs told all this to Westcott himself? Or had the darkness concealed them from the inquisitive eyes of the preacher? Martha Westcott had said “no” to that and he had believed her. And why had Westcott received his interference in the matter of Deborah’s return to the farm so blandly? What was he planning behind his smiling face and hypnotic eyes? That was it, of course. Westcott was fooling with hypnotism. He had hypnotized Deborah that night and even when he had come for her this very morning he had, for an instant, subjected her will to his. Dreeme scraped his plate clean with outward unconcern but inwardly he was perplexed. “As a matter of fact,” he thought to himself, “I am all at sea.” He was not self-sufficient at all. He was aware of a great many questions, but he could offer but a meager handful of answers. These people were leagued against him, and they intended to do what they pleased with him when the psychological moment came. And that would be when he interfered too strenuously in their designs, when through fool-luck he clogged their purposes. That would be when? The scraping of knives and creaking of chairs aided and abetted his inquiring mind. He pushed his plate back and scowled. Then his features lightened. Of course! A thrill of triumph ran up his spine, and the faraway light in the depths of his mind glowed brighter. It would be when he found the place called Dagon. It would be when he stood on that spot and faced these farmers in the very heart of their mystery. Even as the unfamiliar name flashed across his consciousness the preacher’s yellow hand closed upon his wrist. He lifted startled eyes to the calm equine face.

“I asked,” said the Reverend George Burroughs in his solemn voice, “if you enjoyed strolling in the evening.”

Still at it, eh?

“By myself, yes,” replied Dreeme. The yellow hand disappeared beneath the table.

“It is good to be by one’s self,” remarked the preacher. “He who goes by himself need fear no man.”

The stilted voice of Burroughs rose like the neigh of a horse.

“That is not exactly the saying, is it?” inquired Dreeme politely.

The preacher wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said nothing.

They had finished eating now. The defeated platter lay in greasy subjection. The knives and forks reposed upon the stained field of battle like discarded weapons. The buzzing flies hummed above the debris monotonously. With a clattering of steel-tipped shoes the children squirmed from their chairs and fled through the door. Mrs. Slater and Deborah rose and staggered toward the kitchen under loads of plates and cups and gravy-boats. They were Trojan women carrying the shields of their warriors. The three men still sat in their places as though there was something to be said between them. Walden Slater opened and shut his mouth. He looked helplessly from Burroughs to Dreeme. His sweaty shoulders seemed to climb up about his tanned leathery face. A remnant of bread swung like a miniature acrobat from his chin.

“It’ll be a poor crop,” he mumbled.

“Poor crop,” echoed Burroughs.

“Why will it be a poor crop?” asked Dreeme.

Walden Slater opened his mouth and eyes very wide at that. After a moment he answered weakly:

“Because it will be a poor crop.”

Several minutes of silence ensued.

“The Lord will provide,” remarked Burroughs finally.

Walden Slater did not brighten perceptibly at these glad tidings. He had put his trust in the Lord before, and he knew exactly how much it was rewarded when there was too much sun and not enough rain. He corrugated his brow in the unusual travail of thought.

“I guess⁠ ⁠…” he commenced.

“If rain⁠ ⁠…” started Burroughs.

“How much⁠ ⁠…” questioned Dreeme.

All three men had started at once, and at the surprising medley of voices they ceased abruptly. Each one waited for the other to speak. No one dared to begin. Mrs. Slater and Deborah had removed all the dishes. The red and white tablecloth was folded up and put away. The hot afternoon sun splashed through the windows and flooded the dining room floor. Burroughs cautiously withdrew his chair from the golden pool. Walden Slater spoke with unusual rapidity for him.

“About Deb,” he said, “I guess if she wants to stay, she can. I told Jeff Westcott that. I said.⁠ ⁠…”

He stopped as abruptly as he commenced.

Dreeme wanted to jump up and fling his arms about the weary farmer. This was what had been on Walden Slater’s mind. This was what he had desired to communicate to Dreeme. Having delivered himself of his pronunciamento he rose painfully to his feet and turned toward the door. The Reverend George Burroughs picked his teeth meditatively with a wooden toothpick he had drawn from his black vest pocket. Then he blew his nose with a rare fish-horn effect.

Dreeme fumbled for his pipe contentedly. Well, Walden Slater was a friend. He was an ally. He was stretching a grotesque gnarled hand across the imbroglio of nights and days to Dreeme. The young doctor watched the farmer’s bowed shoulders disappear through the door. He was going back to his meager sun-parched acres where he would labor all the harder that he might feed one more mouth. Dreeme lighted his pipe, pushed his chair back, and walked slowly across the room. Before he reached the warm flood of sunlight he was halted.

“Doctor Dreeme.”

The Reverend George Burroughs stood beside the table with a half-raised yellow claw. His stringy black hair stood out above his frayed coat collar.

“If you enjoy the pleasing scent of the evening air,” he declared in his neighing voice, “perhaps we may stroll together some time. I am a silent companion, I fear, but equally a lover of nature. If you desire I shall be pleased to give you some information about the flora and fauna of this neighborhood.”

“Thank you,” responded Dreeme. “I generally stroll alone when I do stroll, which is not often. Sometime, however.⁠ ⁠…” He waved an inconclusive hand.

Outside he wondered. “Now, what the devil does he mean?” He turned at the gateway to meet a corpulent red-faced man who came running heavily down the road. The fellow was waving his arms in excitement. “Doctor,” he called as he came nearer, “Doctor.” Dreeme waited for the excited individual. When he came abreast of the doctor he stopped and puffed furiously while he mopped his ruddy face with a ruddier handkerchief. “Cardiac trouble,” thought Dreeme. Aloud he said:

“You shouldn’t run in the sun.”

The individual flourished his active hand.

“They’ve found a body by the Saccarac River, almost under the bridge,” he bellowed. “I’m Barnson. I don’t know nothing about it. My farm’s just above the bridge. My son, Simon, found the body. You remember, you treated him for blood-poisoning in the foot last Fall.”

Dreeme was uncertain as to whether he had treated the body or Simon for blood-poisoning in the foot, but he turned with Barnson and started to walk hurriedly with him up the Leeminster Road.

“Whose body?” he asked.

“Didn’t wait⁠ ⁠… to find out,” puffed Barnson. “My boy, Simon, found it. You remember⁠ ⁠… the boy you treated.”

He sat down heavily by the roadside.

“Dang it, I’m winded,” he declared. “You run ahead.”

“The body won’t run away,” said Dreeme.

Nevertheless he mounted the incline at a trot, his exertions and the sun covering his face with a freely running river of perspiration. The dry red sand puffed about his feet and sifted into his shoes. As he turned the arc of the road by the burned mill he saw a knot of men standing by the river below the bridge. They were leaning forward, their shoulders almost touching. He scrambled down the bank, the wiry weeds catching at his clothes and thrusting up his coat-sleeves as he half-slid and half-stumbled toward the low baked bank of the river. The men drew apart at the sound of his scrambling feet, and a freckled-faced youth with a bobbing Adam’s apple, whom he recognized as Simon Barnson, turned to him as he approached the group.

“It’s Wagner, Westcott’s man,” he called in a shrill voice.

Dreeme waved the men aside and approached the limp bundle of clothes that huddled before him. Wagner lay on his side, his heavy-booted feet sunk in the muddy ooze of the Saccarac River. One arm was twisted across his face. The two or three farmers who stood in a knot conversing in low tones, observed Dreeme curiously as he went methodically about his task of investigating the condition of the corpse. It was only by a violent effort that the young doctor moved Wagner’s bulky upflung arm sufficiently to study the dead man’s face. He started back with an exclamation of horror at the sight. Wagner’s eyes had been torn out and a wooden peg had been driven into each socket. Streamers of blood had flowed from these wounds and coagulated along the tanned cheeks and in the red and bushy beard. The purple lips were drawn back over the yellow teeth in a last ghastly smile of anguish. In the back of the hired man’s head, a trifle above the lined red neck, was an open wound, a gaping orifice of blood and splintered bone, that might have been made with some fairly sharp instrument, an axe or a heavy chisel.

“He’s dead all right,” said Dreeme, rising to his feet. “How long since he was found?”

The farmers stood in stolid silence until Simon Barnson constituted himself spokesman.

“I found him ’bout half an hour ago,” he said. “Then I run home and told Pa. Then I run to Bidwell’s.” He indicated a tall farmer standing near. Bidwell backed hastily away.

“Don’t you be talking too much, Simon,” called a voice from the top of the bank. “You’ll be talking yourself into jail first thing you know.”

Dreeme glanced up and saw the elder Barnson sitting on the ground and mopping his fiery face. His lips curled, and he turned back to the silent farmers. He said:

“It’s murder, you know. I should say the man’s been dead about three hours. We’ll have to find out who’s been across this bridge during the last three hours.”

The farmers shuffled together.

“I reckon there’s authorities’ll find that out,” said one of them coldly. The others nodded in agreement.

Dreeme felt helpless and out of place. He addressed himself to Simon Barnson.

“Has the coroner been sent for?”

Bidwell, the tall farmer, spoke up at that. He said:

“Yessir. I sent my man with the mare out to Leeminster right away as soon’s Simon told me. He’ll pick up Westcott on the way back.”

“Oh, will he?” said Dreeme. He stood beside the body gazing down at it. Wagner stared up at him with a fixed grin upon his ensanguined face. He lay like an old sack half-filled with boneless flesh. He was worm’s meat now. All his toiling in the hot sun and the fierce rains had come to this. His heavy feet had crunched through the last field. His hands, so calloused and split with labor, would guide farm implements no more. Dreeme looked down at the clenched hand that he had forced from the disfigured face and he saw clutched in the black, broken-nailed, stumpy fingers a bit of paper. It was curious that he had missed it before. He knelt down and tried to force the stiff fingers open. The farmers watched him from a little distance curiously, their necks craned, their eyes narrowed to slits in the sunlight. It took all his strength to open these dead fingers but with one last desperate effort he heard them break with a crackling sound and the slip of paper fluttered to the oozy bank. He snatched it up before it drifted into the river. Standing up he held the paper before him and looked at it. There was nothing upon it except the tiny drawing of a goat’s head. Dreeme stared at it in perplexity.

“I reckon you’d better save that for the coroner, Mister Doctor,” remarked Bidwell.

“I intend to,” replied Dreeme shortly.

None of them trusted him. He was a stranger and they wanted their own kind around, men who talked and thought as they did, who understood without words the springs of hidden actions. Well, to hell with them! Let them all go to hell! He heard the creak of the coroner’s buggy and the clop-clop of the horse on the bridge-boards above him and lifting his eyes he saw the thin-mouthed Leeminster official. One of their own kind at last! Beside him was Jeffrey Westcott, hatless, his cloven skull gleaming blue in the sunlight. The farmer turned his head downward and stared coolly at the body of his hired man. Then he transferred his attention to Dreeme. There was no expression in his face.

“Down here, coroner, down here,” called Simon Barnson.

“Hold your horses, son!” replied that official. “I’ll be right there.”

He lumbered heavily from his buggy and slid down the bank in a sitting posture, adjusting his steel-rimmed spectacles as he came.