"A year, more or less. I take it when I can't sleep."
"Lately?"
"Not for several weeks."
"Yes, you have," I thought. Aloud I said: "I'll make you up
something else, for a change. Can you sleep now?"
"I'll have a try."
"Better get to bed."
"I sleep better here," he said, and without more ado turned over with
his face to the wall. I waited a moment, but he took no further
notice of my presence, and I went out.
The girl who had helped me with the dressing was outside, feeding
sugar to the mare. The two seemed old friends. I saw, as I drew
near, that she bore a strong resemblance to Lessing himself,
sufficient to proclaim her his sister. She had the same deep hazel
eyes, but her hair was lighter; it showed a bronze glint as she stood
bare-headed in the sunshine. It would have been an attractive face
but for a look of cynicism, almost a hardness, in the lines of her
mouth. I was glad that it was she I encountered instead of Mrs.
Lessing. Here was at least one practical person in this puzzling
household.
She turned as I came near, but without moving.
"Your brother will do all right," I said without preamble. "Keep him
quiet today, and if possible make him sleep. He wants rest badly."
She nodded, brushing the crumbs of sugar from her hands.
"How long has this been going on?"
"The not sleeping?" She looked at me sharply. "About four or five
nights."
"I thought so. Can't you make him?"
She looked at me almost contemptuously, as though wondering that my
interview with Lessing had taught me so little. "Does he look as if
I could?"
"You can do it if anyone can," I said. "I shall be back tomorrow.
If by any chance I am wanted..."
"I'll come and fetch you," she said.
"Good." I turned to unfasten the mare, then paused. "You have a dog
here, I think. May I see it?"
For a moment she seemed about to hesitate. "If you like," she said
then.
I followed her round to the side of the house. A small sort of
tool-shed stood not far from the odd building I had noticed, and
which I saw now was not an annex, but separate from the house. The
door of the shed was closed, and from within a whining and scratching
greeted our approach. Without a word she turned the key and threw
open the door.
A magnificent orange setter rushed out nearly knocking her down.
There was nothing savage in his demeanor; he licked her hands and
face and even tried to include me in the demonstration, but what
caught my attention was his inexplicable behavior the next moment.
He bounded straight toward the big outbuilding, but within a few
paces of it he stopped, whining and sniffing, his ears laid back, his
body trailed near to the ground, as though in some abject fear.
Whining still, he dragged himself back to our feet and crouched
there, trembling. Miss Lessing's voice broke the silence.
"Do you advise," she said, "that he should be destroyed as dangerous?"
"I think," I replied, "that is hardly necessary, at present. What's
the matter with him?"
Her lip curled a little as she looked at me. She shrugged her
shoulders.
"He is frightened. Do you believe in the instinct of dogs, Doctor
Haverill?"
"What is that building used for?" I asked curtly.
"It is my brother's laboratory."
"Then what in heaven's name----?" I checked the exclamation on my
lips. She was looking at me as her brother had done, but she seemed,
at all events, to make up her mind more quickly. "Come with me," she
said quietly.
We walked to the building. There was a door at the side fitted with
a Yale lock, but it stood slightly ajar. She pushed it open. The
interior consisted of one single room, that seemed from its fittings
half laboratory, half workshop. There were shelves around,
containing bottles, chemical apparatus, a few books stacked together.
A long table, littered with tubes and glasses, stood almost directly
under the skylight. One corner of the room, to the right of the
table, was screened off to form a dark-room, with the ordinary square
of red glazed fabric let into the door.
I looked around the place with curiosity. There was nothing here to
account for the dog's behavior. The contents of the table at one end
were confused and overthrown, and a strip of cocoa matting, which had
evidently lain under or near the table, had been rolled and flung in
one corner. The boards were noticeably cleaner where it had been
lying, and near the edge of this clean space there was a stain,
smudged as though purposely by someone's foot, but to my eyes an
obvious blood-stain.
Directly under the skylight, which was some four feet square, was the
apparatus that for the moment puzzled me. It was mounted on a high
stand that brought it near to the glass, and it looked like an
acetylene lamp with very powerful concave reflectors; the kind of
reflector, on a smaller scale, that is used in some lighthouses. The
size of the lamp was quite outside the requirements of the room for
ordinary lighting purposes, and the reflector seemed planned to throw
the light outside the building, and in any desired direction. As I
looked at it there flashed across my mind the recollection of the
curious sort of searchlight I had seen the night before from my
porch. Here was the solution of it, but I was puzzled to imagine
what Lessing could be doing with an apparatus of this kind in such a
place.