"Well?" I said impatiently.
"I'se gwine, I'se gwine. I was thinkin' on'y dis mawnin' how dat
feed done oughter be fetched. Yessir, I was sayin' dat out in de
car'ge-house. It done oughter be fetched _today_."
"It'll be right on your road after you leave Mr. Lessing's."
"Yessir, dat so! On'y dat packet, doctah ... I was jest considerin'
dat packet. Ef I was to put dat packet in de buckboard longer de
feed sack I'd be right scared 'er losing it. It don't seem to me,
doctah, dat 'ar packet gwine t' be very safe dat way."
"But you've got a pocket, you old idiot!"
"Yessir, I done got pockets. I was on'y jest a-studyin', doctah. I
don' recommend pockets, not when a pusson's got a commission to 'tend
to. When a pusson puts suthin' in his pocket, it happens sometime
dat a pusson's gwine _forget_ it."
"If it happens to you," I assured him, "I'll find a way of operating
on your memory, so you'd better be careful!"
He took the packet without more ado and went off to get the buckboard
ready. It was too fine a day to waste about the house, and I had it
in mind to take the cycle out for a spin. Telling Mrs. Searle I
would probably be away for lunch, I got into my cycling suit and set
off.
I followed the road for some distance past the Bend, and then
branched off to the right, joining the Pike. The machine was in good
running order, and I did some twenty miles before I slowed up finally
at a little village with the hope of getting something to eat.
There was the usual hotel and saloon combined, with its array of
spruce bushes in tubs before the entrance. I leaned my cycle against
the porch and went in to interview the landlord about a meal.
Dinner was by luck just ready. I cleaned off some of the grime of my
ride and wandered into the commercial room, which was garnished with
horsehair furniture, a mildewed engraving of Washington, and two
plates of sticky fly-paper, buzzing and noxious, set out on the
soiled tablecloth. There was one other midday guest, a young man in
a gray suit who sat watching the struggles of the latest addition to
the fly-paper colony while he waited for dinner. I placed him
immediately as a newspaper man, and the first dozen words we
exchanged, as I took my place opposite to him at the table, proved me
right. He had been sent down on the trial of one of those dull and
elusive scandals which serve to lighten the papers during the dead
season, and had to put in two hours' waiting for his train back to
the city.
He had a considerable fund of anecdote which needed only the barest
encouragement to set going, and he transferred his interest from the
fly-paper to myself with complimentary promptitude. He had a trick
of raising his voice a full three tones at the beginning of each
sentence, and as his dissertations were lengthy I found myself
speculating at to what new and rasping height his voice might next
reach.
There was a week-old copy of a local paper lying on the table, and in
a pause of the meal he pushed it over to me.
"There's a thing that might interest you, being a cyclist," he said.
"What do you make of that kind of an accident?"
I read the paragraph he pointed out. It was the account of an
inquest held on the body of a young man identified as one George
Powell, salesman in a Philadelphia dry-goods store. He had been
found on a stretch of road a few miles beyond Coopersville by a
farmer taking an early load of milk to the Coopersville creamery.
The handle-bars and front part of his wheel, near by, were damaged,
and the broken lamp was picked up a few yards further on. The man
was dead, but the curious part, which had evidently struck my
acquaintance also, was that there were no injuries found on the body
except a single diagonal scratch across the face, which was of
sufficient depth to have destroyed one eye and to lay the entire
cheek open. This in itself had not produced death, and the coroner's
autopsy had revealed no symptom of concussion. The medical officer's
verdict had been death from heart failure.
The injuries suggested attack, but there had been no robbery, and
though the man's clothing was torn his pockets were apparently
untouched. They contained thirty-five dollars in notes, in a
pocket-book, some small change, and the papers that had led to his
identification.
"Well?" said my acquaintance.
"It looks queer."
He laid a finger on the paragraph.
"You see the body was picked up fifteen yards from the edge of the
wood. If anyone had laid for him, they'd have laid right in the
woods, where there was cover. But whatever hit him, it hit him
before he reached there."
"He might have run into something."
"As what?"
"I don't know." And there struck me instantly the thought that my
companion put into words. "If you run into anything on a bicycle, at
full speed, it doesn't generally happen that the handle-bars get the
worst injury. You see that the front wheel was not much broken. And
he was riding toward the woods, and it's going to take a pretty
phenomenal shock to throw a man and his bicycle fifteen yards
backwards. I'll tell you another thing. I happen to know that
stretch of road, because I spent part of last summer near there, with
some people. It's a level stretch, cleared both sides, and there
isn't anything larger than a stone to run into."
I waited, wondering what he was driving at. He chose a toothpick
from the holder and began to employ it, leisurely.
"You'd reckon those things would strike the jury, wouldn't you? But
they're so dam' simple down here that they're content to come up
against facts like that, and they say: Well, here's a man got killed
and we don't know what hit him. Guess we'll let it go at
misadventure and go get a drink!' That's their mental attitude, and
there isn't anything going to shake them out of it."
"What's your theory?" I asked.
He revolved the toothpick meditatively.
"If I knew, I guess I'd be up against a story that would make every
newspaper in the country sit up. There's something queer there, and
I'll tell you why, and you'll see just how enterprising these country
juries are. Last April"--he raised his voice again, giving the
toothpick an extra twirl in emphasis--"precisely the same thing
happened to another man, not twelve miles from where this was. He
was killed under much about the same circumstances, and the jury then
returned the same old verdict, with a caution about the dangers of
scorching. I happen to know, because I was down there on some story
the time the thing occurred. I saw the man." He paused, and without
knowing why I felt my pulses quicken suddenly in anticipation. "He
had marks on his body that a wild-cat couldn't have made! He was
picked up at the side of the path, among some stiff under-brush, so
of course they said the fall did it. I tell you he was ripped, like
I've seen a dog's face ripped by a badger. I've seen murder cases
and I've seen accidents, but I've never seen the precise accident
that would leave that kind of marks."
"You think it was murder?"
"The man wasn't murdered. He hit his head against a stone and died
of concussion that time, right enough. But it was near enough to
murder, if you assume an assailant who'd strap two-inch steel claws
on to his hands." He laughed. "It's an original outfit! But that's
what I'm asking _you_? What's the animal that goes round in these
woods that's strong enough to wreck the steel tubing of a bicycle,
that attacks with its claws and not with its teeth, and that's quick
enough to knock a man down without the chance of a struggle?"
"There were no traces?"
"None. Not a single footprint."
All the while he spoke there had been before my mind the picture of
Lessing--Lessing with those inexplicable scratches on his chest.
Whatever had attacked these two had attacked Lessing also; that I
would swear to. I was conscious that the young man was watching me
rather closely.
"Heard something of this before, have you?"
"No. It interests me. But I think you're on a wrong tack."
"How?"
"Man alive, you don't suppose there could conceivably be any animal
of that kind loose in the country without people knowing it! Someone
would have seen it."
"I guess two people did see it," he suggested.
"If anything escaped from a menagerie there'd be a hue and cry
raised. The woods around here couldn't give cover to any animal of
that size and ferocity for three months without some track of it
being found."