"That's what I ask myself," said Lessing grimly. "Do I look like a
man subject to brain trouble?"
"No," I said. "I gave that theory up almost immediately."
"Then what do you make of it?" he asked quietly.
"Make of it!" I cried. "Good heavens, man, do you realize that
you're asking me to believe a thing that's outside the range of all
human possibility!"
"Human possibility! What is human possibility? I tell you the thing
as it happened, simply." He rose and began to pace to and fro in the
room. "I'm a sane man. I'm not given to imaginary things. And
besides--you saw yourself----"
"Wait a moment," I said. "About this light. Have you used the same
lamp right along?"
Lessing gave a quick look. I wondered if he had divined my visit to
the laboratory that first morning.
"No. I altered it after the second time. There was an interval of
over four months when nothing happened at all. I tried to reason it
all out, and I concluded that in some way the lamp had had to do with
it. From the position of the building, and the woods about it, the
light I was at first using could be visible only from one certain
direction. I wanted to investigate the whole thing systematically,
and with that idea I raised the lamp and fitted a strong reflector
that would throw the light outside the building at will, and in any
direction."
His description corresponded with the light I had seen above the
tree-tops, the night of Pete's adventure with the turkey-buzzard.
"You were using this the last time?"
"Yes. I had been experimenting with it, off and on, for several
weeks."
"Have you any idea of the shape of the thing?" I asked him.
"So far as I could make out anything, outside the glass, I might
describe it as some kind of dog. It seemed to be greyish.... But
that as a theory is sheer nonsense. You know that no dog could have
made the scratches you saw."
One thing still puzzled me.
"You say that you put the light out yourself the first time?"
"Yes."
"And the second?"
"There was scarcely time to get any definite impression," he answered
evasively. "I was struck down almost at once."
"But you had the impression of a dog?"
"What does it matter?" he cried, with a sudden change of voice. "I
tell you, Haverill, it was like nothing that I can describe!"
We sat there for some minutes in silence. I can see now the turn of
Lessing's head, the restless movement of his fingers on the
chair-arm. It seemed incongruous that we should be sitting here in
this common-place room, amid surroundings which spoke so emphatically
of the practical routine of life, discussing that which should have
branded us both as madmen.
It was Lessing who broke the silence first.
"What the good?" he said, with a short laugh. "I've told you the
whole business, and it's up to you to make what you choose of it.
The only conclusion seems to be that we are up against something
which is, as you put it, outside the range of experience. Good. But
suppose I told you that it wasn't outside the range of
experience--that what I saw has been seen by other people, upon
independent testimony, ten, twenty, thirty years ago?"
I thought of the reporter's story. But there would be time to
contribute my data presently, after Lessing had told me all that he
knew.
"Did you ever hear of an apparition called the Jersey Devil?" he
asked.
"I don't remember it."
"You probably wouldn't," Lessing replied. He took a fresh cigarette
from the box and lit it. "The tale afforded some stray paragraphs in
the papers, at different times, much as the periodical accounts of
'authentic' ghosts do, but I don't believe anyone gave the slightest
credence to it. The Jersey Devil, to sum up all that I have been
able to glean on the subject, was a legendary monster, reputed to
have been seen, on the evidence of several persons, at different
periods during the past fifty or sixty years. The legend goes back,
I believe, to just before the Civil War. According to the story, its
appearance gives warning to some national trouble or calamity. It
was said to have been seen before Lincoln's assassination, before the
Spanish-American War, and before the assassination of President
McKinley. It is described as a creature having the body of a bat and
the head of a horse--sometimes as a quasi-human head on a winged
animal body--and it haunts certain counties of New Jersey, chiefly
Monmouth and Ocean counties, and has also been seen as far north as
Pennsylvania. The legend goes that it is a changeling, that is to
say, a devil which took possession of a child's body at birth and
flew off in the shape of a monster. Why it should have developed the
sort of national solicitude they claim for it is unexplained. Of
course the evidence is almost entirely that of superstitious country
people who saw it, or thought they saw it, but the fact remains that
the evidence in every case tallies, even after intervals of ten or
twenty years.
"We may take it that very legend has somewhere some natural origin,
however much it may be subsequently exaggerated or distorted. Why,
if this particular legend is purely imaginary, should it be confined
to certain districts and not to others? We are not dealing with an
apparition reputed to haunt one particular place. It has a pretty
wide range of country, on the contrary, and its appearance has been
vouched for, almost simultaneously, in places a great many miles
apart. Why should it be seen in one certain county and not in the
adjoining ones, where the inhabitants are probably equally
superstitious? Also it is not seen actually at the time of trouble,
when people's minds might be most naturally influenced by
superstition, but days and sometimes weeks before the event. That
fact in itself I attach no importance to. There is a coincidence,
and people naturally connect the two ideas. But I mention it to
prove that in no instance was the thing seen because it was expected
to be seen; its appearance in each case was entirely without warning
or predisposition."