"Miss Lessing, why can't you get your brother to go away from here,
for a time?"
"I can't. I've tried. He wouldn't leave, now. You don't know him.
He's the last person in the world to give a thing up until he's
proved it down to the ground, one way or another. Whatever's at the
bottom of this, he won't rest till he's found it out. It's just a
scientific problem to him, and nothing else."
"And you?" I said.
"I?" She moved her shoulders. "What can I think? I had hoped just
now--But I only know what he has told me, what I have seen. If one
began to think----"
"Listen to me," I said. "You must not think! You and I are two sane
people. Look at these wood around! I ask you, is it possible to
feel anything but sane and incredulous in a place like this? I want
you to get into your head, right now, that there is nothing--nothing
at all in this world--that a man has any reason to be afraid of. And
there are very few things in the world, to my belief, that cannot be
explained. Has it ever occurred to you that this whole conviction of
your brother's may be nothing more than hallucination?"
"But the injuries----"
"I have known hysteric patients, before now, inflict as severe
injuries upon themselves without consciousness or recollection. I
don't say it is your brother's case; I'm only trying to form a
possible rational explanation such as any doctor would put forward.
I have had one or two such cases within my own experience. What I
propose to do is this, but I shall do it only with your consent. I
will write to Herrick and ask him down here for a fortnight. It will
be a new brain to bear on the problem, and I shall ask your brother
to let us join these investigations with him."
"You'll do that." She put out her hand to me impulsively.
"I'll do it to-night. Only ... I shall have to give Herrick a
detailed account of everything that has happened, so far as we know
it, and I can't do that without your brother's approval."
"Yes ... I see."
"You will excuse one question. Are they on good terms?"
It struck me that I had never heard Lessing mention his name.
"Yes." She paused doubtfully. "It's funny you should ask that.
They had a disagreement, about two years ago. It was when my brother
first took up this ... this kind of study. Having séances and that.
Doctor Herrick wanted him to give it up."
I moved involuntarily. Here was a new light on Lessing's attitude of
mind, which he himself had been at pains, it seemed to me, to touch
on very lightly. I remembered stray references of his, the signed
article I had noticed on my first evening at the house.
"Your brother used to attend séances often?"
"Didn't he tell you? I don't know that I would have mentioned it,
but I don't see that it matters. It was before I came to live with
them. He and some friends of his were very interested, and Doctor
Herrick used to join them too sometimes. They met at a friend's
studio. Doctor Herrick was rather against it from the first, but I
know he used to be there. Of course I understand very little about
it, but ... things did happen. I don't mean that they banged on
tambourines or rapped out the alphabet or anything like that. It
wasn't spiritualism. And then Doctor Herrick stopped. I think he
knew more than any of them, but he said it was dangerous and it
didn't lead to anything, and he wanted my brother to give it up
altogether. Kate--that's my sister-in-law, you know--was their
medium, and I think it was on her account. Doctor Herrick thought it
was bad for her. And then one night something happened, I don't know
just what, but Kate got some sort of a shock. She's very highly
strung at any time, and I always supposed something frightened her,
but anyway she was quite ill for a long time after that. She used to
get queer sort of nervous spells, and she couldn't be left alone, and
that was why I first came to live with them, on her account. Of
course my brother gave the whole business up then. The physician who
attended her said simply that she was in poor health, and had had a
nervous breakdown, and he told her she must live in the country
awhile till she got stronger, but I know Doctor Herrick thought at
the time that the séances had been the cause of it. He told my
brother so."
I listened attentively. It was news to me that Herrick, the
essential level-headed, should have lent himself at any time to
experiments of this order. He had never mentioned the subject to me
in our many talks, and I had even gathered, as one gathers an
impression without any very definite grounds, that he was a confirmed
sceptic on all matters of occultism.
"You say they had a disagreement?"
"It was exactly that," she made haste to say, "They didn't quarrel,
but I know Herrick was very much opposed to Dick's views, and they
used to have arguments. But it didn't amount to more than that."
"Good!"
She had risen to her feet, and at her movement the setter himself
lazily rose and came towards us.
"Then we're going to see this thing out?" I said.
"We'll see it out."
We shook hands, and I fancied that her fingers rested in mine a
moment voluntarily before she drew them away.
"Are you coming up to see my brother today?" she asked.
"Presently ... I'd like to." I looked at my watch. "I thought of
taking a stroll up to the dam, as I'm so close; I've never been
there. You say it's only a few minutes?"
"Not more than ten, through the woods."
"Let's walk up together," I suggested, "if you aren't too tired."
She assented readily, and we struck off up a little footpath, barely
traceable, that followed the course of the stream. It was, as she
had said, a scant ten minutes before the sound of the sluice broke on
our ears, and through a sudden clearing of the woods the dam lay
before us, a black sinister sheet of water, covered with masses of
floating weed and pond-lilies, and darkened by the trees and
underbrush that grew closely down to its edge. An old scow, long
past use and sunken low in the water, lay pad-locked to a slimy stump
near the shore.
Following an old cart-track, we skirted the edge of the dam in the
direction of the saw-mill, a dilapidated building with broken roof,
that seemed to have stood for many years of disuse. To reach it we
had to cross the sluice itself, and Mary Lessing, who was a few paces
ahead of me, paused to look down over the single rough handrail that
protected one from a misstep.
There is something forbidding about a mill-sluice at any time,
especially when dissociated, as this was, from the companionable
sound of human labour. The sheer depth, the knowledge of the vast
imprisoned force behind one, the sound of water gushing here and
there between the slimy weed-grown timbers, give always, to me at
least, an indefinable sense of the sinister.
I leaned my rod against the railing, and we looked down side by side
at the black oozing wall below.
"I like this place," Mary Lessing said. "There's something queer and
creepy about it. I often come here. I suppose they haven't worked
the sluice for years."
"I doubt if the machinery would move now," I said. "Of course this
is never opened. There should be a smaller sluice for the millstream
further on."
I glanced as I spoke at the clumsy wooden levers near me that
controlled the sluice. They looked to be rotting in their place, but
as I pushed one, idly, a sudden change in the sound of escaping water
below warned me that the machinery was not in such ill repair as it
would seem. I exerted my strength to pull the lever back, and my
attention was momentarily distracted from the girl beside me. She
was leaning out over the hand-rail, and when I turned it was with a
sudden cry of warning.
"Look out!" I said. "That may not be safe!"
I caught her arm instinctively as I spoke, and on the instant the
rail bent outward with a slight sound of cracking. In another moment
she would have been over the edge. We looked at one another, and
Mary laughed, a little nervously on the stillness. Her face had
flushed.
"I thought that rail was all right," she said rather awkwardly.
"Dick walked over here with me not a week ago, and we tested it then
to see."
"It isn't all right now," I returned sharply.
I put my two hands on the rail, giving it a slight wrench outward.
It gave easily to my touch, and looking closer, I saw that the
surface towards the water had been half cut through. Someone had
tampered with it deliberately and within the last few days.
"What is it?" Mary Lessing asked.
"Merely rotten, as I thought!"
I turned away, and walked thoughtfully on towards the saw-mill. The
thing puzzled me, but it had an ugly look. It was no idle mischief
that had prompted the act. Whoever had done it, had done it
maliciously, and the purpose was not very far to seek. Hitherto I
had not attached much importance to the Lessings' occasional laughing
references to their unpopularity in the village. Now it assumed
suddenly a significance.