I wrote to Herrick that same evening and his answer came a couple of
days later, saying that he hoped to get away towards the end of the
month. I had said nothing in my letter about the events of the
summer, but merely mentioned that the Lessings were my neighbours for
the time being.
Herrick wrote: "I shall be glad to meet Lessing again. He seems to
have buried himself in obscurity for the last twelve months. Is he
still as enthusiastic a theorist as ever, or has the country sobered
his ideas? In any case you are to be congratulated on having for
neighbours three of the most charming people it has ever been my luck
to meet."
I smiled at the "three." In my own mind I could have substituted
another numeral which would explain much of Herrick's promptitude in
accepting my invitation. He was very much mistaken if he thought
that any such artless device would put me off the track. In
imagination I already saw myself playing the rôle of a reluctant
gooseberry during his visit.
Lessing, when I mentioned my expected guest, made a comment almost
identical with Herrick's own.
"Herrick?" he said. "Good! We shall have some arguments, Haverill,
that will eclipse even your own. If Herrick gets to the bottom of
this by any of his cut-and-dried theories and deductions I'll give
him best once and for all!"
One thing at least pleased me. I gathered from both their remarks
that whatever difference had occurred between them had been purely a
battle of opinion, and had no influence on their fundamental regard
for one another. Meantime my meeting with Mary Lessing, and the
subsequent incident of the broken hand-rail, had settled my mind on
one point at least. There was some malicious influence at work in
the neighborhood which was distinctly and obviously human, whether it
bore any relation to the laboratory experiences or not, and at any
cost, even if necessary in the face of Lessing's opposition, she must
be kept clear of it.
Three-fourths of the neighbouring population were Pennsylvania Dutch,
and I had learned enough, in my own infrequent dealings with them, to
recognize their sullen aloofness, amounting almost to a hostility,
towards any stranger settled in their midst. The Lessings were for
some reason disliked in the village, and I fancied that much of the
distrust towards them was due to their having chosen for their
dwelling a spot which already had a sufficiently bad reputation in
the eyes of the country people about. Lessing was by no means the
sort of man to make himself popular here, or even friendly. He was
more or less of a recluse; he had erected a mysterious building in
which, engaged upon equally mysterious pursuits, he chose to isolate
himself until all hours of the night, and he displayed an open
indifference towards all the current gossip and superstition of the
neighbourhood. Following the primitive psychology of these people,
narrow-minded to a degree and distrustful of anything unfamiliar, his
habits alone were sufficient to brand him as an ungodly character.
According to his sister, he had already fallen foul of Jake Menning
soon after his arrival, and I had no doubt whatever that Aaron, out
of revenge, had since done his best to foster the already
antagonistic feeling towards him. The huckster's trade lends itself
to all the back-door gossip of the countryside, and it seemed to me
that I could trace easily enough the fruit of Aaron's house-to-house
visits. Aaron himself was civil-spoken, industrious, religious to
all accounts, and a highly respected member of the community; but all
this did not weigh very far against the man's face. Whatever ill
blood ran in the Menning family, it was certainly not confined to the
deceased Jakey.
I mentioned my suspicions to Lessing a day or two later, when I was
at the bungalow.
"Oh, the man's right enough," he returned. "I don't like his kind,
that's all. I had a row with Jakey because I didn't want him hanging
round the place and I told him so. Aaron has never annoyed us in any
way; on the contrary, he takes pains to be particularly civil. I
think he's like all the rest around, glad enough to keep clear of
Dutchman's Hill and all its inhabitants, dead or living!"
Mary Lessing had asked me, on our homeward walk, not to mention the
cut railing to her brother, and I had not done so. It was sufficient
for the moment that she had agreed to keep away from the mill-dam and
its immediate neighbourhood. She was a sensible girl and I had no
fear that she would break her promise out of any spirit of bravado or
curiosity.
We were in the sitting-room. Mary had gone down to the village on an
errand, and Mrs. Lessing was as usual invisible. For the time being
we were free from interruption, and it struck me as a good moment to
tell Lessing what I had heard from the reporter concerning the two
mysterious cycling 'fatalities.
He took it even more seriously than I had expected. It was even with
scant patience that he heard me out.
"But good heavens, man," he cried, "why didn't you tell me all this
sooner? Don't you see that it's what I've been expecting, what I've
been watching the papers for month after month? It puts my
experience clear of all doubt. I have felt certain--as certain as I
am standing here--that sooner or later some accident of this sort
would turn up."
"It was a good fifteen miles from here," I said. "Besides----"
"What's fifteen miles? I don't care if it was fifty! Have you got
the cutting with you?"
I had. I had torn off the corner with the paragraph, unobserved of
my reporter friend, and I took the fragment now from my pocketbook
and gave it to Lessing. He read it through eagerly.
"The facts correspond. The man was killed in the open; he had no
chance of shelter. The thing hit him as he was riding."
"It's not proved."
"There's the damage to the bicycle."
"There's exactly that," I said, "which to my mind puts a different
light on the whole thing. If the impact of the blow was sufficient
to damage the bicycle to that extent, how was it that the rider
escaped all injury except a single scratch on the face? It's out of
all reason. There were no marks on the body. That is testified to.
If a man is knocked off his bicycle while riding at even an average
speed, he'll have some marks to show for it. He died from heart
failure, probably resultant upon fright and the shock of the wound.
Very good. But that doesn't account for the bicycle. It seems to me
that whatever attacked him wreaked its spite on the machine
afterwards."
"He had time to dismount?"
"Possibly. It doesn't say how near to the bicycle he was lying. If
he fell at all he must have fallen clear of it. The lamp was picked
up several yards away."
"The lamp..." said Lessing.
The same thought was in both our minds.
"What date did this happen?" he asked.
"It was a week-old paper. I was there ... wait a moment." I made a
rough calculation in my mind. "This happened, apparently, on the
Thursday previous. That should bring it to about the third of the
month."
"The third was a Thursday," said Lessing. He pulled out an almanac
from the bookshelves and ran the pages over. I saw him frown.
"There was a full moon on that evening. It is just possible he was
riding without a light at all. If so, that throws my whole theory
out."
"The whole thing," said I, "looks to me like the work of a maniac.
Take the lamp. It was picked up some yards away. Now a bicycle
lantern isn't merely hung on; it's screwed on, and you can't imagine
any sort of blow struck from above that would dislodge it and throw
it that distance. It must have been either unscrewed or torn off,
deliberately, and that in itself suggests human agency."
Lessing barely heard me. He was staring at the scrap of paper spread
out on his knee.
"The first man, according to your reporter was killed actually in the
woods. The second was picked up some twenty feet from the edge of
the woods, on the open road. That's important. It was a clear
night. Why should he be attacked in the open when there were woods
within half a dozen yards that would have given ample ambush?"
Unconsciously he was repeating the reporter's argument. "That
doesn't look like the work of a human being. Besides, the man wasn't
robbed. I tell you, Haverill, there's something that doesn't satisfy
me in all this. Either they made some extraordinary mistake, or ...
but he was riding _towards_ the woods!"
"Apparently."
"On what evidence?"
"I suppose the position of the bicycle," I said lamely.
"There had been no rain for some days. The roads are hard about
here, and a bicycle wouldn't be likely to leave tracks, especially on
the edge of the path. You're a doctor, Haverill. Suppose a man died
from heart failure, would he necessarily die at the instant of the
shock?"
"Only in romances. Actually, there would be several seconds'
interval at least."
"He might run, say, twenty feet and then drop?"
"Quite possibly. But I don't see how that helps."
"It means just this," said Lessing, "that according to my idea the
man was not riding towards the woods at all. He was attacked
actually in the woods or at the edge of them, and he ran the twenty
feet to where his body was found. Listen. The moon did not rise
that evening until 10.30. Anyone riding through the woods the
earlier part of the evening would have used a lamp. He was a
stranger in the district and was identified only by papers. No one
in Coopersville knew him or had apparently ever seen him before.
Coopersville is not a large place, and a case like this makes
sufficient talk. If he had passed through there during the evening
someone would have seen him, and it would have been mentioned at the
inquest. The chances are that he had come from a distance, and that
he was riding _towards_ Coopersville with the idea of putting up
there for the night. Assuming that, and that he was carrying a lamp
at the time, we have our facts fairly clear. He was attacked just
within cover of the woods, that is to say, where the light would be
more clearly noticeable than on an open stretch of moonlit road. The
overhanging trees would break the attack more or less, which accounts
for the comparative slightness of his own injury. The primary object
of attack being the lamp, the rider would have the chance of escape,
whereas if he had been struck actually in the open, at full force, he
would have been probably killed on the spot."
The whole theory was fairly ingenious, but it didn't account for the
wrecking of the bicycle, for its being found where it was, some
distance clear of the woods and near the man's own body. I told
Lessing so. He looked at me queerly.
"Have you ever seen a dog worry a stick?" he asked.
"We aren't dealing with dogs."
"Whatever wrecked the bicycle could have dragged it that distance."
"If your theory has anything in it the bicycle was carried. If it
had been dragged they would have found traces. Don't tell me that
any animal capable of such insensate fury as you suggest would have
had the intelligence to conceal its tracks!"
We were both getting rather heated over the argument. It seemed to
me that Lessing was bent obstinately on maintaining his own views, to
the point of extravagance. For my part, I was equally positive that
the affair was due to some human agency. Neither of us, therefore,
was aware of a shadow in the doorway until Mary Lessing's pleasant
mocking voice broke in upon our discussion.
"What on earth," she said, "are you two people scrapping about so
vehemently?"
"We weren't scrapping," I smiled. "We were discussing a problem--you
might call it a scientific riddle. It concerns the law which governs
the movement of bodies through space."
Mary turned on me her invariable reproachful glance when she
suspected that anyone was making fun of her. She sat down, pulling
the pins from her hat, and let the sunlight strike on her roughened
bronze-coloured hair.
"Is it anything," she inquired, "with which my inferior feminine mind
might be capable of grappling?"
"Certainly," I returned promptly. "We will illustrate it with the
simple objects now before us. How would it be possible, for
instance, for that extremely solid book-case to be moved, say, to the
other end of the room, without being dragged or carried?"
Mary affected to consider, her head on one side.
"Simple enough," she said, laughing. "It would have to fly through
the air, that's all."
There was a moment's silence in the room, while I looked at Lessing
and he looked at me.
"Suppose we have some tea?" he said then.
X