"You make, if I may s-say so, a great error," he said gravely.
He smoked for a few moments tranquilly, his gaze, behind the dark
glasses, seeming to rest dreamily on the stretch of road before the
house.
"I suppose you are staying in the village?" I asked.
"Over there." He made a vague gesture which included half the
visible landscape. "With some excellent people of the name of
S-S-Sliefer."
"Oh, Sliefer's," I said, interested. "I know them slightly. The big
farm-house past the saw-mill."
"Precisely," he agreed, and gave me a look before relapsing again
into silence.
Our conversation, if it could be called so, languished. It was
evident to me that his shyness was battling with the desire to be
off--I judged that Herrick had fairly dragged him here out of a
mistaken cordiality--and after the exchange of a few more spasmodic
sentences I accepted his courteous and timid explanation that the
Sliefers dined at midday and would be expecting him back, and rose to
shake hands.
"A queer chicken!" said Herrick as we watched his jerky little figure
disappear down the road. "I picked him up back in the woods there,
grubbing around the saw-mill, and brought him along for your
benefit--a quaint example of the Pennsylvanian fauna! Timidicus
professus, or ground-dwelling goo-goo bird. Difficult of approach
and does not thrive in captivity. Guess he's more than a bit batty,
by his looks."
"Mrs. Sliefer never mentioned a boarder," I remarked. "He must be a
new arrival. It's to be hoped he won't come to any grief in his
grubbing around, as you call it."
"Oh, the gods protect the innocent," laughed Herrick. "Even the
alleged ghost of Jakey Menning would have pity. By the way, the fair
Rebecca's tale is still firmly believed in, by the Sliefers at any
rate. The latest village version is that she was chased clear to the
garden fence and that her skirt still shows five scorched prints
where the ghostly fingers clutched. The neighbourhood must have been
quite worked up. It was bad enough when Jakey had the decency to
keep to one place at least, but now he has taken, like the wind, to
blowing where he listeth, folks are getting scary. I got that much
from our guileless little friend, though he professes himself to be
quite indifferent on the subject. Of course you, as the village
doctor, are above such gossip, so I thought I'd go gleaning for you."
"Someone's doing it," I said.
"Of course someone did, in the case of Rebecca at least. Real ghosts
don't holler, as I said before, and the blue-fire details smell
strongly of the common or garden matchbox. But as our little
professor-bird spends most of his time in the woods about there, I
thought his observations might come in useful."
"Private detective, eh?"
Herrick smiled.
"Oh, I'm sufficiently interested in the Lessing problem to be anxious
to clear out the undergrowth, if you follow me. That done, one can
judge a bit more clearly. If there's any foolery going on we'll run
it to the ground, and Crowfoot may come in useful there."
"I've a good notion," I said, knocking my pipe out, "to try some
watching round that locality myself one of these nights."
"It wouldn't be any good," he returned, "for the simple reason that
Jakey wouldn't demonstrate to you or me any more than he's
demonstrated to Lessing. He chooses those he wants to favour. As a
matter of fact, by the aid of my bedroom window, the convenience of
which you have probably under-estimated, Austin, I spent last night
prowling myself. No, I didn't let you into it because I wanted to be
alone. Needless to say, there was nothing doing. But I've found out
one thing. There's someone else interested in the game besides us.
I don't know who. But we narrowly escaped collision, and gave each
other mutually a wide berth."
"It couldn't have been the ghost himself, whoever he is?"
"I think not. It was too obvious we were both out on the same
errand. Like the Irishman, we each thought we were someone else and
when we met it was neither of us!" He smiled at the recollection.
"Well, I suppose we'll get at the root of the thing some day!"