"I know," said Herrick.
"I had hoped," he went on, "that you didn't retain any very definite
impression. That's why----"
"_You_ saw it."
"We all saw something. We thought we did."
"And Sliefer..." I paused. "Herrick, there was something else. I
remember now. You were holding me. And you told Sliefer not to
fire. I wondered..."
"They say there is a change, one way or another, at the moment of
death," Herrick said. "I knew it. I tried to stop him." He paused
a moment. "I was too late. That's all."
We sat there for a moment, not speaking. Then Herrick knocked his
pipe out against the boulder and rose to his feet.
"Come on back to the house. Mrs. Searle will have breakfast for us,
and we both look rather a wreck!" He laid a hand on my shoulder.
"Take my advice, Austin, and put this whole thing out of your mind.
I told you in the beginning--there's the other explanation; why not
stand by it? As I say, it covers all the facts. The rest is between
us three. Look at it how you will, whatever happened last night
happened for the best."
I remembered the thing that had cried and twisted on the ground, and
was silent. Herrick was right.
As soon as Lessing was able to travel we went down, the three of us,
to the little cottage on the Sound which they had rented for the
remainder of the fall. Herrick came down for an occasional long
week-end, and it was during one of these, when we were lounging out
on the beach before supper, that he handed me without comment a
little cutting from a Pennsylvania local paper.
It was headed "Man's Body found in Millpond" and stated briefly how
some boys, fishing in Sliefer's dam, had discovered the body of a
man, believed to be that of a certain Aaron Menning, chicken pedlar,
who had disappeared from the neighborhood mysteriously some weeks
before. The body, which had lain for a considerable time in the
water, showed the trace of two bullet wounds, but owing to the
difficulties of medical evidence after so long a time had elapsed it
was not possible to prove that either of these had been sufficient to
cause death, which was brought in, on the finding of the coroner's
jury, as accidental. "It will be remembered," the article concluded,
"that equally mysterious circumstances attended, less than a year
ago, the death of Menning's stepbrother, whose body was found at a
spot not half a mile from the scene of this later tragedy. Though
there was no suggestion of foul play at the time, rumor later
connected Aaron's name, in no uncertain terms, with his stepbrother's
death, a rumor which his disappearance served to strengthen in many
persons' minds. Whatever the circumstances which led to this second
tragedy, and how far the two may be connected, will remain for ever a
mystery, since Aaron's death closes definitely the last chapter in
the story of this singularly ill-fated family."
"What's that?" asked Lessing.
I slipped the cutting into my pocket. My compact with Herrick still
held good.
"Only some more nonsense of Jack's."
Lessing grinned up at me from where he lounged, one bandaged arm
stretched above his head, in the deck-chair.
"I should think, as an engaged man, you ought to be getting
impervious by this time."
"I am. Don't you worry!"
Over the lawn, through the warm-scented dusk, came Mary's voice from
the porch.
"Austin!" she called. "Dick! Are you three going to sit there all
night?"
Herrick moved away.
"Come on," he said over his shoulder. "Supper is ready, and I won't
risk being told again that I monopolize you all the day!"