He, too, hesitated, staring at me sidewise. "I think it is blue," he
offered at length.
"Go to the head of the class," I grumbled. "I rather expected you to
guess red--that's most obvious."
"But I was not guessing," he assured me. "A flash of blue came before
my mind's eye. Come, let us try another time."
We continued the experiment for a while. Zoberg was not always
correct, but he was surprizingly close in nearly every case. The most
interesting results were with the names of persons, and Zoberg achieved
some rather mystifying approximations. Thus, when I was thinking of
the actor Boris Karloff, he gave me the name of the actor Bela Lugosi.
Upon my thinking of Gilbert K. Chesterton, he named Chesterton's close
friend Hilaire Belloc, and my concentration on George Bernard Shaw
brought forth a shout of "Santa Claus." When I reiterated my charge of
psychological trickery and besought him to teach me his method, he grew
actually angry and did not speak for more than half an hour. Then he
began to discuss our destination.
"A most amazing community," he pronounced. "It is old--one of the
oldest inland towns of all America. Wait until you see the houses, my
friend. You can almost hear the ghosts within them, in broad daylight.
And their Devil's Croft, that is worth seeing, too."
"Their what?"
He shook his head, as though in despair. "And you set yourself up as an
authority on occultism!" he sniffed. "Next you will admit that you have
never heard of the Druids. A Devil's Croft, my dull young friend, used
to be part of every English or Scots village. The good people would set
aside a field for Satan, so that he would not take their own lands."
"And this settlement has such a place?"
"_Ja wohl_, a grove of the thickest timber ever seen in this
over-civilized country, and hedged in to boot. I do not say that they
believe, but it is civic property and protected by special order from
trespassers."
"I'd like to visit that grove," I said.
"I pray you!" he cried, waving in protest. "Do not make us unwelcome."
* * * * *
We arrived shortly before noon. The little town rests in a circular
hollow among high wooded hills, and there is not a really good road
into it, for two or three miles around. After listening to Zoberg, I
had expected something grotesque or forbidding, but I was disappointed.
The houses were sturdy and modest, in some cases poor. The greater part
of them made a close-huddled mass, like a herd of cattle threatened by
wolves, with here and there an isolated dwelling like an adventuresome
young fighting-bull. The streets were narrow, crooked and unpaved, and
for once in this age I saw buggies and wagons outnumbering automobiles.
The central square, with a two-story town hall of red brick and a
hideous cast-iron war memorial, still boasted numerous hitching-rails,
brown with age and smooth with use. There were few real signs of modern
progress. For instance, the drug store was a shabby clapboard affair
with "Pharmacy" painted upon its windows, and it sold only drugs, soda
and tobacco; while the one hotel was low and rambling and bore the
title "Luther Inn." I heard that the population was three hundred and
fifty, but I am inclined to think it was closer to three hundred.
We drew up in front of the Luther Inn, and a group of roughly dressed
men gazed at us with the somewhat hostile interrogation that often
marks a rural American community at the approach of strangers. These
men wore mail-order coats of corduroy or suede--the air was growing
nippier by the minute--and plow shoes or high laced boots under
dungaree pants. All of them were of Celtic or Anglo-Saxon type.
"Hello!" cried Zoberg jovially. "I see you there, my friend Mr. Gird.
How is your charming daughter?"
The man addressed took a step forward from the group on the porch. He
was a raw-boned, grizzled native with pale, pouched eyes, and was a
trifle better dressed than the others, in a rather ministerial coat of
dark cloth and a wide black hat. He cleared his throat before replying.
"Hello, Doctor. Susan's well, thanks. What do you want of us?"
It was a definite challenge, that would repel or anger most men, but
Zoberg was not to be denied. He scrambled out of the car and cordially
shook the hand of the man he had called Mr. Gird. Meanwhile he spoke in
friendly fashion to one or two of the others.
"And here," he wound up, "is a very good friend of mine, Mr. Talbot
Wills."
All eyes--and very unfriendly eyes they were, as a whole--turned upon
me. I got out slowly, and at Zoberg's insistence shook hands with Gird.
Finally the grizzled man came with us to the car.
"I promised you once," he said glumly to Zoberg, "that I would let you
and Susan dig as deeply as you wanted to into this matter of spirits.
I've often wished since that I hadn't, but my word was never broken
yet. Come along with me; Susan is cooking dinner, and there'll be
enough for all of us."
He got into the car with us, and as we drove out of the square and
toward his house he conversed quietly with Zoberg and me.
"Yes," he answered one of my questions, "the houses are old, as you can
see. Some of them have stood since the Revolutionary War with England,
and our town's ordinances have stood longer than that. You aren't the
first to be impressed, Mr. Wills. Ten years ago a certain millionaire
came and said he wanted to endow us, so that we would stay as we are.
He had a lot to say about native color and historical value. We told
him that we would stay as we are without having to take money from him,
or from anybody else for that matter."
* * * * *
Gird's home was large but low, all one story, and of darkly painted
clapboards over heavy timbers. The front door was hung on the most
massive hand-wrought hinges. Gird knocked at it, and a slender,
smallish girl opened to us.
She wore a woolen dress, as dark as her father's coat, with white at
the neck and wrists. Her face, under masses of thunder-black hair,
looked Oriental at first glance, what with high cheek-bones and eyes
set aslant; then I saw that her eyes were a bright gray like worn
silver, and her skin rosy, with a firm chin and a generous mouth. The
features were representatively Celtic, after all, and I wondered for
perhaps the fiftieth time in my life if there was some sort of blood
link between Scot and Mongol. Her hand, on the brass knob of the door,
showed as slender and white as some evening flower.
"Susan," said Gird, "here's Doctor Zoberg. And this is his friend, Mr.
Wills."
She smiled at Zoberg, then nodded to me, respectfully and rather shyly.
"My daughter," Gird finished the introduction. "Well, dinner must be
ready."
She led us inside. The parlor was rather plainer than in most
old-fashioned provincial houses, but it was comfortable enough.
Much of its furniture would have delighted antique dealers, and one
or two pieces would have impressed museum directors. The dining-room
beyond had plate-racks on the walls and a long table of dark wood,
with high-backed chairs. We had some fried ham, biscuits, coffee and
stewed fruit that must have been home-canned. Doctor Zoberg and Gird
ate heartily, talking of local trifles, but Susan Gird hardly touched
her food. I, watching her with stealthy admiration, forgot to take more
than a few mouthfuls.
After the repast she carried out the dishes and we men returned to the
parlor. Gird faced us.
"You're here for some more hocus-pocus?" he hazarded gruffly.
"For another séance," amended Zoberg, suave as ever.
"Doctor," said Gird, "I think this had better be the last time."
Zoberg held out a hand in pleading protest, but Gird thrust his own
hands behind him and looked sternly stubborn. "It's not good for the
girl," he announced definitely.
"But she is a great medium--greater than Eusapia Paladino, or Daniel
Home," Zoberg argued earnestly. "She is an important figure in the
psychic world, lost and wasted here in this backwater----"
"Please don't miscall our town," interrupted Gird. "Well, Doctor, I
agree to a final séance, as you call it. But I'm going to be present."
Zoberg made a gesture as of refusal, but I sided with Gird.
"If this is to be my test, I want another witness," I told Zoberg.
"_Ach!_ If it is a success, you will say that he helped to deceive."
"Not I. I'll arrange things so there will be no deception."
Both Zoberg and Gird stared at me. I wondered which of them was the
more disdainful of my confidence.
Then Susan Gird joined us, and for once I wanted to speak of other
subjects than the occult.
_3. "That Thing Isn't My Daughter----"_
It was Zoberg who suggested that I take Susan Gird for a relaxing drive
in my car. I acclaimed the idea as a brilliant one, and she, thanking
me quietly, put on an archaic-seeming cloak, black and heavy. We left
her father and Zoberg talking idly and drove slowly through the town.
She pointed out to me the Devil's Croft of which I had heard from the
doctor, and I saw it to be a grove of trees, closely and almost rankly
set. It stood apart from the sparser timber on the hills, and around it
stretched bare fields. Their emptiness suggested that all the capacity
for life had been drained away and poured into that central clump. No
road led near to it, and I was obliged to content myself by idling the
car at a distance while we gazed and she talked.
"It's evergreen, of course," I said. "Cedar and a little juniper."
"Only in the hedge around it," Susan Gird informed me. "It was planted
by the town council about ten years ago."