"I know, you didn't say it, but again I anticipated you. So it's not
the thought of her possible unconscious crime, but the chance of
comfortable companionship that perplexes you." He stopped laughing
suddenly. "I'm sorry, Wills. Forgive me. I shouldn't laugh at this, or
indeed at any aspect of the whole very serious business."
I could hardly take real offense at the man who had rescued and
sheltered me, and I said so. We finished breakfast, and he sought his
overcoat and wide hat.
"I'm off for town again," he announced. "There are one or two points
to be settled there, for your safety and my satisfaction. Do you mind
being left alone? There's an interesting lot of books in my study. You
might like to look at a copy of Dom Calmet's _Dissertations_, if you
read French; also a rather slovenly _Wicked Bible_, signed by Pierre
De Lancre. J. W. Wickwar, the witchcraft authority, thinks that such a
thing does not exist, but I know of two others. Or, if you feel that
you're having enough of demonology in real life, you will find a whole
row of light novels, including most of P. G. Wodehouse." He held out
his hand in farewell. "William will get you anything you want. There's
tobacco and a choice of pipes on my desk. Whisky, too, though you don't
look like the sort that drinks before noon."
With that he was gone, and I watched him from the window. He moved
sturdily across the bright snow to a shed, slid open its door and
entered. Soon there emerged a sedan, old but well-kept, with the judge
at the wheel. He drove away down a snow-filled road toward town.
I did not know what to envy most in him, his learning, his assurance or
his good-nature. The assurance, I decided once; then it occurred to me
that he was in nothing like the awkward position I held. He was only
a sympathetic ally--but why was he that, even? I tried to analyze his
motives, and could not.
* * * * *
Sitting down in his study, I saw on the desk the Montague Summers
book on werewolves. It lay open at page 111, and my eyes lighted at
once upon a passage underscored in ink--apparently some time ago, for
the mark was beginning to rust a trifle. It included a quotation from
_Restitution of Decayed Intelligence_, written by Richard Rowlands in
1605:
"... _werewolves_ are certaine sorcerers, who hauvin annoynted their
bodyes, with an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the deuil;
and putting on a certain inchanted girdel, do not only vnto the view of
others seeme as wolues, but to their own thinking haue both the shape
and the nature of wolues, so long as they weare the said girdel. And
they do dispose theselves as uery wolues, in wurrying and killing, and
moste of humaine creatures."
This came to the bottom of the page, where someone, undoubtedly
Pursuivant, had written: "Ointment and girdle sound as if they might
have a scientific explanation." And, in the same script, but smaller,
the following notes filled the margin beside: