"It's nothing to be upset about," I tried to comfort her.
"Not be upset!" She sat straight up, and in the light of the fire I
could see a single pained line between her brows, deep and sharp as a
chisel-gash. "Not when I almost turned into a beast!"
"How much of that do you remember?" I asked her.
"I was foggy in my mind, Talbot, almost as at the séance, but I
remember being drawn--drawn to what was waiting out there." Her eyes
sought the thickets on the far side of our blaze. "And it didn't seem
horrible, but pleasant and welcome and--well, as if it were my kind.
You," and she glanced quickly at me, then ashamedly away, "you were
suddenly strange and to be avoided."
"Is that all?"
"It spoke to me," she went on in husky horror, "and I spoke to it."
I forbore to remind her that the only sound she had uttered was a
wordless howl. Perhaps she did not know that--I hoped not. We said no
more for another awkward time.
Finally she mumbled, "I'm not the kind of woman who cries easily; but
I'd like to now."
"Go ahead," I said at once, and she did, and I let her. Whether I took
her into my arms, or whether she came into them of her own accord, I do
not remember exactly; but it was against my shoulder that she finished
her weeping, and when she had finished she did feel better.
"That somehow washed the fog and the fear out of me," she confessed,
almost brightly.
It must have been a full hour later that rustlings rose yet again in
the timber. So frequently had my imagination tricked me that I did
not so much as glance up. Then Susan gave a little startled cry, and
I sprang to my feet. Beyond the fire a tall, gray shape had become
visible, with a pale glare of light around it.
"Don't be alarmed," called a voice I knew. "It is I--Otto Zoberg."
"Doctor!" I cried, and hurried to meet him. For the first time in my
life, I felt that he was a friend. Our differences of opinion, once
making companionship strained, had so dwindled to nothing in comparison
to the danger I faced, and his avowed trust in me as innocent of murder.
"How are you?" I said, wringing his hand. "They say you were hurt by
the mob."
"_Ach_, it was nothing serious," he reassured me. "Only this." He
touched with his forefinger an eye, and I could see that it was bruised
and swollen half shut. "A citizen with too ready a fist and too slow a
mind has that to answer for."
"I'm partly responsible," I said. "You were trying to help me, I
understand, when it happened."
* * * * *
More noise behind him, and two more shapes pushed into the clearing. I
recognized Judge Pursuivant, nodding to me with his eyes bright under
his wide hat-brim. The other man, angular, falcon-faced, one arm in a
sling, I had also seen before. It was Constable O'Bryant. I spoke to
him, but he gazed past me, apparently not hearing.
Doctor Zoberg saw my perplexed frown, and he turned back toward the
constable. Snapping long fingers in front of the great hooked nose,
he whistled shrilly. O'Bryant started, grunted, then glared around as
though he had been suddenly and rudely awakened.
"What's up?" he growled menacingly, and his sound hand moved swiftly to
a holster at his side. Then his eyes found me, and with an oath he drew
his revolver.
"Easy, Constable! Easy does it," soothed Judge Pursuivant, his own
great hand clutching O'Bryant's wrist. "You've forgotten that I showed
how Mr. Wills must be innocent."
"I've forgotten what we're here for at all," snapped O'Bryant, gazing
around the clearing. "Hey, have I been drunk or something? I said that
I'd never----"
"I'll explain," offered Zoberg. "The judge met me in town, and we came
together to see you. Remember? You said you would like to avenge your
brother's death, and came with us. Then, when you balked at the very
edge of this Devil's Croft, I took the liberty of hypnotizing you."
"Huh? How did you do that?" growled the officer.
"With a look, a word, a motion of the hand," said Zoberg, his eyes
twinkling. "Then you ceased all objections and came in with us."
Pursuivant clapped O'Bryant on the unwounded shoulder. "Sit down," he
invited, motioning toward the roots of the tree.
The five of us gathered around the fire, like picknickers instead of
allies against a supernormal monster. There, at Susan's insistence,
I told of what had happened since Judge Pursuivant had left us. All
listened with rapt attention, the constable grunting occasionally, the
judge clicking his tongue, and Doctor Zoberg in absolute silence.
It was Zoberg who made the first comment after I had finished. "This
explains many things," he said.
"It don't explain a doggone thing," grumbled O'Bryant.
Zoberg smiled at him, then turned to Judge Pursuivant. "Your
ectoplasmic theory of lycanthropy--such as you have explained it to
me--is most interesting and, I think, valid. May I advance it a trifle?"
"In what way?" asked the judge.
"Ectoplasm, as you see it, forms the werewolf by building upon the
medium's body. But is not ectoplasm more apt, according to the
observations of many people, to draw completely away and form a
separate and complete thing of itself? The thing may be beastly, as you
suggest. Algernon Blackwood, the English writer of psychic stories,
almost hits upon it in one of his 'John Silence' tales. He described an
astral personality taking form and threatening harm while its physical
body slept."
"I know the story you mean," agreed Judge Pursuivant. "_The Camp of the
Dog_, I think it's called."
"Very well, then. Perhaps, while Miss Susan's body lay in a trance,
securely handcuffed between Wills and myself----"
"Oh!" wailed Susan. "Then it was I, after all."
"It couldn't have been you," I told her at once.
"But it was! And, while I was at the judge's home with you, part of me
met the constable's brother in this wood." She stared wildly around her.
"It might as well have been part of _me_," I argued, and O'Bryant
glared at me as if in sudden support of that likelihood. But Susan
shook her head.
"No, for which of us responded to the call of that thing out there?"
For the hundredth time she gazed fearfully through the fire at the
bushes behind which the commanding whine had risen.
"I have within me," she said dully, "a nature that will break out, look
and act like a beast-demon, will kill even my beloved father----"
"Please," interjected Judge Pursuivant earnestly, "you must not take
responsibility upon yourself for what happened. If the ectoplasm
engendered by you made up the form of the killer, the spirit may have
come from without."
"How could it?" she asked wretchedly.
"How could Marthe Beraud exude ectoplasm that formed a bearded,
masculine body?" Pursuivant looked across to Zoberg. "Doctor, you
surely know the famous 'Bien Boa' séance, and how the materialized
entity spoke Arabic when the medium, a Frenchwoman, knew little or
nothing of that language?"
Zoberg sat with bearded chin on lean hand. His joined brows bristled
the more as he corrugated his forehead in thought. "We are each a
thousand personalities," he said, sententiously if not comfortingly.
"How can we rule them all, or rule even one of them?"
* * * * *
O'Bryant said sourly that all this talk was too high flown for him to
understand or to enjoy. He dared hope, however, that the case could
never be tied up to Miss Susan Gird, whom he had known and liked since
her babyhood.
"It can never do that," Zoberg said definitely. "No court or jury would
convict her on the evidence we are offering against her."
I ventured an opinion: "While you are attempting to show that Susan is
a werewolf, you are forgetting that something else was prowling around
our fire, just out of sight."
"_Ach_, just out of sight!" echoed Zoberg. "That means you aren't sure
what it was."
"Or even that there was anything," added Susan, so suddenly and
strongly that I, at least, jumped.
"There was something, all right," I insisted. "I heard it."
"You thought you heard a sound behind the tree," Susan reminded me.
"You looked, and there was nothing."
Everyone gazed at me, rather like staid adults at a naughty child. I
said, ungraciously, that my imagination was no better than theirs, and
that I was no easier to frighten. Judge Pursuivant suggested that we
make a search of the surrounding woods, for possible clues.
"A good idea," approved Constable O'Bryant. "The ground's damp. We
might find some sort of footprints."
"Then you stay here with Miss Susan," the judge said to him. "We others
will circle around."
The gaunt constable shook his head. "Not much, mister. I'm in on
whatever searching is done. I've got something to settle with whatever
killed my kid brother."
"But there are only three lanterns," pointed out Judge Pursuivant. "We
have to carry them--light's our best weapon."
Zoberg then spoke up, rather diffidently, to say that he would be glad
to stay with Susan. This was agreed upon, and the other three of us
prepared for the search.
I took the lantern from Zoberg's hand, nodded to the others, and walked
away among the trees.
_14. "I Was--I Am--a Wolf."_
Deliberately I had turned my face toward the section beyond the
fire, for, as I have said repeatedly, it was there that I had heard
the movements and cries of the being that had so strongly moved and
bewitched Susan. My heart whispered rather loudly that I must look for
myself at its traces or lack of them, or for ever view myself with
scorn.
Almost at once I found tracks, the booted tracks of my three allies.
Shaking my lantern to make it flare higher, I went deeper among the
clumps, my eyes quartering the damp earth. After a few moments I found
what I had come to look for.
The marks were round and rather vague as to toe-positions, yet not so
clear-cut as to be made by hoofs. Rather they suggested a malformed
stump or a palm with no fingers, and they were deep enough to denote
considerable weight; the tracks of my own shoes, next to them, were
rather shallower. I bent for a close look, then straightened up, looked
everywhere at once, and held my torch above my head to shed light all
around; for I had suddenly felt eyes upon me.
I caught just a glimpse as of two points of light, fading away into
some leafage and in the direction of the clearing, and toward them I
made my way; but there was nothing there, and the only tracks underfoot
were of shod human beings, myself or one of the others. I returned to
my outward search, following the round tracks.
They were plainly of only two feet--there were no double impressions,
like those of a quadruped--but I must have stalked along them for ten
minutes when I realized that I had no way of telling whether they
went forward or backward. I might be going away from my enemy instead
of toward it. A close examination did me little good, and I further
pondered that the creature would lurk near the clearing, not go so
straight away. Thus arguing within myself, I doubled back.
Coming again close to the starting-point, I thought of a quick visit to
the clearing and a comforting word or two with Susan and Zoberg. Surely
I was almost there; but why did not the fire gleam through the trees?
Were they out of wood? Perplexed, I quickened my pace. A gnarled tree
grew in my path, its low branches heavily bearded with vines. Beyond
this rose only the faintest of glows. I paused to push aside some
strands and peer.
The fire had almost died, and by its light I but half saw two figures,
one tall and one slender, standing together well to one side. They
faced each other, and the taller--a seeming statue of wet-looking
gray--held its companion by a shoulder. The other gray hand was
stroking the smaller one's head, pouring grayness thereon.
I saw only this much, without stopping to judge or to wonder. Then I
yelled, and sprang into the clearing. At my outcry the two fell apart
and faced me. The smallest was Susan, who took a step in my direction
and gave a little smothered whimper, as though she was trying to speak
through a blanket. I ran to her side, and with a rough sweep of my
sleeve I cleared from her face and head a mass of slimy, shiny jelly.
"You!" I challenged the other shape. "What have you been trying to do
to her?"
For only a breathing-space it stood still, as featureless and clumsy as
a half-formed figure of gray mud. Then darkness sprang out upon it, and
hair. Eyes blazed at me, green and fearsome. A sharp muzzle opened to
emit a snarl.
"Now I know you," I hurled at it. "I'm going to kill you."
And I charged.
Claws ripped at my head, missed and tore the cloth of my coat. One
of my arms shot around a lean, hairy middle with powerful muscles
straining under its skin, and I drove my other fist for where I judged
the pit of the stomach to be. Grappled, we fell and rolled over. The
beast smell I remembered was all about us, and I knew that jaws were
shoving once again at my throat. I jammed my forearm between them, so
far into the hinge of them that they could not close nor crush. My
other hand clutched the skin of the throat, a great loose fistful, drew
it taut and began to twist with all my strength. I heard a half-broken
yelp of strangled pain, felt a slackening of the body that struggled
against me, knew that it was trying to get away. But I managed to roll
on top, straddling the thing.
"You're not so good on defense," I panted, and brought my other hand
to the throat, for I had no other idea save to kill. Paws grasped and
tore at my wrists. There was shouting at my back, in Susan's voice and
several others. Hands caught me by the shoulders and tried to pull me
up and away.
"No!" I cried. "This is it, the werewolf!"
"It's Doctor Zoberg, you idiot," growled O'Bryant in my ear. "Come on,
let him up."
"Yes," added Judge Pursuivant, "it's Doctor Zoberg, as you say; but a
moment ago it was the monster we have been hunting."
I had been dragged upright by now, and so had Zoberg. He could only
choke and glare for the time being, his fingers to his half-crushed
throat. Pursuivant had moved within clutching distance of him, and was
eyeing him as a cat eyes a mouse.
"Like Wills, I only pretended to search, then doubled back to watch,"
went on the judge. "I saw Zoberg and Miss Susan talking. He spoke
quietly, rhythmically, commandingly. She went into half a trance, and
I knew she was hypnotized.
"As the fire died down, he began the change. Ectoplasm gushed out and
over him. Before it took form, he began to smear some upon her. And Mr.
Wills here came out of the woods and at him."
O'Bryant looked from the judge to Zoberg. Then he fumbled with his
undamaged hand in a hip pocket, produced handcuffs and stepped forward.
The accused man grinned through his beard, as if admitting defeat
in some trifling game. Then he held out his wrists with an air of
resignation and I, who had manacled them once, wondered again at their
corded strength. The irons clicked shut upon one, then the other.
"You know everything now," said Zoberg, in a soft voice but a steady
one. "I was--I am--a wolf; a wolf who hoped to mate with an angel."
His bright eyes rested upon Susan, who shrank back. Judge Pursuivant
took a step toward the prisoner.
"There is no need for you to insult her," he said.
Zoberg grinned at him, with every long tooth agleam. "Do you want to
hear my confession, or don't you?"
"Sure we want to hear it," grunted O'Bryant. "Leave him alone, judge,
and let him talk." He glanced at me. "Got any paper, Mr. Wills?
Somebody better take this down in writing."
I produced a wad of note-paper and a stub pencil. Placing it upon my
knee, with the lantern for light, I scribbled, almost word for word,
the tale that Doctor Zoberg told.
_15. "And That Is the End."_
"Perhaps I was born what I am," he began. "At least, even as a lad
I knew that there was a lust and a power for evil within me. Night
called to me, where it frightens most children. I would slip out of
my father's house and run for miles, under the trees or across fields,
with the moon for company. This was in Germany, of course, before the
war."
"During the war----" began Judge Pursuivant.
"During the war, when most men were fighting, I was in prison." Again
Zoberg grinned, briefly and without cheer. "I had found it easy and
inspiring to kill persons, with a sense of added strength following.
But they caught me and put me in what they called an asylum. I was
supposed to be crazy. They confined me closely, but I, reading books
in the library, grew to know what the change was that came upon me at
certain intervals. I turned my attention to it, and became able to
control the change, bringing it on or holding it off at will."
He looked at Susan again. "But I'm ahead of my story. Once, when I was
at school, I met a girl--an American student of science and philosophy.
She laughed at my wooing, but talked to me about spirits and psychical
phenomena. That, my dear Susan, was your mother. When the end of the
war brought so many new things, it also brought a different viewpoint
toward many inmates of asylums. Some Viennese doctors, and later
Sigmund Freud himself, found my case interesting. Of course, they
did not arrive at the real truth, or they would not have procured my
release."
"After that," I supplied, writing swiftly, "you became an expert
psychical investigator and journeyed to America."
"Yes, to find the girl who had once laughed and studied with me. After
some years I came to this town, simply to trace the legend of this
Devil's Croft. And here, I found, she had lived and died, and left
behind a daughter that was her image."
Judge Pursuivant cleared his throat. "I suspect that you're leaving out
part of your adventures, Doctor."
Zoberg actually laughed. "_Ja_, I thought to spare you a few shocks.
But if you will have them, you may. I visited Russia--and in 1922 a
medical commission of the Soviet Union investigated several score
mysterious cases of peasants killed--and eaten." He licked his lips,
like a cat who thinks of meat. "In Paris I founded and conducted a
rather interesting night school, for the study of diabolism in its
relationship to science. And in 1936, certain summer vacationists on
Long Island were almost frightened out of their wits by a lurking thing
that seemed half beast, half man." He chuckled. "Your _Literary Digest_
made much of it. The lurking thing was, of course, myself."
We stared. "Say, why do you do these things?" the constable blurted.
Zoberg turned to him, head quizzically aslant. "Why do you uphold your
local laws? Or why does Judge Pursuivant study ancient philosophies?
Or why do Wills and Susan turn soft eyes upon each other? Because the
heart of each so insists."
Susan was clutching my arm. Her fingers bit into my flesh as Zoberg's
eyes sought her again.
"I found the daughter of someone I once loved," he went on, with real
gentleness in his voice. "Wills, at least, can see in her what I saw. A
new inspiration came to me, a wish and a plan to have a comrade in my
secret exploits."
"A beast-thing like yourself?" prompted the judge.
Zoberg nodded. "A _lupa_ to my _lupus_. But this girl--Susan Gird--had
not inherited the psychic possibilities of her mother."
"What!" I shouted. "You yourself said that she was the greatest medium
of all time!"
"I did say so. But it was a lie."
"Why, in heaven's name----"
"It was my hope," he broke in quietly, "to make of her a medium, or a
lycanthrope--call the phenomenon which you will. Are you interested in
my proposed method?" He gazed mockingly around, and his eyes rested
finally upon me. "Make full notes, Wills. This will be interesting, if
not stupefying, to the psychic research committees.
"It is, as you know, a supernormal substance that is exuded to change
the appearance of my body. What, I wondered, would some of that
substance do if smeared upon her?"
I started to growl out a curse upon him, but Judge Pursuivant, rapt,
motioned for me to keep silent.
"Think back through all the demonologies you have read," Zoberg was
urging. "What of the strange 'witch ointments' that, spread over an
ordinary human body, gave it beast-form and beast-heart? There, again,
legend had basis in scientific fact."
[Illustration: "The strange witch ointments gave it beast-form and
beast-heart."]
"By the thunder, you're logical," muttered Judge Pursuivant.
"And damnable," I added. "Go on, Doctor. You were going to smear the
change-stuff upon Susan."
"But first, I knew, I must convince her that she had within her the
essence of a wolf. And so, the séances."
"She was no medium," I said again.
"I made her think she was. I hypnotized her, and myself did weird
wonders in the dark room. But she, in a trance, did not know. I needed
witnesses to convince her."
"So you invited Mr. Wills," supplied Judge Pursuivant.
"Yes, and her father. They had been prepared to accept her as medium
and me as observer. Seeing a beast-form, they would tell her afterward
that it was she."
"Zoberg," I said between set teeth, "you're convicted out of your own
mouth of rottenness that convinces me of the existence of the Devil
after whom this grove was named. I wish to heaven that I'd killed you
when we were fighting."
"_Ach_, Wills," he chuckled, "you'd have missed this most entertaining
autobiographical lecture."
"He's right," grumbled O'Bryant; and, "Let him go on," the judge
pleaded with me.
* * * * *
"Once sure of this power within her," Zoberg said deeply, "she would
be prepared in heart and soul to change at touch of the ointment--the
ectoplasm. Then, to me she must turn as a fellow-creature. Together,
throughout the world, adventuring in a way unbelievable----"
His voice died, and we let it. He stood in the firelight, head thrown
back, manacled hands folded. He might have been a martyr instead of a
fiend for whom a death at the stake would be too easy.
"I can tell what spoiled the séance," I told him after a moment. "Gird,
sitting opposite, saw that it was you, not Susan, who had changed. You
had to kill him to keep him from telling, there and then."
"Yes," agreed Zoberg. "After that, you were arrested, and, later,
threatened. I was in an awkward position. Susan must believe herself,
not you, guilty. That is why I have championed you throughout. I went
then to look for you."
"And attacked me," I added.
"The beast-self was ascendant. I cannot always control it completely."
He sighed. "When Susan disappeared, I went to look for her on the
second evening. When I came into this wood, the change took place,
half automatically. Associations, I suppose. Constable, your brother
happened upon me in an evil hour."
"Yep," said O'Bryant gruffly.
"And that is the end," Zoberg said. "The end of the story and, I
suppose, the end of me."
"You bet it is," the constable assured him. "You came with the judge to
finish your rotten work. But we're finishing it for you."
"One moment," interjected Judge Pursuivant, and his fire-lit face
betrayed a perplexed frown. "The story fails to explain one important
thing."
"Does it so?" prompted Zoberg, inclining toward him with a show of
negligent grace.
"If you were able to free yourself and kill Mr. Gird----"
"By heaven, that's right!" I broke in. "You were chained, Zoberg, to
Susan and to your chair. I'd go bail for the strength and tightness of
those handcuffs."
He grinned at each of us in turn and held out his hands with their
manacles. "Is it not obvious?" he inquired.
We looked at him, a trifle blankly I suppose, for he chuckled once
again.
"Another employment of the ectoplasm, that useful substance of change,"
he said gently. "At will my arms and legs assume thickness, and hold
the rings of the confining irons wide. Then, when I wish, they grow
slender again, and----"
He gave his hands a sudden flirt, and the bracelets fell from them on
the instant. He pivoted and ran like a deer.
"Shoot!" cried the judge, and O'Bryant whipped the big gun from his
holster.
Zoberg was almost within a vine-laced clump of bushes when O'Bryant
fired. I heard a shrill scream, and saw Zoberg falter and drop to his
hands and knees.
We were all starting forward. I paused a moment to put Susan behind
me, and in that moment O'Bryant and Pursuivant sprang ahead and came
up on either side of Zoberg. He was still alive, for he writhed up to
a kneeling position and made a frantic clutch at the judge's coat.
O'Bryant, so close that he barely raised his hand and arm, fired a
second time.
Zoberg spun around somehow on his knees, stiffened and screamed.
Perhaps I should say that he howled. In his voice was the inarticulate
agony of a beast wounded to death. Then he collapsed.
Both men stooped above him, cautious but thorough in their examination.
Finally Judge Pursuivant straightened up and faced toward us.
"Keep Miss Susan there with you," he warned me. "He's dead, and not a
pretty sight."
Slowly they came back to us. Pursuivant was thoughtful, while O'Bryant,
Zoberg's killer, seemed cheerful for the first time since I had
met him. He even smiled at me, as Punch would smile after striking
a particularly telling blow with his cudgel. Rubbing his pistol
caressingly with his palm, he stowed it carefully away.
"I'm glad that's over," he admitted. "My brother can rest easy in his
grave."
"And we have our work cut out for us," responded the judge. "We must
decide just how much of the truth to tell when we make a report."
O'Bryant dipped his head in sage acquiescence. "You're right," he
rumbled. "Yes, sir, you're right."
"Would you believe me," said the judge, "if I told you that I knew it
was Zoberg, almost from the first?"
But Susan and I, facing each other, were beyond being surprized, even
at that.