The horse thudded ponderously up the road.
“How did Westcott shoot himself?” asked Dreeme suddenly.
The boy turned his thin face and green eyes over his small hunched
shoulder, opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it firmly.
“I calculate that he’ll tell you that,” he finally answered. He kicked
ferociously at the horse’s ribs with his small bare feet.
A few drops of rain dashed against Dreeme’s face. It was
extraordinarily dark now for the moon had disappeared, swallowed up in
the soundless rain-cloud that stretched across the sky like a monstrous
sable circus-tent. More by sense than anything else the young doctor
knew that he had passed the old burned mill and an instant later the
horse clattered across the small wooden bridge which spanned the narrow
Saccarac River. He was now on the final stretch of dirt-road leading
to the Westcott farm. This route was exceedingly familiar to Dreeme
for he traversed it often, going either to some farm or to the larger
town of Leeminster where there was a bank, a stone school-house, a
deserted gin-distillery crumbling to ruin, and a small court-house. The
road turned in a great slow arc and was bordered by low stone fences,
dejected and wrecked by weather into wide breaches at intervals.
Between the roadway and the feeble barriers grew occasional clumps of
birch trees and beneath them in season bloomed the dusty black-eyed
Susans and asthma-compelling golden-rod. Behind the fences stretched
the ploughed fields and grass meadows of the various small farms, all
of them sloping downward for the Marlborough-Leeminster road progressed
along a ridge. A faint mingled smell of piled dung, rotting hay and
skinny poultry permeated the air. Dreeme knew the territory well enough
by day. The white-washed houses, set well back from the road and a
story more in the rear than they were in front because of the ground
slope, lifted tilted smoking chimneys. Dogs, cursed with legions of
perpetually active fleas, barked from sagging porches and blear-eyed
cocks crowed in the wire-enclosures behind the long lurching kitchens
that seemed to have been added as afterthoughts to the dispirited
houses. Some of these dwellings were astonishingly old and even the
white-wash failed to conceal their dejected venerability. The doors
and windows, sunken by the years as though Time had leaned on the
lintels and sills with a heavy elbow, leered like the features of a
twisted face. All this was in the daytime. At night a profound darkness
enveloped these staggering structures. There were no lights in the
small opaque windows, nothing but the blank glow of the moon and stars.
The farmers of Marlborough sought their beds at an early hour, and the
candles and kerosene oil which still sufficed for illumination cost
money. Only when the moon was at its brightest did the houses step
somewhat out of their brooding night shadow and turn the incurious
eyes of their windows toward the curving road. Then they seemed to
squat like an unfriendly array of old crones in soiled white wrappers,
watching the highway along which so many strange figures had passed
since the first mysterious settlers arrived in the valley and found
it a likely place wherein to raise their hewn log-houses and their
solitary mill.
The horse stopped suddenly and Dreeme, surmising that he had reached
his journey’s end, slipped to the ground, his feet clattering on
loose pebbles as he maintained his balance. A long ominous growl
immediately before him greeted his footsteps and he drew back with some
trepidation. He knew all about the half-savage dogs that patrolled
the farm-yards at night. The boy hurried by him and there was a sound
of poles being pulled out of their sockets at a gateway. A cold damp
snout thrust itself against Dreeme’s hand just as the boy hissed an
unintelligible phrase and an instant later there was the sound of
a heavy body forcing its way through the bushes which lined the
road. Dreeme knew that the dog was watching him from a distance with
savage curiosity. The boy came back and grasped the rope that served
for bridle on the horse. “This is the way, doctor,” he said. “Don’t
be afraid of the dog.” They stumbled through what was apparently an
aperture in the fence and followed a twisted and hummocky path. Dreeme
tripped over unsuspected hollows and small jutting boulders until they
circled the dark bulk of the house and were at a rear door. A few
drops of rain pattered against his face as he looked up at the rear
windows. It was curious that he could perceive no least vestige of
light emanating from the blank panes. The building stood morosely in
a pool of high trees and this intensified the darkness about it. At
the door the boy knocked delicately, his thin knuckles playing upon
the splintered woodwork, and, after a moment, while Dreeme felt very
foolish and slightly startled, there were a few whispered words with
some invisible personage who had shot back a series of bolts. The brief
beam of a candle leaped across the doctor’s face and he felt himself
urged forward and into a room where the shadows fled sluggishly before
the feeble whiplash of light from the cylinder of wax. There was a
rattling sound as the bolts were shot and Dreeme knew that he was
locked in the Westcott farm-house.
Clutching his black bag, he stared curiously about him but all that he
could perceive was a simply furnished room, the usual “sitting room”
of a farm-house with its few stuffed chairs, its wax flowers under
glass on a side table, its faded family pictures, a framed silver
plate from a coffin, and an antiquated spinning wheel that squatted
forlornly in a corner. Before him stood a stocky figure holding a fat
candle in one hand and directing him toward an opposite door with the
other. The meager flame from the candle slanted back and illuminated
a deep red beard and two glassy eyes. Dreeme, his vision clearing in
the feeble glow, noted that his companion was evidently the hired man,
a burly figure absurdly short for his girth and garmented in dejected
looking blue overalls and a faded woolen shirt. This apparition was in
his stocking feet and he made no sound as he padded across the floor.
The hired man said nothing but cleared his throat with a choking sound
as though he were endeavoring to loosen unused vocal chords, and then,
apparently giving it up as something beyond his powers, proceeded
toward the door which he had indicated with an awkward flourish of a
square hairy hand. He rapped timidly at the door.
“Wagner?” cried a sharp voice from within.
Wagner opened the door a trifle, thrust in his shaggy red head, and
seemed to croak hoarsely.
“All right! All right!” the voice snapped immediately, and Wagner stood
back and motioned Doctor Dreeme toward the patch of yellow light that
poured through the half-opened door.