It was a small room into which Dreeme ventured and one in which the
walls seemed to push forward, an aspect intensified, perhaps, by the
tall lurching cases of books which surrounded the square table at
which Jeffrey Westcott sat. There were books everywhere, in the cases,
scattered over the table, and piled in slumping heaps on the floor.
The greater portion of them were huge tomes, bound in old buckrams,
in worm-eaten moroccos, or in yellow vellum. The dull gold lettering,
subdued in the glow of Westcott’s kerosene-lamp, seemed like the sleepy
half-shut eyes of somnolent beasts waiting patiently for the word of
the master who should bring them to life. But there was no word now.
They rested, these mysterious beasts of ancient knowledge, holding
their secrets close to their muted hearts. Dreeme paused just inside
the door staring about him in amazement.
An impatient exclamation roused him to his professional duties and he
turned toward Jeffrey Westcott, observing him closely for the first
time.
“Good evening or good morning,” remarked the man seated by the table.
“I have lost count of the hours, doctor.”
Westcott was a heavily-built man, smooth-faced, and with a shaven
head. This round skull, blue with an incipient growth of dark hair,
reminded Dreeme irresistibly of the tonsured cranium of some medieval
friar. It was curiously ridged in the center, as though the two sides
of the skull had been pressed together while molten and so joined,
leaving a cloven line where the bone had bulged upward on either side.
The ears were long and rose thin and prominent on either side of this
curious head. The broad brow slanted back at an obvious angle and the
chin, blue also with incipient hair, thrust forward aggressively,
the ensemble giving the impression of semi-malignant imperiousness.
Westcott’s nose was broken and this accident accentuated the curious
profile which he presented when he turned his head, a profile almost
ape-like but redeemed by a certain vitality of knowledge. His eyes,
large, coal-black and motionless, glittered dully, but it was not the
dull glitter of stupidity. Rather was it a repressed but unceasing
watchfulness that was somehow mocking in its semblance of indifference.
Dreeme was reminded of the eyes of a cat when it permits a bird to
flutter within a few feet of its curved claws.
“It is a very fine library, I assure you,” continued the farmer with a
casual flutter of one sun-burned hand toward the lurching cases. Dreeme
sensed a purring irony in the man’s voice. “I should like to show it
to you but just now I am somewhat inconvenienced by this cursed bullet
wound.”
Dreeme with a muttered apology, hurried forward fumbling at the catch
to his black bag.
“It is not often--at least in this part of the world--that one sees so
many books,” he said. “You must excuse me.”
His amazement was frank and he made no attempt to conceal it.
“You are freely pardoned,” replied the ironic voice.
The doctor knelt and began to remove the bloodstained bandage that
swathed the plump calf of the farmer.
“How did this happen?” he inquired as the wrapping slipped away and he
saw the black bullet-hole surrounded by a crusted clot of blood.
“Experiment,” returned Westcott shortly.
“Experiment?” echoed Dreeme questioningly, glancing up into the still
black eyes. Westcott reached deliberately for a cigar, drawing one from
the large box that stood on the table at his elbow. He said nothing but
stared blandly at the doctor as he lighted the long dark weed. Dreeme,
flushed and feeling foolish, turned back to his labor. He decided that
Westcott was an offensive brute.
“I want a pan of hot water,” he said, after inspecting the wound. “I
shall have to probe for the bullet. It may pain you a bit.”
He felt a moment’s elation at the idea of giving Westcott pain.
The farmer turned his head and shouted toward the door.
“Wagner!” he cried. “Wagner!”
In the short pause that ensued, Dreeme, still kneeling before the
stocky Westcott, studied the worn backs of the books in the case
opposite him. They seemed to emanate an atmosphere that was ominous.
There was something dark and forbidding about them, an intangible
suggestion of an evil culture. The crowding walls advanced stealthily,
bringing an aura of suffocation with them.
The farmer cursed softly and pleasantly to himself.
“My dear doctor,” he began, “I am afraid you will have to....”
“What is it, Jeff?” inquired a feminine voice, low and husky, behind
them.
Both men turned at this unexpected sound. Westcott was plainly put out
and for a moment his large eyes glittered angrily. Dreeme gazed upward
at the woman who had so quietly entered the room with a curiosity
which almost instantly merged into amazement. There are women who at a
first glance arrest the attention not so much by any ulterior beauty
or unique qualities of bearing as by an inward spirit which seems to
beat fiercely against the thin walls of flesh and strive vehemently
to liberate itself from its entangling disguises. These women may
not be beautiful in the fleshy sense of the word, but somehow they
achieve more than the semblance of beauty in the eyes of the sensitive
observer. Dreeme saw such a woman before him and knew instantly and
instinctively that it was not alone the comeliness of her features that
so casually and indifferently subdued and betrayed the deliberate
impartiality of his reason. He saw immediately an extraordinary
inward impulse that climbed in her bosom and all but trembled on her
blood-red mouth. It was her eyes and mouth that first seized his
imagination. These eyes were dark and they glowed beneath large white
lids that drooped somewhat as with the ennui of identical days. They
seemed endless in depth like half-concealed forest springs and yet a
quickening spark glimmered in these unfathomable lakes of hushed amber
fire. The mouth was full with curling lips almost archaic in their
contour, and Dreeme was vaguely reminded of his adolescent ideas of the
snaky-haired Medusa. There was a subtle cruelty in this mouth.
“I told you to stay in your own room, my dear helpful Martha,” said
Westcott, his chin thrusting forward, “but since you are here, permit
me to present my invaluable friend, Doctor--er--Dreeme, I think. This
is my wife, doctor.”
She did not glance toward Dreeme.
“Wagner has gone to the----” She left the sentence unfinished. “I
thought you would need hot water.”
“Your mind is always acute, Martha,” remarked Westcott, giving her a
malicious look. “And who sent Wagner to the----”
“I did,” she responded coolly, placing the basin of hot water on the
floor close by Dreeme who still remained on one knee gazing at her.
Westcott smiled sourly and turned to the doctor.
“Come, doctor,” he said. “You must be wanting to get back to your
comfortable bed.”
Dreeme flushed and turned confusedly to his labors.
For a moment there was silence.
“The age of amazement,” said Westcott softly to the air, “is worthy of
a study in itself. There are so many ways of considering it.”
He winced as the probe touched the raw flesh.
“Softly, doctor, softly,” he begged. “Now take the age of amazement as
it affects the individual. Is it not true, my dear doctor, that if we
knew why a man was amazed and each time that he was amazed we should
know a great deal about him?”
Dreeme, intent on his work, said nothing.
“The question is merely theoretical,” proceeded Westcott. “I do not
expect an answer. I, for my own part, mingle so seldom in the world of
men that I have but small opportunity to put my theory in practice but
whenever I do see a man I strive to observe his surprised reactions to
things. It tells me something about him.”
The bullet slipped from the wound and Dreeme busied himself for a
moment in washing the torn flesh. At length he looked up for the
silence seemed to invite him to speak, to carry on a conversation that
was rather meaningless. He stared into Westcott’s dark expressionless
eyes.
“And me?” he said, smiling. “What have you learned about me in the few
minutes that I have been here?”
Westcott was obviously waiting for the question.
“Your reactions of surprise were obvious,” he answered, cocking his
head on one side. He began to count the points off on his fingers.
“Number one. You were amazed at finding so excellent and unexpected a
library here. I gather from that that your idea of the literacy of this
part of the world is not high. I agree with you in the main--but there
are exceptions everywhere, doctor. You were also amazed at finding
in me a man not wholly a stranger to the subtleties of the mind. I
may be flattering myself in this assumption but I do not think so. In
other words, you had thought of me as a mysterious, surly, country
clodhopper.”
There was a soft snarl in his voice. Before Dreeme could expostulate he
went on with his enumeration.
“Number two. You were amazed to hear that my little wound was the
result of an experiment. It piqued a curiosity which, unfortunately for
you, I shall not satisfy.”
“I assure you, I----” began Dreeme stiffly, but the soft voice
proceeded.
“Number three. You were amazed to see my wife. Well, I hardly blame
you. She amazes me at times.”
Again the soft snarl permeated his voice.
Dreeme instinctively glanced at Mrs. Westcott. She was standing by a
small window gazing out on the darkness and he could see no more than
the cool oval of her face. She seemed to be looking upward toward the
rainy sky with a strained attentiveness that suggested the listener.
It was, perhaps, the rain to which she was listening, for Dreeme could
hear the soft gurgle and suck of the water as it dripped outside the
window. With a final skillful twist he fastened the new bandage about
Westcott’s calf and stood upright. The farmer looked at him calmly, his
lips slightly apart, and Dreeme could see the man’s long yellow teeth.
“I should say from the casual glimpse I have had of you,” remarked
Westcott, “that you are a capable doctor, a painstaking man, a
sensitive person perhaps a little stiff in reactions to unexpected
things, and an individual who must fight against the impulse of
being--well, not a busybody but one who is driven too far sometimes by
the itch of curiosity.”
Dreeme laughed aloud and picked up his bag. Absurdly enough, he could
feel the presence of Mrs. Westcott behind him, a presence like the
soft invisible approach of some great feline through the impenetrable
darkness of a forest.
“Your analysis is amusing,” he said. “But must I take it too seriously?”
“You must take it for what it is worth,” replied Westcott, fastening
his yellow teeth upon his cigar and puffing meditatively. “Be good
enough, my dear doctor, to send your little bill by mail. I can dress
the wound myself or have it done for me by ... Wagner.”
He looked up sharply, removing his cigar as the hint of a smile died
from his face.
“Doctor Dreeme,” he said. “I am a peculiar man. I am a student who has
found a secluded harborage. I do not care to make acquaintances. They
are unpleasant responsibilities and they deprive me of that leisure
which I owe to my researches. I live my own life in my own way. I do
not want to be disturbed by the curiosity of--er--neighbors.”
Dreeme bowed silently, his face flushed, and turned to the door. Yes,
he decided, Westcott was an offensive brute. The farmer smiled faintly,
his cloven head bending forward in the lamp-light.
“You must pardon my abruptness,” he remarked. “I am a solitary
anchorite except for my little circle and am not, perhaps, as courteous
as I should be.”
Dreeme said nothing. He could sense the faint mockery in the farmer’s
stiff speech.
“Will you show the doctor to the door?” said Westcott gently to his
wife.
She started from her attitude of rapt listening and turned toward
Dreeme, her heavy-lidded casual eyes flitting coolly across his face.
Then she moved slowly toward the door. Dreeme’s last picture of
Westcott was of a curiously cloven head suddenly bowed above a huge
tome. He could hear the soft rustling of Mrs. Westcott’s skirt as
she crossed the sitting room floor. His heart pounded rapidly as he
moved through the closeness of the room after her. It was as though a
strange drug that affected his breathing filled the air. He heard her
unbar the door, and, as it opened, a rush of cool rain-washed air swept
across his face bringing instant relief from the choked sensation that
had overpowered him in the room. It was still raining, a desultory and
gloomy patter that rattled on the trees and the tiny roof of the back
porch. The wet air was filled with the fresh scent of water and soaked
grass. Dreeme drew in long breaths of it as he stepped bare-headed into
the rain, wondering somewhat vaguely how he was to be conducted back to
town. Just as he was about to bid Mrs. Westcott good-by and was turning
toward her he felt her arm fall sharply against his shoulder.
“Do you hear anything?” she asked in her low husky voice.
He strained his ears in some surprise and for a moment in the patter
of rain he seemed to hear a thin rushing overhead as though a flock of
heavy-winged birds were beating through the night air. The sound swept
into nothingness so suddenly that he decided it was no more than the
blood beating in his own ears or the upper whir of the rain. It was as
though a door had been suddenly closed.
“No,” he answered, “I don’t hear anything but the rain.”
Her hand pressed against him and he could sense in the darkness the
soft rise and fall of her bosom. The blood started to race through his
pulses again and the choked feeling that had persisted during the
short space of time while they had crossed the dark room to the door
filled him. He felt his lips trembling as though with a faint palsy.
As he strained his eyes violently toward her he could dimly note the
outline of her face turned toward his and he knew that her heavy-lidded
eyes were wide open and fixed with a disturbing intensity upon him. Her
full blood-red lips moved slowly. Then her hand dropped from his arm,
and it was as though a strange power had been removed from him.
“Good-night,” she said in her low muffled tones.
The door closed softly and he heard the bolts being shot into place.
Still he stood there, knowing that she, too, was standing just on the
other side of the bolted door. After a moment’s pause he heard her
footsteps passing slowly and evenly through the room. Dreeme turned
to the rain, a bewildered smile at his own impressionability creeping
to his lips. At the same moment he heard Miles clucking to the horse.
Blundering through the dark, he stumbled toward the road. Before he
reached the gate it began to rain furiously, a heavy roaring down-pour
that soaked him to the skin.