I
As Dreeme, racing close at the heels of Walden Slater, circled the
Westcott farm-house, he glanced up curiously at the windows. There was
no light. The building gloomed in its cluster of trees just as it had
that first night when he had stumbled after the boy Miles along the
uneven path and entered through the back door. It was like a house of
the dead, a dwelling-place from which the rose-colored actualities of
living had long ago vanished. Around it, the tall dark trees kept their
somber watch, standing like ghostly sentinels. The spark of Walden
Slater’s lantern sent strange beasts of shadows scurrying into the
underbrush that lined the hummocky path. At the back door the farmer
set down his light and hammered upon the wood with the butt of his
revolver. The sound seemed to echo inside the house. It was like the
echo that comes from a musty tomb when the iron grille that guards its
dead from the living world is shaken. If there was anything in back of
the wood against which Walden Slater was hammering so vigorously, that
shape or being or spectre was standing mute.
“Of course not,” muttered the farmer. With a fierce kick of his
heavy boot he crashed the door open and it smashed against the wall
on broken hinges. The intruder entered slowly, holding the lantern
before him in one hand and grasping his cocked revolver in the other.
Dreeme followed at his heels. The small beam of light darted about the
room reflecting the stuffed chairs, the wax flowers under glass, the
photographic enlargements on the wall. Dreeme’s mind automatically
swept back to that time when he had followed Martha Westcott through
this room trembling from the magnetism of her strange personality.
Walden Slater circled the sitting room slowly, lifting his lantern to
view the pictures and examining the tables and the chairs. He seemed to
be looking for something, some hint that might indicate the direction
that he desired. “Uriah,” he muttered, pausing before one picture, a
particularly large and atrocious piece of workmanship that hung above
the wax flowers. Dreeme caught a glimpse of a glittering eye highly
touched by the painter’s art.
“What are we searching for?” he inquired. “Shouldn’t we get on?”
Walden Slater said nothing but strode toward the door that led to the
library. He kicked it open unceremoniously and entered and Dreeme
followed close at his heels. It was just as the young doctor remembered
it.
“Light the lamp,” said the farmer. Dreeme fumbled at the chimney
and wick, and an instant later the pale yellow glow illuminated the
room. The crowded book-stacks leaned forward, and the ancient volumes
seemed to watch the intruders speechlessly. The young doctor walked
impatiently about the table where he had once seen Jeffrey Westcott
seated. He felt that they were wasting time, that Deborah was confined
somewhere in some secret place from which she should be rescued as
speedily as possible. He wanted to say this to the farmer, to get him
started on the way to the place called Dagon, and yet he refrained
from speech, for Walden Slater was obviously looking for something.
He, too, circled the room, inspecting the backs of the books with a
swift and keen eye. Dreeme paused near one case and read a few faded
titles. “Certainty of Worlds of Spirits” by Richard Baxter. “De la
Démonomanie des Sorciers” par Jean Bodin. “Sadducismus Triumphatus” by
Joseph Glanvil. “Daemonolatria” by Nicholas Remigius. “Discourse of the
Subtill Practises of Devilles” by George Giffard. He turned abruptly to
the farmer.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“The goat’s head,” replied the farmer. He had ruffled through the
papers on Westcott’s table.
“Do you know what that means?” exclaimed Dreeme.
Walden Slater nodded.
“Be patient,” he said. “It’s the signal for the Esbat.”
He continued to rummage about the room.
Suddenly he snorted in triumph, and started for the door. Dreeme
followed close at his heels. The farmer, still holding his lantern,
turned a corner and they began to climb a narrow flight of stairs.
Behind them in the deserted library the oil-lamp perched precariously
on the corner of the table and quivered at each gust of rainy air that
swept through the window.
They wandered through two bedrooms, the feeble flare of the lantern
illuminating neatly-made beds, and came to a closed door that
apparently opened into a room on the rear of the house. Walden Slater,
employing his usual tactics, kicked it open and they entered into a
small chamber that was entirely unfurnished except for a raised stone
slab on three perpendicular pillars of granite in the corner. The
farmer made his way immediately toward this strange bit of furniture
and held his lantern over it, inspecting the corrugated surface of the
stone. Dreeme, standing beside him, saw dark stains on the slab and a
small keen-bladed knife that appeared more like a lancet than anything
else. The knife glittered in the ray of the lantern and the young
doctor was overwhelmed by a sudden fear. He stared wide-eyed at the
farmer, and Walden Slater’s long upper lip quivered in the dim light.
Dreeme struggled between an absorbed excitement in their discoveries
and his intense concern for Deborah’s safety. She was somewhere not
far from them, her mind a riot of fear, waiting frantically for him.
He was sure of that. But what had happened to her in the meantime,
during those hours (and he was not sure how many they had been, for the
taciturn farmer had vouchsafed no specific information on this point)
she had passed since Burroughs enticed or kidnapped her from the Slater
house, he could not even guess. If any harm had come to her (and his
heart nearly ceased beating at the thought) he would not leave the
valley until he had killed Jeffrey Westcott and George Burroughs. A
cold determination seemed to freeze the emotions in him as he came to
this decision. His thin lips tightened and his eyes became like blue
steel.
“I shall go mad in a minute,” he said calmly to the farmer.
Walden Slater opened his mouth to speak and then, with a grunt that
expressed both surprise and relief, he pointed to the corner in back
of the stone slab. The dejected carcass of a chicken lay there in its
dishevelled feathers, its crop slit open and its blood dabbled upon the
floor.
“He’s been divining,” he said. Then he looked closely at the young
doctor.
“You perk up, Doctor Dreeme,” he added. “I know what I’m doing. There’s
no harm done to anybody ... yet.”
He bent over and fumbled about the limp carcass of the chicken and
then straightened his body with a grunt of satisfaction. In his hand
he held a small blood-smeared square of paper. Silently he turned and
strode down stairs, Dreeme close at his heels. He did not speak until
they had regained the comparative light of the library and then he
sank into Jeffrey Westcott’s chair by the table. The curtain from the
window fluttered inward, narrowly missing the chimney of the sputtering
lamp. Dreeme stood before the farmer, his eyes staring and his hands
trembling.
“I reckon I’ll have to explain a few things,” he remarked slowly, “or
you’ll be fainting on me, Doctor.”
“I’m not going to faint, Walden,” replied the young doctor, “but I am
mad to get on. I know Deborah’s in grave danger and I should be with
her.”
Walden Slater nodded gravely.
“Westcott is playing his last card to dominate the valley,” he said.
“He’s called an Esbat, a meeting, and he intends a sacrifice. I knew
it was coming ever since I saw that goat-head in Wagner’s fist. The
goat-head is used as an announcement for a coming event. Wagner was on
his way to somebody with the sign when he was smashed in the head and
killed. That’s when I started thinking. There hasn’t been an Esbat in
this valley since old Captain Uriah Carrier died, and my dad told me
all about him.”
He cleared his throat after this unexpectedly long speech. Then he
renewed his distasteful task of narration.
“We don’t want none of this stuff, Doctor,” he declared. “The farmers
want to forget what their grand-dads were. Westcott won’t let us
forget. He’s got Uriah’s black book and we’re all in it. He’s got some
of us fooled by stirring up feelings in us that we thought had died
out of us. It has died out of me. I don’t take any stock in this stuff
though my dad was befuddled by old Uriah and went to his Esbat.”
He cleared his throat again and held up the bit of paper. In the
lamp-glow Dreeme saw the tiny goat’s head carefully drawn in
blue ink and when Walden Slater slowly turned the paper he saw
“Dagon--two--nigger” written in small letters. He recalled now that he
had never turned over the bit of paper he had given to the coroner. He
recalled, too, the antagonism of the farmers who had stood so short a
distance from him when he had extracted the paper from Wagner’s stiff
hand.
“It seems that they meet at Dagon at two o’clock, and that Dagon is
somewhere in Nigger Swamp,” he said mechanically.
Walden Slater nodded his head in assent.
“That’s it,” he said. “Westcott sacrificed a chicken to see if the
signs were propitious. Apparently he decided they were, although what a
chicken’s crop has to do with it is beyond me.”
He stopped abruptly and turned his face toward the open window. Dreeme
listened, too, and he could hear the distinct sound of footsteps going
by the house. They apparently died away in the soft grass of the field
that stretched from the dwelling to Briony Wood.
“They’re gathering,” remarked the farmer simply. He stood up and
regained his lantern.
“We can’t know where they’ve hidden Deborah,” he said, “but we do know
that they’ll bring her to the place called Dagon. She’s to be the
sacrifice, Doctor.”
“They wouldn’t dare to kill her!” exploded Dreeme.
“There’s some things worse than death,” answered Walden Slater.
He moved toward the door and Dreeme followed him. Behind them the
forgotten lamp perched on the edge of the table, and as the wind
increased the curtain flapped ever nearer the yellow flame, a flame
that sputtered but, being shielded from the worst of the gust by a
protector, never went out. The two men passed through the sitting room
and out through the broken door into the storm which had now settled
down into a gusty drizzle.
“And, besides,” said Walden Slater slowly, “Wagner was killed, wasn’t
he?”
“Do you know who killed him?” asked Dreeme. “Was it Jeffrey Westcott?”
“I know that the pegs driven into his eye-sockets were whittled by a
mighty dull knife,” returned the farmer grimly.
They plodded on in silence after that, their heads bowed against
the driving wind and rain. Occasionally they stumbled over hammocks
of wet grass and once Walden Slater sprawled upon the ground, his
lantern rolling from his hand and blinking out. With a grumbled curse
he scrambled to his feet and picked up the extinguished lantern and
examined it.
“It’s busted!” he said vehemently, flinging it from him with an angry
gesture. They heard it clatter against a stone wall to the side of
them. After that they struggled on in the darkness across the field,
the black shadow of Briony Wood in its slight elevation looming nearer
and nearer against the faint glow of the stormy sky.
“If you meet anybody,” said the farmer suddenly, “don’t you say a damn
word. Keep your head down and trudge along.”
Dreeme muttered something in his throat. Mingled rain and perspiration
was streaming down his face and his naked feet were cut by the sharp
stones and twigs. He heard his heart beating violently in his bosom and
wondered if the farmer was as tired as he. They had crossed the greater
part of the field now and the ground was sloping upward before them,
sloping upward to tall spectral trees that stood with inter-mingled
branches and waited menacingly for their coming. It would be dark in
those trees and there would probably be no pathway. But they would have
to go on, for somewhere beyond the trees was the place called Dagon,
and it was at Dagon that he would next meet Deborah. Sobbingly he
climbed the slope at the heels of Walden Slater.