ACROSS THE WATER.
For an instant the blood in my arteries seemed to stop, so that I
gasped when I tried to speak.
“What boy was that?” I said, in a forced voice, when I could command
myself.
“What boy?--eh?--what boy?” His eyes were wandering up and down the
wall again. “Him, I say, as they burried quick--young Trender o’ the
mill.”
“How do you know he was buried alive? How could he have been if he was
murdered?”
“How do I know? He were murdered, I say. I’m George White, the
sexton--and what I knows, I knows.”
“And the doctor murdered him?”
“Don’t I say so?”
He had hardly spoken, when he put his hand to his head, moved a step
back and stood staring at me with horror-stricken, injected eyes.
“My God!” he muttered. “He whispered there into the pit that if I said
to another what I said to him I were as good as a dead man.”
The panic increased in him. I could see the tortured soul moving, as
it were, behind the flesh of his face. When the nerve of endurance
snapped he staggered and fell forward in a fit.
Helpless to minister to a convulsion that must find its treatment in
the delirium ward of a hospital, I ran to the police station, which
was but a short distance away, and gave information of the seizure I
had witnessed. A stretcher was sent for the poor, racked wretch; he
was carried away spluttering and writhing, and so for the time being
my chance of questioning him further was ended.
Now, plainly and solemnly: Had I been face to face with an awful
fragment of the truth, or had I been but the chance hearer of certain
delirious ravings on the part of a drink-sodden wretch--ravings as
baseless as the unsubstantial horror at which he had flung his cap?
That the latter seemed the more probable was due to an obvious
inconsistency on the part of the half-insane creature. If the boy had
been murdered, how could he have been buried alive? Moreover, it was
evident that the sexton was near a monomaniac on the subject of living
interments. Moreover, secondly, it was altogether improbable and not
to be accounted for that the keen-witted doctor should intrust a
secret so perilous to such a confederate. And what object had he to
gain by the destruction of Modred, beyond the satisfying of a little
private malice perhaps? An object quite incompatible with the fearful
danger of the deed.
On the other hand, I could not but recall darkly that the sexton, on
the morning when, apparently sane and sensible, he had conducted me to
my brother’s grave, had thrown out certain vague hints and
implications, which, hardly noticed by me at the time, assumed a
lurider aspect in the light of his more definite charge; that, by
Zyp’s statement to me after my illness, it would seem that Dr.
Crackenthorpe had shown some eagerness and made voluntary offer of his
services, in the matter of hushing up the whole question of Modred’s
death; that it was not impossible that he also had discovered the
boy’s knowledge of the secret of the hiding-place and had jumped at a
ready opportunity for silencing forever an unwelcome confederate.
Stung to sudden anxious fervor by this last thought, I broke into a
hurried walk, striving by vigorous motion to coax into consistent
order of progression the dread hypothesis that so tore and worried my
mind. Suddenly I found that, striding on preoccupied, I was entering
that part of the meadowland wherein lay the pool of uncanny memories.
It shone there before me, like a silver rent in the grass, the shadow
of a solitary willow smudged upon its surface, and against the trunk
of the tree that stood on the further side of the water a long, dusky
figure was leaning motionless. It was that of the man who was most in
my thoughts; and, looking at him, even at that distance, something
repellant in his aspect seemed to connect him fittingly with the
stormy twilight around him that was imaged in my soul.
Straight I walked down to the water’s edge and hailed him, and, though
he made no response, I saw consciousness of my presence stir in him.
“I want a word with you!” I called. “Shall I shout it across the
river?”
He slowly detached himself from his position and sauntered down to the
margin over against me.
“Proclaim all from the housetops, where I am concerned,” he answered
in a loud voice. “Who is it wants me, and what has he to say?”
“You know me, I suppose?”
“I have not that pleasure, I believe.”
“Never mind. I have just come from talk with a confederate of
yours--the sexton of St. John’s.”
“I know the man certainly. Is he in need of my services?”
“He would say ‘God forbid’ to that, I fancy. He’s had enough of you,
maybe.”
“Oh, in what way?”
“In the way of silencing awkward witnesses.”
“Pray be a trifle less obscure.”
“I have this moment left him. He was seized with a fit of some sort.
He’d rather have the devil himself to wait upon him than you, I
expect.”
“Why so?”
“I had some talk with him before he went off his head. Do you wish to
know what he charged you with?”
“Certainly I do.”
“Murder!”
Dr. Crackenthorpe looked at me across the water a long minute; then,
never taking his eyes off my face, lifted up the skirts of his coat
and began to shamble and jerk out the most ludicrous parody of a dance
I have ever seen. Then, all of a sudden, he stopped and was doubled up
in a suffocating cackle of laughter.
Presently recovering himself, he walked off down the bank to a point
where the stream narrowed, and motioned me to come opposite him.
“It’s not from fear of you and your sexton,” he explained, still
gasping out the dry dust of his humor. “Your exquisite pleasantry has
weakened my vocal chords--that’s all.”
I treated him to a long stare of most sovereign contempt. For all his
assumed enjoyment, I fancied he was pretty observant of my mood and
that he was calculating the nature of the charge I had fired at him.
“And whom did I murder?” he said, making a great show of mopping his
face with his handkerchief.
“Say it was my brother Modred.”
“I’m glad, for your sake, to hear you qualify it. You should be, that
there is no witness to this gross slander. I presume you to be, then,
one of that pleasant family of Trender, who have a local reputation
none of the sweetest.”
He came down close to the water’s edge--we were but a little distance
apart there--and shook a long finger at me.
“My friend, my friend,” he said, sternly, “your excuse must be the
hot-headedness of youth. For the sake of your father, who once enjoyed
my patronage, I will forbear answering a fool according to his folly.
For his sake I will be gentle and convincing, where it is my plain
duty, I am afraid, to chastise. This man you speak of is a heavy
drinker, and is now, by your own showing, on the verge of delirium
tremens. Do you take the gross imaginings of such a person for
gospel?”
“Dr. Crackenthorpe,” I said, quietly, “your threats fall on stony
ground. I admit the man is hardly responsible for his statements at
the present moment; only, as it happens, I have met and spoken with
him before.”
I thought I could see in the gathering darkness his lips suck inward
as if with a twitch of pain.
“And did he charge me then with murdering your brother?”
“He said what, viewed in the light of his after outburst, has awakened
grave suspicions in me.”
He threw back his head with a fresh cackle of laughter.
“Suspicions!” he cried. “Is that all? It’s natural to have them,
perhaps. I had mine of you once, you know.”
“You lie there, of course. By your own confession, you lie.”
“And now,” he went on, ignoring my interruption, “they are diverted to
another.”
“Will you answer me a question or two?”
“If they are put with a proper sense of decorum I will give them my
consideration.”
“Do you know where my father keeps the treasure, the bulk of which you
have robbed him of?”
“Most offensively worded. But I will humor you. I never had need”--he
shot out an evil smile--“of obtaining my share of the good things by
other than legitimate means.”
“Do you know?”
“No, I don’t, upon the honor of a gentleman.”
“Did my brother that’s dead know?”
“Really, you tempt me to romance to satisfy your craving for
information. I was not in your brother’s confidence.”
“Was there the least doubt that my brother was dead when he was
buried?”
“Ah! I see. You have been hunting chimeras in George White’s company.
It is the man’s werewolf, my good friend. You may take my professional
certificate that no such thing happened.”
I looked at him, my soul lowering with doubt and the gloom of baffled
vengeance.
“Have you anything further to ask?” he said, with mocking politeness.
“Any other insane witness to cite on behalf of this base and baseless
prosecution?”
“None at present.”
I turned and walked a step or two, intending to leave him without
another word, but, on a thought, strode back to the waterside.
“Listen you!” I cried. “For the time you are quit of me. But bear in
mind that I never rest or waver in my purpose till I have found who it
was that killed my brother.”
With that I went from him.