III
“That Thing Isn’t My Daughter—”
It was Zoberg who suggested that I take Susan Gird for a relaxing drive in my car. I acclaimed the idea as a brilliant one, and she, thanking me quietly, put on an archaic-seeming cloak, black and heavy. We left her father and Zoberg talking idly and drove slowly through the town.
She pointed out to me the Devil’s Croft of which I had heard from the doctor, and I saw it to be a grove of trees, closely and almost rankly set. It stood apart from the sparser timber on the hills, and around it stretched bare fields. Their emptiness suggested that all the capacity for life had been drained away and poured into that central clump. No road led near to it, and I was obliged to content myself by idling the car at a distance while we gazed and she talked.
“It’s evergreen, of course,” I said. “Cedar and a little juniper.”
“Only in the hedge around it,” Susan Gird informed me. “It was planted by the town council about ten years ago.”
I stared. “But surely there’s greenness in the center, too,” I argued.
“Perhaps. They say that the leaves never fall, even in January.”
I gazed at what appeared to be a little fluff of white mist above it, the whiter by contrast with the black clouds that lowered around the hilltops. To my questions about the town council, Susan Gird told me some rather curious things about the government of the community. There were five councilmen, elected every year, and no mayor. Each of the five presided at a meeting in turn. Among the ordinances enforced by the council was one providing for support of the single church.
“I should think that such an ordinance could be set aside as illegal,” I observed.
“I think it could,” she agreed, “but nobody has ever wished to try.”
The minister of the church, she continued, was invariably a member of the council. No such provision appeared on the town records, nor was it even urged as a “written law,” but it had always been deferred to. The single peace officer of the town, she continued, was the duly elected constable. He was always commissioned as deputy sheriff by officials at the county seat, and his duties included census taking, tax collecting and similar matters. The only other officer with a state commission was the justice; and her father, John Gird, had held that post for the last six years.
“He’s an attorney, then?” I suggested, but Susan Gird shook her head.
“The only attorney in this place is a retired judge, Keith Pursuivant,” she informed me. “He came from some other part of the world, and he appears in town about once a month—lives out yonder past the Croft. As a matter of fact, an ordinary experience of law isn’t enough for our peculiar little government.”
She spoke of her fellow-townsmen as quiet, simple folk who were content for the most part to keep to themselves, and then, yielding to my earnest pleas, she told me something of herself.
The Gird family counted its descent from an original settler—though she was not exactly sure of when or how the settlement was made—and had borne a leading part in community affairs through more than two centuries. Her mother, who had died when Susan Gird was seven, had been a stranger; an “outlander” was the local term for such, and I think it is used in Devonshire, which may throw light on the original founders of the community. Apparently this woman had shown some tendencies toward psychic power, for she had several times prophesied coming events or told neighbors where to find lost things. She was well loved for her labors in caring for the sick, and indeed she had died from a fever contracted when tending the victims of an epidemic.
“Doctor Zoberg had known her,” Susan Gird related. “He came here several years after her death, and seemed badly shaken when he heard what had happened. He and Father became good friends, and he has been kind to me, too. I remember his saying, the first time we met, that I looked like Mother and that it was apparent that I had inherited her spirit.”
She had grown up and spent three years at a teachers’ college, but left before graduation, refusing a position at a school so that she could keep house for her lonely father. Still idiotically mannerless, I mentioned the possibility of her marrying some young man of the town. She laughed musically.
“Why, I stopped thinking of marriage when I was fourteen!” she cried. Then, “Look, it’s snowing.”
So it was, and I thought it time to start for her home. We finished the drive on the best of terms, and when we reached her home in midafternoon, we were using first names.
Gird, I found, had capitulated to Doctor Zoberg’s genial insistence. From disliking the thought of a séance, he had come to savor the prospect of witnessing it—Zoberg had always excluded him before. Gird had even picked up a metaphysical term or two from listening to the doctor, and with these he spiced his normally plain speech.
“This ectoplasm stuff sounds reasonable,” he admitted. “If there is any such thing, there could be ghosts, couldn’t there?”
Zoberg twinkled, and tilted his beard-spike forward. “You will find that Mr. Wills does not believe in ectoplasm.”
“Nor do I believe that the production of ectoplasm would prove existence of a ghost,” I added. “What do you say, Miss Susan?”
She smiled and shook her dark head. “To tell you the truth, I’m aware only dimly of what goes on during a séance.”
“Most mediums say that,” nodded Zoberg sagely.
As the sun set and the darkness came down, we prepared for the experiment.
The dining-room was chosen, as the barest and quietest room in the house. First I made a thorough examination, poking into corners, tapping walls and handling furniture, to the accompaniment of jovial taunts from Zoberg. Then, to his further amusement, I produced from my grip a big lump of sealing-wax, and with this I sealed both the kitchen and parlor doors, stamping the wax with my signet ring. I also closed, latched and sealed the windows, on the sills of which little heaps of snow had begun to collect.
“You’re kind of making sure, Mr. Wills,” said Gird, lighting a patent carbide lamp.
“That’s because I take this business seriously,” I replied, and Zoberg clapped his hands in approval.
“Now,” I went on, “off with your coats and vests, gentlemen.”
Gird and Zoberg complied, and stood up in their shirtsleeves. I searched and felt them both all over. Gird was a trifle bleak in manner, Zoberg gay and bright-faced. Neither had any concealed apparatus, I made sure. My next move was to set a chair against the parlor door, seal its legs to the floor, and instruct Gird to sit in it. He did so, and I produced a pair of handcuffs from my bag and shackled his left wrist to the arm of the chair.
“Capital!” cried Zoberg. “Do not be so sour, Mr. Gird. I would not trust handcuffs on Mr. Wills—he was once a magician and knows all the escape tricks.”
“Your turn’s coming, Doctor,” I assured him.
Against the opposite wall and facing Gird’s chair I set three more chairs, melting wax around their legs and stamping it. Then I dragged all other furniture far away, arranging it against the kitchen door. Finally I asked Susan to take the central chair of the three, seated Zoberg at her left hand and myself at her right. Beside me, on the floor, I set the carbide lamp.
“With your permission,” I said, and produced more manacles. First I fastened Susan’s left ankle to Zoberg’s right, then her left wrist to his right. Zoberg’s left wrist I chained to his chair, leaving him entirely helpless.
“What thick wrists you have!” I commented. “I never knew they were so sinewy.”
“You never chained them before,” he grinned.
With two more pairs of handcuffs I shackled my own left wrist and ankle to Susan on the right.
“Now we are ready,” I pronounced.
“You’ve treated us like bank robbers,” muttered Gird.
“No, no, do not blame Mr. Wills,” Zoberg defended me again. He looked anxiously at Susan. “Are you quite prepared, my dear?”
Her eyes met his for a long moment; then she closed them and nodded. I, bound to her, felt a relaxation of her entire body. After a moment she bowed her chin upon her breast.
“Let nobody talk,” warned Zoberg softly. “I think that this will be a successful venture. Wills, the light.”
With my free hand I turned it out.
All was intensely dark for a moment. Then, as my eyes adjusted themselves, the room seemed to lighten. I could see the deep gray rectangles of the windows, the snow at their bottoms, the blurred outline of the man in his chair across the floor from me, the form of Susan at my left hand. My ears, likewise sharpening, detected the girl’s gentle breathing, as if she slept. Once or twice her right hand twitched, shaking my own arm in its manacle. It was as though she sought to attract my attention.
Before and a little beyond her, something pale and cloudy was making itself visible. Even as I fixed my gaze upon it, I heard something that sounded like a gusty panting. It might have been a tired dog or other beast. The pallid mist was changing shape and substance, too, and growing darker. It shifted against the dim light from the windows, and I had a momentary impression of something erect but misshapen—misshapen in an animal way. Was that a head? And were those pointed ears, or part of a headdress? I told myself determinedly that this was a clever illusion, successful despite my precautions.
It moved, and I heard a rattle upon the planks. Claws, or perhaps hobnails. Did not Gird wear heavy boots? Yet he was surely sitting in his chair; I saw something shift position at that point. The grotesque form had come before me, crouching or creeping.
Despite my self-assurance that this was a trick, I could not govern the chill that swept over me. The thing had come to a halt close to me, was lifting itself as a hound that paws its master’s knees. I was aware of an odor, strange and disagreeable, like the wind from a great beast’s cage. Then the paws were upon my lap—indeed, they were not paws. I felt them grip my legs, with fingers and opposable thumbs. A sniffing muzzle thrust almost into my face, and upon its black snout a dim, wet gleam was manifest.
Then Gird, from his seat across the room, screamed hoarsely.
“That thing isn’t my daughter—”
In the time it took him to rip out those five words, the huddled monster at my knees whirled back and away from me, reared for a trice like a deformed giant, and leaped across the intervening space upon him. I saw that Gird had tried to rise, his chained wrist hampering him. Then his voice broke in the midst of what he was trying to say; he made a choking sound and the thing emitted a barking growl.
Tearing loose from its wax fastenings, the chair fell upon its side. There was a struggle and a clatter, and Gird squealed like a rabbit in a trap. The attacker fell away from him toward us.
It was all over before one might ask what it was about.