"Susan," said Gird, "here's Doctor Zoberg. And this is his friend, Mr. Wills."
She smiled at Zoberg, then nodded to me, respectfully and rather shyly.
"My daughter," Gird finished the introduction. "Well, dinner must be ready."
She led us inside. The parlor was rather plainer than in most old-fashioned provincial houses, but it was comfortable enough. Much of its furniture would have delighted antique dealers, and one or two pieces would have impressed museum directors. The dining room beyond had plate-racks on the walls and a long table of dark wood, with high-backed chairs. We had some fried ham, biscuits, coffee and stewed fruit that must have been home-canned. Doctor Zoberg and Gird ate heartily, talking of local trifles, but Susan Gird hardly touched her food. I, watching her with stealthy admiration, forgot to take more than a few mouthfuls.
After the repast she carried out the dishes and we men returned to the parlor. Gird faced us.
"You're here for some more hocus-pocus?" he hazarded gruffly.
"For another seance," amended Zoberg, suave as ever.
"Doctor," said Gird, "I think this had better be the last time."
Zoberg held out a hand in pleading protest, but Gird thrust his own hands behind him and looked sternly stubborn. "It's not good for the girl," he announced definitely.
"But she is a great medium - greater than Eusapia Paladino, or Daniel Home," Zoberg argued earnestly. "She is an important figure in the psychic world, lost and wasted here in this backwater - "
"Please don't miscall our town," interrupted Gird. "Well, Doctor, I agree to a final seance, as you call it. But I'm going to be present."
Zoberg made a gesture as of refusal, but I sided with Gird.
"If this is to be my test, I want another witness," I told Zoberg.
"Ahh! If it is a success, you will say that he helped to deceive."
"Not I. I'll arrange things so there will be no deception."
Both Zoberg and Gird stared at me. I wondered which of them was the more disdainful of my confidence.
Then Susan Gird joined us, and for once I wanted to speak of other subjects than the occult.
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 hill-tops. 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 ofTicials 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 seance, 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 seance."
"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 seahng-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 Uttle 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 shirt-sleeves. 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 handcufis 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 u]3on 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, Hkewise 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 ratde 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 hampjering 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.
IV
''I don't know what kiUed him."
Just when I got up I do not remember, but I was on my feet as the grapplers separated. Without thinking of danger - and surely danger was there in the room - I might have rushed forward; but Susan Gird, lying limp in her chair, hampered me in our mutual shackles. Standing where I was, then, I pawed in my pocket for something I had not mentioned to her or to Zoberg; an electric torch.
It fitted itself into my hand, a compact little cylinder, and I whipped it out with my finger on the switch. A cone of white light spurted across the room, making a pool about and upon the motionless form of Gird. He lay crumpled on one side, his back toward us, and a smudge of black wetness was widening about his slack head and shoulders.
With the beam I swiftly quartered the room, probing it into every corner and shadowed nook. The creature that had attacked Gird had utterly vanished. Susan Gird now gave a soft moan, like a dreamer of dreadful things. I flashed my light her way.
It flooded her face and she quivered under the impact of the glare, but did not open her eyes. Beyond her I saw Zoberg, doubled forward in his bonds. He was staring blackly at the form of Gird, his eyes protruding and his clenched teeth showing through his beard.
"Doctor Zoberg!" I shouted at him, and his face jerked nervously toward me. It was fairly cross-hatched with tense lines, and as white as fresh pipe-clay. He tried to say something, but his voice would not command itself.
Dropping the torch upon the floor, I next dug keys from my jacket and with trembling haste unlocked the irons from Susan Gird's wrist and ankle on my side. Then, stepping hurriedly to Zoberg, I made him sit up and freed him as speedily as possible. Finally I returned, found my torch again and stepped across to Gird.
My first glance at close quarters was enough; he was stone-dead, with his throat torn brutally out. His cheeks, too, were ripped in parallel gashes, as though by the grasp of claws or nails. Radiance suddenly glowed behind me, and Zoberg moved forward, holding up the carbide lamp.
"I found this beside your chair," he told me unsteadily. "I found a match and lighted it." He looked down at Gird, and his lips twitched, as though he would be hysterical.
"Steady, Doctor," I cautioned him sharply, and took the lamp from him. "See what you can do for Gird."
He stooped slowly, as though he had grown old. I stepped to one side, putting the lamp on the table. Zoberg spoke again:
"It is absolutely no use. Wills. We can do nothing. Gird has been killed."
I had turned my attention to the girl. She still sagged in her chair, breathing deeply and rhythmically as if in untroubled slumber.
"Susan," I called her. "Susan!"
She did not stir, and Doctor Zoberg came back to where I bent above her. "Susan," he whispered penetratingly, "wake up, child."
Her eyes unveiled themselves slowly, and looked up at us. "What -" she began drowsily.
"Prepare yourself," I cautioned her quickly. "Something has happened to your father."
She stared across at Gird's body, and then she screamed, tremulously and long. Zoberg caught her in his arms, and she swayed and shuddered against their supporting circle. From her own wrists my irons still dangled, and they clanked as she wrung her hands in aimless distraction.
Going to the dead
man once more, I unchained him from the chair and turned him upon his back. Susan's black cloak lay upon one of the other chairs, and I picked it up and spread it above him. Then I went to each door in turn, and to the windows.
"The seals are unbroken," I reported. "There isn't a space through which even a mouse could slip in or out. Yet - "
"I did it!" wailed Susan suddenly. "Oh, my God, what dreadful thing came out of me to murder my father!"
I unfastened the parlour door and opened it. Almost at the same time a loud knock sounded from the front of the house.
Zoberg lifted his head, nodding to me across Susan's trembling shoulder. His arms were still clasped around her, and I could not help but notice that they seemed thin and ineffectual now. When I had chained them, I had wondered at their steely cording. Had this awful calamity drained him of strength?
"Go," he said hoarsely. "See who it is."
I went. Opening the front door, I came face to face with a tall, angular silhouette in a slouch hat with snow on the brim.
"Who are you?" I jerked out, startled.
"O'Bryant," boomed back an organ-deep bass. "What's the fuss here?"
"Well -" I began, then hesitated.
"Stranger in town, ain't you?" was the next question. "I saw you when you stopped at the Luther Inn. I'm O'Bryant - the constable."
He strode across the door-sill, peered about him in the dark, and then slouched into the lighted dining room. Following, I made him out as a stern, roughly dressed man of forty or so, with a lean face made strong by a salient chin and a similar nose. His light blue eyes studied the still form of John Gird, and he stooped to draw away the cloak. Susan gave another agonized cry, and I heard Zoberg gasp as if deeply shocked. The constable, too, flinched and replaced the cloak more quickly than he had taken it up.
"Who done that?" he barked at me.
Again I found it hard to answer. Constable O'Bryant sniffed suspiciously at each of us in turn, took up the lamp and herded us into the parlour. There he made us take seats.
Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 01 Page 2
