Part 6 (2/2)
”Of this.” Low held up a tapering, reddish-brown tendon or line, which had red, curved triangular teeth set on it at intervals.
The other men stared at this object, and then Montesson burst out: ”The creeper on the wall!” he said, in a tone of disappointment. ”It couldn't be! Besides, has a plant blood?”
”Let us go and look at it,” said Low. ”This creeper has never been cut because it withers away every winter to the ground and grows again in the spring. Look here!” He took out his knife and cut a leathery shoot. A crimson stain spurted out on his cuff. ”The only person, as far as I can gather, who cut this plant was Mr. Lampurt in nailing it to the wall. He died of shock when he saw the red stain on his finger, for he knew something of its deadly properties. But though stupefying, as your condition last night proved, Montesson, they are not fatal. Even to stupefy, they must get into the blood. Now the deaths have all occurred within reach of the tendrils of this plant. And all have happened at the same season of the year, that is to say, at the time when it attains its full annual strength and growth. Another point in favor of Montesson's escape, was the dryness of the season. The growth is not quite so good as usual this, summer, is it?”
”No, the tendrils are thinner a” a good deal thinner and smaller.”
”Just so. Therefore your weight saved you, though you were stupefied by the punctures of the thorns. I feared that, and warned you to use your knife.”
”But the brain of the thing?” cried Fremantle. ”Why, man, has a plant will and knowledge and malevolence?”
”Not of itself, as I believe,” answered Low. ”Perhaps you will prefer to attribute much to the long arm of coincidence, but the explanation I can offer is one that has long been held by occultists in other countries. Pythagoras and others have taught that forms of incarnation change as the soul raises or debases itself during each spell of Life. Connect with this the belief of the Brahmins, and I may add of various African tribes, that an earthbound spirit, at the moment of a premature or sudden death, may pa.s.s into plants or trees of certain species, by virtue of an inherent attraction possessed by these plants for such ent.i.ties. To go further, it is said that these degraded souls have intervals during which they have power of voluntary action to do good or evil, and such action has influence on their future incarnations.”
”What do you mean? What do you intend us to believe?” Montesson said, and stopped.
”It is hard to put it into words in these latter days of unbelief,” said Low, ”but the evidence goes to show that a man a” presumably not a good man a” dies a sudden death near this plant, even inoculated with its sap.”
”It is incredible!” said Fremantle almost angrily.
”I don't ask you to believe it,” said Flaxman Low quietly, ”I only tell you such beliefs exist. Montesson can do something towards proving my theory. Let me have the plant destroyed, and judge by results.”
Mr. Montesson has acted upon Mr. Flaxman Low's suggestions. The Grey House is now occupied and safe.
DR. MUNCING, EXORCIST.
[Psychic sleuth: Dr. Muncing].
Gordon MacCreagh.
A plate upon the gatepost of the trim white wicket said only: ”Dr. Muncing, Exorcist.”
Aside from that, the house was just the same as all the others in that street a” semidetached, stuccoed, respectable. A few more bra.s.s plates announced other sober citizens with their sprinkling of doctors of law and doctors of medicine, and one of divinity. But ”Dr. Muncing, Exorcist”; that was darkly suggestive of something queer.
The man who gazed reflectively out of the window at the driving rain was, like his bra.s.s sign, vaguely suggestive, too, of something queer; of having the capacity to do something that the other sober citizens, doctors and lawyers, did not do.
He was of a little more than middle height, broad, with strong, capable-looking hands; his face was square cut, finely crisscrossed with weather-beaten lines, tanned from much travel in faraway lands; a strong nose hung over a thin, wide mouth that closed with an extraordinary determination.
The face of a normal man of strong character. It was the eyes that conveyed that vague impression of something unusual. Deep set, they were, of an indeterminate color, hidden beneath a frown of reflective brows; brooding eyes, suggestive of a knowledge of dark things that other sober citizens did not know.
The other man who stared out of the other window was younger, bigger in every way; an immense young fellow who carried in his big shoulders and clean complexion every mark of having devoted more of his college years to the study of football rather than of medicine. This one grunted an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.
”I'll bet a dollar this is a patient for you.”
Dr. Muncing came over to the other window.
”I don't bet dollars with Dr. James Terry. Gambling seems to have been one of the few things you did really well at John College. The fellow does look plentifully frightened, at that.”
The man in question was hurrying down the street, looking anxiously at the house numbers; bent over, huddled in a rain coat, he read the numbers furtively, as though reluctant to turn his head out of the protection of his upturned collar. He uttered a glad cry as he saw the plate of Dr. Muncing, Exorcist, and, letting the gate slam, he stumbled up the path to the door.
Dr. Muncing met the man personally, led him to a comfortable chair, mixed a stimulant for him, offered him a cigarette. Calm, methodical, matter-of-fact, this was his ”bedside manner” with such cases. Forcefully he compelled the impression that, whatever might be the trouble, it was nothing that could not be cured. He stood waiting for an explanation. The man stammered an incoherent jumble of nothings.
”I a” Doctor, I don't know how, I can't tell you what it is, but the Reverend Hendryx sent me to you. Yet, I don't know what to tell you; there's nothing to describe.”
”Well,” said the doctor judicially, ”that is already interesting. If there's nothing and if the Reverend Hendryx feels that he can't pray it away, we probably have something that we can get hold of.”
His manner was dominant and cheerful, he radiated confidence. His bulky young a.s.sistant had been cleverly chosen for just that purpose also, to a.s.sist in putting over the impression of power, of force to deal with queer and horrible things that could not be sanely described.
The man began to respond to that atmosphere. He got a grip on himself and began to speak more coherently: ”Doctor, I don't know what to tell you. There have been no spooks, or anything of that sort. We've seen nothing; heard nothing. It's only a feeling. You'll laugh at me, Doctor, but it's just a something in the dark that brings a feeling of awful fear; and I know that it will catch me. Last night a” my G.o.d, last night it almost touched me.”
”I never laugh,” said Dr. Muncing seriously, ”until I have laid my ghost. For some ghosts are horribly real. Tell me something about yourself, your family, your home and so on. And as to your f ears, whatever they are, please don't try to conceal them from me.”
A baffled expression came over the man's face. He could not divorce his personal affairs from the quite commonplace.
”There's nothing to tell, Doctor; nothing that's different to anybody else. I don't know what could bring this frightful thing about us. My name is Jarrett a” I sell real estate up in the Catskills. I have a little place a hundred feet off the paved state road; two miles from the village. There's nothing old or dilapidated about the house; there's modern plumbing, electric lights, and so on. No old grave yards anywhere in the neighborhood. Not a single thing to bring this horror; and yet a” I tell you, Doctor, there's something frightful in the dark that we can feel.”
”Hma”m!” The doctor pursed his lips and walked a short beat, his hands deep in his pockets. ”A new house; no old a.s.sociations. Begins to sound like an elemental, only how would such a thing have gotten loose? Or it might be a malignant geoplasm, but a” Tell me about your family, Mr. Jarrett.”
”There's only four of us, Doctor. There's my wife's brother, who's an invalid; anda””
”Aha”h!” a quick breath came from the doctor. ”So there's a sick man, yes? What is his trouble?”
”His lungs are affected. He was advised to come to us for the mountain air; and he was getting very much better; but recently he's very much worse again. We've been thinking that perhaps this constant terror has been too much for him.”
”Hum, yes, indeed.” The doctor strode his quick beat back and forth; his indeterminate eyes were distinctly steel gray just now. ”Yes, yes, the terror, and the sick man who grows worse. Quite so. Who else, Mr. Jarrett? What else have you that might attract a visohagig ent.i.ty?”
”A viso a” what? Good G.o.d, Doctor, we haven't anything to attract anything. Besides my wife's brother there's only my son, ten years of age, and my wife. She gets it worse than any of us; she says she has even seen a” but I think there's a lot of blarney in all that.” The man contrived a sick smile. ”You know how women are, Doctor; she says she has seen shapes a” formless things in the dark. She likes to think she is psychic, and she is always seeing things that n.o.body else knows anything about.”
”Oh, good Lord!” Dr. Muncing groaned and his face was serious. ”Verily do fools rush in. All the requirements for piercing the veil. Heavens, what idiots people can be.”
Suddenly he shot an accusing finger at Mr. Jarrett.
”I suppose she makes you sit round a table with her, and all that sort of stuff.”
”Yes, Doctor, she does. Raps and spelt out messages, and so on.”
”Good Lord!” The doctor walked angrily back and forth. ”Fools by the silly thousand play with this kind of fire, and this time these poor simpletons have broken in on some, thing.”
He whirled on the frightened realtor with accusing finger laying down the law.
”Mr. Jarrett, your foolish wife doesn't know what she has done. I myself don't know what she has turned loose or what this thing might develop into. We may be able to stop it. It may escape and grow into a world menace. I tell you we humans don't begin to know what forces exist on the other side of that thin dividing line that we don't begin to understand. The only thing to do now is to come with you immediately to your home; and we must try and find out what this thing is that has broken through and whether we can stop it.”
The Jarrett house turned out exactly as described. Modern and commonplace in every way; situated in an acre of garden and shrubbery on a sunlit slope of the Catskill Mountains. The other houses of the straggly little village were much the same, quiet residences of normal people who preferred to retire a little beyond the noise and activity of the summer resort of Pine Bend about two miles down the state road.
The Jarrett family fitted exactly into their locale. Well-meaning, hospitable rural nonent.i.ties. The lady who was psychic was over-plump and short of breath at that elevation; the son, a gangling schoolboy, evinced the shy aloofness of country youth before strangers; the sick man, thin and drawn, with an irritable cough, showed the unnatural flush of color on his cheeks that marked his disease.
It required very much less than Dr. Muncing's keenness to see that all of these people were in a condition of nervous tension that in itself was proof of something that had made quite an extraordinary effect on their unimaginative minds.
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