Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 01 (2 page)

           
 
''You can almost hear the ghosts."

 
          
 
I have sat down with the purpose of writing
out, plainly and even flatly, all that happened to me and to Doctor Otto Zoberg
in our impromptu adventure at psychic investigation; yet, almost at the start,
I find it necessary to be vague about the tiny town where that adventure ran
its course. Zoberg began by refusing to tell me its name, and now my friends of
various psychical research committees have asked me to hold my peace until they
have finished certain examinations without benefit of yellow journals or prying
politicians.

 
          
 
It is located, as Zoberg told me, within five
hours by fast automobile of Washington. On the following morning, after a quick
and early breakfast, we departed at seven o'clock in my sturdy coupe. I drove
and Zoberg guided. In the turtle-back we had stowed bags, for the November sky
had begun to boil up with dark, heavy clouds, and a storm might delay us.

 
          
 
On the way Zoberg talked a great deal, with
his usual charm and animation. He scoffed at my skepticism and prophesied my
conversion before another midnight.

 
          
 
"A hundred years ago, realists like
yourself
were ridiculing hypnotism," he chuckled.
"They thought that it was a fantastic fake, like one of Edgar Poe's
amusing tales,
ja
? And now it is a great science, for
healing and comforting the world. A few years ago, the world scorned mental
telepathy
- "

 
          
 
"Hold on," I interrupted. "I'm
none too convinced of it now."

 
          
 
"I said just that, last night. However,
you think that there is some grain of truth to it. You would be a fool to laugh
at the many experiments in clairvoyance carried on at Duke University."

 
          
 
"Yes, they are impressive," I
admitted.

 
          
 
"They are tremendous, and by no means
unique," he insisted. "Think of a number between one and ten,"
he said suddenly.

 
          
 
I gazed at my hands on the wheel, thought of a
joking reply,
then
fell in with his mood.

 
          
 
"All right," I replied. "I'm
thinking of a number. What is it?"

 
          
 
"It is seven," he cried out at once,
then laughed heartily at the blank look on my face.

 
          
 
"Look here, that's a logical number for
an average man to think of," I protested. "You relied on human
nature, not telepathy."

 
          
 
He grinned and tweaked the end of his beard
between manicured fingers.
"Very good.
Wills, try
again.
A color this time."

 
          
 
I paused a moment before replying, "All
right, guess what it is."

 
          
 
He, too, hesitated, staring at me sidewise.
"I think it is blue," he offered at length.

 
          
 
"Go to the head of the class," I
grumbled. "I rather expected you to guess red - that's most obvious."

 
          
 
"But I was not guessing," he assured
me. "A flash of blue came before my mind's eye. Come, let us try another
time."

 
          
 
We continued the experiment for a while.
Zoberg was not always correct, but he was surprisingly close in nearly every
case. The most interesting results were with the names of persons, and Zoberg
achieved some rather mystifying approximations. Thus, when I was thinking of
the actor Boris Karlofl", he gave me the name of the actor Bela Lugosi.
Upon my thinking of Gilbert K. Chesterton, he named Chesterton's close friend
Hilaire Belloc, and my concentration on George Bernard Shaw brought forth a
shout of "Santa Claus." When I reiterated my charge of psychological
trickery and besought him to teach me his method, he grew actually angry and
did not speak for more than half an hour. Then he began to discuss our
destination.

 
          
 
"A most amazing community," he
pronounced. "It is old - one of the oldest inland towns of all America.
Wait until you see the houses, my friend. You can almost hear the ghosts within
them, in broad daylight. And their Devil's Croft, that is worth seeing,
too."

 
          
 
"Their what?"

 
          
 
He shook his head, as though in despair.
"And you set yourself up as an authority on occultism!" he sniffed.
"Next you will admit that you have never heard of the Druids. A Devil's
Croft, my dull young friend, used to be part of every English or Scots village.
The good people would set aside a field for Satan, so that he would not take
their own lands."

 
          
 
"And this settlement has such a
place?"

 
          
 
"
yfl
wohl, a, grove
of the thickest timber ever seen in this over-civilized country, and hedged in
to boot. I do not say that they believe, but it is civic property and protected
by special order from trespassers."

           
 
"I'd like to visit that grove," I
said.

 
          
 
"I pray you!" he cried, waving in
protest. "Do not make us unwelcome."

 
          
 
We
arrived
shordy
before noon. The little town rests in a circular hollow among high wooded
hills, and there is not a really good road into it, for two or three miles
around. After listening to Zoberg, I had expected something grotesque or
forbidding, but I was disappointed. The houses were sturdy and modest, in some
cases poor. The greater part of them made a close-huddled mass, like a herd of
cattle threatened by wolves, with here and there an isolated dwelling like an
adventuresome young fighting-bull. The streets were narrow, crooked and
unpaved, and for once in this age I saw buggies and wagons out-numbering
automobiles. The central square, with a two-story town hall of red brick and a
hideous cast-iron war memorial, still boasted numerous hitching-rails, brown
with age and smooth with use. There were few real signs of modem progress. For
instance, the drug store was a shabby clapboard affair with
"Pharmacy" painted upon its windows, and it sold only drugs, soda and
tobacco; while the one hotel was low and rambling and bore the title
"Luther Inn." I heard that the population was three hundred and
fifty, but I am inclined to think it was closer to three hundred.

 
          
 
We drew up in front of the Luther Inn, and a
group of roughly dressed men gazed at us with the somewhat hostile
interrogation that often marks a rural American community at the approach of
strangers. These men wore mail-order coats of corduroy or suede - the air was
growing nippier by the minute - and plow shoes or high laced boots under
dungaree pants. All of them were of Celtic or Anglo-Saxon type.

 
          
 
"Hello!" cried Zoberg jovially.
"I see you there, my friend Mr. Gird. How is your charming daughter?"

 
          
 
The man addressed took a step forward from the
group on the p
)orch
. He was a raw-boned, grizzled
native with pale, pouched eyes, and was a trifle better dressed than the
others, in a rather ministerial coat of dark cloth and a wide black hat. He
cleared his throat before replying.

 
          
 
"Hello, Doctor.
Susan's
well, thanks.
What do you want of us?"

 
          
 
It was a definite challenge, that would repel
or anger most men, but Zoberg was not to be denied. He scrambled out of the car
and cordially shook the hand of the man he had called Mr. Gird. Meanwhile he
spoke in friendly fashion to one or two of the others.

 
          
 
"And here," he wound up, "is a
very good friend of mine, Mr. Talbot Wills."

 
          
 
All eyes - and very unfriendly eyes they were,
as a whole - turned upon me. I got out slowly, and at Zoberg's insistence shook
hands with Gird. Finally the grizzled man came with us to the car.

 
          
 
"I promised you once," he said
glumly to Zoberg, "that I would let you and Susan dig as deeply as you
wanted to into this matter of spirits. I've often wished since that I hadn't,
but my word was never broken yet. Come along with me; Susan is cooking dinner,
and there'll be enough for all of us."

 
          
 
He got into the car with us, and as we drove
out of the square and toward his house he conversed quietly with Zoberg and me.

 
          
 
"Yes," he answered one of my
questions, "the houses are old, as you can see. Some of them have stood
since the Revolutionary War with England, and our town's ordinances have stood
longer than that. You aren't the first to be impressed, Mr. Wills. Ten years
ago a certain millionaire came and said he wanted to endow us, so that we would
stay as we are. He had a lot to say about native color and historical value. We
told him that we would stay as we are without having to take money from him, or
from anybody else for that matter."

 
          
 
Gird's home was large but low, all one storey,
and of darkly painted clapboards over heavy timbers. The front door was hung on
the most massive handwrought hinges. Gird knocked at it, and a slender,
smallish girl opened to us.

 
          
 
She wore a woolen dress, as dark as her
father's coat, with white at the neck and wrists. Her face, under masses of
thunder-black hair, looked Oriental at first glance, what with high cheek-bones
and eyes set aslant; then I saw that her eyes were a bright gray like worn
silver, and her skin rosy, with a firm chin and a generous mouth. The features
were representatively Celtic, after all, and I wondered for perhaps the
fiftieth time in my life if there was some sort of blood link between Scot and
Mongol. Her hand, on the brass knob of the door, showed as slender and white as
some evening flower.

 
          
 
"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.