The Trees of Pride Read online

  III. THE MYSTERY OF THE WELL

  Cyprian Paynter did not know what he expected to see rise out ofthe well--the corpse of the murdered man or merely the spirit of thefountain. Anyhow, neither of them rose out of it, and he recognizedafter an instant that this was, after all, perhaps the more naturalcourse of things. Once more he pulled himself together, walked to theedge of the well and looked down. He saw, as before, a dim glimmer ofwater, at that depth no brighter than ink; he fancied he still hearda faint convulsion and murmur, but it gradually subsided to an utterstillness. Short of suicidally diving in, there was nothing to bedone. He realized that, with all his equipment, he had not even broughtanything like a rope or basket, and at length decided to return forthem. As he retraced his steps to the entrance, he recurred to, and tookstock of, his more solid discoveries. Somebody had gone into the wood,killed the Squire and thrown him down the well, but he did not admit fora moment that it was his friend the poet; but if the latter had actuallybeen seen coming out of the wood the matter was serious. As he walkedthe rapidly darkening twilight was cloven with red gleams, that made himalmost fancy for a moment that some fantastic criminal had set fire tothe tiny forest as he fled. A second glance showed him nothing but oneof those red sunsets in which such serene days sometimes close.

  As he came out of the gloomy gate of trees into the full glow he saw adark figure standing quite still in the dim bracken, on the spot wherehe had left the woodcutter. It was not the woodcutter.

  It was topped by a tall black hat of a funeral type, and the wholefigure stood so black against the field of crimson fire that edged thesky line that he could not for an instant understand or recall it. Whenhe did, it was with an odd change in the whole channel of his thoughts.

  "Doctor Brown!" he cried. "Why, what are you doing up here?"

  "I have been talking to poor Martin," answered the doctor, and madea rather awkward movement with his hand toward the road down to thevillage. Following the gesture, Paynter dimly saw another dark figurewalking down in the blood-red distance. He also saw that the handmotioning was really black, and not merely in shadow; and, comingnearer, found the doctor's dress was really funereal, down to the detailof the dark gloves. It gave the American a small but queer shock, as ifthis were actually an undertaker come up to bury the corpse that couldnot be found.

  "Poor Martin's been looking for his chopper," observed Doctor Brown,"but I told him I'd picked it up and kept it for him. Between ourselves,I hardly think he's fit to be trusted with it." Then, seeing the glanceat his black garb, he added: "I've just been to a funeral. Did you knowthere's been another loss? Poor Jake the fisherman's wife, down in thecottage on the shore, you know. This infernal fever, of course."

  As they both turned, facing the red evening light, Paynter instinctivelymade a closer study, not merely of the doctor's clothes, but of thedoctor. Dr. Burton Brown was a tall, alert man, neatly dressed, whowould otherwise have had an almost military air but for his spectaclesand an almost painful intellectualism in his lean brown face and baldbrow. The contrast was clinched by the fact that, while his face was ofthe ascetic type generally conceived as clean-shaven, he had a strip ofdark mustache cut too short for him to bite, and yet a mouth that oftenmoved as if trying to bite it. He might have been a very intelligentarmy surgeon, but he had more the look of an engineer or one of thoseservices that combine a military silence with a more than militaryscience. Paynter had always respected something ruggedly reliable aboutthe man, and after a little hesitation he told him all the discoveries.

  The doctor took the hat of the dead Squire in his hand, and examined itwith frowning care. He put one finger through the hole in the crown andmoved it meditatively. And Paynter realized how fanciful his own fatiguemust have made him; for so silly a thing as the black finger wagglingthrough the rent in that frayed white relic unreasonably displeased him.The doctor soon made the same discovery with professional acuteness,and applied it much further. For when Paynter began to tell him ofthe moving water in the well he looked at him a moment through hisspectacles, and then said:

  "Did you have any lunch?"

  Paynter for the first time realized that he had, as a fact, worked andthought furiously all day without food.

  "Please don't fancy I mean you had too much lunch," said the medicalman, with mournful humor. "On the contrary, I mean you had too little.I think you are a bit knocked out, and your nerves exaggerate things.Anyhow, let me advise you not to do any more to-night. There's nothingto be done without ropes or some sort of fishing tackle, if with that;but I think I can get you some of the sort of grappling irons thefishermen use for dragging. Poor Jake's got some, I know; I'll bringthem round to you tomorrow morning. The fact is, I'm staying there fora bit as he's rather in a state, and I think is better for me to ask forthe things and not a stranger. I am sure you'll understand."

  Paynter understood sufficiently to assent, and hardly knew why he stoodvacantly watching the doctor make his way down the steep road to theshore and the fisher's cottage. Then he threw off thoughts he had notexamined, or even consciously entertained, and walked slowly and ratherheavily back to the Vane Arms.

  The doctor, still funereal in manner, though no longer so in costume,appeared punctually under the wooden sign next morning, laden with whathe had promised; an apparatus of hooks and a hanging net for hoistingup anything sunk to a reasonable depth. He was about to proceed on hisprofessional round, and said nothing further to deter the American fromproceeding on his own very unprofessional experiment as a detective.That buoyant amateur had indeed recovered most, if not all, ofyesterday's buoyancy, was now well fitted to pass any medicalexamination, and returned with all his own energy to the scene ofyesterday's labors.

  It may well have brightened and made breezier his second day's toil thathe had not only the sunlight and the bird's singing in the little wood,to say nothing of a more scientific apparatus to work with, but alsohuman companionship, and that of the most intelligent type. Afterleaving the doctor and before leaving the village he had bethoughthimself of seeking the little court or square where stood the quietbrown house of Andrew Ashe, solicitor, and the operations of draggingwere worked in double harness. Two heads were peering over the well inthe wood: one yellow-haired, lean and eager; the other redhaired, heavyand pondering; and if it be true that two heads are better than one, itis truer that four hands are better than two. In any case, their unitedand repeated efforts bore fruit at last, if anything so hard and meagerand forlorn can be called a fruit. It weighed loosely in the net asit was lifted, and rolled out on the grassy edge of the well; it was abone.

  Ashe picked it up and stood with it in his hand, frowning.

  "We want Doctor Brown here," he said. "This may be the bone of someanimal. Any dog or sheep might fall into a hidden well." Then he brokeoff, for his companion was already detaching a second bone from the net.

  After another half hour's effort Paynter had occasion to remark, "Itmust have been rather a large dog." There were already a heap of suchwhite fragments at his feet.

  "I have seen nothing yet," said Ashe, speaking more plainly. "That iscertainly a human bone." "I fancy this must be a human bone," said theAmerican.

  And he turned away a little as he handed the other a skull.

  There was no doubt of what sort of skull; there was the one unique curvethat holds the mystery of reason, and underneath it the two black holesthat had held human eyes. But just above that on the left was anotherand smaller black hole, which was not an eye.

  Then the lawyer said, with something like an effort: "We may admit itis a man without admitting it is--any particular man. There may besomething, after all, in that yarn about the drunkard; he may havetumbled into the well. Under certain conditions, after certain naturalprocesses, I fancy, the bones might be stripped in this way, evenwithout the skill of any assassin. We want the doctor again."

  Then he added suddenly, and the very sound of his voice suggested thathe hardly believed his own words.

  "Haven't
you got poor Vane's hat there?"

  He took it from the silent American's hand, and with a sort of hurryfitted it on the bony head.

  "Don't!" said the other involuntarily.

  The lawyer had put his finger, as the doctor had done, through the holein the hat, and it lay exactly over the hole in the skull.

  "I have the better right to shrink," he said steadily, but in a vibrantvoice. "I think I am the older friend."

  Paynter nodded without speech, accepting the final identification.The last doubt, or hope, had departed, and he turned to the draggingapparatus, and did not speak till he had made his last find.

  The singing of the birds seemed to grow louder about them, and the danceof the green summer leaves was repeated beyond in the dance of the