Exorcism!
He would try it, of course—if he could find a priest to take on the task. He’d not the faith himself. But where find a priest?
He would leave the Church out just so long as he could.
Too, there was another problem: he must find some means to protect his neighbors. Hmm. That would be difficult—plenty difficult.
He was standing by the French doors, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes on the wood along the creek. Suddenly, he started. Something white down there. Something white, close to the ground, moving slowly. It disappeared.
He stared at the place. Shortly from a little to the left, two figures emerged from the wood. And when they approached the house, Pierre—his breath in short gasps—identified them.
A moment later he heard David say good night to Sara at the front door; heard the door open, heard retreating footfalls on the gravel. He heard the door close. Better permit her to go to her room. Didn’t want to see her, anyhow. But he walked to the door and called her.
She entered quietly, yet with the listlessness with which she had left completely gone. Indeed, there was a certain vibrancy in her step; a flush in her lips; an actual bloom on her cheeks.
“God knows what she’s been doing!” Pierre thought. He could not keep his eyes from the floor where no shadow fell. He thought, “Maybe she doesn’t know.” He said, then: “Hello, pet. Have a nice walk?”
She said, “Why . . . I suppose so.”
“Thought I heard David out there.”
“Yes. Yes, you did.”
“Where did you go?”
She glanced down at her hands, thoughtfully. Her brows were drawn in wonder. “Why, really, I don’t—quite remember.” Pierre’s heart leaped. Thank God; thank God! She still doesn’t know.”
Manning Trent, too, remained up long after he reached home. But he was in no condition to sit in one place and think things through. He paced his study, then prowled about the house restlessly.
Julia was in bed. Good. He probably looked like a ghost—if he looked the way . he felt.
David was still out. Dammit. Didn’t used to stay out so late. He looked at his watch. One o’clock. Even love should have some limits.
He switched on a light in the long dining room and removed the stopper from a decanter. He poured himself a drink, held the glass, to the light(and watched the . lambent amber. Then he put the drink down.
Might just have been the trouble over there, he thought. Might have been one drink too many plus suggestion. Pierre certainly had his fill. Himself, he’d stay off—till Dave came in, anyway. He started prowling about the house again.
He’d talk it over with David. Utter rot, of course. He’d get David to stay away trom her. She was mad. And that was that. Otherwise Hardt wouldn’t be about. No matter how much you like a man, you couldn’t have your son marrying his daughter if she were a raving lunatic. He’d talk to Dave.
He was in the drawing room, off the main hall, when he heard David come in.
“That you, David?”
“Hello, Dad. Still up? Want something?” He entered the room, big, comfortable looking, hatless, his white hair tousled. Trent gazed at him with admiring fondness. But then, as if drawn by some power beyond himself, his eyes lowered—to the hands—to the knees—to the feet—and there, on the floor, they sought for something they could not find.
“No, David. I didn’t want anything.”
WHILE this was happening, wiry Red Crane, crack photographer of Trent’s Herald, leaned on the bar at the Well and sipped a Scotch and soda.
There were other newspapermen in the room—reporters and photographers from the New York and Philadelphia papers. They sat at the rickety tables, lounged over the bar. A pin-ball machine maintained a chatter of steel balls against pegs and ringing bells.
The usually placid, low-voiced John Craven, busier behind the bar than he had been in years, appeared somewhat flushed and excited by the sudden fame cast upon his establishment. He said:
“Ye-ss—ye-ss.”
Just as he always had. But there was sometimes a catch in his breath.
The pay-station phone on the wall rang, and Painter of the Times, the most fastidiously dressed man of the lot, took down the receiver.
Then he turned to the room at large: “Mirror’s calling Doyle. Anybody seen Doyle?”
Doyle, in extravagant slow motion, detached himself from his beer and ambled to the phone.
“Yeh . . . Uh huh . . . Uh huh . . . Uh huh . . . Okay.”
When he returned to the bar he loosed an oath.
“Calling me in, dammit. Claim the yarn’s washed up.”
Somebody consoled, “What the hell! Don’t wanta die down here, do you?”
“Half-baked idea in the first place,” another said.
“Nice while it lasted,” Doyle observed. “Overtime’ll pay my drinks for a month.”
Allan Kane, photographer for the Herald-Tribune, lunged through the swinging doors, black leather camera case swung over his shoulder. He approached the bar.
“Hi, Red.”
Tom Summers. Herald reporter, came in from the night. Sleepy-eyed, he took the place at the bar Kane vacated. He ordered a beer and stood looking at.it. He said quietly:
“Gonna try again tonight, Red?”
Red Crane nodded.
“When?”
Crane held the underside of his left wrist up and glanced at his watch.
“Ten minutes or so.”
“I need sleep,” groused Summers.
“Don't I?” retorted Crane. Then, “No kid- din’, I think we got something. I was down there again this afternoon. Fresh tracks, right along the bank. Comin’?”
Summers said, “I suppose. But if we have to wait up all the damned night again, I’m bringing a bottle. We'd better leave separately. These mugs’d spike your tires if they figured we were pulling a fast one.”
Summers drank up and left. A few minutes later Crane picked up his case, hung it on his shoulder and followed.
It was nine-thirty when Summers and Red Crane parked their car in a seldom-used lane in the woods west of the State Highway. Summers said:
“Boss’s land, isn’t it?”
“Trent’s?” Crane’s laugh was short. “I dun- no. His place is over in that direction.” He nodded to the east. “That perfume feller lives over there. South, I guess it is.”
Both would have been surprised to know that, at that moment, Manning Trent, who paid their salaries each and every Friday, was in earnest conversation with not only “that perfume feller” but with one of Philadelphia’s leading psychiatrists. And they would have been thunderstruck by the nature of the conversation.
They started down a path through the woods, Summers’ flashlight picking out the way. It was downhill—down toward the Neshaminy.
The night previous they had hidden out near the confluence of the Neshaminy and the Bowling, where the body of Leroy Tilson was found. And the night before that they had camped even farther down the Neshaminy. But tonight:
“I’ll show you where we went wrong,” Crane said. “We were right in our first idea. This damned wolf or whatever it is keeps pretty close to the creek. The Tilson case proved that. So does the dead goat and the case up at Melton Crossing. But this after-noon I found. . . .”
He took the flashlight from Summers and led the way down a steep gravel incline. “Here’s the creek now.”
Reporter and photographer emerged into a small canyon.
“Hell!” spat Summers. “I know this place. It’s where Derhammer and Messner took a shot at it.”
“Over that way,” Crane amended, motioning upstream. “Well, do you see?”
“Hell, no.”
“Look, Tom. If this thing wanders up and downstream and if it keeps close to the creek, it’s got to come through this canyon. And if—”
“Check.”
For the next few minutes, Crane busied himself with his case. He opened his camera and adjusted
the lens. He inserted a bulb and checked the plate. He found a rocky ledge between two bushes several feet above the creek, affording a view both up and downstream. Then the two men made themselves comfortable and sat down to wait.
Fifteen minutes dragged by. Then, more slowly, thirty. Summers drew out a bottle, unscrewed the top and silently handed it to Crane. Crane drank. And Summers drank. And Summers put the bottle away and started to light a cigarette.
“Douse it,” Crane whispered. ‘‘Animals can smell a mile off.”
“He'll smell us, anyway,” Summers said.
“That’s so. Where’s the wind?”
They checked the direction of the breeze, found it from the north.
“That’s okay,” Crane decided. “Can’t smell us up or downstream.”
They waited. It was an hour now. An hour and a half. The canyon was dark, forbidding. Scrub pine on the shoulders of the canyon cast shadows on the creek and screened the starlit sky. The water below them gurgled quietly.
“This where you saw those fresh prints?” Summers whispered.
“Yell.”
They waited. An owl somewhere above screeched with startled suddenness. A rabbit scrambled through the dry leaves somewhere below.
Two hours.
Downstream, at Fountain Head, Dr. Justin Hard: was preparing to leave. Shortly, Manning Trent would return home, his mind troubled. And Pierre would sit in front of his log fire and stare.
Two hours and fifteen minutes. Upstream two miles was the Lamberton Farm.
Two hours and a half had passed when Summers clutched Crane’s arm. They listened breathlessly.
There. . . . There it was again:
Plump, plump, plump—the faint padding of footsteps on moist earth.
Crane crouched, camera in hand, eyes on the creek below and the narrow path on the other side, meagerly illuminated between the splotches of black shadows by starlight. A dry twig cracked under Crane’s feet, sounding to his tense ears like a blast of dynamite.
“Easy, Red.”
The sound neared; stopped (and both men visualized the quarry pausing to sniff suspiciously); then the sound grew more distinct.
Pad, pad, pad. . . .
At the canyon mouth now, Summers figured; where Heinrich and Messner had seen them.
There was rhythm in the sound; pad-plump, pad-plump, pad-plump. . . .
And then—
With their own eyes, and simultaneously, they saw the long, low, moving shadows. Summers thought:
“Two! Derhammer’s right.”
He nudged Crane.
One appeared larger and whiter, Summers thought. And that would check. Crane steeled himself. He crouched, sighted. A. hundred thoughts sped dizzily: would the bulb have enough penetration; little far, there; black, too black; speed right? Damn it! Need the telescopic. Gosh! If I pull this off. . . .
Summers, behind Crane, saw the slow leisurely approach. The beasts trotted as it tired. Pad-plump. They were more distinct now. They resolved into form. But they were still shadows. Why didn’t Crane shoot?
Now they were directly in front of them. In a belt of starlight.
Flash!
Summers received a split-second impression of a huge, sleek white beast etched against the far rocks; of a red stain about the nose; of a darker animal drawing up the rear.
“Got it!” Crane shouted.
In the black oblivion that followed they heard a crashing from below; sounds receding, racing away.
THE next day Manning Trent did not go into the city. He breakfasted late—too late, purposely, to face David over the table. His eyes wore the telltale look of a sleepless night.
Julia, too, was up before Trent came down. From the open bay window in the cheerfully curtained breakfast room, Manning saw her long, low limousine—Roger at the wheel—roll out of the grounds and creep along the State Highway. Julia, a lady settled in her ways, never permitted Roger to drive more than twenty-five miles an hour.
“You are driving too rapidly, Roger,” she would announce with asperity into the microphone which linked her glass-encased ton- neau to Roger’s seat. Or again:
“Somewhat more slowly, Roger.”
She had installed, in the rear, a separate speedometer. And the result was that Julia Trent crept wherever she went—and traffic crept behind her.
As the spotless black limousine disappeared at its discreet pace behind a hill, Trent was relieved. He just couldn’t, today, stand up to her prying inquiries.
“You did not sleep well last night, Manning?”
“Do you feel, Manning, that the—ah—alcohol may have occasioned your restlessness?”
The tightness in the throat, the slight giddiness, the aching of neck and shoulder muscles so well known to the insomniac gripped Trent. Nor did he more than look at his food.
Have to work this out, he thought. No sleep. Can’t think straight. But—have to work this out.
He sat, and his coffee grew cold. He stared out across the lawn, still green even in December. He stared beyond the lawn to his fields and woods, to tree-studded Mt. Neshaminy. Above the crowns of the trees and somewhat to the east of that tall hill, the copper work on a chimney pot glistened in the sun. Fountain Head. Unreasoning bitterness grew within him.
He felt angry with Pierre, with Sara, with Dr. Hardt, with everything and anything connected with Fountain Head. The entire landscape in that direction repelled him. Hadn’t there been enough trouble at Trent Farms without borrowing from the neighbors? Wasn’t the change in Julia’s character through the years sufficient damnation? And David’s long, long invalidism?
He speculated. Had David’s illness left some weakness which paved the way to greater susceptibility to this—this horror?
Midway in his thought he shook himself— physically and abruptly. Good God! He was going on as if he believed this nonsense! In the plain light of the new day, he knew for certain that the events of the preceding night were only a passing madness.
Violently, he pushed back his chair to leave the table. The sound brought Wallace, the butler, into evidence. As he turned to leave. Wallace said with his usual stiff politeness:
“It was too bad, sir, about the Lamberton girl.”
Trent stopped, turned. Wallace was already bending rigidly over the table to remove the dishes. Trent asked gruffly:
“What do you mean?”
Wallace, straightening, faced his employer.
“I am sorry, sir. I thought you knew. It was Elsie. She is the youngest, I am told; six years, I believe they said. She was found this morning in the woods back of their place. She was quite badly mangled, sir.”
Dully, Trent stared at Wallace—Wallace, whose poker face would greet Doomsday without a wrinkle of emotion. Finally Trent asked:
“Dead?”
“Oh, quite, sir.”
Trent's shoulders slumped. He knew the child's mother, Jennie Lamberton; prettiest girl in the township when he was a youngster. A misty recollection of a dance clouded thought for an instant; a summer romance; and then her marriage to Howard Lamberton, and her inheritance of her father's great farm on Pumpernickle Road. Trent began hesitantly:
“Was it—”
“The wolf? That is what they say, sir. But they say there were two of them, sir.”
There was just enough trace of the histrionic in Wallace’s pauses between sentences, just enough emphasis upon the numeral to give Trent thought. He looked narrowly in Wallace's face; he wondered if the man were not regarding him with a little too much interest.
“Somewhat,” continued Wallace, “like the Heath case at Melton Crossing, sir. Elsie was asleep on the first floor and the window was up a little. Rather warm for December, you know, sir. But you would think, sir, that with this going on, people would close their windows. I understand the State Police have warned—”
Trent, still thinking of Wallace’s sharp glance, interrupted impatiently, “What are
they saying?”
“Th
e police, sir?”
“People.”
“Why, sir, I would not put any trust in gossip. You know how the talk goes on back stairs.”
“Am I expected to?” Trent inquired dryly. “I am sorry, sir. I did not mean to imply—”
“What are they saying?” Trent repeated.
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