“Oh, I wake, all right. Sometimes I lie still a long time, looking at the dog as earnestly as the dog looks at me—I always leave the light going. When I can’t endure it any longer I sit up in bed—and nothing is there!”
“’M, ’m—what is the beast’s expression?”
“It seems to me sinister. Of course I know that, except in art, an animal’s face in repose has always the same expression. But this is not a real animal. Newfoundland dogs are pretty mild looking, you know; what’s the matter with this one?”
“Really, my diagnosis would have no value: I am not going to treat the dog.”
The physician laughed at his own pleasantry, but narrowly watched his patient from the corner of his eye. Presently he said: “Fleming, your description of the beast fits the dog of the late Atwell Barton.”
Fleming half-rose from his chair, sat again and made a visible attempt at indifference. “I remember Barton,” he said; “I believe he was—it was reported that—wasn’t there something suspicious in his death?”
Looking squarely now into the eyes of his patient, the physician said: “Three years ago the body of your old enemy, Atwell Barton, was found in the woods near his house and yours. He had been stabbed to death. There have been no arrests; there was no clew. Some of us had ‘theories.’ I had one. Have you?”
“I? Why, bless your soul, what could I know about it? You remember that I left for Europe almost immediately afterward—a considerable time afterward. In the few weeks since my return you could not expect me to construct a ‘theory.’ In fact, I have not given the matter a thought. What about his dog?”
“It was first to find the body. It died of starvation on his grave.”
We do not know the inexorable law underlying coincidences. Staley Fleming did not, or he would perhaps not have sprung to his feet as the night wind brought in through the open window the long wailing howl of a distant dog. He strode several times across the room in the steadfast gaze of the physician; then, abruptly confronting him, almost shouted: “What has all this to do with my trouble, Dr. Halderman? You forget why you were sent for.”