"'Do the people suffer this without complaint—these deaths and convulsions and apostasies?' asked Joan. Well, no. But if they destroyed the mill a liquor saloon would go up immediately. The proprietor was simply waiting. And they didn't want that. So they kept it quiet. And nobody need go there. Nobody had been alarmed or hurt except the meddlers. And in villages the people have less scientific curiosity. But Darby was going immediately. It was December twenty-third now. Joan must come, too; it would be most exciting. Joan argued against it, but he too was curious, so they agreed to go. And the next day they went."
II
By this time the circle was absolutely silent, concentrated to ears and eyes. They stared and leaned towards the shadowy corner behind the stove where the dimly defined figure crouched. The clerk got up and turned down the gas, which flared in his face, and the room was almost wholly dark. The man spoke in a dull, mechanical way, as one speaks who clears his mind, once for all. At intervals he waited fully ten seconds to rest his voice, strangely impressive, with its strained, choked tones.
"The next day they went," he repeated. "Darby was not only clever—he was extremely sensitive. Ridicule was unbearable to him. And though he was a literary fellow, and artistic and all that, he was practical, too, for all he was so brilliant and winning. It actually troubled him that people should believe anything but what he called 'the strictly logical,' and he thought Joan's ideas far too flexible and credulous. It was really for Joan's sake, he said in joke, whom he rather suspected of spiritualistic leanings, that he intended to make the excursion into the country. And he would tell nobody. He would make no inquiries. He would conduct the search along somewhat unusual lines, he declared. One of them should sleep in the room. At one o'clock precisely the other should quietly mount a ladder fixed just where the mythical ladder had been and enter the room in that way, thus preventing any mischievous practical jokes from without, and insuring help to the man within, should he need it.
"And Joan agreed to this. He was interested himself, and he'd have been as eager and scornful as Darby if it hadn't occurred to him—for he was a terribly literal fellow—that four tragedies, sad as these had been, and all unexplained, couldn't be accounted for by chance nor made less sad even by a good logician like Darby. So he suggested one or two friends to fall back upon in case of foul play of any kind. And Darby looked at him and laughed a little sneering laugh and called him——" The man choked and bent lower. He seemed to be unable to speak for some seconds. Then he hurried on, speaking from this point very rapidly and using a kind of clumsy gesture that brought the scenes he spoke of strangely clear to the men around him.
"He called him a coward. So Joan agreed to go. And on the afternoon of the day before Christmas they took a long ladder and a lantern and some sandwiches and two revolvers and drove in a butcher's cart to the little village. And Joan was as eager as Darby that no one should know. You see, Darby called him a coward.
"They slipped into the old, dingy mill at dusk, and went over it with the greatest thoroughness. Everything was open and empty. Only the corner bedroom and one of the living rooms were furnished at all. The dust lay thick in the mill proper, but the living rooms were singularly free from it. Darby noticed this and remarked it to Joan. 'It doesn't smell half so musty, either,' he said. 'I'm glad of that. I hate old, musty smells.'
"Then a queer, crawly feeling came over Joan, and he said: 'Darby, let's go home. Life's short enough, heaven knows. If anything——' And then Darby told him once for all that if he wanted to go home he might, and otherwise he might shut up.
"'Do you want it dusty and smelly?' said he.
"'Yes,' said Joan, 'I do. I don't see why it isn't, either. It's just as old and just as deserted as the other part.'