"Not I. I'll arrange things so there will be no deception."
Both Zoberg and Gird stared at me. I wondered which of them was the more disdainful of my confidence.
Then Susan Gird joined us, and for once I wanted to speak of other subjects than the occult.
3. "That Thing Isn't My Daughter——"
It was Zoberg who suggested that I take Susan Gird for a relaxing drive in my car. I acclaimed the idea as a brilliant one, and she, thanking me quietly, put on an archaic-seeming cloak, black and heavy. We left her father and Zoberg talking idly and drove slowly through the town.
She pointed out to me the Devil's Croft of which I had heard from the doctor, and I saw it to be a grove of trees, closely and almost rankly set. It stood apart from the sparser timber on the hills, and around it stretched bare fields. Their emptiness suggested that all the capacity for life had been drained away and poured into that central clump. No road led near to it, and I was obliged to content myself by idling the car at a distance while we gazed and she talked.
"It's evergreen, of course," I said. "Cedar and a little juniper."
"Only in the hedge around it," Susan Gird informed me. "It was planted by the town council about ten years ago."
I stared. "But surely there's greenness in the center, too," I argued.