Joe Morrow stared, too. Was it the Farley house? Roscoe Sweetman, ungainly and burly in his leather coat, his corduroy trousers and his heavy boots, sat uncomfortably in a chair and rubbed a calloused hand across a stubble of beard. Frederick Wingate, lithe and jaunty, walked the floor and filled the boy’s eyes. An opera cloak draped his shoulders, his shirt was pleated, his collar was long and loose, and a silk tie was gathered in a limp, nondescript bow. He seemed, in his dress, to belong to another age; and this passion for adornments of the past was reflected in his jewelry. His watch was old—a thick, heavy silver timepiece elaborately scrolled that had been converted into an ungainly wrist watch. And on the finger of his right hand was an enormous old-fashioned ring of gold curiously twisted and knotted.
“Doctor,” the artist announced, “I have brought you a man half out of his wits.”
“I know what I have heard,” the farmer said, slowly and heavily.
“Just what did you hear, Sweetman?” Dr. Stone asked.
“It was last night. I was coming home from the village and took a short cut across the Farley place to get quicker to my back door. I came close past the house, and there were voices coming from the inside. That was strange because there was no light on the inside. I have long had a key from Mr. Rodgers, the real estate man, so I went home and got the key and opened the front door. From inside came groans and cries of suffering. Then I went and shouted for Mr. Wingate.”
“And then?” the doctor asked.
The artist shrugged. “I brought flashlights. We searched the house from cellar to attic. There was nobody there—nothing had been disturbed.”
“Voices?” Dr. Stone suggested.
“He’s imagining things,” Frederick Wingate said impatiently. “There were no voices.”
“I heard them plain,” the farmer insisted stonily.