front corner. Thunstone got out of the sedan. He was big and powerfully built, with gray streaks in his well-combed dark hair and trim mustache. He wore a blue summer suit. In one broad hand he carried a stick of spotted wood with a bent handle and a silver band, but he did not lean on it. Walking the flagged path to the front steps, he studied the house. Two rooms and a kitchen below, he guessed, another room and probably a bath above.
A slender girl in green slacks and a paint-daubed white blouse came to the open door. “Yes, sir?” she half- challenged.
He lifted a hand as though to tip the hat he did not wear. “Good afternoon. My name is John Thunstone. A researcher into old folk beliefs. I came because, yonder at the county seat, they told me an interesting story about this place.”
“Interesting story?” She came out on the stoop. Thunstone thought she was eighteen or nineteen, small but healthy, with a cascade of chestnut hair. Her long face was pretty. In one hand she held a kitchen knife, in the other a half-peeled potato. “Interesting story?” she said again.
“About a circle in your yard,” said Thunstone. “with no grass on its circumference. It’s mentioned briefly in an old folklore treatise, and I heard about it at your courthouse today.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “Here comes Bill—my husband. Maybe he can tell you.”
A young man carrying a big pair of iron pincers came around the corner of the house. He was middle-sized and sinewy, in dungarees and checked shirt, with a denim apron, He had heavy hair and a close-clipped beard, and a blotch of soot on his nose. No older than, say, twenty-two. This couple, reflected Thunstone, had married early. “Yes, sir?” said the young man.
“This is Mr. Thunstone, Bill,” said the girl. “Oh, I didn’t say who we were. This is my husband Bill Bracy, and my name’s Prue.”
“How do you do?” said Thunstone, but Bill Bracy was staring.
“I’ve seen your picture in the papers,” he said. “Read about your researches into the supernatural.”
“I do such things.” Thunstone nodded. “At your county seat, I looked up the old colonial records of the trial of Crett Marrowby, for sorcery.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bill Bracy. “We’ve heard of that, too.”
“Mr. Packer, the clerk of the court, mentioned this house of yours,” went on Thunstone. “He called it the Trumbull house. And said that there’s a circular patch in the yard, and some old people connect it with the Marrowby case.”
He looked around him, as though in quest of the circular patch.
“That’s around in the back yard,” said Prue Bracy. “We’ve only lived here a few months. When we bought from the Trumbulls, they said we’d do well to leave the thing alone.”
“Might I see it?” asked Thunstone.
“I’ll show it to you,” said Bill Bracy. “Prue, could you maybe fix us some drinks? Come this way, sir.”
He and Thunstone rounded the corner of the house and went into the back yard. That was an open stretch of coarse grass, with woods beyond.
“There it is,” and Bracy pointed with his tongs.
Almost at the center of the grassy stretch lay a moist roundness, greener than the grass. Thunstone walked toward it. The circle seemed nine or ten feet across. It was bordered with a hard, base ring of pale brown earth. Thunstone paced all around, moving lightly for so large a man. The inner expanse looked somewhat like a great pot of wet spinach. It seemed to stir slightly as he studied it. It seethed. He reached out with the tip of his spotted stick.
“Don’t,” warned Bracy, but Thunstone had driven the stick into the mass.
For a moment, something seemed to fasten upon the stick, to drag powerfully upon it. Thunstone strongly dragged it clear and lifted it. Where it had touched the dampness showed a momentary churning whirl. He heard, or imagined, a droning hum.
“I did that when we first came here,” Bill Bracy said, a tremble in his voice. “I put a hoe in there, and the hoe popped out of my hand and was swallowed up before I looked.”
“It didn’t get my cane,” said Thunstone. “This happens to be a very special cane.” He looked at Bracy. “Why did it take your hoe?”
“I’ve wondered myself. I haven’t fooled with it again.” Bracy’s bearded face was grave. “I should explain, Prue and I came here from New York, because the house was so cheap. She paints—she’s going to do a mural at the new post office in town—and I make metal things, copper and pewter, and sell them here and there. Mr. and Mrs. Trumbull wanted to get rid of the house, so we got it for almost nothing. They told us what I told you, leave that sink hole thing alone. ‘Do that,’ Mr. Trumbull said, ‘and it will leave you alone.’ ”
“But you lost a hoe in it,” Thunstone reminded.
“Yes, sir,” Bracy nodded heavily. “And when it came to evening that day, we heard noises. Sort of a growling noise, over and over. I wanted to go out and check, but Prue wouldn’t let me. She was frightened, she prayed. And that’s the last time we’ve meddled in it, and how about a drink now?”
“In a moment.”
Thunstone studied the outer ring intently. It was of bald, hard earth, like baked pottery. Again he measured the distance across with his eyes. Rings of that dimension had been common in old witchcraft cases, he reflected; they were about the size to hold a coven of thirteen sorcerers standing together, perhaps dancing together. Circles were always mysterious things, whether they were old or new. He turned back to Bracy.
“I’ll be glad for that drink you mentioned,” he said.
They returned to the house and entered a small, pleasant front room. There were chairs and a table and a sofa draped in a handsome Indian blanket. A small fireplace was set in a corner. Prue Bracy was making highballs at the table. Thunstone accepted his glass. Ice clinked pleasantly in it. They sat down and drank.
“I explained to Mr. Thunstone how we were advised to leave that thing alone,” said Bracy.
“I’m not sure it should be left alone,” said Thunstone, sipping. “Let me tell you some things I found out earlier today, when I was at the courthouse.”
He referred to a sheaf of notes to read some of his conversation with the clerk Packard. He quoted what brief record the ancient county ledgers had of the execution, long ago, of Crett Marrowby. At that time in Colonial history, George II’s act of 1735 obtained, to repeal the death penalty for witchcraft; but for a mass of odd charges Marrowby had been put in jail for a year, with a public appearance in the pillory every three months. His execution had been simply for the murder of a minister of the local church, the Reverend Mr. Herbert Walford.
“And it was ordered that he be buried outside the churchyard,” Thunstone finished.
“Confession or not, they thought he was evil,” suggested Bill Bracy. “Is that all you have on the case?”
“So far, it is,” replied Thunstone. “Yet I hope for more. Mr. Packer spoke of an old resident named Ritson —”
“That one!” broke in Bill Bracy, not very politely. “He’s one of those crusty old characters that got weaned on a pickle. We met him when we first came here, tried to make friends, and he just turned the acid on us.”
“I’ll try to neutralize his acid,” said Thunstone, and he rose. “I’ll go now, but I have a cheeky favor to ask. I want to come back here tonight and stay.”
Prue blinked at him, very prettily. “Why,” she said, “we don’t have a spare room, but there’s this sofa if you don’t have a place to stay.”
“I’m checked into the Sullivan Motel in town, but right here is where I want to be tonight,” said Thunstone. “The sofa will do splendidly for me.” He went to the door. “Thank you both. Will you let me fetch us something for supper? I’ll shop around in town.”
He went to the soft-lighted grill room of the Sullivan Motel, for there, Packer had told him, old Mr. Ritson habitually sat and scowled into a drink. Sure enough, there at the bar sat a gray man, old and hunched, harshly gaunt where Thunstone was blocky. It must be Ritson. He was dressed in shabby black, like an undertaker’s assistant. His lead-pale hair bushed around his cars. His nose and chin were as sharp as daggers. Thunstone sat down on the stool next to him. From the bartender he ordered a double bourbon and water. Then he turned to the old man.
“I think you’re Mr. Ritson,” he said.
The other turned bitter, beady eyes upon him, clamped the thin mouth between sharp nose and sharp chin. “So you know who I am,” came the grumpiest of voices. “I know who you are, too—this Thurston fellow who’s come
