near me that I could see its glaring eyes and the shape of a huge beast with horns, which I recognised a moment later as Carleton’s, Mr. Van Dyming’s prize Durham bull; an animal so dangerous that Mr. Dyming is forced to keep it locked up. It was now free and it rushed past and on ahead, cutting off my advance, while the madman with the knife cut off my retreat. I was at bay; I stopped with my back to a tree, screaming for help.
“How did the bull get out?” I said.
He was watching my face while I read, like I might have been a teacher grading his school paper. “When I was a boy, I used to take subscriptions to the Police Gazette, for premiums. One of the premiums was a little machine guaranteed to open any lock. I don’t use it anymore, but I still carry it in my pocket, like a charm or something, I guess. Anyway, I had it that night.” He looked down at the paper on the table.
“I guess folks tell what they believe they saw. So you have to believe what they think they believe. But that paper don’t tell how she kicked off her slippers (I nigh broke my neck over one of them) so she could run better, and how I could hear her going wump-wump-wump inside like a dray horse, and how when she would begin to slow up a little I would let out another toot on the whistle and off she would go again.
“I couldn’t even keep up with her, carrying that portfolio and trying to blow on that whistle too; seemed like I never would get the hang of it, somehow. But maybe that was because I had to start trying so quick, before I had time to kind of practice up, and running all the time too. So I threw the portfolio away and then I caught up with her where she was standing with her back against the tree, and that bull running round and round the tree, not bothering her, just running around the tree, making a right smart of fuss, and her leaning there whispering ‘Carleton. Carleton’ like she was afraid she would wake him up.”
The account continued: I stood against the tree, believing that each circle which the bull made, it would discover my presence. That was why I ceased to scream. Then the man came up where I could see him plainly for the first time. He stopped before me; for one both horrid and joyful moment I thought he was Mr. Van Dyming. “Carleton!” I said.
He didn’t answer. He was stooped over again; then I saw that he was engaged with the knife in his hand.
“Carleton!” I cried.
“‘Dang if I can get the hang of it, somehow,’ he kind of muttered, busy with the murderous knife.
“Carleton!” I cried. “Are you mad?”
He looked up then. I saw that it was not my husband, that I was at the mercy of a madman, a maniac, and a maddened bull. I saw the man raise the knife to his lips and blow again upon it that fearful shriek. Then I fainted.
IV
AND THAT WAS ALL. The account merely went on to say how the madman had vanished, leaving no trace, and that Mrs. Van Dyming was under the care of her physician, with a special train waiting to transport her and her household, lock, stock, and barrel, back to New York; and that Mr. Van Dyming in a brief interview had informed the press that his plans about the improvement of the place had been definitely rescinded and that the place was now for sale.
I folded the paper as carefully as he would have. “Oh,” I said. “And so that’s all.”
“Yes. I waked up about daylight the next morning, in the woods. I didn’t know when I went to sleep nor where I was at first. I couldn’t remember at first what I had done. But that ain’t strange. I guess a man couldn’t lose a day out of his life and not know it. Do you think so?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I think too.”
“Because I know I ain’t as evil to God as I guess I look to a lot of folks. And I guess that demons and such and even the devil himself ain’t quite as evil to God as lots of folks that claim to know a right smart about His business would make you believe. don’t you think that’s right?” The wallet lay on the table, open. But he did not at once return the newspaper to it.
Then he quit looking at me; at once his face became diffident, childlike again. He put his hand into the wallet; again he did not withdraw it at once.
“That ain’t exactly all,” he said, his hand inside the wallet, his eyes downcast, and his face: that mild, peaceful, nondescript face across which a mild moustache straggled. “I was a powerful reader, when I was a boy. Do you read much?”
“Yes. A good deal.”
But he was not listening. “I would read about pirates and cowboys, and I would be the head pirate or cowboy me, a durn little tyke that never saw the ocean except at Coney Island or a tree except in Washington Square day in and out. But I read them, believing like every boy, that some day… that living wouldn’t play a trick on him like getting him alive and then… When I went home that morning to get ready to take the train, Martha says, “You’re just as good as any of them Van Dymings, for all they get into the papers. If all the folks that deserved it got into the papers, Park Avenue wouldn’t hold them, or even Brooklyn,’ she says.”
He drew his hand from the wallet. This time it was only a clipping, one column wide, which he handed me, yellow and faded too, and not long: MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED Wilfred Middleton, New York Architect, Disappears From Millionaire’s Country House POSSE SEEKS BODY OF ARCHITECT BELIEVED SLAIN BY MADMAN IN VIRGINIA MOUNTAINS May Be Coupled With Mysterious Attack On Mrs. Van Dyming Mountain Neighborhood In State Of Terror , Va. April 8, Wilfred Middleton, 56, architect, of New York City, mysteriously disappeared sometime on April 6th, while en route to the country house of Mr. Carleton Van Dyming near here. He had in his possession some valuable drawings which were found this morning near the Van Dyming estate, thus furnishing the first clue. Chief of Police Elmer Harris has taken charge of the case, and is now awaiting the arrival of a squad of New York detectives, when he promises a speedy solution if it is in the power of skilled criminologists to do so.
MOST BAFFLING IN ALL HIS EXPERIENCE
“When I solve this disappearance,” Chief Harris is quoted, “I will also solve the attack on Mrs. Van Dyming on the same date.”
Middleton leaves a wife, Mrs. Martha Middleton, St., Brooklyn.
He was watching my face. “Only it’s one mistake in it,” he said.
“Yes!” I said. “They got your name wrong.”
“I was wondering if you’d see that. But that’s not the mistake…” He had in his hand a second clipping which he now extended. It was like the other two; yellow, faint. I looked at it, the fading, peaceful print through which, like a thin, rotting net, the old violence had somehow escaped, leaving less than the dead gesture fallen to quiet dust. “Read this one. Only that’s not the mistake I was thinking about. But then, they couldn’t have known at that time…”
I was reading, not listening to him. This was a reprinted letter, an ‘agony column’ letter: New Orleans, La. April 10,…
To the Editor, New York Times
New York, N. Y.
Dear Sir
In your issue of April 8, this year you got the name of the party wrong. The name is Midgleston not Middleton. Would thank you to correct this error in local and metropolitan columns as the press a weapon of good evil into every American home. And a power of that weight cannot afford mistakes even about people as good as any man or woman even if they don’t get into the papers every day.
Thanking you again; beg to remain
