With that he was gone, and I watched him from the window. He moved sturdily across the bright snow to a shed, slid open its door and entered. Soon there emerged a sedan, old but well-kept, with the judge at the wheel. He drove away down a snow-filled road toward town.
I did not know what to envy most in him, his learning, his assurance or his good-nature. The assurance, I decided once; then it occurred to me that he was in nothing like the awkward position I held. He was only a sympathetic ally—but why was he that, even? I tried to analyze his motives, and could not.
Sitting down in his study, I saw on the desk the Montague Summers book on werewolves. It lay open at page 111, and my eyes lighted at once upon a passage underscored in ink—apparently some time ago, for the mark was beginning to rust a trifle. It included a quotation from Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, written by Richard Rowlands in 1605:
“… were-wolves are certaine sorcerers, who hauvin annoynted their bodyes, with an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the deuil; and putting on a certain inchanted girdel, do not only vnto the view of others seeme as wolues, but to their own thinking haue both the shape and the nature of wolues, so long as they weare the said girdel. And they do dispose theselves as uery wolues, in wurrying and killing, and moste of humaine creatures.”
This came to the bottom of the page, where someone, undoubtedly Pursuivant, had written: “Ointment and girdle sound as if they might have a scientific explanation.” And, in the same script, but smaller, the following notes filled the margin beside:
Possible Werewolf Motivations
Involuntary lycanthropy.
Must have blood to drink (connection with vampirism?).
Must have secrecy.
Driven to desperation by contemplating horror of own position.
Voluntary lycanthropy.
Will to do evil.
Will to exert power through fear.
Contributing factors to becoming werewolf.
Loneliness and dissatisfaction.
Hunger for forbidden foods (human flesh, etc.).
Scorn and hate of fellow men, general or specific.
Occult curiosity.
Simon-pure insanity (Satanist complex).
Are any or all of these traits to be found in werewolf?
Find one and ask it.
That was quite enough lycanthropy for the present, so far as I was concerned. I drew a book of Mark Twain from the shelf—I seem to remember it as Tom Sawyer Abroad—and read all the morning. Noon came, and I was about to ask the judge’s negro servant for some lunch, when he appeared in the door of the study.
“Someone with a message, sah,” he announced, and drew aside to admit Susan Gird.
I fairly sprang to my feet, dropping my book upon the desk. She advanced slowly into the room, her pale face grave but friendly. I saw that her eyes were darkly circled, and that her cheeks showed gaunt, as if with strain and weariness. She put out a hand, and I took it.
“A message?” I repeated William’s words.
“Why, yes.” She achieved a smile, and I was glad to see it, for both our sakes. “Judge Pursuivant got me to one side and said for me to come here. You and I are to talk the thing over.”
“You mean, last night?” She nodded, and I asked further, “How did you get here?”
“Your car. I don’t drive very well, but I managed.”
I asked her to sit down and talk.
She told me that she remembered being in the parlor, with Constable O’Bryant questioning me. At the time she had had difficulty remembering even the beginning of the séance, and it was not until I had been taken away that she came to realize what had happened to her father. That, of course, distressed and distracted her further, and even now the whole experience was wretchedly hazy to her.
“I do recall sitting down with you,” she said finally, after I had urged her for the twentieth time to think hard. “You chained me, yes, and Doctor Zoberg. Then yourself. Finally I seemed to float away, as if in a dream. I’m not even sure about how long it was.”
“Had the light been out very long?” I asked craftily.
“The light out?” she echoed, patently mystified. “Oh, of course. The light was turned out, naturally. I don’t remember, but I suppose you attended to that.”
“I asked to try you,” I confessed. “I didn’t touch the lamp until after you had seemed to drop off to sleep.”
She did recall to memory her father’s protest at his manacles, and Doctor Zoberg’s gentle inquiry if she were ready. That was all.
“How is Doctor Zoberg?” I asked her.
“Not very well, I’m afraid. He was exhausted by the experience, of course, and for a time seemed ready to break down. When the trouble began about you—the crowd gathered at the town hall—he gathered his strength and went out, to see if he could help defend or rescue you. He was gone about an hour and then he returned, bruised about the face. Somebody of the mob had handled him roughly, I think. He’s resting at our place now, with a hot compress on his eye.”
“Good man!” I applauded. “At least he did his best for me.”
She was not finding much pleasure in her memories, however, and I suggested a change of the subject. We had lunch together, egg sandwiches and coffee, then played several hands of casino. Tiring of that, we turned to the books and she read aloud to me from Keats. Never has “The Eve of St. Agnes” sounded better to me. Evening fell, and we were preparing to take yet another meal—a meat pie, which William assured us was one of his culinary triumphs—when the door burst open and Judge Pursuivant came in.
“You’ve been together all the time?” he asked us at once.
“Why, yes,” I said.
“Is that correct, Miss
