He touched a little book there, and drew it forth.
It was Jager’s Long Lost Friend.
A good hour later, Lanark rode into the yard of his ex-sergeant. The moon was high, and Jager was sitting upon the front stoop.
Silently the owner of the little house rose, took Lanark’s bridle rein and held the horse while Lanark dismounted. Then he led the beast around to the rear yard, where the little shed stood. In front of this he helped Lanark unbridle and unsaddle the roan.
A Negro boy appeared, diffident in his mute offer of help, and Jager directed him to rub the beast down with a wisp of hay before giving it water or grain. Then he led Lanark to the front of the house.
Jager spoke at the threshold: “I thank God you are come back safely.”
IX
Debate and Decision
Jager’s Negro servant was quite as good a cook as promised. Lanark, eating chicken stew and biscuits, reflected that only twice before had he been so ravenous—upon receiving the news of Lee’s surrender at Appomatox, and after the funeral of his mother. When he had finished, he drew forth a cheroot. His hand shook as he lighted it. Jager gave him one of the old looks of respectful disapproval, but did not comment. Instead he led Lanark to the most comfortable chair in the parlor and seated himself upon the keg. Then he said: “Tell me.”
Lanark told him, rather less coherently than here set down, the adventures of the evening. Again and again he groped in his mind for explanations, but not once found any to offer.
“It is fit for the devil,” pronounced Jager when his old commander had finished. “Did I not say that you should have stayed away from that woman? You’re well out of the business.”
“I’m well into it, you mean,” Lanark fairly snapped back. “What can you think of me, Jager, when you suggest that I might let things stand as they are?”
The frontier preacher massaged his shaggy jowl with thoughtful knuckles. “You have been a man of war and an officer of death,” he said heavily. “God taught your hands to fight. Yet your enemies are not those who perish by the sword.” He held out his hand. “You say you still have the book I lent you?”
From his torn pocket Lanark drew Hohman’s Long Lost Friend. Jager took it and stared at the cover. “The marks of fingers,” he muttered, in something like awe. He examined the smudges closely, putting on his spectacles to do so, then lifted the book to his nose. His nostrils wrinkled, as if in distaste, and he passed the thing back. “Smell it,” he directed.
Lanark did so. About the slimy-looking prints on the cover hung a sickening odor of decayed flesh.
“The demon that attacked you, that touched this book, died long ago,” went on Jager. “You know as much—you killed him with your own hand. Yet he fights you this very night.”
“Maybe you have a suggestion,” Lanark flung out, impatient at the assured and almost snobbish air of mystery that colored the manner of his old comrade in arms. “If this is a piece of hell broke loose, perhaps you did the breaking. Remember that image—that idol-thing with horns—that you smashed in the cellar? You probably freed all the evil upon the world when you did that.”
Jager frowned, but pursued his lecture. “This very book, this Long Lost Friend, saved you from the demon’s clutch,” he said. “It is a notable talisman and shield. But with the shield one must have a sword, with which to attack in turn.”
“All right,” challenged Lanark. “Where is your sword?”
“It is a product of a mighty pen,” Jager informed him sententiously. He turned in his seat and drew from a box against the wall a book. Like the Long Lost Friend, it was bound in paper, but of a cream color. Its title stood forth in bold black letters:
The Secrets
Of
Albertus Magnus
“A translation from the German and the Latin,” explained Jager. “Printed, I think, in New York. This book is full of wisdom, although I wonder if it is evil, unlawful wisdom.”
“I don’t care if it is.” Lanark almost snatched the book. “Any weapon must be used. And I doubt if Albertus Magnus was evil. Wasn’t he a churchman, and didn’t he teach Saint Thomas Aquinas?” He leafed through the beginning of the book. “Here’s a charm, Jager, to be spoken in the name of God. That doesn’t sound unholy.”
“Satan can recite scripture to his own ends,” misquoted Jager. “I don’t remember who said that, but—”
“Shakespeare said it, or something very like it,” Lanark informed him. “Look here, Jager, farther on. Here’s a spell against witchcraft and evil spirits.”
“I have counted at least thirty such in that book,” responded the other. “Are you coming to believe in them, sir?”
Lanark looked up from the page. His face was earnest and, in a way, humble.
“I’m constrained to believe in many unbelievable things. If my experience tonight truly befell me, then I must believe in charms of safety. Supernatural evil like that must have its contrary supernatural good.”
Jager pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and smiled in his beard. “I have heard it told,” he said, “that charms and spells work only when one believes in them.”
“You sound confident of that, at least,” Lanark smiled back. “Maybe you will help me, after all.”
“Maybe I will.”
The two gazed into each other’s eyes, and then their hands came out, at the same moment. Lanark’s lean fingers crushed Jager’s coarser ones.
“Let’s be gone,” urged Lanark at once, but the preacher shook his head emphatically.
“Slowly, slowly,” he temporized. “Cool your spirit, and take council. He that ruleth his temper is greater than he that taketh a city.” Once more he put out his hand for the
