“Oh, will he?” said Dreeme. He stood beside the body gazing down at it. Wagner stared up at him with a fixed grin upon his ensanguined face. He lay like an old sack half-filled with boneless flesh. He was worm’s meat now. All his toiling in the hot sun and the fierce rains had come to this. His heavy feet had crunched through the last field. His hands, so calloused and split with labor, would guide farm implements no more. Dreeme looked down at the clenched hand that he had forced from the disfigured face and he saw clutched in the black, broken-nailed, stumpy fingers a bit of paper. It was curious that he had missed it before. He knelt down and tried to force the stiff fingers open. The farmers watched him from a little distance curiously, their necks craned, their eyes narrowed to slits in the sunlight. It took all his strength to open these dead fingers but with one last desperate effort he heard them break with a crackling sound and the slip of paper fluttered to the oozy bank. He snatched it up before it drifted into the river. Standing up he held the paper before him and looked at it. There was nothing upon it except the tiny drawing of a goat’s head. Dreeme stared at it in perplexity.
“I reckon you’d better save that for the coroner, Mister Doctor,” remarked Bidwell.
“I intend to,” replied Dreeme shortly.
None of them trusted him. He was a stranger and they wanted their own kind around, men who talked and thought as they did, who understood without words the springs of hidden actions. Well, to hell with them! Let them all go to hell! He heard the creak of the coroner’s buggy and the clop-clop of the horse on the bridge-boards above him and lifting his eyes he saw the thin-mouthed Leeminster official. One of their own kind at last! Beside him was Jeffrey Westcott, hatless, his cloven skull gleaming blue in the sunlight. The farmer turned his head downward and stared coolly at the body of his hired man. Then he transferred his attention to Dreeme. There was no expression in his face.
“Down here, coroner, down here,” called Simon Barnson.
“Hold your horses, son!” replied that official. “I’ll be right there.”
He lumbered heavily from his buggy and slid down the bank in a sitting posture, adjusting his steel-rimmed spectacles as he came.
VI
I
Dreeme sat gloomily in front of Humphrey Lathrop and waited for the old doctor to deliver any advice that he might have to give.
“There you are,” he had concluded, an exasperated perplexity lining his face. “I’m out! It’s a closed community so far as I am concerned. A murder is committed, a murder as obvious as the nose on your face, and I can do nothing about it. I’ve tried. I’ve run about town in the boiling sun all afternoon, I’ve even been to Leeminster. What’s the result? Nothing!”
Humphrey Lathrop pursed his great lips and looked wise. “He’s the frog,” thought Dreeme. He was thinking of the old story of the frog who puffed herself up until she burst. The little frog had seen a cow. He had described it to his mother. It was big, enormous. “Was it as large as this?” she had inquired, puffing herself up to formidable proportions. “Larger,” the little frog had said. The big frog scowled (imagine a frog scowling!) and had puffed herself still bigger. Her abdomen had distended to an horrendous bulge. “As large as this?” she had asked proudly. “Larger,” responded the little frog. The mother was beside herself. She had puffed valiantly again and her green skin had stretched and swelled wonderfully. She was a rotund circle of emerald. “As large as this?” she had shrieked. “Oh, larger,” the little frog answered gloomily. He had probably become a bit bored by this time and had wanted to go off and sit on a lily pad and snap at flies. With a last desperate effort the great frog indrew a huge breath. There was a pop and then no frog. The little frog had looked up in the sky and then down at the ground but he had failed to discover his mother. She had burst into fragments, disappeared entirely. Humphrey Lathrop puffed himself up in this way. Some day he would burst and disappear. And then Dreeme felt quite ashamed of his malicious analogy. Humphrey Lathrop was a kind helpful old man. His importance was only the privilege of age. He was not consciously puffing himself to impossible proportions. He was merely trying to ease Dreeme’s mind, to act the wise counsellor. The young doctor observed him and nearly smiled. Then his levity abruptly died away as his reason thrust him back among his grievances.
“There you are,” he had said. “What’s the result? Nothing!”
“It’s always the result,” said Humphrey Lathrop gloomily.
Dreeme reiterated himself.
“After I saw the body I questioned the coroner. I wanted to study the wooden pegs. I gave him the scrap of paper with the goat’s head on it. I wanted to talk about time, about possible murderous weapons, about a dozen and one things. He put me off with silly generalities. I went to Bidwell, who seemed to have the confidence of those infernally silent farmers, and pleaded for an investigation without loss of time. He evaded me. I talked to the damned selectmen or whatever they are, Winship and Collender. There was nothing doing. Nothing but antagonism in sleepy little suspicious eyes. The constable was busy getting in some parched hay. He knew nothing about it and didn’t want to know anything about it. He was a hopeless fool. Finally I went to Leeminster. The officials there referred me back to Marlborough. I tell you, Humphrey, it is impossible to start a serious investigation of this murder. By God, I’ll write to Boston. I’ll telegraph Washington.”
He paused breathless. Lathrop broke
