“Nothing so simple as that,” he said, after he had recovered himself. “Nothing so simple as that. You’re a trifle primitive, doctor.”
There was a faint hint of hysteria behind the calmness of Westcott. Dreeme could sense it, a faraway excitement that was kept under control only by an effort of the mind. The farmer was laboring under an unrest that he desired to conceal. The young doctor sat coolly gazing into the scummed mirror of the millpond. There were no faces there, not even the reflection of the silver drumhead of the moon, nothing but a glow, a blank meaningless glow. The farmer sucked in a long breath suddenly.
“When are you going away, Doctor Dreeme?” he inquired. There was a finality in the question that made it as much an order as a query.
“I don’t expect to go away,” said Dreeme.
So that was it? He was to be forced out of town, was he?
“Do you find much that holds you here?” Westcott’s tone was studiously innocent, devoid of any sly innuendo. Yet the implied order was there.
“I find much that interests me here,” answered the young doctor. He wanted to add, “Even you,” but thought better of it. Let the farmer show his teeth in his own way. Suddenly he felt Westcott’s broad hand on his shoulder.
“Doctor Dreeme,” the farmer said. “You had better go away from here. The farmers don’t want you any more. They are suspicious and ill at ease with you. You are fashioned from a different kind of flesh than they are. Your mind works differently. There are doctors who can come from the outside, from that world of cities where everybody is more or less the same in social relationships, and settle here and be of some use but you are not one of them. Old Doctor Lathrop was like that. You are too … too speculative, too eager to find out things, too unwilling to permit the valley to go its own way and employ its own methods. The itch of curiosity is too strong inside you. These men who scrape at the soil do not want active intelligences about them. They distrust strangers. Go away. Forget that you were ever here and forget the people who are here. The world has forgotten them and they desire no less than to stay forgotten. This is good advice that I am giving you for I know what I am talking about. I may not mingle much with these people but I know their minds. After all, I am one of them. I tell you to go away … before you are sent away in a manner humiliating to you.”
The heavy hand dropped from Dreeme’s shoulders. The dark eyes studied him curiously.
“Thanks for the advice,” said the young doctor. “I’ll stay.”
“Why are you so obtuse?” asked Westcott sadly. Behind the intonations fluttered the tiny scarlet bird of hysteria.
Dreeme became a trifle angry.
“I’m not obtuse,” he snapped. “That’s why you want me to go away. You’re afraid of what I’ll find out. Of what I’ll discover about your wax dolls and your goats’ heads and your hypnotic charlatanry and your murdered hired man and … and your place called Dagon!”
Westcott’s face became distorted in the moonlight. The scarlet bird flew upward with a feverish beating of wings.
“You fool! You fool!” he cried, in a strained raucous voice. “That’s it! You must be made to leave this valley even if you are carried out of it!”
Dreeme laughed shortly.
The blazing eyes of Westcott moved closer to his face.
“Do you think we care one tinker’s damn about you?” he shouted. “Do you flatter yourself that we are afraid of you? You simple idiot! We are doing our best to get rid of you without hurting you! You mean nothing to us. You are stumbling about in the darkness and don’t know where you are. You are pitting your puny mind and strength against a power that is as old as the Egyptians, a power that established itself in this valley nearly two hundred and fifty years ago. We who have listened to the voice of the Master need fear nothing but deliverance from the Master.”
“Have I gotten on your nerves as badly as that?” cried Dreeme maliciously.
Westcott’s voice had changed and a crazy ecstasy was in it. The scarlet bird filled the burned mill with a hysteric swishing of wings.
“He walks on the hills at night. He whistles to the Sacred Goat and snaps his fingers at the moon and stars. In the dark palms of his hands is all the power of the earth. He stands at the place called Dagon and his feet are rooted like mountains.”
Dreeme rose to his feet. Westcott was swaying like a drunken man and a thin white froth bubbled on his lips.
“Aie‑e‑e‑e, Asmodeus!” he screamed. “Sweep this man out of my father’s holy place!”
Dreeme thought he was about to fall upon the ground and he stretched out a hand toward him. Westcott shuddered all through his heavy body. Then, as suddenly as it had come, his delirium passed away. The madness died out of his eyes and voice and he sank down in the embrasure. The scarlet bird had flown away on the wind.
Westcott lifted his hand to his eyes and sat for a moment in silence. Then he turned to Dreeme.
“I am taken with seizures,” he said rapidly. “I am an extremely nervous man. You must not take my outbreak too seriously. You are a doctor. You know.”
Dreeme sat down opposite him in the embrasure. The faraway light in the depths of his mind was glowing so brightly that it dazzled his reason. Shapes passed before it and they were familiar but he could not quite identify them. He glanced sharply at Westcott. The farmer, quite himself, was smiling slyly, secretively.
“Nervous delirium,” he said confidentially, tapping his cloven head. “I lose control of myself.”
Dreeme eyed him searchingly.
“I am not so sure,”
