The Place Called Dagon

so quietly entered the room with a curiosity which almost instantly merged into amazement. There are women who at a first glance arrest the attention not so much by any ulterior beauty or unique qualities of bearing as by an inward spirit which seems to beat fiercely against the thin walls of flesh and strive vehemently to liberate itself from its entangling disguises. These women may not be beautiful in the fleshy sense of the word, but somehow they achieve more than the semblance of beauty in the eyes of the sensitive observer. Dreeme saw such a woman before him and knew instantly and instinctively that it was not alone the comeliness of her features that so casually and indifferently subdued and betrayed the deliberate impartiality of his reason. He saw immediately an extraordinary inward impulse that climbed in her bosom and all but trembled on her bloodred mouth. It was her eyes and mouth that first seized his imagination. These eyes were dark and they glowed beneath large white lids that drooped somewhat as with the ennui of identical days. They seemed endless in depth like half-concealed forest springs and yet a quickening spark glimmered in these unfathomable lakes of hushed amber fire. The mouth was full with curling lips almost archaic in their contour, and Dreeme was vaguely reminded of his adolescent ideas of the snaky-haired Medusa. There was a subtle cruelty in this mouth.

“I told you to stay in your own room, my dear helpful Martha,” said Westcott, his chin thrusting forward, “but since you are here, permit me to present my invaluable friend, Doctor⁠—er⁠—Dreeme, I think. This is my wife, doctor.”

She did not glance toward Dreeme.

“Wagner has gone to the⁠—” She left the sentence unfinished. “I thought you would need hot water.”

“Your mind is always acute, Martha,” remarked Westcott, giving her a malicious look. “And who sent Wagner to the⁠—”

“I did,” she responded coolly, placing the basin of hot water on the floor close by Dreeme who still remained on one knee gazing at her. Westcott smiled sourly and turned to the doctor.

“Come, doctor,” he said. “You must be wanting to get back to your comfortable bed.”

Dreeme flushed and turned confusedly to his labors.

For a moment there was silence.

“The age of amazement,” said Westcott softly to the air, “is worthy of a study in itself. There are so many ways of considering it.”

He winced as the probe touched the raw flesh.

“Softly, doctor, softly,” he begged. “Now take the age of amazement as it affects the individual. Is it not true, my dear doctor, that if we knew why a man was amazed and each time that he was amazed we should know a great deal about him?”

Dreeme, intent on his work, said nothing.

“The question is merely theoretical,” proceeded Westcott. “I do not expect an answer. I, for my own part, mingle so seldom in the world of men that I have but small opportunity to put my theory in practice but whenever I do see a man I strive to observe his surprised reactions to things. It tells me something about him.”

The bullet slipped from the wound and Dreeme busied himself for a moment in washing the torn flesh. At length he looked up for the silence seemed to invite him to speak, to carry on a conversation that was rather meaningless. He stared into Westcott’s dark expressionless eyes.

“And me?” he said, smiling. “What have you learned about me in the few minutes that I have been here?”

Westcott was obviously waiting for the question.

“Your reactions of surprise were obvious,” he answered, cocking his head on one side. He began to count the points off on his fingers.

“Number one. You were amazed at finding so excellent and unexpected a library here. I gather from that that your idea of the literacy of this part of the world is not high. I agree with you in the main⁠—but there are exceptions everywhere, doctor. You were also amazed at finding in me a man not wholly a stranger to the subtleties of the mind. I may be flattering myself in this assumption but I do not think so. In other words, you had thought of me as a mysterious, surly, country clodhopper.”

There was a soft snarl in his voice. Before Dreeme could expostulate he went on with his enumeration.

“Number two. You were amazed to hear that my little wound was the result of an experiment. It piqued a curiosity which, unfortunately for you, I shall not satisfy.”

“I assure you, I⁠—” began Dreeme stiffly, but the soft voice proceeded.

“Number three. You were amazed to see my wife. Well, I hardly blame you. She amazes me at times.”

Again the soft snarl permeated his voice.

Dreeme instinctively glanced at Mrs. Westcott. She was standing by a small window gazing out on the darkness and he could see no more than the cool oval of her face. She seemed to be looking upward toward the rainy sky with a strained attentiveness that suggested the listener. It was, perhaps, the rain to which she was listening, for Dreeme could hear the soft gurgle and suck of the water as it dripped outside the window. With a final skillful twist he fastened the new bandage about Westcott’s calf and stood upright. The farmer looked at him calmly, his lips slightly apart, and Dreeme could see the man’s long yellow teeth.

“I should say from the casual glimpse I have had of you,” remarked Westcott, “that you are a capable doctor, a painstaking man, a sensitive person perhaps a little stiff in reactions to unexpected things, and an individual who must fight against the impulse of being⁠—well, not a busybody but one who is driven too far sometimes by the itch of curiosity.”

Dreeme laughed aloud and picked up his bag. Absurdly enough, he could feel the presence of Mrs. Westcott behind him, a presence like the soft invisible approach of some great feline through the impenetrable darkness of a forest.

“Your analysis is amusing,” he said. “But must I