“Bones? What bones? What does that mean?” cried Dreeme.
Lathrop’s voice was monotonous.
“The bones of the Salem witches.”
A great light seemed to flood Dreeme’s mind, that light that had once been so far away, but it was too dazzling for him as yet. A voice deep inside him was talking feverishly, saying things, explaining, indicating. He could not catch the sound of the words. The voice was talking too fast. The words ran together. They were a febrile blur of sound.
“You must explain everything, Humphrey,” he said in a calm voice as he sat down. “I’m in this thing too deep now. Somebody I know … is affected.”
The old doctor nodded, and then, reaching for his tumbler of applejack, drank the entire potion down in a single draught. He choked and wheezed for a moment.
“You hit me amidships then,” he remarked soberly. “Where did you hear of the place called Dagon?”
“Never mind,” returned Dreeme. “Don’t stave me off with questions. Tell me things.”
“I’m going to,” answered Lathrop mildly. “I’m going to tell you things. You’re going to have it all now, and much good may it do you.”
His eyes roved about the room. Then they reverted to Dreeme.
“Suppose you tell me everything first,” he said in a wheedling voice. “I want to know what you’ve found out. There is no use duplicating the few facts and suspicions that I possess.”
Dreeme eyed him impatiently.
“All right,” he said shortly, and plunged immediately into his tale. In a rapid condensed form he told Lathrop of the first visit he had paid to Westcott’s house, of the two conversations with Martha Westcott, of the death of Wagner, of the strange fright of Deborah, and of the goat’s head. He strove to reinterpret the theory of will which Jeffrey Westcott had put forward in the burned mill. He explained his suspicions of the Reverend George Burroughs. Lathrop listened attentively, his head on one side, and his great lips pursed so that they thrust out like the snout of a pig. Occasionally he would nod. Once or twice his eyes opened very wide. In one instance he emitted a triumphant cluck as though some suspicion he had carried in his mind for years were verified.
“Will you fetch me down that big black book?” he said softly when Dreeme concluded his tale, indicating the little shelf that was nailed high on the wall behind him. Dreeme strode over and drew forth a bulky volume that was covered with dust, blew it off, and brought it to the table where he placed it. He deliberately read the title on the back of the tome as he laid it down. The name “Cotton Mather” was printed there in faded gilt letters. Lathrop smiled, a smile with no humor in it, and drew the book toward him. Then he adjusted his spectacles and leaned back very much like a judge about to give a decision.
“I tried to keep you away from this,” he said, “for good and sufficient reasons, and chief among them was the peace of your own mind and the degree of your success in Marlborough. Well, you have lost the peace of your mind, and there is no longer any reason to suppose that you will ever have any success in Marlborough. There is no reason, therefore, why you should not know as much as I know. I will tell you, Daniel, that what you have told me has made some dark places clear to me, and verified certain suspicions which I have wisely kept to myself. Therefore, in making plain to you what I know I shall adjust some of your own information into the scheme of things.”
After this preamble he cleared his throat loudly, searched through the huge volume before him until he found a certain place, closed the book upon a pudgy finger that retained the page, and glanced soberly at Dreeme.
“It’s witchcraft we have to deal with,” he said mildly. “It’s a cursed madness that has ruled this valley since 1692.”
Dreeme nodded without surprise. He suspected this, indeed, he knew it.
“Yes, sir, witchcraft,” repeated the old doctor. “You probably don’t believe in it. No more do I. But the outward forms of it exist just as surely as the outward forms of the Christian religion exist. It has its established hierarchy, although I believe today that it is the weapon of madmen, charlatans, and fanatics.”
He sighed loudly.
“This is a mad world, Daniel,” he said. “We are all more or less insane. Well, I’m getting nowhere. As I age I grow more discursive.”
Dreeme moved restlessly and the old doctor lifted a hand.
“Let me tell you this in my own way,” he said. “You’ll have it all before I am done.”
Lathrop cleared his throat and fastened his eyes upon Dreeme.
“In 1692,” he said, “the little town of Salem went insane. You’ve read your history and you know all about the witch scares and the hangings on Gallows Hill. You know how the children cried out that they were possessed, and gave testimony against various men and women in the community, and how the judges and preachers strove to battle with this strange outbreak of insanity. I don’t have to give you a resumé of that history. It is enough to remind you of it. It is the common conclusion of most scholars that all this was a form of religious mania, and that the people who were hanged were not professed witches but victims of hallucinations and enmity. I don’t believe it. I believe those people belonged to a secret and blasphemous order that met all over the world, that they were divided into covens or parishes, that they each had their leader in the shape of a Black Man who represented the Devil, that they worshipped Satan, and that they attempted to practise magic. I believe that they were unhinged to such a degree that they could imagine themselves flying through the air, that they were addicted to hallucinations and delusions and visions,
