Dreeme nodded an assent.
“That’s it,” he agreed. “Now what can we do about it?”
Lathrop scowled heavily.
“I,” he emphasized, “can do nothing about it.”
“Something must be done about it,” urged Dreeme.
“Then you do it, Daniel,” said the old doctor. “And God be with you.”
He shook his head dolefully.
“I’m not a witch-hunter,” he explained mildly. “Neither am I Don Quixote or Bayard or Sherlock Holmes or … or. …”
He continued to roll his head from side to side slowly.
“No, Daniel,” he protested, “I’m the man who sits in a chair all day.”
He reverted to the phenomena that Dreeme had adumbrated during his story.
“The various things you’ve told me,” he said, “clear up, as I’ve pointed out before, some of my suspicions. Let us take up the wax figures first, those little puppets that Deborah Morton found behind Westcott’s books. That’s an old witchcraft trick. A doll is made and baptized with the name of some living person against whom the witch desires revenge or evil. Then needles are thrust into those places where the person is to be injured and charms are recited over the little figure. Westcott, I believe, imagined this mummery would sharpen and direct the invisible strength of his will. You say one of the dolls had a needle thrust into its leg. Well, Westcott got shot in the leg, didn’t he? I imagine that was his first charm, a charm against himself. And it worked. Never ask me how it worked, but it did. The other doll had needles through its eyes. Well, how about the wooden pegs driven into Wagner’s eye-sockets?”
Dreeme shuddered as he recalled the disfigured face grinning up at him from the bank of the Saccarac River.
“I don’t believe Westcott killed Wagner,” added Lathrop. “No, sir. I believe he wanted the hired man dead because he found out that the poor fellow was acting as a go-between for Martha Westcott and yourself. Now into whose brain did Westcott force the thought of and will for this murder? Find that out, Daniel, if you can.”
“I intend to,” said the young doctor, his mouth a thin line of determination.
“But don’t forget,” remarked Lathrop, “that there may be a little doll somewhere christened Daniel Dreeme with a needle through its heart.”
“I’ll take my chance,” said Dreeme.
“We come to the goat’s head,” proceeded Lathrop. “That puzzles me. I know its origin but not its purpose.”
Dreeme was visibly excited at this topic.
“Here we sit like two Sherlock Holmes,” chuckled the old narrator, “and we’re really two Doctor Watsons. Amateurs, Daniel, amateurs.”
Suddenly he sobered up.
“The goat’s head,” he explained, “was the seal of Thomas Morton of Merry Mount. It is still extant upon legal documents which he left behind him. I’ll venture to assert, Daniel, that your Deborah, who wears that seal, apparently, about her neck, is a descendant of the Morton clan. Old Thomas left enough illegitimate progeny, God knows, and there is no reason why some of these women may not have taken the rascal’s name. Why the goat’s head should have been clutched in Wagner’s hand or why it is branded on Martha Westcott’s shoulder is beyond my reasoning faculties. Those are things that you will have to find out.”
Slowly he opened the bulky black volume before him.
“Daniel,” he said, “listen to this. I am reading from Cotton Mather.”
He bowed over the page and read slowly:
“… this Rampant Hag, Martha Carrier, was the person, of whom the Confessions of the Witches, and of her own Children among the rest, agreed, That the Devil had promised her, she should be Queen of Hell.”
He looked up solemnly.
“That, I take it,” he remarked, “is the fountainhead of the Carrier family. You notice she had children. She was the Queen of Hell, Daniel, the Queen of Hell. That’s a brave title for a Puritan lady.”
He turned back to the book and searched through a few pages. Finding what he sought for, he cleared his throat and looked up.
“Now then,” he said, and began to read again.
“ ‘Richard Carrier affirmed to the jury that he saw Mr. George Burroughs at the witch meeting at the village and saw him administer the sacrament.’ And here’s another interesting bit. ‘He,’ … that’s Burroughs, Daniel. … ‘He was Accused by Eight of the Confessing Witches, as being an Head Actor at some of their Hellish Rendezvouses, and one who had the promise of being a King in Satan’s kingdom, now going to be erected. …’ ”
Lathrop closed the book with a snap and a puff of dust started up from it.
“And there,” he said, “is the stock from which your sallow preacher-friend, the Reverend George Burroughs, descends. I point these things out to you, Daniel, so that you may understand how clear the stock
