“A fine rain makes a fine crop,” announced the preacher.
“A fine crop makes a fine profit,” added Dreeme, saying the first thing that popped into his mind.
“A fine knife makes a fine point,” declared Walden Slater. “This knife is dull.”
He handed it back without any thanks, and the preacher stowed it away in his pocket. Dreeme drifted back through the kitchen preparatory to returning to his study. The conversation was altogether too dull.
IV
Dreeme was jerked out of a sound sleep by a strong hand grasping his shoulder. He started up with an uncontrollable cry of amazement.
“Get into your clothes,” said a voice. “It’s time.”
He recognized Walden Slater’s voice. Without any questions he leaped out of bed and hurried into his trousers and shirt. A heavy rain pounded on the roof as he completed his brief toilet, and shook his head violently to recover his partially benumbed senses. Walden Slater moved before him as they hurried for the staircase and ran down it to the entrance hall. Before dashing out through the door into the rain Dreeme flung his still soggy raincoat about him. A moment later they stood in the road where the heavens seemed to open and let down an unimaginable flood upon them. Walden Slater snatched up a stormproof lantern from the ground by the gate, and as he stooped his heavy coat gaped open and Dreeme caught a glimpse of the butt of the Smith and Wesson revolver thrust into his belt.
“What is it, Walden?” gasped the young doctor. “For God’s sake, find your tongue.”
“I can find my tongue when I want it,” replied the farmer. “You come with me.”
They splashed through the puddles up the gradual rise of the Leeminster Road, bowing their heads to the fierce blows of the frantic gusts of rain that sought to thrust them back. Dreeme was running in his bare feet.
“Walden!” he gasped. “Walden!”
“Deborah’s gone. Disappeared completely,” cried Walden Slater with unwonted vigor. “So’s Burroughs. Does that tell you anything? Dreeme, I’ve thought this whole thing out. You come with me.”
He ran all the faster, and Dreeme followed him while a mounting rage seethed within him.
“I know what I know,” the farmer called back over his shoulder.
Dreeme seemed to be borne along by the furies within him. He accelerated his pace and soon was abreast of the farmer. For a time they ran doggedly, the breath whistling in their lungs. Under their feet drummed the boards of the bridge that spanned the Saccarac River. A moment later they were on even ground. Deborah gone! How or why she had gone Dreeme did not know, but Walden Slater knew, and that was enough. It would be time enough later to ask questions. Yet Dreeme, leaning his head closer to the farmer, did ask something.
“Where are we going?” His voice rose in a shout. “To the Westcott farm?”
“Dagon, damn it, Dagon!” shouted back the farmer. “We’re going to the place called Dagon!”
They ran all the faster through the relentless rain.
IX
I
As Dreeme, racing close at the heels of Walden Slater, circled the Westcott farmhouse, he glanced up curiously at the windows. There was no light. The building gloomed in its cluster of trees just as it had that first night when he had stumbled after the boy Miles along the uneven path and entered through the back door. It was like a house of the dead, a dwelling-place from which the rose-colored actualities of living had long ago vanished. Around it, the tall dark trees kept their somber watch, standing like ghostly sentinels. The spark of Walden Slater’s lantern sent strange beasts of shadows scurrying into the underbrush that lined the hummocky path. At the back door the farmer set down his light and hammered upon the wood with the butt of his revolver. The sound seemed to echo inside the house. It was like the echo that comes from a musty tomb when the iron grille that guards its dead from the living world is shaken. If there was anything in back of the wood against which Walden Slater was hammering so vigorously, that shape or being or spectre was standing mute.
“Of course not,” muttered the farmer. With a fierce kick of his heavy boot he crashed the door open and it smashed against the wall on broken hinges. The intruder entered slowly, holding the lantern before him in one hand and grasping his cocked revolver in the other. Dreeme followed at his heels. The small beam of light darted about the room reflecting the stuffed chairs, the wax flowers under glass, the photographic enlargements on the wall. Dreeme’s mind automatically swept back to that time when he had followed Martha Westcott through this room trembling from the magnetism of her strange personality. Walden Slater circled the sitting room slowly, lifting his lantern to view the pictures and examining the tables and the chairs. He seemed to be looking for something, some hint that might indicate the direction that he desired. “Uriah,” he muttered, pausing before one picture, a particularly large and atrocious piece of workmanship that hung above the wax flowers. Dreeme caught a glimpse of a glittering eye highly touched by the painter’s art.
“What are we searching for?” he inquired. “Shouldn’t we get on?”
Walden Slater said nothing but strode toward the door that led to the library. He kicked it open unceremoniously and entered and Dreeme followed close at his heels. It was just as the young doctor remembered it.
“Light the lamp,” said the farmer. Dreeme fumbled at the chimney and wick, and an instant later the pale yellow glow illuminated the room. The crowded book-stacks leaned forward, and the ancient volumes seemed to watch the intruders speechlessly. The young doctor walked impatiently about the table where he had once seen Jeffrey Westcott seated. He felt that they were wasting time, that Deborah was confined somewhere in some secret place from which she
