The Place Called Dagon

and the tall thin tree-trunks. It was like a miracle, a glittering phenomenon that translated the dripping environment into a place of mingled silver and tossed diamonds. There had been a moon like this when he had held Deborah’s slight figure close against him and understood that she was an absolute part of his life. He had walked home that night from Humphrey Lathrop’s cottage and phantoms had walked on either side of him. One of them had said: “I had a very good lawyer, Mr. Stopes.” He had forgotten what the other phantom said. It did not exist any longer. It had been a world of glittering jewelry. It was marvelous, the way in which the earth changed. It was the slave of imagination, the willing Genie that brought whatsoever the dreamer desired. Though he was surrounded by trees and following a path that permitted no view of the country on either side he yet experienced the sensation that he was on a sort of Mount of Vision, that everything was being made clear to him here without words, that the answers to all he had been asking were in the sparkling moonlight and among the dark wet green leaves of the trees. He felt immeasurably grown in spiritual dimensions, enlarged so that he might contain all the love and wonder that abounded in the world. The uneven stones cut his feet but he was oblivious of them. Malicious branches lashed across his face like small whips but he laughed to himself as he thrust them aside. It was all right now.

The path turned and slanted downward and he understood that they were on the final stretch that led into Jeffrey Westcott’s land. The name sprang back into his intelligence ominously and his lips tightened at the thought. There was still justice to be accomplished. Glancing back, he wondered vaguely what had become of the score of farmers who had gathered about the Devil Stone in that hollow which he should never see again. What justice could there be for those deluded men? He strove to remember what had actually happened but all he could recollect was the report of a gun, the log-like fall of Burroughs, and his own mad rush when he had snatched Deborah up from the stone and darted into the bushes with her. A vague idea of scattered running forms lingered in the back of his consciousness but he could not verify it by any reasoning. Had those men fled into the swamp or were they now slowly returning along the path which Walden Slater and he had followed? Were they, even now, lurking among the trees to the rearward of him, watching him with fanatic eyes, planning among themselves some secret onslaught? He could not tell and he did not care. He knew that the head of the serpent had been crushed in the Reverend George Burroughs and that the heart of the serpent would be stilled when justice was accomplished on Jeffrey Westcott. After that, the blind body could do what it desired. He understood that the frenzied farmers had been controlled by a malicious power of will and that when that will was destroyed there would be, as Walden Slater had said, “Nothing to fight about.” Comforted by this thought, he plodded on, Walden Slater’s dogtrot having dwindled to a fast walk on the downward grade.

The last stretch of woods passed swiftly and as the path turned and they faced the thinning trees Dreeme became aware of a reddish glow that lit up the heavens before him. It was not the light of the moon for that great white miracle hung directly above his head in the wide cleft of the split storm-cloud. It was something else, something that glowed upward from the ground, and as they burst through the final fringe of bushes into Westcott’s back meadow, he saw that the mysterious farmhouse was a mass of high leaping flames. At the same instant Walden Slater started forward in a run and the young doctor, accelerating his pace, followed closely at his heels. As he ran his mind automatically snapped back to a lighted lamp with a protector and a flying end of curtain that ever blew closer and closer to that lamp. Had they put that lamp out? He knew that they had done nothing of the sort, that, in their hurry, they had left it burning just as they had left the window open regardless of the wind that puffed the curtain inward. His first thought was one of relief that the farmhouse, a hive of malevolence, was burning up with its books, its sacrilegious altar, and its memories. The lair of the serpent was destroyed. Then he remembered the purpose that brought them back here. Where would Jeffrey Westcott be? Would he hide in the swamp while his years of evil knowledge went up in thick smoke and spurting flame? Walden Slater shifted Deborah from one shoulder to the other and ran all the faster.

II

A few men and women were gathered about the Westcott farmhouse, gazing helplessly at the flame that thrust sudden tongues of fierce yellow through the shattered windows. Mrs. Slater, among them, moved, a small fluttering-eyed plump woman, back and forth, gesticulating but saying nothing. Her mouth opened and shut, a round black hole in the light of conflagration, but no sounds issued forth. In the first place, she could find nobody with whom to converse. There was Lucinda, sitting awkwardly in Humphrey Lathrop’s old buggy, holding the somewhat startled horse tight-reined, as she watched the burning house, but Lucinda was speechless. She had nothing to say and she conveyed this to Mrs. Slater by a cold vinegary downward stare whenever the plump little woman wandered near the buggy. She was there to observe and then to report to Humphrey Lathrop who sat at home, a helpless mountain, waiting eagerly for news. As Dreeme and Walden Slater circled the house