The man was Halpin Frayser. He lived in St. Helena, but where helives now is uncertain, for he is dead. One who practises sleeping inthe woods with nothing under him but the dry leaves and the damp earth,and nothing over him but the branches from which the leaves have fallenand the sky from which the earth has fallen, cannot hope for greatlongevity, and Frayser had already attained the age of thirty-two. Thereare persons in this world, millions of persons, and far and away thebest persons, who regard that as a very advanced age. They are thechildren. To those who view the voyage of life from the port ofdeparture the bark that has accomplished any considerable distanceappears already in close approach to the farther shore. However, it isnot certain that Halpin Frayser came to his death by exposure.
He had been all day in the hills west of the Napa Valley, lookingfor doves and such small game as was in season. Late in the afternoon ithad come on to be cloudy, and he had lost his bearings; and although hehad only to go always downhill -- everywhere the way to safety when oneis lost -- the absence of trails had so impeded him that he wasovertaken by night while still in the forest. Unable in the darkness topenetrate the thickets of manzanita and other undergrowth, utterlybewildered and overcome with fatigue, he had lain down near the root ofa large madrono and fallen into a dreamless sleep. It was hours later,in the very middle of the night, that one of God's mysteriousmessengers, gliding ahead of the incalculable host of his companionssweeping westward with the dawn line, pronounced the awakening word inthe ear of the sleeper, who sat upright and spoke, he knew not why, aname, he knew not whose.
Halpin Frayser was not much of a philosopher, nor a scientist. Thecircumstance that, waking from a deep sleep at night in the midst of aforest, he had spoken aloud a name that he had not in memory and hardlyhad in mind did not arouse an enlightened curiosity to investigate thephenomenon. He thought it odd, and with a little perfunctory shiver, asif in deference to a seasonal presumption that the night was chill, helay down again and went to sleep. But his sleep was no longer dreamless.
He thought he was walking along a dusty road that showed white inthe gathering darkness of a summer night. Whence and whither it led, andwhy he travelled it, he did not know, though all seemed simple andnatural, as is the way in dreams; for in the Land Beyond the Bedsurprises cease from troubling and the judgment is at rest. Soon he cameto a parting of the ways; leading from the highway was a road lesstravelled, having the appearance, indeed, of having been long abandoned,because, he thought, it led to something evil; yet he turned into itwithout hesitation, impelled by some imperious necessity.
As he pressed forward he became conscious that his way was hauntedby invisible existences whom he could not definitely figure to his mind.From among the trees on either side he caught broken and incoherentwhispers in a strange tongue which yet he partly understood. They seemedto him fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against his bodyand soul.
It was now long after nightfall, yet the interminable forestthrough which he journeyed was lit with a wan glimmer having no point ofdiffusion, for in its mysterious lumination nothing cast a shadow. Ashallow pool in the guttered depression of an old wheel rut, as from arecent rain, met his eye with a crimson gleam. He stooped and plungedhis hand into it. It stained his fingers; it was blood! Blood, he thenobserved, was about him everywhere. The weeds growing rankly by theroadside showed it in blots and splashes on their big, broad leaves.Patches of dry dust between the wheel-ways were pitted and spattered aswith a red rain. Defiling the trunks of the trees were broad maculationsof crimson, and blood dripped like dew from their foliage.
All this he observed with a terror which seemed not incompatiblewith the fulfilment of a natural expectation. It seemed to him that itwas all in expiation of some crime which, though conscious of his guilt,he could not rightly remember. To the menaces and mysteries of hissurroundings the consciousness was an added horror. Vainly he sought, bytracing life backward in memory, to reproduce the moment of his sin;scenes and incidents came crowding tumultuously into his mind, onepicture effacing another, or commingling with it in confusion andobscurity, but nowhere could he catch a glimpse of what he sought. Thefailure augmented his terror; he felt as one who has murdered in thedark, not knowing whom nor why. So frightful was the situation -- themysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace; the noxiousplants, the trees that by common consent are invested with a melancholyor baleful character, so openly in his sight conspired against hispeace; from overhead and all about came so audible and startlingwhispers and the sighs of creatures so obviously not of earth -- that hecould endure it no longer, and with a great effort to break some malignspell that bound his faculties to silence and inaction, he shouted withthe full strength of his lungs! His voice, broken, it seemed, into aninfinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, went babbling and stammeringaway into the distant reaches of the forest, died into silence, and allwas as before. But he had made a beginning at resistance and wasencouraged. He said:
'I will not submit unheard. There may be powers that are notmalignant travelling this accursed road. I shall leave them a record andan appeal. I shall relate my wrongs, the persecutions that I endure --I, a helpless mortal, a penitent, an unoffending poet!' Halpin Frayserwas a poet only as he was a penitent: in his dream.
Taking from his clothing a small red-leather pocket-book one halfof which was leaved for memoranda, he discovered that he was without apencil. He broke a twig from a bush, dipped it into a pool of blood andwrote rapidly. He had hardly touched the paper with the point of histwig when a low, wild peal of laughter broke out at a measurelessdistance away, and growing ever louder, seemed approaching ever nearer;a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laugh, like that of the loon,solitary by the lakeside at midnight; a laugh which culminated in anunearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as ifthe accursed being that uttered it had withdrawn over the verge of theworld whence it had come. But the man felt that this was not so -- thatit was near by and had not moved.
A strange sensation began slowly to take possession of his body andhis mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses wasaffected; he felt it rather as a consciousness -- a mysterious mentalassurance of some overpowering presence -- some supernatural malevolencedifferent in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about him,and superior to them in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideouslaugh. And now it seemed to be approaching him; from what direction hedid not know -- dared not conjecture. All his former fears wereforgotten or merged in the gigantic terror that now held him in thrall.Apart from that, he had but one thought: to complete his written appealto the benign powers who, traversing the haunted wood, might sometimerescue him if he should be denied the blessing of annihilation. He wrotewith terrible rapidity, the twig in his fingers rilling blood withoutrenewal; but in the middle of a sentence his hands denied their serviceto his will, his arms fell to his sides, the book to the earth; andpowerless to move or cry out, he found himself staring into the sharplydrawn face and blank, dead eyes of his own mother, standing white andsilent in the garments of the grave!
II
In his youth Halpin Frayser had lived with his parents in Nashville,Tennessee. The Fraysers were well-to-do, having a good position in suchsociety as had survived the wreck wrought by civil war. Their childrenhad the social and educational opportunities of their time and place,and had responded to good associations and instruction with agreeablemanners and cultivated minds. Halpin being the youngest and not overrobust was perhaps a trifle 'spoiled.' He had the double disadvantage ofa mother's assiduity and a father's neglect. Frayser pere was what noSouthern man of means is not -- a politician. His country, or rather hissection and State, made demands upon his time and attention so exactingthat to those of his family he was compelled to turn an ear partlydeafened by the thunder of the political captains and the shouting, hisown included.
Young Halpin was of a dreamy, indolent and rather romantic turn,somewhat more addicted to literature than law, the profession to whichhe was bred. Among those of his relations who professed the modern faithof heredity it was well understood that in him the character of the lateMyron Bayne, a maternal great-grandfather, had revisited the glimpses ofthe moon -- by which orb Bayne had in his lifetime been sufficientlyaffected to be a poet of no small Colonial distinction. If not speciallyobserved, it was observable that while a Frayser who was not the proudpossessor of a sumptuous copy of the ancestral 'poetical works' (printedat the family expense, and long ago withdrawn from an inhospitablemarket) was a rare Frayser indeed, there was an illogical indispositionto honour the great deceased in the person of his spiritual successor.Halpin was pretty generally deprecated as an intellectual black sheepwho was likely at any moment to disgrace the flock by bleating in metre.The Tennessee Fraysers were a practical folk -- not practical in thepopular sense of devotion to sordid pursuits, but having a robustcontempt for any qualities unfitting a man for the wholesome vocation ofpolitics.
In justice to young Halpin it should be said that while in him werepretty faithfully reproduced most of the mental and moralcharacteristics ascribed by history and family tradition to the famousColonial bard, his succession to the gift and faculty divine was purelyinferential. Not only had he never been known to court the Muse, but intruth he could not have written correctly a line of verse to savehimself from the Killer of the Wise. Still, there was no knowing whenthe dormant faculty might wake and smite the lyre.
In the meantime the young man was rather a loose fish, anyhow.Between him and his mother was the most perfect sympathy, for secretlythe lady was herself a devout disciple of the late and great MyronBayne, though with the tact so generally and justly admired in her sex(despite the hardy calumniators who insist that it is essentially thesame thing as cunning) she had always taken care to conceal her weaknessfrom all eyes but those of him who shared it. Their common guilt inrespect of that was an added tie between them. If in Halpin's youth hismother had 'spoiled' him he had assuredly done his part toward beingspoiled. As he grew to such manhood as is attainable by a Southerner whodoes not care which way elections go, the attachment between him and hisbeautiful mother -- whom from early childhood he had called Katy --became yearly stronger and more tender. In these two romantic natureswas manifest in a signal way that neglected phenomenon, the dominance ofthe sexual element in all the relations of life, strengthening,softening, and beautifying even those of consanguinity. The two werenearly inseparable, and by strangers observing their manners were notinfrequently mistaken for lovers.
Entering his mother's boudoir one day Halpin Frayser kissed herupon the forehead, toyed for a moment with a lock of her dark hair whichhad escaped from its confining pins, and said, with an obvious effort atcalmness:
'Would you greatly mind, Katy, if I were called away to Californiafor a few weeks?'
It was hardly needful for Katy to answer with her lips a questionto which her tell-tale cheeks had made instant reply. Evidently shewould greatly mind; and the tears, too, sprang into her large brown eyesas corroborative testimony.
'Ah, my son,' she said, looking up into his face with infinitetenderness,' I should have known that this was coming. Did I not lieawake a half of the night weeping because, during the other half,Grandfather Bayne had come to me in a dream, and standing by hisportrait -- young, too, and handsome as that -- pointed to yours on thesame wall? And when I looked it seemed that I could not see thefeatures; you had been painted with a face cloth, such as we put uponthe dead. Your father has laughed at me, but you and I, dear, know thatsuch things are not for nothing. And I saw below the edge of the cloththe marks of hands on your throat -- forgive me, but we have not beenused to keep such things from each other. Perhaps you have anotherinterpretation. Perhaps it does not mean that you will go to California.Or maybe you will take me with you?'
It must be confessed that this ingenious interpretation of thedream in the light of newly discovered evidence did not wholly commenditself to the son's more logical mind; he had, for the moment at least,a conviction that it foreshadowed a more simple and immediate, if lesstragic, disaster than a visit to the Pacific Coast. It was HalpinFrayser's impression that he was to be garroted on his native heath.
'Are there not medicinal springs in California?' Mrs. Frayserresumed before he had time to give her the true reading of the dream --'places where one recovers from rheumatism and neuralgia? Look -- myfingers feel so stiff; and I am almost sure they have been giving megreat pain while I slept.' She held out her hands for his inspection.What diagnosis of her case the young man may have thought it best toconceal with a smile the historian is unable to state, but for himselfhe feels bound to say that fingers looking less stiff, and showing fewerevidences of even insensible pain, have seldom been submitted formedical inspection by even the fairest patient desiring a prescriptionof unfamiliar scenes. The outcome of it was that of these two oddpersons having equally odd notions of duty, the one went to California,as the interest of his client required, and the other remained at homein compliance with a wish that her husband was scarcely conscious ofentertaining.
While in San Francisco Halpin Frayser was walking one dark nightalong the water-front of the city, when, with a suddenness thatsurprised and disconcerted him, he became a sailor. He was in fact'shanghaied' aboard a gallant, gallant ship, and sailed for a farcountree. Nor did his misfortunes end with the voyage; for the ship wascast ashore on an island of the South Pacific, and it was six yearsafterward when the survivors were taken off by a venturesome tradingschooner and brought back to San Francisco.
Though poor in purse, Frayser was no less proud in spirit than hehad been in the years that seemed ages and ages ago. He would accept noassistance from strangers, and it was while living with a fellowsurvivor near the town of St. Helena, awaiting news and remittances fromhome, that he had gone gunning and dreaming.
III
The apparition confronting the dreamer in the haunted wood -- the thingso like, yet so unlike, his mother -- was horrible! It stirred no lovenor longings in his heart; it came unattended with pleasant memories ofa golden past -- inspired no sentiment of any kind; all the fineremotions were swallowed up in fear. He tried to turn and run from beforeit, but his legs were as lead; he was unable to lift his feet from theground. His arms hung helpless at his sides; of his eyes only heretained control, and these he dared not remove from the lustreless orbsof the apparition, which he knew was not a soul without a body, but thatmost dreadful of all existences infesting that haunted wood -- a bodywithout a soul! In its blank stare was neither love, nor pity, norintelligence -- nothing to which to address an appeal for mercy. 'Anappeal will not lie,' he thought, with an absurd reversion toprofessional slang, making the situation more horrible, as the fire of acigar might light up a tomb.
For a time, which seemed so long that the world grew grey with ageand sin, and the haunted forest, having fulfilled its purpose in thismonstrous culmination of its terrors, vanished out of his consciousnesswith all its sights and sounds, the apparition stood within a pace,regarding him with the mindless malevolence of a wild brute; then thrustits hands forward and sprang upon him with appalling ferocity! The actreleased his physical energies without unfettering his will; his mindwas still spellbound, but his powerful body and agile limbs, endowedwith a blind, insensate life of their own, resisted stoutly and well.For an instant he seemed to see this unnatural contest between a deadintelligence and a breathing mechanism only as a spectator -- suchfancies are in dreams; then he regained his identity almost as if by aleap forward into his body, and the straining automaton had a directingwill as alert and fierce as that of its hideous antagonist.
But what mortal can cope with a creature of his dream? Theimagination creating the enemy is already vanquished; the combat'sresult is the combat's cause. Despite his struggles -- despite hisstrength and activity, which seemed wasted in a void, he felt the coldfingers close upon his throat. Borne backward to the earth, he saw abovehim the dead and drawn face within a hand's-breadth of his own, and thenall was black. A sound as of the beating of distant drums -- a murmur ofswarming voices, a sharp, far cry signing all to silence, and HalpinFrayser dreamed that he was dead.
IV
A warm, clear night had been followed by a morning of drenching fog. Atabout the middle of the afternoon of the preceding day a little whiff oflight vapour -- a mere thickening of the atmosphere, the ghost of acloud -- had been observed clinging to the western side of Mount St.Helena, away up along the barren altitudes near the summit. It was sothin, so diaphanous, so like a fancy made visible, that one would havesaid: 'Look quickly! in a moment it will be gone.'
In a moment it was visibly larger and denser. While with one edgeit clung to the mountain, with the other it reached farther and fartherout into the air above the lower slopes. At the same time it extendeditself to north and south, joining small patches of mist that appearedto come out of the mountain-side on exactly the same level, with anintelligent design to be absorbed. And so it grew and grew until thesummit was shut out of view from the valley, and over the valley itselfwas an everextending canopy, opaque and grey. At Calistoga, which liesnear the head of the valley and the foot of the mountain, there were astarless night and a sunless morning. The fog, sinking into the valley,had reached southward, swallowing up ranch after ranch, until it hadblotted out the town of St. Helena, nine miles away. The dust in theroad was laid; trees were adrip with moisture; birds sat silent in theircoverts; the morning light was wan and ghastly, with neither colour norfire.
Two men left the town of St. Helena at the first glimmer of dawn,and walked along the road north-ward up the valley toward Calistoga.They carried guns on their shoulders, yet no one having knowledge ofsuch matters could have mistaken them for hunters of bird or beast. Theywere a deputy sheriff from Napa and a detective from San Francisco --Holker and Jaralson, respectively. Their business was man-hunting.
'How far is it?' inquired Holker, as they strode along, their feetstirring white the dust beneath the damp surface of the road.
'The White Church? Only a half mile farther,' the other answered.'By the way,' he added, 'it is neither white nor a church; it is anabandoned schoolhouse, grey with age and neglect. Religious serviceswere once held in it -- when it was white, and there is a graveyard thatwould delight a poet. Can you guess why I sent for you, and told you tocome armed?'
'Oh, I never have bothered you about things of that kind. I'vealways found you communicative when the time came. But if I may hazard aguess, you want me to help you arrest one of the corpses in the graveyard.'
'You remember Branscom?' said Jaralson, treating his companion'swit with the inattention that it deserved.
'The chap who cut his wife's throat? I ought; I wasted a week'swork on him and had my expenses for my trouble. There is a reward offive hundred dollars, but none of us ever got a sight of him. You don'tmean to say -- '
'Yes, I do. He has been under the noses of you fellows all thetime. He comes by night to the old graveyard at the White Church.'
'The devil! That's where they buried his wife.'
'Well, you fellows might have had sense enough to suspect that hewould return to her grave some time!'
'The very last place that anyone would have expected him to returnto.'
'But you had exhausted all the other places. Learning your failureat them, I "laid for him" there.'
'And you found him?'
'Damn it! he found me. The rascal got the drop on me -- regularlyheld me up and made me travel. It's God's mercy that he didn't gothrough me. Oh, he's a good one, and I fancy the half of that reward isenough for me if you're needy.'
Holker laughed good-humouredly, and explained that his creditorswere never more importunate.
'I wanted merely to show you the ground, and arrange a plan withyou,' the detective explained. 'I thought it as well for us to be armed,even in daylight.'
'The man must be insane,' said the deputy sheriff. 'The reward isfor his capture and conviction. If he's mad he won't be convicted.'
Mr. Holker was so profoundly affected by that possible failure ofjustice that he involuntarily stopped in the middle of the road, thenresumed his walk with abated zeal.
'Well, he looks it,' assented Jaralson. 'I'm bound to admit that amore unshaven, unshorn, unkempt, and uneverything wretch I never sawoutside the ancient and honourable order of tramps. But I've gone in forhim, and can't make up my mind to let go. There's glory in it for us,anyhow. Not another soul knows that he is this side of the Mountains ofthe Moon.'
'All right,' Holker said; 'we will go and view the ground,' and headded, in the words of a once favourite inscription for tombstones:'"where you must shortly lie" -- I mean if old Branscom ever gets tiredof you and your impertinent intrusion. By the way, I heard the other daythat "Branscom" was not his real name.'
'What is?'
'I can't recall it. I had lost all interest in the wretch and itdid not fix itself in my memory -- something like Pardee. The womanwhose throat he had the bad taste to cut was a widow when he met her.She had come to California to look up some relatives -- there arepersons who will do that sometimes. But you know all that.'
'Naturally.'
'But not knowing the right name, by what happy inspiration did youfind the right grave? The man who told me what the name was said it hadbeen cut on the headboard.'
'I don't know the right grave.' Jaralson was apparently a triflereluctant to admit his ignorance of so important a point of his plan. 'Ihave been watching about the place generally. A part of our work thismorning will be to identify that grave. Here is the White Church.'
For a long distance the road had been bordered by fields on bothsides, but now on the left there was a forest of oaks, madronos, andgigantic spruces whose lower parts only could be seen, dim and ghostlyin the fog. The undergrowth was, in places, thick, but nowhereimpenetrable. For some moments Holker saw nothing of the building, butas they turned into the woods it revealed itself in faint grey outlinethrough the fog, looking huge and far away. A few steps more, and it waswithin an arm's length, distinct, dark with moisture, and insignificantin size. It had the usual country-schoolhouse form -- belonged to thepacking-box order of architecture; had an underpinning of stones, amoss-grown roof, and blank window spaces, whence both glass and sash hadlong departed. It was ruined, but not a ruin -- a typical Californiansubstitute for what are known to guide-bookers abroad as 'monuments ofthe past.' With scarcely a glance at this uninteresting structureJaralson moved on into the dripping undergrowth beyond.
'I will show you where he held me up,' he said. 'This is thegraveyard.'
Here and there among the bushes were small enclosures containinggraves, sometimes no more than one. They were recognized as graves bythe discoloured stones or rotting boards at head and foot, leaning atall angles, some prostrate; by the ruined picket fences surroundingthem; or, infrequently, by the mound itself showing its gravel throughthe fallen leaves. In many instances nothing marked the spot where laythe vestiges of some poor mortal -- who, leaving 'a large circle ofsorrowing friends,' had been left by them in turn -- except a depressionin the earth, more lasting than that in the spirits of the mourners. Thepaths, if any paths had been, were long obliterated; trees of aconsiderable size had been permitted to grow up from the graves andthrust aside with root or branch the enclosing fences. Over all was thatair of abandonment and decay which seems nowhere so fit and significantas in a village of the forgotten dead.
As the two men, Jaralson leading, pushed their way through thegrowth of young trees, that enterprising man suddenly stopped andbrought up his shotgun to the height of his breast, uttered a low noteof warning, and stood motionless, his eyes fixed upon something ahead.As well as he could, obstructed by brush, his companion, though seeingnothing, imitated the posture and so stood, prepared for what mightensue. A moment later Jaralson moved cautiously forward, the otherfollowing.
Under the branches of an enormous spruce lay the dead body of aman. Standing silent above it they noted such particulars as firststrike the attention -- the face, the attitude, the clothing; whatevermost promptly and plainly answers the unspoken question of a sympatheticcuriosity.
The body lay upon its back, the legs wide apart. One arm was thrustupward, the other outward; but the latter was bent acutely, and the handwas near the throat. Both hands were tightly clenched. The wholeattitude was that of desperate but ineffectual resistance to -- what?
Near by lay a shotgun and a game bag through the meshes of whichwas seen the plumage of shot birds. All about were evidences of afurious struggle; small sprouts of poison-oak were bent and denuded ofleaf and bark; dead and rotting leaves had been pushed into heaps andridges on both sides of the legs by the action of other feet thantheirs; alongside the hips were unmistakable impressions of human knees.
The nature of the struggle was made clear by a glance at the deadman's throat and face. While breast and hands were white, those werepurple -- almost black. The shoulders lay upon a low mound, and the headwas turned back at an angle otherwise impossible, the expanded eyesstaring blankly backward in a direction opposite to that of the feet.From the froth filling the open mouth the tongue protruded, black andswollen. The throat showed horrible contusions; not mere finger-marks,but bruises and lacerations wrought by two strong hands that must haveburied themselves in the yielding flesh, maintaining their terriblegrasp until long after death. Breast, throat, face, were wet; theclothing was saturated; drops of water, condensed from the fog, studdedthe hair and moustache.
All this the two men observed without speaking -- almost at aglance. Then Holker said:
'Poor devil! he had a rough deal.'
Jaralson was making a vigilant circumspection of the forest, hisshotgun held in both hands and at full cock, his finger upon the trigger.
'The work of a maniac,' he said, without withdrawing his eyes fromthe enclosing wood. 'It was done by Branscom -- Pardee.'
Something half hidden by the disturbed leaves on the earth caughtHolker's attention. It was a redleather pocket-book. He picked it up andopened it. It contained leaves of white paper for memoranda, and uponthe first leaf was the name 'Halpin Frayser.' Written in red on severalsucceeding leaves -- scrawled as if in haste and barely legible -- werethe following lines, which Holker read aloud, while his companioncontinued scanning the dim grey confines of their narrow world andhearing matter of apprehension in the drip of water from every burdenedbranch:
'Enthralled by some mysterious spell, I stoodIn the lit gloom of an enchanted wood.The cypress there and myrtle twined their boughs,Significant, in baleful brotherhood.'The brooding willow whispered to the yew;Beneath, the deadly nightshade and the rue,With immortelles self-woven into strangeFunereal shapes, and horrid nettles grew.'No song of bird nor any drone of bees,Nor light leaf lifted by the wholesome breeze:The air was stagnant all, and Silence wasA living thing that breathed among the trees.'Conspiring spirits whispered in the gloom,Half-heard, the stilly secrets of the tomb.With blood the trees were all adrip; the leavesShone in the witch-light with a ruddy bloom.'I cried aloud! -- the spell, unbroken still,Rested upon my spirit and my will.Unsouled, unhearted, hopeless and forlorn,I strove with monstrous presages of ill!'At last the viewless -- '
Holker ceased reading; there was no more to read. The manuscript brokeoff in the middle of a line.
'That sounds like Bayne,' said Jaralson, who was something of ascholar in his way. He had abated his vigilance and stood looking downat the body.
'Who's Bayne?' Holker asked rather incuriously.
'Myron Bayne, a chap who flourished in the early years of thenation -- more than a century ago. Wrote mighty dismal stuff; I have hiscollected works. That poem is not among them, but it must have beenomitted by mistake.'
'It is cold,' said Holker; 'let us leave here; we must have up thecoroner from Napa.'
Jaralson said nothing, but made a movement in compliance. Passingthe end of the slight elevation of earth upon which the dead man's headand shoulders lay, his foot struck some hard substance under the rottingforest leaves, and he took the trouble to kick it into view. It was afallen headboard, and painted on it were the hardly decipherable words,'Catharine Larue.'
'Larue, Larue!' exclaimed Holker, with sudden animation. 'Why, thatis the real name of Branscom -- not Pardee. And -- bless my soul! how itall comes to me -- the murdered woman's name had been Frayser!'
'There is some rascally mystery here,' said Detective Jaralson. 'Ihate anything of that kind.' There came to them out of the fog --seemingly from a great distance -- the sound of a laugh, a low,deliberate, soulless laugh which had no more of joy than that of a hyenanight-prowling in the desert; a laugh that rose by slow gradation,louder and louder, clearer, more distinct and terrible, until it seemedbarely outside the narrow circle of their vision; a laugh so unnatural,so unhuman, so devilish, that it filled those hardy man-hunters with asense of dread unspeakable! They did not move their weapons nor think ofthem; the menace of that horrible sound was not of the kind to be metwith arms. As it had grown out of silence, so now it died away; from aculminating shout which had seemed almost in their ears, it drew itselfaway into the distance until its failing notes, joyous and mechanical tothe last, sank to silence at a measureless remove.
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