Hartley snorted, but the caretaker went on seriously. “I mind he told me once old Persis cursed Monk’s Hollow when they were ducking her in the pond. And they couldn’t drown her, either—not with the father she had, that came out of the North Swamp one night to—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Hartley said disgustedly. “So if the stone is moved she’ll pop up, eh?”
Dobson caught his breath. “You shouldn’t say things like that, Mr. Hartley. Persis Winthorp was a witch—everybody knows that. There used to be awful things going on in this house when she lived here.”
Hartley turned away. They were standing in the garden and he moved aside to examine the stone.
There were curious marks upon it, seemingly chiseled by inexpert hands. The rough figures had a vague resemblance to Arabic, but Hartley could make nothing of them. He heard Dobson stump up beside him.
“He said—my granddad—that when they were ducking her they had to get the women folks away. She came up out of the water all green and slimy, with her great mouth croaking out spells to nobody knows what heathen gods—”
Hartley looked up quickly at the sound of a motor. A truck was chugging into view around the bend of the road. He glanced at the Witch Stone, and then, making up his mind, hastily sprinted for the road. Behind him he heard Dobson muttering some obscure reference to Persis Winthorp’s mysterious father.
The truck was loaded with gravel. He flagged it, and as it ground to a halt swung himself on the running board.
“I wonder if you’d do a little job for me,” he said to the two men in the truck. “I want to get a good-sized rock out of my garden, and it’s a bit too heavy for me to handle. It’ll only take a minute.” He pulled out his wallet.
The driver, an unshaved, bull-necked Irishman, turned inquiringly to his companion, exchanged glances with him, and then grinned at Hartley. “Sure, buddy. Glad to oblige.”
“Good,” Hartley said, and, half to himself: “We can dump it under a bush, out of sight.”
Later, Hartley stood by his window, frowning. The moon was rising beyond the ridge, but the garden was still in shadow. Somehow he had the impression that something had moved in that dim black sea of gloom. Crickets were shrilling monotonously, and he felt unreasonably nervous. From below came a recurrent tap and shuffle as Dobson puttered about the kitchen.
Dobson would have to do something about that barren spot in the garden. It was even more noticeable now that the stone had been removed, and even in the gloom Hartley fancied he could see a deeper shadow where the Witch Stone had stood.
What was the old legend? Dobson had hysterically poured it out as the truck drivers were lifting the stone, pleading with them to replace it, begging Hartley to relent. It was full of monstrous hints of the obscure traffic Persis Winthorp had had with the abnormal beings that dwelt in the North Swamp, and in particular her dealings with the batrachoid creature who had sired her—a demon whom the Indians had worshiped ages ago, Dobson said.
The villagers could not kill her, but there were spells which could nullify her evil magic, and there were words of power that could keep her fettered in her grave—words such as those which were chiseled upon the Witch Stone, the caretaker protested, fear contorting his face into a brown, wrinkled mask.
In Monk’s Hollow they said—and his voice sank to a tremulous whisper—that in the grave, Persis had grown more like her unknown father. And now that Hartley was moving the Witch Stone—
Hartley lit a cigarette, frowning down into the enigmatic gloom of the garden. Either Dobson was mentally unbalanced, or there was some logical reason for his interest in that particular spot in the garden. Perhaps—
The thought flashed into Hartley’s mind, and he chuckled suddenly. Of course! He should have known! Dobson must be something of a miser—indeed, Hartley had already encountered more than one instance of his penury—and his hoard must have been buried beneath the Witch Stone.
What more logical place to hide it—the grave of the ill-famed old witch, shunned by the superstitious country folk?
Well, it served the old fellow right, Hartley thought unkindly. Trying to frighten his employer with a cock-and-bull story about a witch-woman who was supposed still to be alive—
With a sharp exclamation Hartley bent forward, peered out of the window. There was something moving in the garden—a blacker shadow in the gloom. He could not make out its form, but it seemed to be moving very slowly in the direction of the house.
Suddenly he realized that the sound of Dobson’s movements below had ceased. The wooden leg was no longer thumping on the kitchen floor. With the realization Hartley grinned, halfminded to throw up the window and shout at the caretaker. Good Lord! Did the fellow think Hartley was trying to steal his few pennies?
Hartley told himself that Dobson was old, crotchety, but nevertheless Hartley felt a little surge of irritation mount within him.
The black shadow was coming closer to the house. Hartley strained his eyes, but could make out no more than a dim, oddly squat outline. For a moment he wondered whether Dobson, for some insane reason, was crawling on his hands and knees.
The shadow scuttled swiftly for the house, was hidden from Hartley by the windowsill. He shrugged, crushed out his cigarette, and turned back to the book he had been reading.
Subconsciously he must have been waiting for some sound, for when the knock came he started, almost dropping the book. Someone had lifted and let fall the knocker on the front door.
He waited. The sound was not repeated, but after a time he heard a furtive shuffling below, together with the tap-tapping of Dobson’s wooden leg.
The book lay forgotten in his lap. To his straining ears came a preliminary scratching, then the tinkle of breaking glass. There was a faint rustling sound.
Hartley got up quickly. Had Dobson inadvertently locked himself out—and had he, after knocking at the door, broken a window to crawl back into the house? Somehow Hartley could not picture the rheumatic, crippled Dobson forcing himself through a window. Also, he had heard Dobson’s footsteps inside the house just now.
Had the black shadow in the garden really been Dobson? Could it have been some prowler seeking entry? The two truck drivers had eyed his fat wallet greedily when he had paid them—
Then, blasting up from below, came a scream, knife-edged with terror, shrilling out harshly through the house. Hartley swore, leaped for the door. As he opened it he heard a hurried rush of footsteps—Dobson’s, for the tapping of the wooden leg was plainly audible.
But mingling with that sound was a puzzling scratching noise, as though of a dog’s claws scraping across the floor. Hartley heard the back door open; the footsteps and the scraping ceased.
He took the stairway in three leaps.
As he burst into the kitchen the screaming began again, was cut off abruptly. There was a faint gurgling proceeding from beyond the open doorway that led into the garden. Hartley hesitated, snatched up a heavy carving knife that lay on the table, and stepped quietly into the night.
The moon had risen higher, and in its wan light the garden looked ghostly, unearthly, save where the light from the doorway streamed out in a narrow path of yellow illumination. The night air was cool on his face. From his left, in the direction of the barren clearing where the Witch Stone had stood, came a faint rustling.
Hartley stepped quietly aside, vague apprehension mounting within him. Remembrance of Dobson’s warning came flooding back, the caretaker’s ominous insistence that the old witch had never died, that she lay waiting in her grave for someone to move the stone that held her fettered.