Parlan, the Four-Clawed

by William Wallace Cook

 

Parlan, the Four-Clawed

 

THE MARK OF THE BEAST WAS
UPON EMMET ALDEN, BUT HAWLEY,
WHO WAS RUTH ALDEN'S LOVER
WAS CHARGED WITH HIS MURDER

 

By William Wallace Cook

 

Editor’s Note: A ghost-story? Yes. But it is so much more than just that, ts so thoroughly real in its facts, so tremendously dramatic in its situation, that it repudiates any such classification. Indeed this conception of “Parlan” has a force and originality that place it on a plane with Mrs. Shelley's “Frankenstein” and Maupassant’s “L’Horla.” At once deeply thoughtful and greatly daring, it will make a strong appeal to every imaginative reader—and will leave a most vivid and lasting memory.

 

CHAPTER I
The Telegram

SO far as Hawley was concerned, Rand was a privileged character. At any hour Rand might drop into Hawley’s rooms and be sure of a hearty welcome. If Hawley happened to be busy, he put aside his work, serene in the consciousness that if his labor were good, something was coming that was sure to be better; or if nothing pressed and the hour was one of idleness and reverie, the idler was thankful to have point and proportion given to his thoughts.

It was midnight when the door of Hawley’s study quietly opened and closed, leaving a tall, slender figure inside the room. From head to foot the figure was immaculate, clean and strong. A sense of power radiated from every alert line.

Hawley heaved a sigh of satisfaction, laid aside his pen and pushed back from the desk. There was no word of greeting from one or the other. Rand would never have it so, and Hawley had fallen into his way.

Silently the caller divested himself of light overcoat, hat and gloves. In the identical spot where he always laid them they found their place. Then he took a cigar from a humidor on a corner table, scratched a match and began to smoke. He smoked with ease and consideration, as one who loved the weed and would not profane it by wanton handling. Still without speaking, he passed to the grate. A low fire was burning, for it was early spring and the night had a tang to it. A white, shapely hand dropped the burned match upon the coals. For several moments Rand leaned an elbow on the mantel, his eyes lowered to the fire and delicate smoke-wreaths rising above him.

His hair was thick and snow-white. It massed about his leonine head in tumbling waves. Ever since he had known Rand, Hawley had wanted to get at his hair and do something to it. Here was the one touch of carelessness in a person otherwise orderly to a fault.

Rand might have been forty, fifty or sixty. Hawley did not know—never knew. His face was sunken at the cheeks and eyes, but it was smooth and void of wrinkles. The eyebrows were bushy; from their wells beneath, the eyes gleamed like polished jet.

“It had to come here to-night,” said Rand. “Somewhere in the depths of my nature there were promptings and forebodings. The promptings were insistent, and the forebodings—dark.” He did not look around but kept his eyes on the fire. “You are a novelist, Hawley, and human emotions are your stock in trade; yet I doubt if even you can understand how sensitively I am balanced in the affairs of my friends.” He turned around suddenly and gave the other his full attention. “Has anything unusual happened to you to-night?”

HAWLEY smiled, reached for his pipe and uncovered his tobacco-jar. “Nothing unusual ever happens to me, Rand,” he answered. “You know very well that I am the most commonplace person in the world.” He crammed the bowl of his briar slowly and trailed the fire across it. “Fate offers me no adventures,” he went on through the quick fog that enveloped him; “so I create them for the shadow-people in my yarns. That gives me all the pleasure with none of the consequences.”

“Life itself is a beautiful adventure,” proceeded Rand, leaning his back against the mantel, “and most of us fail to understand its causes, effects and responsibilities. We do something admirable, and the reward is not ours alone but travels in all directions with bright consequences for people in distant countries, perhaps in other worlds. A good deed, Hawley, is a living thing, and not the less vital because the eye fails to comprehend it. Contrariwise, the questionable act is a force equally to be reckoned with. Occasional small misdeeds grow into habits with repetition, becoming in time unseen monsters which prey, not upon ourselves alone but upon the whole fabric of civilization, victimizing more especially those innocent ones who are nearest to us. The wrongs we do by two and two are not paid for one by one. The machinery of the higher justice is complicated with results.”

A widely read man, Rand merely used the ideas of others in building up weird ideas of his own. To blaze a clear trail through some fantastic wilderness of thought was a joy to him. It seemed now, to Hawley, as though he was going pretty far afield.

“But let me be more specific,” went on Rand, dropping his dreamy air. “Let us come particularly to your case and—pardon me—to your more intimate personal affairs. If I go too far, you know,”—and he smiled,—“it is your privilege to show me the door.”

“Martin! Go as far as you like, old man; I guess I can stand it.”

Rand pulled up a chair by the fire. Sinking into it, he smoked reflectively for a few moments, evidently casting about in his mind for the best way to approach a difficult subject. He had not yet decided, when a bell tinkled somewhere in the depths of the house. The sound caused him to stir suddenly.

“There!” he breathed. “I have felt that something was about to happen to you, felt it so strongly, Bruce, that I could not keep away from your rooms even at this midnight hour. To me that bell sounds like a tocsin, summoning all the malevolent forces of destiny to their first attack.”

So earnest were his words that a grisly feeling sped through Hawley’s nerves. The writer shook off the uncanny influence with a light laugh.

“I never saw you just like this before, Martin,” said he. “What in the deuce has come over you? I—”

A TAP sounded at the door. Hawley was startled. Rand’s vague forebodings, at least so far as the bell was concerned, appeared to be bearing fruit.

“Better answer the door, Bruce,” suggested Rand calmly.

A sleepy colored man stood at the threshold. “Telegram, sah,” said he; “it jes’ come. De boy done tol’ me it’s a rush message.”

Hawley, a quick fear—he knew not of what—surging through him, came back into the room with the telegram in his hand. While Rand watched him closely, he tore open the yellow envelope and drew forth a damp, folded sheet. The envelope fluttered to the floor as Hawley unfolded the message and ran over its contents with wild eyes.

“What—what can this mean?” he muttered. “It says so little and yet it—it means so much! I—I—” He turned slowly toward Rand.

“Is it from Miss Alden?” the other inquired.

“How could you guess?” Rand smiled mysteriously and a little sadly. “There—there must have been some accident,” murmured Hawley with pale lips. “It is like a thunderclap, Rand! I wonder when I can catch a train for the other side of the lake. Read it.” He thrust the telegram into his friend’s hand and went to pick up a newspaper from the floor beside his desk.

The message was brief. “If you would save me, come at once.” It was signed simply “Ruth.” Rand smoothed the telegram out on the arm of his chair, watching the eager, worried face of his friend as it bent over a published timetable in the newspaper.

“There’s a train in two hours,” Hawley announced. “It will bring me into Bellevue at seven in the morning. I must take it.”

“Don’t,” said Rand. Hawley looked at him in astonishment. “Be advised by me,” Rand went on. “Don’t go at all, Bruce.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Hawley sharply.

“Just what I say,” was the response. “It is borne in upon me that, by going, you will merely make a bad matter worse.”

“What do I care for your premonitions?” Hawley flung at his friend. “The woman I love, the woman I am to marry, sends me a message like that; and you—you sit there and advise me to ignore it! She calls to me out of some great trouble,—out of some deadly peril that has come to her suddenly,—and you are heartless enough to suggest that I give no heed to the call. Rand, you have gone too far. You are not my friend.”

RAND tossed his half-burned cigar into the grate. Getting out of the chair, he walked to the place where he had left his overcoat, hat and gloves. His face expressed infinite sadness—and helplessness. Silently he put on the coat.

“I may be unjust to Miss Alden, Bruce,” said he, his voice throbbing with sympathy, “but I am not unjust to you. I have known Emmet Alden, Miss Alden’s father for years. He comes of a splendid family, and, until he made a hermit of himself, held a high social position; but in spite of that, he is a throw-back to the worst in the Alden line. If there is a more unprincipled man on earth than Emmet Alden, I have yet to hear of him.”

“Even so,” returned Hawley in anger, “what has Emmet Alden’s character to do with that of Ruth? No finer, sweeter woman ever lived! No—”

“Do not mistake me,” pleaded Rand. “Ruth Alden is all that is admirable, but she is doomed by her father’s errors of omission and commission, and by his wholly evil estimate of life. Bruce, if you go to her now, you are bound to become involved in the same horror that has caught her in its clammy grip. As for saving her, you cannot. A higher law intervenes, a law immutable and relentless as that which holds the fixed stars in the sky and hurls the solar systems sweeping through space. It is the law which declares that, whatever we do for better or for worse, the happiness or the blight falls not upon ourselves alone but upon all who come within the circle of its operations. Ruth Alden cannot escape; yet here and now the way is open to you, if you will but steel your heart to follow it.”

Hawley’s face was pallid but resolute. “That law is of your own invention,” he said between his teeth. “Who ever heard of it before?”

“Nevertheless,” declared Rand solemnly and in a voice tremulous with awe, “it is a law which becomes operative the moment it is known and understood. From this hour you will be dominated by it. Bruce—”

“I shall go!” asserted Hawley. “Fire and flood, death itself, are as nothing when the woman you love calls to you.”

“Yes,” agreed Rand softly, “I might have known. It is not in you to shirk what you conceive to be your duty. When the worst comes,” he added, “you will remember that I am really your friend and will ask for my help? Very likely there will be nothing I can do, but I should like to be near you. You will send for me in the black hour?”

“If I have a black hour, Martin,” Hawley answered, “I promise that you shall be the first one I turn to. But your queer fancies are leaping ahead to no purpose. Your queer law would make the innocent suffer for the guilty—”

“That is at once the truth and the horror of it,” interposed the other, picking up hat and gloves and moving to the door. “I have your promise, however, and will take what comfort from it I may.”

Without another word he let himself out into the dimly lighted hall and softly closed the door behind him. Presently the retreating footfalls had died away.

CHAPTER II
The Man at the Gate

ALTHOUGH history is mute upon the subject, there are those who declare that Bellevue was a trading post of the French in the days when Michillimackinac flourished, when Kaskaskia was more than a name, and when the early foundations of Detroit were laid. Be this as it may, nevertheless it is certain that the beginnings of Bellevue were shrouded in a comparatively ancient and ghostly past; and if the departed ever revisit scenes of their earthly trials and struggles, then this town on the shore of the great lake is most assuredly haunted by daring voyageurs, and the equally daring and more self-sacrificing pères.

Bellevue is a small place. Amid its oaks and elms and hard maples it sprawls lazily across the top of a bluff the foot of which is washed by the lake waters. The nearest railroad is five miles away; and although the town is cool and refreshing in the dog-days, yet the absence of a bathing-beach fends off the summer-resorters. It was hardly worth while for a progressive railroad to go to the trouble of touching such an elderly, doddering old settlement when a productive peach-country beckoned from another direction. Bellevue, in short, offered every inducement for one who wished to hibernate or vegetate or for any of a thousand and one reasons to get out of the workaday world.

On that bright, crisp morning in early spring, Bruce Hawley was the only passenger in the dilapidated old stage that dragged back and forth between the railroad and the town. Old Ben Timmins, the Jehu, knew Hawley, of course; for old Ben had driven the stage for twenty years, and this would be Hawley’s third summer of coming and going between Bellevue and the “big city across the lake.

The writer had first visited the town while on the trail of an historical romance. That romance had never been written. It had dawned upon Hawley that the theme would be too old and prosaic to be fashionable with his readers. His public clamored for things modern, for things ultra in more senses of the word than one. As another reason, Hawley’s fictional romance was lost in a very real romance of his own.

Two summers gone, on a clear, fresh morning, he had strolled along the wooded bluff to a spot half a mile beyond: the town. Emerging from a mask of timber, a picture of rare beauty had unrolled suddenly before his eyes. The lake danced away in golden waves to the purple horizon. In the middle distance hovered a white, triangular sail, and just above the skyline trailed a plume of black smoke. This was all common enough. What gave the scene its charm and rescued it from the ordinary was a figure in the foreground, no more than half a dozen yards from the spot where Hawley was standing. It was the figure of a girl, sitting before an easel and facing lakeward.

AGAINST a brown umbrella, bent to ward off the sun, the face of the artist showed in clear relief. And it was a face that a man—even a writer whose art specializes in faces—might rave over. There was something so high, so spirituelle and yet so militant about it that Hawley was reminded of Joan of Arc.

While the girl sketched, wrapped up in her work and oblivious of his presence, he stood and gazed. The deft, exquisitely molded hands, the rounded curves of cheek and throat, the graceful lines of the slender form bourgeoning like a flower into the full blow of womanhood—all these he saw; and ina flash of realization, he knew that here was the one for whom he had been waiting. This conviction arose in him suddenly and captured him completely. Fate seemed to have plotted the situation, and Fate remained to direct the progress of events.

Abruptly the girl dropped palette and brush. With a stifled scream she leaped from her camp-stool and stared at the ground, recoiling, both hands at her throat. Hawley was not too far away to hear the warning hiss. Catching up a stick that lay at his feet, he ran forward. One of those reptiles of the Michigan swamps and woods, the dreaded massasauga, was wrapped in an ugly coil and about to strike. He beat it down, crushed its head with his heel and then flung it, still quivering, over the edge of the bluff.

So he came to know Ruth Alden, and for two summers he was in Bellevue much of the time. There was no love lost between Bruce Hawley and Emmet Alden, but a sort of truce prevailed between them as the wooing prospered. Hawley wondered at Alden’s dislike, and at his seeming complaisance as his daughter’s heart came more and more into the writer’s keeping. That wonder had grown, and yet Alden’s attitude had remained a mystery.

HAWLEY, lumbering along in the rattling stage, had taken a reminiscent view of the past; and soon the fears that had oppressed him ever since receiving the telegram found vent in words and sought reassurance from Ben Timmins.

“How are the Aldens, Ben?”

The old driver glanced slyly at his passenger and chuckled. “I guess the’s only one o’ them Aldens that’s a-worryin’ you,” said he. “Seen her yestiday, Mr. Hawley. ’Peared to be a leetle mite peaked but was real chipper otherways.”

“Where did you see her?” Hawley went on, conscious of a growing relief.

“She was to town last evenin’. Seen her comin’ out of the telegraft-office. Her father, I guess, is purty much as usual. It aint often anybody in town ever sees him. Manages to keep himself out o’ sight purty nigh all the time. Once, theugh, I came fair onto him in the road. Lor’! that dead white face o’ his give me the creeps. He aint human, some ways, that feller!”

Timmins had seen Ruth as she came from the telegraph-office after sending the message to Hawley. If she were well, as Timmins averred, then why those fearsome words—“If you would save me, come at once”?

Hawley took what comfort he could from the report of Ben Timmins; and he got down from the stage in front of the Bellevue House just as the sleepy old town began to stir itself and rub its eyes and consider the small affairs of another day. Hamilton Garvey, proprietor of the hotel, came down from the porch to welcome the newly arrived guest.

“Sort o’ rushing the season this year, aint you, Mr. Hawley?” Garvey inquired. “I wasn’t expectin’ you for a month yet. Same old room, eh? Well, we're not crowded, and you can have anything you want that we’ve got.”

Timmins went on to the post office with the mail while Hawley followed his host into the hotel office. His first move, after putting down his satchel, was to go to the telephone and call up the Aldens. Emmet Alden would be working in his garden, he reasoned, and Ruth would be the one to answer his call. Presently he heard her voice, thrilling him as always, but now—in view of that message—infinitely more dear than ever before.

“I’m here, Ruth,” said he. “I caught the first train after receiving your telegram. What has happened?”

“I knew you would come quickly, Bruce,” came to him breathlessly over the wire. “I can never be too thankful that I have a strong heart on which to lean at such a time. Will you be here at nine?”

“Whenever you want me, Ruth. You are well?”

“Yes, Bruce.” The soft tones became hurried. “I can’t talk to you as I would like over the ’phone. Good-by—until nine.”

HE would have talked further, but the receiver at the other end of the line was placed on the hooks.

“Probably she feared an interruption,” thought Hawley as he turned away from the instrument. “I'll go to my room at once, Garvey,” said he to the landlord. “I’d like breakfast at eight.”

“It'll be ready any time,” said the landlord. “Here’s the key to Number Six, Mr. Hawley, and you can go right up.”

At eight Hawley came down to breakfast, and at eight-thirty he was on his way to the cottage of Emmet Alden. He had had no sleep the night before,—he had worked late and during his night ride on the train his fears would give him no rest,—but he was thoroughly awake, and although a bit puzzled by the situation, his brain was clear.

A scattering of oaks lined the country road. They were stunted and gnarled and had not yet put forth their leaves. Through their gaunt branches whistled a chill wind from the lake. Spring was slow in touching the Michigan shore with its promise of summer. The landscape was bleak and overhung by a drab, cheerless sky. Under the sandy bluff the waves murmured a sort of moaning chant.

“Jove!” muttered Hawley to himself, turning up the collar of his overcoat as he strode along, “there’s nothing very pleasant in this. From June till October this country will do, but how Emmet Alden can bear the winters here is more than I ever could understand. It isn’t fair to Ruth, keeping her cooped up amid such loneliness and desolation! But,” he added, smiling, “this year there is going to be a change. Before long, Ruth’s happiness will be in my hands, and I shall make it my duty to give her the comforts her father’s selfishness has denied her.”

Presently he reached a place where the straggling oaks gave way to a neatly kept plot of ground bordered by a fence of white pickets. Flower-beds lay back of the fence, marked off in geometrical designs and carefully tended. Only two or three of the beds showed early blossoms. Beyond this garden was the cottage—a veranda overlooking the road and another, at the rear, giving a view of the lake.

Hawley paused an instant as his eyes took in the familiar surroundings. The gate in the picket fence swung wide open, but a man stood there with a hand on either gatepost—stood like a sentinel and as one barring the way. It was Emmet Alden.

ALDEN was slender, his figure clean-cut and graceful. He came of a good family, and his bearing was eloquent of birth and breeding. Even these rags of respectability will stay with a man through evil fortunes. Alden could work in his garden and yet throw about his weeding and digging and transplanting the high air of an aristocrat who loves the soil for the soil itself. His eyes were dark, and set in a dead, hueless face as white as his snowy hair—an unlined, expressionless face that proved a perfect mask for his soul. Planted firmly within the gate, he regarded Hawley with a fixed gaze as he continued to advance after his brief, startled pause.

“Hello, Mr. Alden!” he called, coming close and halting again.

“Good morning,” was the answer in frosty tones. “You are here to see Ruth, I suppose; but she is not receiving callers to-day.”

Hawley stared. “Why,” he said, “I talked with Ruth a little while ago and she asked me to be here at nine.”

“Yes, I know,” Alden went on quietly; “and I know, too, that she sent you a telegram, asking you to come. That telegram was ill-advised. I am sorry, Hawley, to appear discourteous or inhospitable, but I do not think it best for you to come here. You would regret it, sooner or later, I feel positive.”

Hawley’s resentment was steadily rising. “The position I occupy, Mr. Alden,” said he, “gives me the right to take my orders from Ruth, and not from you or anyone else. I must see her if only for a few minutes. Will you let me in?”

“No. This is my house; I am master here. Whoever comes and goes must do so at my pleasure. I detest scenes, Hawley; so don’t make one. Let me appeal to you as one gentleman to another.”

A four-pronged, sharp-pointed, short-handled garden-implement lay on one of the gateposts. Alden’s hand, incased in an earth-stained glove, moved to the implement, and his fingers closed around the handle. The movement was so easily, so quietly, made as hardly to suggest a menace; nevertheless Hawley felt that the menace was there.

One thing Hawley was resolved upon: he had come to see Ruth at her request. It was his right and his duty to call upon her, and he would do so. He advanced a step. Alden’s lithe, trim figure pulled itself sharply together. The two men stood peering at each other, their eyes emphasizing the resolution each of them felt. A “scene” seemed unavoidable. Then, abruptly, above the whistle of the lake wind and the croon of the lake waves, Hawley heard a sound behind him. He whirled about but could see no one, and nothing to cause the sound that had startled him.

YET the sound not only continued but grew clearer, more distinct. It could hardly be defined, but seemed like a padded footfall, a whispering rustle as of silk garments punctuated by a beat of paws on the ground. If some animal, heavy and unwieldy, were increasing its pace from a trot to a lope, the sound might have matched that which now struck on Hawley’s ears. But there was no animal approaching—nothing at all, so far as he could see. He turned, bewildered, to receive another start when his eyes fell on Alden.

The uncanny face of the man in the gate was no longer a mask. It reflected terror and panic, a wild, unutterable fear that sent Alden staggering to one side, crouched and gripping the sharp-pointed garden-tool—waiting, it might be, to do battle for his life.

“What is it, Alden?” cried Hawley in consternation. “What’s the matter? Where—”

Words died on his lips. Something was passing him, entering the gate and plunging along the graveled walk toward the house. He felt a stirring of the air, and heard the rustling and awkward fall of hoofs or paws. Dazed, he stood and stared, trying in vain to see what he could not see. The sounds reached the veranda, bounded up the steps and crossed the boards—then seemed to melt into the closed front door.

Shaken and unstrung, Hawley advanced and leaned upon one of the gate-posts. A groan burst from Alden. Dropping the garden-tool, he staggered to the fence and clung to the pickets. A scream echoed from the house. That cry spurred Hawley to action, lifting him at once out of the dread spell in which he had been caught.

Running to the house, he threw open the door and sprang into the hall. “Ruth!” he cried. ‘Ruth! Where are you?”

CHAPTER III
In the Shadow

A WOMAN was crouched on her knees in a corner of the hall. Her head was bowed, and she was muttering wildly and wringing her hands. Hawley stepped to her and touched her shoulder.

“Ann!” he called sharply. “Where’s your mistress? Where’s Ruth?”

A shiver convulsed the form, and a black, horrified face slowly lifted. The woman clutched the hand that rested on her shoulder.

“Mr. Hawley!” she cried. “Bress de Lawd you done got here! It’s come, Mr. Hawley! It’s come through dat do’, jess lak it’s been doin’. Ah dunno why Ah stays in sech a place, ’cept it’s fo’ Miss Ruth. She couldn’t stand it, Ah reckon, ef ol’ Ann wasn’t around. Bress de Lawd you’s here!”

The old mammy had been Ruth’s friend and stand-by for years. From the girl’s childhood she had known this one faithful heart in all the dark, shifting troubles of her father’s house.

“What’s come, Ann?” demanded Hawley. “What are you talking about?”

The colored woman arose shakily from her knees.

“How Ah knows whut it is, Mr. Hawley?” she sputtered. “Ah’s afeared of mah life, but Ah’s more afeared fo’ Miss Ruth. It’s de ha’nts, only you kain’t see ’em. It jess comes an’ goes wid a gallop an’ a rush, poundin’ an’ traipsin’ around an’ a-scarin’ ev’ybody ’most to deff. You done got to take Miss Ruth away, Mr. Hawley, or I’ll take her away mahse’f. Ah wont put up wid dis much longer—Ah kain’t!” The old woman was almost hysterical.

“Will you take me to Ruth, Ann?” Hawley asked.

Ann calmed herself with an effort. “Fo’ sure Ah’ll take you to dat po’ chil’, Mr. Hawley,” she answered. “Ah was jess on mah way to her when Ah heerd de whisperin’ an’ de gallopin’ an’ mah ol’ knees jess crumpled right up an’ let me down where Ah stood. Ah knowed it was here ag’in—an’ ebry time it comes it gits worse an’ worse. Right dis way, Mr. Hawley.”

Ann ushered Hawley into a room off the hall, the sitting-room of the cottage. A slender figure, pale as death, was half lying on a couch. It was Ruth. Slender always, she seemed now to be little more than a shadow. Her head was thrown back, and her eyes were closed. Hawley started forward, but the old colored woman held him back.

“She’s always lak dat, Mr. Hawley, after de ha’nts comes an’ goes,” she whispered. “Jess wait.” She went to the couch, knelt down and began stroking the girl’s forehead softly. “It’s all ovah with, honey,” she murmured; “your mammy’s right here, an’ you’s all right. Open dem eyes, now, an’ jess look who’s come with me. You’s gwine to be chirked up a heap when you-all sees who’s here.”

RUTH opened her eyes and started forward. “Bruce!” she exclaimed, and put out her arms to him.

Ann left the two alone. Hawley sat down on the couch beside Ruth, and did all that he could think of to cheer and soothe her.

“You're not well, dear,” said he. “I can see that plainly. The life here has worn on you more during the last winter than ever before. You're living in a shadow—a horrible shadow that is steadily sapping your strength.”

“Not my strength alone, Bruce,” the girl answered, “but my reason as well. And what is the shadow?” She shuddered. “Will you tell me?” she asked, appealingly.

“Unhappiness, loneliness, your father’s selfishness in making a hermit of you as he has of himself.”

“Don’t say my father’s selfishness, Bruce,” she begged. “He is good to me, in his way, and does everything he can to make me comfortable.” She sat up straight and looked at him steadily. “I have tried and tried to understand what this all means, but the more I think of it the greater the mystery becomes. Tell me, you were outside when I screamed?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear anything?’ She spoke breathlessly. “I know there was nothing to see, but did you hear?”

“I heard strange sounds, Ruth,” he answered gravely.

“Like the rushing of a wind,” she went on, her eyes wide and fearful, “and like a quick fall of feet?”

“Yes, it was like that. An illusion, of some sort, nothing more. It can be explained, I am sure, after a little study. You mustn’t let the queer sounds worry you, Ruth. Perhaps Ann has made more of them than she should. Negroes are superstitious, you know. It seems a part of their nature—a trait brought out of Africa.” Hawley laughed reassuringly. “We are of a different race, you and I,” he continued. “We reason about things we cannot understand, and do not blindly fall back on the supernatural. For everything that happens, in this matter-of-fact world, there is a common-sense explanation.”

HAWLEY was talking for Ruth’s sake. As he sat there, fencing glibly with life’s mysteries over the faulty barriers of human reason, a sense of his own weakness in that hour impressed itself upon him. Was it Rand’s influence, he asked himself, overawing his spirit and dulling his wits? What had possessed Rand to talk as he had done at their last interview?

Hawley’s heart filled with a great compassion and tenderness as he studied Ruth and noted more and more the physical change in her. What he now feared most was a mental change. He was probing for it with words, and dreading what he might find. All his strength was needed, and he felt that Rand’s weird fancies were binding his hands.

“I had hoped, Bruce,” said Ruth, “that these—shall we call them visitations?—were imaginary, and that they grew upon me because Ann, in her terror, was magnifying them. But you heard what Ann and I heard, and what we have been hearing for weeks. “They are manifestations of some awful mystery. Tell me what it is, Bruce! You are fresh from the outside world, and have come to me with a clear and resourceful mind. Explain, so that I may understand!”

“I must have a little time for that,” he answered, assuming a confidence he did not feel. “How often do these—manifestations occur?”

“I noticed them first five or six weeks ago. Father and I were in this room; he was reading, and I was at the piano. The sounds were faint—just a vague whispering. Probably I should not have noticed it had Father not leaped from his chair and dropped his book on the floor. He stood like a statue, staring into vacancy and terribly agitated. ‘Parlan!’ he gasped; ‘is it Parlan?’ I was alarmed and asked him what was the matter. ‘Nothing,’ he said, and sat down again with his book.”

“‘Parlan!’” echoed Hawley. “That is a name, I suppose. Had you ever heard it before?”

“No, and I have not heard it since. A few days later, Ann came to me and said something had run through the house. She was badly frightened. I tried to reassure her, but while we were talking, the sounds came again—louder than when I had heard them first, and this time I distinctly heard the footfalls. Since then, Bruce, almost every day the sounds are with us, and they are growing in volume. I cannot sleep at night, and there is no rest for me during the day. If I am to bear this much longer I shall die! Oh, what is it, what is it? I am not superstitious; Ann may be, but I am not. I try to think, to reason. Black magic! Is there such a thing?”

“The more you try to think and to reason,” said Hawley, “the more the terror grips you. Now that I am here, Ruth, you must be calm and leave everything to me. Trust me, dear—can you?”

“I should be in despair if I could not,” she answered, love and confidence shining in her eyes. “What am I to do? Tell me!”

“First,” returned Hawley, “you are to leave this house and take lodgings in town.”

“Leave Father—alone?” she faltered. “Ann would not stay a minute without me. How could I do that, Bruce?”

“You can do it,” he insisted, “because it is necessary. Your father himself should have sent you away. He is not so wrapped up in his own affairs that he fails to see how this is affecting you.”

“Father would not let me go,” she breathed.

“As between your father and me,” he asked, “which will you choose?”

“Bruce!” The word was wrenched from her heart, and she put out her trembling hands.

HE took the hands in his own. “If I am to protect you, dear,” he went on, “then I must have the legal right. That can be quickly attended to. I will have Ben Timmins drive me out here this afternoon—say at four o’clock. You and Ann be ready. Your father cannot keep you from me, Ruth.” He put his arm about her and drew her close. “Can’t you see,” he asked gently, “that it is for the best?”

The girl’s staring eyes looked past him toward the doorway. He turned and saw Emmet Alden.

“Hawley,” said Alden, “you can’t conspire against me in my own house and with my own daughter. You and Ruth are not to be married until June. For the few short weeks that remain you might leave her with me, in peace.”

“Peace!” exclaimed Hawley, starting to his feet. “Look at Ruth, Emmet Alden! Can you tell me there is any peace for her, here with you?”

“Am I to be bereft of the only one on earth who cares for me?” Alden demanded.

“Why not, if her welfare demands it? If you cared for Ruth as she cares for you, Alden, you would put aside your selfishness. With what have you surrounded her, here in this house? What monsters of your imagination are having their deadly way with her? If you know,—as I believe you do,—what right have you to ask her to remain here?”

“Go!” Alden ordered, stepping into the room and pointing to the door. “Come back in June. Until then, my girl belongs to me.”

“I shall come back this afternoon,” declared Hawley, moving toward the hall. “Be ready, Ruth,” he added, and left the room and the house.

CHAPTER IV
THE HOUR Strikes

IT was Hawley’s realization of his weakness that tempted him to play his hand boldly and without delay. Rand’s theories continued to overshadow him, and to wax stronger and more unnerving even as his worldly wisdom cried out against them. He felt the power of initiative slipping from him. Before it failed altogether, Ruth must be saved. That accomplished, he assured himself, both he and she would be freed of the Alden shadow, and their lives would be readjusted along normal lines.

What was this evil Thing that came on all fours like a rush of the winds? Manifestly a shape, although invisible; ponderable, yet passing closed doors as through empty space; defying the sense of sight, but not the senses of hearing and touch; setting at odds the laws of nature, and at once material and immaterial. Alden named it Parlan.

Had Alden created It out of the dross of his life? So Rand’s ideas would have it, and those ideas were taking root in Hawley’s mind. But Rand would have the future black and hopeless. To Hawley, the involving of Ruth in her father’s fate was monstrous. Yet with his own eyes he had seen Ruth breaking under this injustice of Rand’s “higher law.” If Hawley could save her, he would be giving the lie to one of his friend’s dark prophecies.

As the slow hours of forenoon and afternoon dragged by, Hawley jumped at every summons of the telephone in the hotel office. He was afraid of a message from Aldens’ informing him that Ruth had yielded to her father and would not leave the cottage. No message of any kind came for him, however. At half-past three, Timmins arrived with the old carryall, and he and Hawley started on their mission.

“D’you take any stock in what’s goin’ round,” inquired the old driver, “that Alden’s shy in the upper story?”

“No, Ben,” Hawley answered.

“You and him aint on sociable terms, be you?”

“What put that idea in your head?”

TEMMINS nibbled at a plug of tobacco and then rolled the quid into his cheek. “This mornin’ you was out there, and Alden didn’t want to let you in,” he continued. “You was goin’ in anyway, and Alden grabs a thing he was usin’ to weed his garden; then you braces right up to him, an’ he’s that skeered he collapses an’ hangs himself on the picket fence.” Timmins chuckled. “After that, you prance right along into the house without Alden sayin’ yes er no. I don’t see how you can be friendly when you two carry on like that.”

“Where did you get that information, Ben?” demanded Hawley, surprised.

“A farmer, name o’ Griggs, was comin’ by an’ seen it. The story’s all over town. Can’t be Alden’s jest right, seems to me.”

“You don’t want to believe all you hear, Ben,” said Hawley, annoyed.

A little later, Timmins pulled up his carryall in front of the cottage, and Hawley jumped down.

“You'll have two more passengers and some luggage on the return-trip, Ben,” he remarked. “Wait for me here.”

“Sure,” was the answer.

Hawley walked into the yard. A voice hailed him before he mounted the steps to the veranda.

“The front door is locked, Mr. Hawley, and I have the key.”

The voice, which was Emmet Alden’s, came from around a corner of the house. Hawley turned from the front entrance and followed a path leading toward the rear and the edge of the bluff. The angle of the building shut off Ben Timmins’ view of Hawley and Alden—which was destined to prove an unfortunate circumstance for Hawley.

Alden was on his knees by the path, digging at the earth with the four-pronged weeder. He sat back on his heels as Hawley approached. “Stop!” he called, as Hawley would have passed. Hawley stopped.

“Don’t you interfere with me, Alden!” he said sharply.

“You’re no welcome caller here,” returned Alden, his voice lifted high. “If you get into the house, it will be in spite of me.”

“I’m sorry you put it that way. I’m determined to carry out my plan, Alden.”

Alden jumped to his feet and barred the path. “Will you leave?” he cried, flourishing the four-pronged weapon.

“Not until Ruth leaves with me.”

HAWLEY’S face was nearly as white as Alden’s. Alden advanced a step and struck with the steel claws. Hawley evaded the blow deftly, seized Alden’s hand and wrenched the weapon from it. For a second the two contended there in the path, and then their ears caught the dread whispering of Parlan. The two fell apart, Hawley awed and startled and Alden in a panic like the one of the morning at the gate. The whisper grew into a rustling, and then into a wild, sibilant roar. Through it sounded the loping fall of padded feet.

Hawley staggered from the path; then, as he watched, he saw Alden in a frenzied struggle, clutching at the air, straining with all his might, tripping and reeling, now this way and now that. He trampled the freshly turned earth in his mad battle; the breath wheezed in his clenched teeth, and a sweat of agony stood out on his pale brows. Another moment, and Hawley saw four reddened points at Alden’s throat; the points lengthened in lines, and then faded in a gaping smear.

A cry of gurgling terror broke from Alden. His body relaxed suddenly as though paralyzed by a blow, and he crumpled to his knees and finally pitched sideways on the trampled ground, writhing and digging into the earth with convulsive fingers. He fell on the four-pronged weeder. Hawley, recovering himself somewhat, ran to the twisting form and removed the stained implement.

“Alden!” he cried.

But Alden fell back and lay still. A window opened in the side of the cottage.

“Lawd sabe us, Mr. Hawley!” wailed the voice of Ann, her terrified black face appearing above the window-sill, “Whut you done, Mr. Hawley, whut you done?”

“Take care of Ruth,” Hawley called. “Keep her away, keep her away!”

As Ann, tossing her hands, reeled away from the window, Hawley faced about to see Ben Timmins hurrying to the scene.

“What’s wrong?” cried Timmins excitedly. “What’s happened to Alden, Mr. Hawley?”

Hawley tossed aside the implement he was holding and leaned weakly against the side of the house. Presently he roused himself and drew a trembling hand across his eyes.

“Go back to town and get an officer, Ben,” said he tremulously. “And a doctor,” he added. “Hurry, man, hurry!”

CHAPTER V
The Trial

THE days that followed were like a nightmare to Hawley. Not until he found himself in a cell of the county jail at Broadbrook did he think of Rand. He sent a telegram, and Rand came at once. There was no greeting from one or the other. Rand put an arm around his friend’s shoulders and sat beside him on the cot.

Rand had studied for the bar and had been admitted. But he did not practice. Nevertheless his mind was trained to all the angles of the law. There was no comfort for his friend in the plain evidence. Hawley, however, was not thinking of himself. “Tell me about Ruth, Martin!” he begged.

“She is ill,” said Rand gently. “The doctor calls it brain-fever. Mrs. Kennedy, my sister, came with me from Chicago, Bruce. She and the old negro woman are with her. And there is a trained nurse. If Miss Alden recovers, life will be brighter for her than ever before, unless—”

Hawley lifted his face from his hands. “Unless what?” he asked dully.

“Unless life darkens hopelessly for you, Bruce,” Rand went on. “I need not tell you how that would leave Ruth Alden.”

“My hands are clean,” said Hawley, “and I have money for a legal fight. Surely something can be done for me!”

“Look this thing squarely in the face, Bruce,” returned Rand. “You had words with Alden, and you were found standing over him with a weapon that could have made the wound. Timmins heard your angry altercation. He did not see the struggle, but he saw you directly afterward. What will you say before a jury? That Alden fought with a phantom? Sane men will not consider phantoms. We know, you and I; yet how can we drive that knowledge home in a convincing way? But we are going to fight; you may rest assured of that.”

“At any rate,” observed Hawley grimly, “the end of Alden means the end of Parlan. Ruth will not have that horror to contend with.”

“Does a man’s influence in the world end with the man himself?” returned Rand. “As Parlan strengthened into a destroying force while Alden lived, so Parlan will disintegrate and finally cease to be now that Alden is gone. The process may be slow. Ripples on the ocean of life reach far, long after the stone that has caused them sinks to the bottom.”

RAND attached himself to his friend’s case as assistant counsel. After making a careful survey of the legal talent offered by Bellevue and Broadbrook, he retained for Hawley a young lawyer just out of law-school, out at elbows but rich in ambition. His name was O’Grady. Pitted against O’Grady and Rand was Henderson Morlay, prosecuting attorney and veteran of the courts.

The finding of the coroner’s jury held Hawley to answer for the slaying of Emmet Alden. No other verdict could have been rendered.

There followed a delay of several weeks, during which Hawley made of his stone walls and iron bars a hermitage. He worked on a novel as a relief to his mind; he had long interviews with O’Grady and Rand; and he was kept advised constantly of the progress Ruth was making in her fight for life—reports that reached him daily, sometimes hourly, and upon which he hung like a starved soul.

The line of defense mapped out by Rand struck hard at O’Grady’s credulity. At first, sensing ultimate failure in taking the supernatural before a hard-headed judge and jury, he was for withdrawing from the case. Rand, however, held him by sheer force of his own convictions; and as the days passed, and Hawley’s case took clearer and clearer form, O’Grady’s skepticism yielded to understanding, and he was filled with awe and enthusiasm. An Irishman by extraction, he knew that banshees had once sung to his ancestors. This lingering superstition formed the weak joint in his armor, and through it Rand pushed his own convictions home.

In the trampled flower-beds at the side of the Alden cottage, Rand had found proof of Parlan. Spoor it was, a clean imprint of a paw, four-toed and four-clawed. A cast in plaster of Paris was made of the paw-print, and the track itself was covered and protected.

At length the time arrived when the judge was ready, the lawyers were ready, and the case of the People versus Bruce Hawley was called. The prisoner, white and thin, but buoyed up by a full knowledge of his innocence, emerged from his hermitage and was taken to the courtroom under official escort. He sat at a table within a railing, O’Grady on one side of him and Rand on the other.

The case had become a famous one, because of the peculiar circumstances surrounding it and because of the fact that a writer of note figured as the principal. The little courtroom was crowded. Metropolitan papers sent representatives to report the trial. Incidentally, Hawley’s books registered an upward leap in sales in all parts of the country.

Two days were occupied in securing a jury. Rand and O’Grady would accept only those of the highest intelligence. The prosecuting attorney, sure of his grounds and positive of conviction, had wondered what the defense was to be—what it could possibly be. No witnesses had been summoned by Hawley’s attorneys, and they appeared content to make use of the witnesses called by the State.

When the jury had been selected, all was in readiness and the trial began. Griggs, a farmer, was called to establish the prosecutor’s contention of bad blood between Alden and Hawley. He had passed the Alden cottage on his way into Bellevue, about nine o’clock in the morning on the day of Hawley’s arrival from Chicago. He told how Alden had stood in the gate, barring Hawley’s passage into the yard, and how Alden had grasped the four-pronged garden-tool, to use either for offensive or defensive purposes.

“Is this the implement, Mr. Griggs?” inquired Morlay, offering the implement in evidence.

Griggs declared that it “looked like the same one.” Then, under deft questioning, he told how Alden, suddenly intimidated, dropped his garden weapon, crouched in terror and presently staggered to the picket fence and clung to it for support. Hawley had hurried on into the house.

O'GRADY on taking his turn with the witness, brought out the fact that Hawley had drawn no weapon with which to intimidate Alden, and that a scream had come from the house just before Hawley had run to the veranda and through the front door.

“How far were you from the gate, Mr. Griggs,” asked O’Grady, “just prior to Alden’s show of panic and his retreat from the walk?”

“A hundred feet, mebby. I was drivin’ by, but slow.”

“Did you hear any unusual sounds, just before the scream came from the house?”

“There was a wind that mornin’, right off'm the lake. That wasn’t unusual, but it was all I heard.”

“You didn’t hear a sound different from that of the wind—something like a rushing whisper accompanied by a fall as of paws? You—”

“Object!” interrupted Morlay. “The question is designed to lead the witness, and it is irrelevant.”

“I think the witness may state what he heard of an unusual nature, if anything,” said the judge.

“I’ve told him all I heard, Jedge,” said Griggs.

“That is all,” said O’Grady.

Ben Timmins was the next one called. He told of bringing Hawley into Bellevue on the morning of his arrival, and of having been hired in the afternoon to drive him out to Alden’s to bring back two passengers with baggage. He had been left, with his rig, outside the gate. Hawley had started for the front door, but a voice—the voice of Alden—called him around the side of the house. When he went that way, he got out of sight. But Timmins heard the angry colloquy that followed, plainly enough. He even repeated what was said. A little later, he had heard sounds, as of a struggle, then a despairing yell. Jumping from his carryall, he had rushed around the house and had seen Hawley. Hawley was standing near Alden, who was lying on the ground with a wound at his throat. Hawley held the garden-tool in his hand, and seemed “considerable agitated.”

“Was this the garden-tool?” demanded the prosecutor, holding up the implement already put in evidence.

“Looks like it,” Timmins answered.

“Can you identify it positively?”

“Maybe I might if I got it in my hands. I picked it up that afternoon from where Hawley had throwed it. It was red on the p’ints and nicked on the handle.”

THE next moment Timmins identified the implement positively. There followed a few more questions, and then the witness was turned over to O’Grady.

“You were at the gate, Mr. Timmins, you say,” said the lawyer for the defense. “Did you hear any unusual sounds?”

“Well, I did hear somethin’ like a sudden rustle o’ wind,” the witness replied.

“Anything else?”

“There was a patterin’, like a dog or somethin’ was runnin’ around the house.”

“Did you see any—”

The prosecutor objected again. These questions were all irrelevant and leading. Morlay was puzzled by the trend of the questions put by the defense. They pointed toward results that baffled him.

“The witness may answer,” said the judge.

“Did you see anything, Mr. Timmins?” went on O’Grady.

“Nary a thing.”

“Was there a wind?”

“The afternoon was ca’m, barrin’ that sudden rush as though a breeze had tried to spring up an’ then quit.”

“The ground was trampled around the spot where Alden was lying?” asked O’Grady.

“Some.”

“Did you see anything besides human footprints in the soft earth?”

“Well, as I told Mr. Rand when he first come, when I stooped down to pick up that thing,”—Timmins pointed to the garden-tool,—“I seen a big print like that of a animal of some kind in the ground. It—”

“Wait, Mr. Timmins!” said the prosecutor, jumping up. “Your Honor, I object to this line of questioning. The witness has declared that he saw nothing. The apparent contention of the defense seems to be that Alden was killed by some animal. The witness saw none—he has stated that decidedly.”

“We contend, Your Honor,” observed O’Grady, “that this paw-print is vital to this case. We will show that, later on. Here is a plaster cast of the impression which we desire to submit in evidence.”

The lawyer lifted a white object from the table.

“Wait with that, wait!” cried the prosecutor. “Where did that plaster cast come from? Who made it? What is it doing in this case now, anyway? This is not cross-examination, Your Honor, but—”

“I helped Mr. Rand make that plaster cast,” broke in Timmins, with an ardor that could not be restrained.

“I demand that the comment of the witness be stricken from the record,” said the prosecutor.

“Let it be stricken out,” decided the judge. “That evidence, Mr. O’Grady,” he went on, “must be introduced in proper form. What the witness says about the footprint of an animal may stand.”

“We're through with Timmins, for the present,” said O’Grady, after whispering with Rand.

MAMMY ANN was next called to the chair. She gave her name as “Ann Jackson, bress de Lawd, an’ a shoutin’ Mefodist.” She proved a garrulous witness, easy to start and hard to stop. Throughout all her talk, loyalty to Hawley was in plainest evidence. More than once she mentioned the “ha’nts,” and the “rushin’ wind” and the loping feet. Through her, Morlay patiently developed the fact that Hawley was seeking to take Ruth Alden, Ann’s mistress, away from her father; that Alden had ordered Hawley out of the house on the very morning of the day in which he had been slain; and that Hawley had left, saying he would return at four in the afternoon. Ann had not been in the sitting-room during this conversation, but she had overheard it from the hall. She and Miss Ruth had been waiting for Hawley to come; they heard a startling cry from the yard, and Ann had run to a window. She had seen Hawley, just as Timmins had seen him. “Whut you done, Mr. Hawley?” she had asked, and Hawley had ordered her to go to her mistress and keep her away. Ann had done so. Her mistress had fainted, and from that faint she had gone into brain-fever.

“Ann,” O’Grady asked, in his turn, “what caused your mistress to faint? Was it the shout from the yard?”

“No sah, it was de lopin’ an’ de rushin’ along wid dat yell from de ya’d. De ha’nts had come, and Miss Ruth done knowed it, yas suh.”

In spite of the prosecutor’s protest, the negro woman described the “ha’nts.” The jury listened with incredulous smiles. The prosecutor wanted this expunged from the record. O’Grady insisted that it remain, stating that a series of illusions, affecting Miss Alden’s health, had led her to ask Hawley to come to Bellevue, that Miss Alden was the cause of her father’s hostility to Hawley, and that Hawley’s desire to save Miss Alden had led him to the Alden cottage on the fateful afternoon—all of which would be duly established. The “ha’nts” remained in the record.

A DEPOSITION from Ruth, recovering slowly but unable to leave her bed, was offered and read. She stated that she was ill, mentally and physically, and had telegraphed to Hawley to come to Bellevue; that he thought a change of surroundings was necessary to her health; and that, against her father’s wishes, she had agreed to leave the cottage with Hawley. She and Hawley were engaged to be married, and she felt that Hawley had the right to take her away—even from her father.

Hawley would not allow his lawyers to bother Ruth to secure a deposition in his own behalf; and Morlay, of course, had taken from her only what the State needed for its case.

Following the written deposition, Dr. Garlock was called. He told of going with Timmins and a deputy sheriff to the Alden cottage, of finding Alden dead in his garden and of making an examination as to the cause. His phraseology, in describing the mortal wound, rather bewildered the jury—to judge from the expressions on their faces.

“Could the wound have been caused by this instrument?” the prosecutor asked, presenting the garden-implement to the witness.

“There were four clawlike marks on Mr. Alden’s throat,” said Dr. Garlock. “They could have been caused by this tool, used as a weapon, and in my opinion they were.”

In cross-examination O’Grady asked: “Doctor, could not the claws of some animal have caused the wound?”

“I suppose so,” was the answer, “if the animal had four claws and all matching the points of that steel ‘weeder.’”

“Do you not think that the claws of this plaster cast match the steel points of the ‘weeder’?” O’Grady asked, reaching for the cast.

“Wait with that, Mr. O’Grady,” warned the judge.

“The display,” protested the prosecutor, “is all for its effect on the jury. Also this talk of that anomaly, an animal with a paw of four claws. It’s just a part and parcel of the old mammy’s ‘ha’nts.’”

The State called a few more witnesses, all yielding testimony more or less helpful to the prosecution. Then, late in the afternoon, the State “rested,” and court was over for that day.

NEXT morning, when the hearing was resumed, Rand was called to the witness-stand.

His testimony was brief but important, since it offered a way of getting the plaster cast of Parlan’s paw into proceedings. This led to an excursion by automobile with the jury to Bellevue and the Alden cottage, where the paw-print was examined. After the return, court recessed until two o’clock; then, when proceedings were again started, Dr. Garlock was called and the plaster cast of the paw given to him for inspection. He measured the space between the claws and stated that it was possible the animal leaving the footprint could have caused the wound at Emmet Alden’s throat.

The sensation of the afternoon was the calling of Bruce Hawley to testify in his own behalf—a move which laid him open to all the arts of the prosecution when he was cross-examined. But Hawley insisted on getting into the witness-chair. His innocence, he believed, armed him against injury at the hands of opposing counsel.

He told his story clearly and simply. The telegram he had received from Ruth was presented. It was clear he had gone to Bellevue determined to save the woman he loved, at any cost to himself. The way was cleared for a discussion of Parlan. Hawley recited all the weird facts. He told, with dramatic earnestness, of the struggle between Alden and the invisible monster, in the flower-garden; how he had looked on in horror, and finally had run to pick up the four-pronged, crimson-stained garden-implement.

The prosecuting attorney, out of Hawley’s own lips, proceeded to flay what he called the “phantom defense.” He brought out the incredible details, and he played up their extravagance and reason-defying phases with telling effect. His probing was merciless.

Hawley’s testimony was not shaken in any particular. He sat quietly through the storm, answering the jeering, sarcastic questions clearly and distinctly.

“What is the front door of the Alden cottage made of?” demanded Morlay.

“Oak, I believe,” answered Hawley.

“How thick is it? Two inches—three inches?”

“Possibly two inches.”

“You tell us that Parlan the Four-Clawed galloped through that closed front door—two inches of solid oak! No resistance of matter there, eh?”

“Not to Parlan.”

“And yet you say Parlan’s invisible claws found resistance against the throat of Emmet Alden, scratching, gouging and delivering a mortal hurt. How do you explain that?”

“I don’t explain it.”

This was only one shot in the terrific bombardment of Hawley’s position. When the prosecuting attorney silenced his guns and sat down, he had blasted to fragments the case of the defense. The strength of Rand’s “higher law,” in its nature-defying operations, was its weakness when on trial before men of sane minds and commonplace convictions.

Rand had known how it would be. So had O’Grady. Hawley, in nowise blinded, continued to hope against hope for the sake of Ruth.

CHAPTER VI
The Case Goes to the Jury

ON the morning of the fifth day of the trial the lawyers opened their oral battle. It was conceded by all who had followed the proceedings and were not hampered in expressing themselves that the battle was one-sided. The prosecution had everything its own way. The occult, as a pastime, is a very engaging study, but a court of law is not the place for such dim mysteries. And Hawley had elected to stand or fall on a wild defense that had to do with an invisible Something that seemed a product of a diseased mind. Why his lawyers had ever championed his cause on such grounds none could understand.

These very unusual details, however, had marked the trial as unique and given it wide publicity. It was read about and talked about the country over. All this was excellent advertising for the lawyers, and O’Grady could see himself, at one jump, achieving renown and a handsome practice. The case was the making of O’Grady.

The assistant prosecuting attorney, one Summerfield, led off with the oratory. He marshaled his facts into one convincing argument, which he placed lucidly in front of the jury. Then, having modestly shot his bolt, he seated himself, and the defense laid hold of its forlorn chance.

O’Grady, his forensic effort carefully prepared, planted himself before the jury-box. The impossibility of a man of Hawley’s standing and character committing the foul crime for which he was on trial was one of the points O’Grady developed. Another angle of his plea concerned the tender relations existing between him and Ruth Alden, for whose sake and at whose request he had plunged himself into that maelstrom of evil circumstances that had engulfed. the Alden home.

What man, with a heart in his body, would not have rushed to the defense of the woman he loved? What man would not have moved heaven and earth to rescue her from the vague but no less real dangers that were slowly killing her? What man would not have quarreled with her father, if to save meant to thwart that selfish father’s will?

The black circumstances were there, yes. The defense did not seek to explain them away. Hawley had had words with Emmet Alden in the morning, and he had entered the house to see Ruth against Alden’s will. And while Hawley was planning to take Ruth away from the terrible influences surrounding her, Alden had appeared and ordered him from the house. Yet Hawley, swayed by high courage and lover-like devotion, had defied Alden and had returned.

Hawley had described, in simple but moving terms, Alden’s struggle with the Unseen Thing that had killed him. Could any man look at Hawley as he sat in the witness-chair and told his story—could any man look at him and brand that story as a lie? “There are stranger things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.” The immortal Shakespeare had penned that line, and its truth was as immortal as Shakespeare’s fame.

Ben Timmins found Hawley standing over the silent form of Alden with the blood-stained garden-implement in his hand—an implement no more effective, Dr. Garlock had said, than the paw of Parlan with its four tearing claws. Was it not easier to believe in Parlan than to believe that Hawley, a popular author and a man of standing, had made a murderous attack on the father of the woman he loved?

O'GRADY consumed two hours, talking with eloquence but with little effect—if the expressions on the faces in the jury-box were any indication. He closed with a plea for the jury to give Hawley back to the woman of his heart, and not blight two lives because they feared “to sound the unplumbed depths of strange human experience.”

When O’Grady sat down, Rand, an altogether different type of man, arose to add his own plea in behalf of his friend. A striking, commanding figure was Rand as he stepped out in front of the jury. He was faultlessly dressed, “the glass of fashion and the mold of form;” and yet, under the polish, could be seen blazing the fires of power—all those seething dynamic forces which make a mortal one to be reckoned with.

The judge lost his attitude of inattention. Resting an elbow on the desk before him, he leaned his chin in his hand and fixed his eyes on the man below. The prosecuting attorney sat back in his chair and stared through half-closed lids—determined, evidently, not to let a syllable escape him. The crowded room grew hushed and attentive. So, at the very beginning Rand dominated his surroundings.

“Your Honor, and gentlemen of the jury!” His enunciation was clear, strong and pleasing. He had a flexible, colorful voice which could take on the character of his emotions at will and had the property of swaying others—sometimes in spite of themselves. “I am not here as a lawyer, but as a friend of the prisoner at the bar. I have known him for years, and I love him for what he has been, but more—infinitely more!—for what he is to-day. You have heard it said that ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.’ Such devotion is rare in this world, but there sits a man”—he turned to level a finger at Hawley—“who would sacrifice a successful career, a future all golden with promise, and his life, to save the woman he loves. I know. As a friend I warned him not to come here. I read in the stars that evil would befall him. One cannot touch pitch without defiling himself; one cannot become involved in the affairs of men like Emmet Alden without reaping the dire consequences. Remember that, gentlemen of the jury. But Bruce Hawley came here. And what did he find?”

RAND stepped to the railing in front of the jury. He laid his hands on it, leaned across, and his dark eyes glowed.

“He found a house haunted by Parlan—Parlan the Four-Clawed,” he went on in tense tones, “a monster which the prosecuting attorney belittles with levity and sarcasm. This Parlan is created by ourselves. When the evil in us shoulders aside the good, then we commence creating our personal Parlan. We build the creature slowly, not as Frankenstein built his monster of material things, but of thoughts and deeds that shun the light. The four claws are our work, and we sharpen them to our undoing. Parlan is material and immaterial—material in that his acts bear visible consequences, immaterial in that he causes the consequences invisibly. He is thought in its evil expression, cast adrift to prey upon the world until the creator of the thought is dead and his trailing influences have died after him.

“So it was Parlan,” continued Rand, drawing back from the railing, “that haunted the house of Emmet Alden. It was Parlan that came as the rushing wind and the loping quadruped—Alden’s Parlan, blighting Alden’s life and the lives around him, and ultimately killing the man who was the author of the monster’s existence. That is the inevitable result when we build our Parlan too big and strong, and arm him with fang and claw. We must expect it.

Rand paused and smiled softly.

“Haven’t you known this before, gentlemen of the jury?” he asked. “Perhaps the idea hasn’t come to you in the terms of my statement. You have missed the higher law in all these workings of retribution. Now you understand. From this moment you are under the law’s dominion. You may not love yourself enough to shirk the questionable act or the wrong thought, but you love others more than yourself, and when you know that they are involved deeply in the retribution aimed at you, then you pause and think—and you turn to better things. Because Emmet Alden did not turn to better things, he is where he is to-day; and Bruce Hawley is there to-day; and Ruth Alden, snatched from the borderland, is lying on her sickbed and breathlessly waiting to know: What will you do with Hawley?”

Rand flung back his shoulders and shook out his shaggy white hair. His eyes flashed, and his voice was like a trumpet as he cried:

“I tell you, men, that Parlan assailed Alden and fought him to the death! That Parlan left that paw-print in the rose-garden; and that four claws and not four sharp points of steel pierced Alden’s throat. I tell you that Hawley is innocent, and should be crowned a victor for this thing he has done—and not placed here in jeopardy of his freedom!”

Rand flung out his hand, waving it to include every man of the jury. His voice fell.

“Not one of you will believe me when I enunciate these workings of the higher law. You feel a little now; you are swayed somewhat, and possibly half convinced. The prosecuting attorney will follow me with his gibes at the ‘phantom defense’ and before he is done, you will pity yourselves as fools for following me in this—to you—extravagant talk. What you need, gentlemen, what most of us need before we will believe, is a demonstration. That is all that will save my friend, the prisoner at the bar.

“Well, why not a demonstration? Parlan, Emmet Alden’s Parlan, has not faded out of existence now that his creator is gone. So long as Emmet Alden’s acts influence the current of events around us, Parlan will be there. This is a fitting place for him to come, and now is a fitting time.

With tremendous dramatic effect, Rand lifted his voice:

“Parlan! Parlan the Four-Clawed! Here, where the grievous consequences of Emmet Alden’s life are being used to enmesh the innocent, come and show us your invisible strength! Show us, I say, the unseen terror of your presence! A tangible demonstration is what I ask. Come, Parlan, before it is too late.”

AS Rand stood, both hands lifted, a fearsome silence settled over the courtroom. Startled eyes glanced nervously around. And while the tenseness was still apparent, Rand walked to his chair and sat down.

A minute, two minutes, passed. Henderson Morlay arose and broke the stillness with a jeering laugh.

“And Parlan failed to keep appointment,” he remarked.

Feet shuffled; people straightened in their chairs; the jury looked relieved; and the judge poured himself a glass of water and drank deeply.

Then the prosecuting attorney launched forth in a stinging criticism of those who would inject imaginary things into the clear, matter-of-fact processes of the law. A man kills another. His plea is Parlan! Presto! All the justice in the world falls to the ground. In words now biting, now bitter, he arraigned Hawley as a man of violent temper, who, cowardlike, would shift the consequences of his crime upon a thing unseen. He closed his talk with a demand for the greatest penalty that could be meted out in the State of Michigan—imprisonment for life at hard labor.

“You are sensible men,” he finished, “and your duty is plain.”

The judge read his instructions. They were brief. The bailiff was prepared to usher the twelve men into the jury-room, but the foreman stayed him with a gesture. There was whispering back and forth in the jury-box—a whispering and a nodding of heads. The situation was clear. The jury, without leaving their seats, was ready to render a verdict. The foreman arose.

“Your Honor,” said he, “we have reached a verdict.”

“What is your verdict?”

“We find the defendant, Bruce Hawley—”

The foreman came to a startled pause. A sound as of sobbing wind in the pines floated over the courtroom. It grew by swift degrees into a rushing storm, accompanied by a loping fall of feet. A woman in the crowded courtroom screamed and fled from the aisle that opened through the long tier of seats. Others, aroused to panic, crowded in haste toward the doors. In vain did the the clerk pound for order, and the bailiffs seek to check the stampede. In the midst of the confusion, the prosecuting attorney’s chair was overturned and he floundered upon the floor.

“Help!” he cried, in a voice husky with terror.

He was struggling, wallowing about on his back, straining upward with his hands. A sleeve of his coat was ripped away, and over his bare forearm ran bright red drops.

“The claws of Parlan!’” cried Rand, on his feet and pointing to the prosecuting attorney. “Now, you men of the jury, will you believe?”

CHAPTER VII
The Verdict

THE confusion in the courtroom was indescribable. There were shouts and cries as a tangle of human beings jammed the exits. All the curious ones who had come to the trial seeking sensations were finding more than they had bargained for. They had been thrilled and frightened by Martin Rand’s forceful appeal to Parlan, but they had grown easier in mind when the prosecuting attorney took the floor and made Parlan the target of jest and scathing contempt. Now that the terrible unseen force had answered Rand and offered a demonstration of its power, people fled the scene like frightened sheep.

The judge, his face gray and a bewildered look in his eyes, was standing beside his chair. “You are not bound to consider, in this case, any mysterious power or force outside the limits of sane human experience.” So had run a clause of his instructions to the jury. Did that clause recur to him then?

O’Grady was on his feet, his two hands lifting a chair and ready to strike. Aiming a blow at the invisible creature with which Morlay was struggling, however, was like aiming a blow at Morlay himself, and the attorney for the defense could not bring himself to the point.

Hawley leaned across the table, watching and listening like a man fascinated. He saw Morlay’s limbs relax suddenly as though relieved from tremendous pressure. There was a surging round and round, in the space behind the railing, as though Parlan might be on parade; then the loud whisper and the fall of paws died slowly away, but in what direction none could determine. All knew this, however: that Parlan had come and gone.

Some of the jurymen climbed down from the chairs on which they had taken refuge. Each of them was white and shaken. The judge resumed his seat. There was a nervous pounding of the gavel and a demand for “Order in the court.”

The prosecuting attorney leaned against the railing, his clothes in disorder, his breath coming in labored gasps, the coat and shirt-sleeves of his right arm stripped away and revealing the white flesh marked with trickling crimson. The thin rills ran down the arm in four distinct lines. Summerfield started toward his chief. Rand, with a quick move, thrust Summerfield to one side.

“Look, gentlemen of the jury!” he called, hurrying to Morlay’s side with the plaster cast of the paw in his hand. “Point for point, the claws of Parlan fit this wound in the arm of the prosecuting attorney—just as they fitted the wound in the throat of Emmet Alden!”

“I object to this, Your Honor!” panted the prosecuting attorney, withdrawing forcibly from Rand and throwing a handkerchief around his arm. “This case is in the hands of the jury. I insist on having the verdict!”

“Are you at agreement, gentlemen of the jury?” inquired the judge, steadying his voice.

“We are,” answered the foreman huskily.

“What is your verdict?”

“We, the jury in the case of the People versus Bruce Hawley, find the defendant not guilty.”

A SMOTHERED exclamation escaped Hawley. The jury was polled, and each man affirmed the rendered verdict. Then the jury was discharged.

O’Grady was the first man to reach Hawley and grip his hand. “Never, in any court, did a jury so quickly reverse itself, Mr. Hawley!” he exclaimed. “They had you guilty without leaving their seats, but one round with Parlan changed all that! No innocent man ever had so close a call, and no chain of circumstantial evidence was ever clawed apart in so queer a way! It is as though Emmet Alden returned from the grave to do one good deed for his memory’s sake. This case has made a different man of me. Sir, I congratulate you on attaining your freedom, and upon having a friend like Martin Rand!”

Hawley went to the jury and gave each man a cordial handshake as he filed out of the jury-box. Some eyed him queerly, as though half afraid; others expressed sympathy with him in his weird trials; still others were thinking only of Parlan.

“We have all been on trial here, Mr. Hawley, as well as yourself, it seems to me,” observed the foreman. “The shock of that culminating event in this courtroom will remain with me to the end of my days. Where is your friend Rand? There is a man it would be good to know. I want to shake hands with him.”

Rand was standing at one side, talking with the judge. Hawley pointed his friend out to the foreman, and the latter greeted the white-haired philosopher of the higher law and spoke with him briefly.

“I want to go at once to see Ruth, Martin,” said Hawley presently, when Rand came to him. “I want to carry this good news to her in person.”

“Then go,” answered Rand, “and my blessing go with you. Bruce, we have written a new law in the statutes of life to-day. It was worth the price that has been paid.”

With that, he wrung his friend’s hand and turned away.