Sunshine glistened on the
dew-drenched grass and on leaves turned golden-red. The dainty
messengers of coming hoar-frost were already in the air, a search for
permanent winter quarters. From the wide moors that everywhere swept up
against the sky, like a purple sea splashed by the occasional grey of
rocky clefts, there stole down the cool and perfumed wind of the west. And the keen taste of the sea ran through all like a master-flavour,
borne over the spaces perhaps by the seagulls that cried and circled
high in the air. But our host took little interest in this sparkling beauty, and had no
thought of showing off the scenery of his property. His mind was
otherwise intent, and, for that matter, so were our own. “Those bleak moors and hills stretch unbroken for hours,” he said, with
a sweep of the hand; “and over there, some four miles,” pointing in
another direction, “lies S—— Bay, a long, swampy inlet of the sea,
haunted by myriads of seabirds. On the other side of the house are the
plantations and pine-woods. I thought we would get the dogs and go
first to the Twelve Acre Wood I told you about last night. It’s quite
near.”

We found the dogs in the stable, and I recalled the deep baying of the
night when a fine bloodhound and two great Danes leaped out to greet
us. Singular companions for guns, I thought to myself, as we struck out
across the fields and the great creatures bounded and ran beside us,
nose to ground. The conversation was scanty. John Silence’s grave face did not
encourage talk. He wore the expression I knew well—that look of earnest
solicitude which meant that his whole being was deeply absorbed and
preoccupied. Frightened, I had never seen him, but anxious often—it
always moved me to witness it—and he was anxious now. “On the way back you shall see the laundry building,” Colonel Wragge
observed shortly, for he, too, found little to say. “We shall attract
less attention then.”

Yet not all the crisp beauty of the morning seemed able to dispel the
feelings of uneasy dread that gathered increasingly about our minds as
we went. In a very few minutes a clump of pine trees concealed the house from
view, and we found ourselves on the outskirts of a densely grown
plantation of conifers. Colonel Wragge stopped abruptly, and, producing
a map from his pocket, explained once more very briefly its position
with regard to the house. He showed how it ran up almost to the walls
of the laundry building—though at the moment beyond our actual view—and
pointed to the windows of his sister’s bedroom where the fires had
been. The room, now empty, looked straight on to the wood. Then,
glancing nervously about him, and calling the dogs to heel, he proposed
that we should enter the plantation and make as thorough examination of
it as we thought worth while. The dogs, he added, might perhaps be
persuaded to accompany us a little way—and he pointed to where they
cowered at his feet—but he doubted it. “Neither voice nor whip will get
them very far, I’m afraid,” he said. “I know by experience.”

“If you have no objection,” replied Dr. Silence, with decision, and
speaking almost for the first time, “we will make our examination
alone—Mr. Hubbard and myself. It will be best so.”

His tone was absolutely final, and the Colonel acquiesced so politely
that even a less intuitive man than myself must have seen that he was
genuinely relieved. “You doubtless have good reasons,” he said. “Merely that I wish to obtain my impressions uncoloured. This delicate
clue I am working on might be so easily blurred by the thought-currents
of another mind with strongly preconceived ideas.”

“Perfectly. I understand,” rejoined the soldier, though with an
expression of countenance that plainly contradicted his words. “Then I
will wait here with the dogs; and we’ll have a look at the laundry on
our way home.”

I turned once to look back as we clambered over the low stone wall
built by the late owner, and saw his straight, soldierly figure
standing in the sunlit field watching us with a curiously intent look
on his face. There was something to me incongruous, yet distinctly
pathetic, in the man’s efforts to meet all far-fetched explanations of
the mystery with contempt, and at the same time in his stolid,
unswerving investigation of it all. He nodded at me and made a gesture
of farewell with his hand. That picture of him, standing in the
sunshine with his big dogs, steadily watching us, remains with me to
this day. Dr. Silence led the way in among the twisted trunks, planted closely
together in serried ranks, and I followed sharp at his heels. The
moment we were out of sight he turned and put down his gun against the
roots of a big tree, and I did likewise. “We shall hardly want these cumbersome weapons of murder,” he observed,
with a passing smile. “You are sure of your clue, then?” I asked at once, bursting with
curiosity, yet fearing to betray it lest he should think me unworthy. His own methods were so absolutely simple and untheatrical. “I am sure of my clue,” he answered gravely. “And I think we have come
just in time. You shall know in due course. For the present—be content
to follow and observe. And think, steadily. The support of your mind
will help me.”

His voice had that quiet mastery in it which leads men to face death
with a sort of happiness and pride. I would have followed him anywhere
at that moment. At the same time his words conveyed a sense of dread
seriousness. I caught the thrill of his confidence; but also, in this
broad light of day, I felt the measure of alarm that lay behind. “You still have no strong impressions?” he asked. “Nothing happened in
the night, for instance? No vivid dreamings?”

He looked closely for my answer, I was aware. “I slept almost an unbroken sleep. I was tremendously tired, you know,
and, but for the oppressive heat—”

“Good! You still notice the heat, then,” he said to himself, rather
than expecting an answer. “And the lightning?” he added, “that
lightning out of a clear sky—that flashing—did you notice _that_?”

I answered truly that I thought I had seen a flash during a moment of
wakefulness, and he then drew my attention to certain facts before
moving on. “You remember the sensation of warmth when you put the letter to your
forehead in the train; the heat generally in the house last evening,
and, as you now mention, in the night. You heard, too, the Colonel’s
stories about the appearances of fire in this wood and in the house
itself, and the way his brother and the gamekeeper came to their deaths
twenty years ago.”

I nodded, wondering what in the world it all meant. “And you get no clue from these facts?” he asked, a trifle surprised. I searched every corner of my mind and imagination for some inkling of
his meaning, but was obliged to admit that I understood nothing so far. “Never mind, you will later. And now,” he added, “we will go over the
wood and see what we can find.”

His words explained to me something of his method.