'Enthralled by some mysterious spell, I stood
In 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 strange
Funereal 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 was
A 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 leaves
Shone 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 broke off in the middle of a
line.
'That sounds like Bayne,' said Jaralson, who was
something of a scholar in his way. He had abated
his vigilance and stood looking down at the body.
'Who's Bayne?' Holker asked rather incuriously.
'Myron Bayne, a chap who flourished in the
early years of the nation—more than a century
ago. Wrote mighty dismal stuff; I have his collected
works. That poem is not among them, but it must
have been omitted by mistake.'
'It is cold,' said Holker; 'let us leave here; we
must have up the coroner from Napa.'
Jaralson said nothing, but made a movement in
compliance. Passing the end of the slight elevation
of earth upon which the dead man's head and
shoulders lay, his foot struck some hard substance
under the rotting forest leaves, and he took the
trouble to kick it into view. It was a fallen headboard, and painted on it were the hardly decipherable words, 'Catharine Larue.'
'Larue, Larue!' exclaimed Holker, with sudden
animation. 'Why, that is the real name of Branscom—not Pardee. And—bless my soul! how it all
comes to me—the murdered woman's name had
been Frayser!'
'There is some rascally mystery here,' said Detective Jaralson. 'I hate 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 hyena night-prowling in the desert; a
laugh that rose by slow gradation, louder and louder,
clearer, more distinct and terrible, until it seemed
barely outside the narrow circle of their vision; a
laugh so unnatural, so unhuman, so devilish, that
it filled those hardy man-hunters with a sense of
dread unspeakable! They did not move their weapons nor think of them; the menace of that horrible
sound was not of the kind to be met with arms.
As it had grown out of silence, so now it died away;
from a culminating shout which had seemed almost
in their ears, it drew itself away into the distance
until its failing notes, joyous and mechanical to the
last, sank to silence at a measureless remove.
