“Since we are on the subject,” I broke in, “what’s that story, Mr. Brown, about a fox having vanished in thin air? I’ve been told that you were present at the time.”
“Present! You may say I saw it, with my own eyes, bursting like a soap bubble!” he cried.
“Go on! Tell us about it.”
“By the way, now I think of it, didn’t it happen just outside your place?” He turned to Dr. Sullivan. “The fox was leading us straight on to Richwick Manor. It was a cunning beast, it had led the hounds a hell of a dance almost till nightfall. But its game was up. The pack was after it. There wasn’t much light any more, it’s true, but I have sharp ears. When the hounds are all set for the kill, you’d have to be a raw novice to mistake the noise they make. They were right on top of it, and no mistake.”
“And it disappeared?” asked the doctor.
“Burst like a ruddy bubble before their very noses, I tell you! I’ve never seen such a stunned pack of curs as those we found when we got there. Dumb-struck they were, a right lot of idiots! Not that we,” he added with a laugh, “looked any brighter than they!”
“I’ve had a good look at my hedge, you know,” I said with casual hypocrisy. “It’s full of holes.”
“Do you think if that devilish beast had slipped through a hole,” he cried, “the hounds wouldn’t have followed it? I don’t want to speak ill of your hedge, Mr. Richwick, but they’ve jumped higher ones than yours! No, just a blasted bubble, that’s the word for it. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it in fox hunters’ memory. We haven’t stopped arguing about it. Do you hunt, too?” he asked the doctor.
Sullivan said he didn’t. The discussion went on for a while, and then we bade the innkeeper good-by. I got into the doctor’s carriage and while he clicked his tongue to the horse, I said:
“I take it this has convinced you of that strange disappearance?”
“Is that your miracle?” asked the doctor.
“Heavens no, unfortunately! It’s only half of it. I’m taking you along to the other half.”
“Besides, couldn’t the animal have passed through those holes in the hedge, after all?”
“Of course,” I laughed, “and that’s just what it did. Only the point is this: why didn’t the hounds follow it? Isn’t that inexplicable? And why did they suddenly stop barking?”
“Because,” the doctor retorted, laughing too, “they must have come up slap against one of your ghosts. I’ve always suspected Richwick Manor of harboring whole regiments of them.”
“Ghosts, my foot!” I growled, not laughing any more, and the doctor looked at me intrigued. “You won’t tell anyone about it?” I said suddenly, with some agitation, for we were getting near. “You remember your promise, don’t you?”
“Of course, of course! What are you afraid of?”
“Neither explicitly nor implicitly?” I persisted. “By hinting for instance that, don’t you see, you must hold your tongue but if you only could…”
“I swear, you latterday Hamlet, do calm yourself! Damn it all, it’s only a fox! You couldn’t be more excited if you’d committed a murder!”
“If only I’d committed a murder,” I sighed, “I’d be in less of a stew.”
“Am I the first person you’ve told about this?”
“The second one, after Mrs. Bumley.”
“Who is Mrs. Bumley?”
“Sylva’s governess.”
“And who is Sylva? Have you many more unknown females up your sleeve?”
“No, only those two. But we’re almost there. You’ll soon get an answer to all this.”
We had indeed arrived. We left the carriage at the farm and walked into the house. Mrs. Bumley was up in her room (I had asked her to stay there). I suggested we should first have another double scotch to give ourselves courage.
“Upon my word, you’re beginning to worry me,” said the doctor, still making an effort to laugh. “Are you hiding a corpse?”
I said that he certainly couldn’t have the slightest notion of the surprise I had in store for him. Then I took my courage in both hands and said, “All right, let’s go up.”
I walked up the stairs before him. I listened at the door. Nothing. Sylva must be asleep. I knocked with my fist to wake her up and did indeed hear her trot. Then I opened the door wide and pushed the doctor in before me.
I was counting on the passably strange appearance of this man in black, long as a breadless day, with his horsy face and foaming mane, to give my vixen a shock of surprise, and I was not disappointed. Sylva was wearing her chemise. She jumped up, yelped, and scampered all over the room in a panic, trying to climb up the curtains as she had once done, leaping at last onto the chest of drawers and from there on top of the wardrobe, whence she observed us, all atremble. That was what I had expected, so I closed the door again and said to the doctor, “You have seen her. Let’s go back.”
If I had said, “Let’s climb on the roof,” he would probably have followed me too. He was plainly so utterly stunned that he marched behind me like an automaton, stumbling a little on the steps. Only after we had sat down in the living room did he recover his speech sufficiently to exclaim in a toneless voice: “Heavens alive!” and asked at last: “Who is that creature?”
Then I told him everything, from the beginning. When I had finished, he said, “It can’t be,” and began to pace up and down the room.
I simply said, “If you can give me another explanation…” but he shook his head.
“If what you have told me is true, then it is really a miracle. There is no possible explanation from a biological point of view. It isn’t a question, as at Lourdes, of a somatic evolution accelerated by the psyche. Such a transformation, in the matter of size alone, is beyond any natural process, even the most exceptional one. As a scientist I have absolutely no right to believe in it.”
“But as a believer?”
“It would seem to me exceedingly hazardous.”
I sighed.
“Very well,” I said, “then don’t give it another thought. You have not seen anything. Go home and forget all about it. But remember your promise!”
He stopped still to gaze at me with pathetic insistence.
“And do you swear,” he asked, “that you have told me the truth?”
“I swear it. Why should I want to hoax you?”
He went on staring at me in silence and then began to massage his skull, though it was red enough as it was, with an air of bewilderment. “I’ll be damned… I’ll be damned…” was all I heard him grunt during the minutes that followed. Then he moved his big chin up and down, and finally said:
“What actually do you expect me to do?”
“Nothing in particular,” I admitted. “You’d have discovered her some day, anyhow. I preferred to show her to you myself. And perhaps I’m expecting some confirmation from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, couldn’t you examine her, perhaps? Do you think it’s possible that she has a perfectly normal constitution?”
“How the devil do you expect me to know?”
Anyway, how could one get Sylva to submit to such an examination? One would have to tie her up hand and foot or bash her on the head.
“There’s no hurry,” I said after some moments’ thought. “Cheer up! You’ve seen her, that’s already something. You have time to think about it while I am gradually breaking her in. Come and see us now and then so that she gets used to you. And bring Dorothy along—Sylva very soon got used to Mrs. Bumley. The day will come when you’ll be able to study her physique thoroughly and at leisure.”
Was he listening? He did not answer. After a certain while he said: