Page:Weird Tales Volume 30 Number 02 (1937-08).djvu/7

 outside world. He kept a store of such ready-made bulletins within, stereotypes responses calculated to give intimation of a subtle discerning intellect at work. He would employ such tactics indefinitely if conducting a conversation unaided. If his wife was with him she manned the big guns while he posed as an impregnable fortress.

Doctor Dick regarded the large dull pretentious creature with patience born of his profession rather than his temperament. Doctor Dick was a Highlander. Alex Kinloch a Lowland Scot. This, in itself, was a deep fixed gulf between them, apart form gulfs of breeding and intellect, and today the doctor found his host peculiarly trying. He'd made a point of calling when he knew Lynneth would not be at "Sandilands." He wanted to spare her the grim tale he had to tell. It had been an effort, however, to miss a chance of seeing her, and his mood grew steadily darker.

"What," he demanded, "would you consider the other side to this horror at Troon?"

Baffled at such direct attack, Alec poked at his piper with an air of grave reserve. He and Edith always were careful to be non-committal in their attitude until they discovered the trend of popular feeling with reference to a new idea. This Troom ghost notion now! If Seagate took it seriously, and yesterday's funeral service seemed to indicate so, then they would follow suit. Alec had been swayed by the vicar yesterday. Now, however, he knew Edith's view was the really intelligent and logical one. The vicar had been simply playing up, doing what the villagers expected of him. Jolly good thing no one but his wife knew that he'd actually got the wind up yesterday. The "Thing of Darkness!" Uh! Nasty phrase that! He'd felt like chucking up everything—selling Troon to any fool who wanted the old place. Well, he could laugh at himself and his fears now.

But this young Pills! He seemed officious. Trying to interfere. Pulling this stuff about haunts and devils at Troon. Warning him that the workmen restoring the hold house were in danger and that he and Edith ought to give up all idea of living there. Damned young whippersnapper, sitting there at his ease and telling a man of the world what was what! He'd tell him where he got off all right!

The door opened to admit his wife. Alec crossed his legs, resumed his pipe, took up the fortress-pose as Doctor Dick rose to his feet. Edith Kinloch progressed with ceremony to a chair.

"How nice of you to call again—so soon, Doctor Thornton."

"Doctor Dick," corrected the visitor. "My father is still in practise here. We have to make a distinction."

"Oh! How awkward for you!"

Edith was slim and tall and neat. She was part of her chosen rôle to stoop kindly to her inferiors. The Lady Bountiful was her favorite part, to be gracious, to condescend. She'd been these things infuriatingly and increasingly ever since she cut free from her decent but quite uneducated family at the age of fourteen. Alec never knew to this day that her mother had a fish-and-chips shop in Edgware road, that her father was crippled and on the dole, that her younger sisters were working in a glue factory.

"My wife," Alec would tell you, believing it to be a fact, "lost both her parents—died in India when she was a child. Friends made themselves responsible for her education." [the Local Educational Council as represented by Edith's adaptable mind] "a branch of the Dorsetshire Frome-Stoddarts, you know.