ribly bruised. But that reference to his neck being broken is an understatement. His neck had not only been broken; it had been wrung like a chicken's. He was lying flat on his chest when I found him, but his face was looking straight up at me. His eyes were wide open——"
His voice trailed off, then strengthened again as he continued, "Whatever manner of thing burst Fothergill's house that night like a cheesebox deliberately paused to wring his neck. And it did something else, too; it put out the fire. Remember Fothergill said that it hated fire? As it burst out of the house it knocked the fireplace flat, and the walls, too, but before that it crushed out the fire. That's why the wreckage didn't burn."
He stopped, then added heavily, "Funny thing, the jug wasn't even smashed. And it was wired in the fireplace, just as Fothergill'd said. The seal had melted out into the ashes, and it was empty."
He sat looking down at the turf at his feet; he was silent for so long that I began to believe he had totally forgotten us. Then he smiled.
"Shall we play quoits?"
My muscles jumped from the sheer casual irrelevance of that question. There was a moment while I did not think at all. Then, in Ethel Barrymore's literal words, I asked uncertainly, "That's all there is? There isn't any more?"
He seemed to hesitate. He rose slowly to his feet, and Fred and I, mechanically aping him, followed. We started toward the quoit pits.
"Yes, there's one thing more," he said, speaking with studied casualness as we walked toward the pits. "But no one would believe this.
"I told you that I was the first person to reach the wreckage of Fothergill's home. Well, there were two large flower-beds bordering the walk, one on each side. They were pretty well grown over with grass and weeds; Fothergill hadn't bothered, that year, to have them replanted and tended. The soil, however, was still soft and loose.
"As I came up Fothergill's walk I saw that the grass and loam in the right-hand flower-bed had been pressed down in a distinct imprint. I looked at that imprint, and even in my haste I stopped and stamped its vague outlines into unrecognizability—so that none who came later would see what I had seen. And by morning, of course, it had been wholly obliterated.
"It was the imprint of the ball and toes of a three-toed foot, and it was bigger than Fothergill's house!"
3 . . .count them . . .3
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