That buoyant ******* had indeed recovered most, if not all, of yesterday's buoyancy, was now well fitted to pass any medical examination, and returned with all his own energy to the scene of yesterday's labors.
It may well have brightened and made breezier his second day's toil that he had not only the sunlight and the bird's singing in the little wood, to say nothing of a more scientific apparatus to work with, but also human companionship, and that of the most intelligent type.
After leaving the doctor and before leaving the village be had bethought himself of seeking the little court or square where stood the quiet brown house of Andrew Ashe, solicitor, and the operations of dragging were worked in double harness. Two heads were peering over the well in the wood: one yellow-haired, lean and eager; the other redhaired, heavy and pondering; and if it be true that two heads are better than one, it is truer that four hands are better than two.
In any case, their united and repeated efforts bore fruit at last, if anything so hard and meager and forlorn can be called a fruit.
It weighed loosely in the net as it was lifted, and rolled out on the grassy edge of the well; it was a bone.
Ashe picked it up and stood with it in his hand, frowning.
"We want Doctor Brown here," he said. "This may be the bone of some animal. Any dog or sheep might fall into a hidden well."
Then he broke off, for his companion was already detaching a second bone from the net.
After another half hour's effort Paynter had occasion to remark, "It must have been rather a large dog." There were already a heap of such white fragments at his feet.
"I have seen nothing yet," said Ashe, speaking more plainly.
"That is certainly a human bone." "I fancy this must be a human bone," said the American.
And he turned away a little as he handed the other a skull.
There was no doubt of what sort of skull; there was the one unique curve that holds the mystery of reason, and underneath it the two black holes that had held human eyes.
But just above that on the left was another and smaller black hole, which was not an eye.
Then the lawyer said, with something like an effort:
"We may admit it is a man without admitting it is--any particular man.
There may be something, after all, in that yarn about the drunkard; he may have tumbled into the well. Under certain conditions, after certain natural processes, I fancy, the bones might be stripped in this way, even without the skill of any assassin.
We want the doctor again."
Then he added suddenly, and the very sound of his voice suggested that he hardly believed his own words.
"Haven't you got poor Vane's hat there?"
He took it from the silent American's hand, and with a sort of hurry fitted it on the bony head.
"Don't!" said the other involuntarily.
The lawyer had put his finger, as the doctor had done, through the hole in the hat, and it lay exactly over the hole in the skull.
"I have the better right to shrink," he said steadily, but in a vibrant voice. "I think I am the older friend."
Paynter nodded without speech, accepting the final identification.
The last doubt, or hope, had departed, and he turned to the dragging apparatus, and did not speak till he had made his last find.
The singing of the birds seemed to grow louder about them, and the dance of the green summer leaves was repeated beyond in the dance of the green summer sea. Only the great roots of the mysterious trees could be seen, the rest being far aloft, and all round it was a wood of little, lively and happy things.
They might have been two innocent naturalists, or even two children fishing for eels or tittlebats on that summer holiday when Paynter pulled up something that weighed in the net more heavily than any bone. it nearly broke the meshes, and fell against a mossy stone with a clang.
"Truth lies at the bottom of a well," cried the American, with lift in his voice. "The woodman's ax."
It lay, indeed, flat and gleaming in the grasses by the well in the wood, just as it had lain in the thicket where the woodman threw it in the beginning of all these things.
But on one corner of the bright blade was a dull brown stain.
"I see," said Ashe, "the woodman's ax, and therefore the Woodman. Your deductions are rapid."
"My deductions are reasonable," said Paynter, "Look here, Mr. Ashe; I know what you're thinking. I know you distrust Treherne; but I'm sure you will be just for all that. To begin with, surely the first assumption is that the woodman's ax is used by the Woodman. What have you to say to it?"
"I say 'No' to it," replied the lawyer. "The last weapon a woodman would use would be a woodman's ax; that is if he is a sane man."
"He isn't," said Paynter quietly; "you said you wanted the doctor's opinion just now. The doctor's opinion on this point is the same as my own. We both found him meandering about outside there; it's obvious this business has gone to his head, at any rate.
If the murderer were a man of business like yourself, what you say might be sound. But this murderer is a mystic.
He was driven by some fanatical fad about the trees.
It's quite likely he thought there was something solemn and sacrificial about the ax, and would have liked to cut off Vane's head before a crowd, like Charles I's. He's looking for the ax still, and probably thinks it a holy relic."
"For which reason," said Ashe, smiling, "he instantly chucked it down a well."
Paynter laughed.
"You have me there certainly," he said. "But I think you have something else in your mind. You'll say, I suppose, that we were all watching the wood; but were we? Frankly, I could almost fancy the peacock trees did strike me with a sort of sickness-- a sleeping sickness."
"Well," admitted Ashe, "you have me there too. I'm afraid I couldn't swear I was awake all the time; but I don't put it down to magic trees--only to a private hobby of going to bed at night.
