The Revealing Pattern

He was a man easily smiled at; a little birdlike individual carrying an umbrella and wearing upon his pink face a look remindful of happy secrets about to be revealed. He came to my desk during the midafternoon lull and said, "I am Professor Jonathan Waits. I have come to avail myself of your facilities."

I had never heard it put quite that way before, but from Professor Waits, it did not sound stilted. It was the way you would expect him to put it. He beamed at the ceiling and said, "What a fine old library, my dear. I must bring Nicholas some time."

I gave him the smile reserved financial supporters and unknown quantatives and asked, "Could I be of service?"

He didn't get to it immediately. "I understand this library is fairly crammed with old records--data on the historical aspects of this area. Personal histories and such."

He had a way of radiating his own cheerful mood. "Oh yes," I assured him. "It's an exceptional day when we don't sweep a D.A.R. or two out of the aisles come closing time."

This, according to his laugh, was quite good. He said, "I'm sure we'll get on splendidly, Miss--?"

"--Hopstead."

"Are you a native?"

"A New Englander from way back," I assured him. "Some of my ancestors used to drink buttered rum with Captain Rogers."

"Then possibly you'd like to know about my work."

"I certainly would." And, strangely enough, I did.

"I am a researcher into the--well, the unusual."

"Psychic research?" I inquired, wanting him to know we New Englanders were not dullards.

"No. Nothing to do with the supernatural at all. My work is to prove that all occurrences, however mysterious, are the logical result of previous actions of individuals; that superstitions are the result, not so much of ignorance, but lack of knowledge."

While I wrestled with that one, he said, "Maybe I could be a trifle more explicit."

"That would help."

His bright little eyes got even brighter. "Do you know, by chance, of the Reamer mansion over in Carleton?"

I certainly did. It was some thirty miles from Patterson, but as a child, I'd visited the place. All children within the radius had visited the Reamer mansion at least once. It was an ancient fifteen room cockroach trap with such a history of death and violence behind it as to cause the kids to walk on tiptoe through its silent rooms. I told the professor I knew about it.

"It has been vacant for fifteen years," he observed.

"And will be vacant for twice fifteen more, I imagine."

"That's just the point. Superstition. Otherwise solid and sane people wouldn't dream of moving into the Reamer mansion. And it's so silly."

"It is?"

"Of course. And that's why I'm here. I intend to prove, so the most stubborn will understand, that the house itself has nothing whatsoever to do with its own grim past; that the people who lived in it are to blame."

It was a dull day and he was such an apparently sincere little man that I decided to keep the conversation alive. "I'm afraid you'll have a hard time proving it. Let's see--the first one was old Silas Reamer. He committed suicide there. That was sometime around 1925. Then--"

"--His son, Henry Reamer, was found dead under mysterious circumstances two years later. Murder was obvious, but nothing has ever been done about it."

I frowned in mock severity. "I don't like the way you put that, Professor. Do you imply that we New Englanders condone violence?"