Scott waddled to his car for a flashlight and moved with it into the trees. He beamed the light ahead, right and left. No Tintons. No Hildie. No nothing except his familiar woods.

The leaves along the path did look as if a wind had disturbed them, but that wasn’t untypical up here, especially when the weather was near a big change. Gusts could blow up suddenly and puff themselves out. The only thing unusual was a bitter-­sharp odor he detected. A fire somewhere? No. It was more fetid, piercing. Scott sniffed, grimacing with distaste. A decaying mouse under the leaves? The man bent over heavily, taking short breaths and frowning deeply with the sharp unpleasantness. He tilted his large head. Had he heard something in the leaves? Strange, unfamiliar? A whirring sound? A rustling? Like hissing? What the hell could that be? It was up the path ahead of him. Hadn’t that black girl said something about a hissing noise? Scott switched his light out and listened sharply. Nothing. His ears must be ringing, he thought. He was panting from just his short walk. His fat body was sweating.

Switching the flashlight on again, Stephen Scott stepped forward into the leaves. He had an itchy feeling that something ahead was watching him come, waiting for him. He wiped perspiration from his cheeks. He could almost imagine beady eyes glinting at him from a copse in front. The rats? Scott’s skin goose-­pimpled. He had an animal sense that an animal was hunting him, not the other way around at all. Treacherous! He could almost see a lifted rat head sniffing with its thin snout to catch his scent. The rustling noise came again, suddenly from many directions! There was more than one rat! How could he have forgotten they roamed in packs? The man’s spine went icy. He felt under water, with sharks circling silently in tighter and tighter moves, smelling blood, coming in­exorably closer, maws open, jaws ready to slash . . .

Stephen Scott turned in the leaves as quietly as his bulk permitted, and started to tiptoe away. Then he stopped, his lips working. He was no coward. If there were rats out here, the Tintons and Hildie might have been attacked. He ought to check it out, unlikely though it was. He chided himself. It was the damned foreign smell that was making him as nervous as a horse with a burr under the saddle. He quieted himself. It occurred to him that he ought to take a sample of the leaves to the Harvard man. The odor might be a clue for the biologist. Now he was thinking sensibly!