The Secret of Lonesome Cove Part 1

Lonesome Cove is one of the least frequented stretches on the New England seaboard. From the land side, the sheer hundred-foot drop of Hawkill Cliffs shuts it off. Access by water is denied; denied with a show of menacing teeth, when the sea curls its lips back, amid a swirl of angry currents, from its rocks and reefs, warning boats away. There is no settlement near the cove. The somber repute suggested by its name has served to keep cottagers from building on the wildly beautiful uplands that overbrood the beach. Sheep browse between the thickets of ash and wild cherry extending almost to the brink of the height, and the straggling pathways along the edge, worn by the feet of their herders, afford the only suggestion of human traffic within half a mile of the spot. A sharp-cut ravine leads down to the sea by a rather treacherous descent.

Near the mouth of this opening, a considerable gathering of folk speckled the usually deserted beach, at noon of July sixth. They centered on a dark object, a few yards within the flood-tide limit. Some scouted about, peering at the sand. Others pointed first to the sea, then to the cliffs with the open gestures of those who argue vehemently. But always their eyes returned, drawn back by an unfailing magnetism, to the central object.

From some distance away a lone man of a markedly different type from the others observed them with an expression of displeasure. He had reached the cove by an arduous scramble, possible only to a good climber, around the jutting elbow of the cliff to the northward. It was easily to be read in his face that he was both surprised and annoyed to find people there before him. One of the group presently detached himself and ambled over to the newcomer, with an accelerated speed as he drew nearer.

“Swanny!” he ejaculated, “if it ain’t Perfessor Kent! Didn’t know you at first under them whiskers. You remember me, don’t you? I used to drive you around when you was here before.”

“How are you, Jarvis?” returned the other. “Still in the livery business, I suppose?”

“Yes. What brings you here, Perfessor?”

“Holidays. I’ve just come out of the woods. And as you have some very interesting sea currents just here, I thought I’d have a look at them. Nobody really knows anything about coast currents, you know. Now my opportunity is spoiled.” He indicated the crowd by a movement of his head.

“Spoilt? I guess not. You couldn’t have come at a better time,” said the local man eagerly.

“Ah, but you see, I had planned to swim out to the eddy, and make some personal observations.”

“You was going to swim into Dead Man’s Eddy?” asked the other, aghast. “Why, Perfessor, you must have turned foolish. They ain’t a man on this coast would take a chance like that.”

“Superstition,” retorted the other curtly. “On a still day such as this there would be no danger to an experienced swimmer. The conditions are ideal except for this crowd. What is it? Has the village gone picnicking?”

“Not sca’cely! Ain’t you heard? Another one’s come in through the eddy. Lies over yonder.”

Professor Kent’s eyebrows went up, as he glanced toward the indicated spot; then gathered in a frown.

“Not washed up there, surely?” he said.

“Thet’s what,” answered Jarvis.

“When?”

“Sometime early this morning.”

“Pshaw!” said the other, turning to look at the curving bulwark of rocks over which the soft slow swell was barely breaking. “If it were the other end of the cove, now, I could understand it.”

“Yes,” agreed Jarvis, “they mostly come in at the other end, on this tide.”

“Mostly? Always.” The professor’s tone was positive. “Unless my charts are wrong. But this—well, it spoils at least one phase of my theory.”

“Theery!” exclaimed the liveryman, his pale eyes alight. “You got a theery? But I thought you didn’t know anything about the body, till I told you, just now.”

“Oh, my ruined theory has reference to the currents,” sighed the other. “It has nothing to do with dead men, as such.”

“Neither has this,” was the prompt response, delivered with a jerk of the thumb toward the dark object.

“No? What is it then, if not a dead man?”

“A dead woman.”

“Oh! All the same, it shouldn’t have come in on this section of the beach at all.”

“Thet ain’t half the strangeness of it, the way it washed in. Lonesome Cove has had some queer folks drift home to it, but nothing as queer as this. Come and see for yourself.”

Still frowning, Professor Kent suffered himself to be led to the spot. Two or three of the group, as it parted before him, greeted him. He found himself looking down on a corpse clad in a dark silk dress and stretched on a wooden grating, to which it was lashed with a small rope. Everything about the body indicated wealth. The dress was expensively made. The shoes were of the best type, and the stockings were silk. The head was marred by a frightful bruise which had crushed in the right side and extended around behind the ear. Blood had clotted thickly in the short close-curled hair. The left side was unmarked. The eyes were closed and the mouth was slightly open, showing a glint of gold amid very white and regular teeth. An expression of deadly terror distorted the face. Professor Kent bent closely over it.

“That’s strange; very strange,” he murmured. “It should be peaceful.”

“But look at the hand!” cried Jarvis.

Here, indeed, was the astounding feature of the tragedy; the aspect that brought Kent to his knees, the more closely to observe. The body lay twisted slightly to the right, with the left arm extended. The left wrist was enclosed in a light rusted handcuff to which a chain was fastened. At the end of the chain was the companion cuff, shattered, evidently by a powerful blow, and half buried in the sand. As Kent leaned over the corpse, a fat, powerful, grizzled man with a metal badge on his shirt-front pushed forward.

“Them’s cast-iron cuffs,” he announced. “That kind ain’t been used these forty years.”

“What kind of a ship ’ud be carryin’ ’em nowadays?” asked some one in the crowd.

“An’ what kind of a seaman’d be putting of ’em on a lady’s wrists?” growled a formidable voice, which Kent, looking up, perceived to have come from amid a growth of heavy white whiskers, sprouting from a weather-furrowed face.

“Seafaring man, aren’t you?” inquired Kent.

“No more. Fifty year of it, man an’ boy, has put me in harbor.”

“That’s Sailor Smith,” explained Jarvis, who had assumed the duties of a self-appointed cicerone. “Not much about the sea and its ways, good or bad, that he don’t know.”

“True for you,” confirmed several voices.

“Then, Mr. Smith, will you take a look at those lashings and tell me whether in your opinion they are the work of a sailor?” asked Kent.

The old hands fumbled expertly. The old face puckered. Judgment came forth presently.

“The knots is well enough. The lashin’s a passable job. What gits me is the rope.”

“Well, what’s wrong with the rope?”

“Nothin’ in pertic’ler. Only, I don’t know what just that style of rope would be doin’ on shipboard, unless it was to hang the old man’s wash on.”

“Suppose we lift this grating.”

“Suppose we lift this grating,” Kent suggested.

At this the man with the badge interposed. “Say, who’s runnin’ this thing, anyhow? I’m sheriff here, an’ this body ain’t to be moved till a doctor has viewed it.”

“Of course,” said Kent mildly; “but I thought you might be interested to see, Mr. Sheriff, whether a ship’s name was stamped somewhere on this grating.”

“Well, I don’t want any amachure learning me my business,” declared the official importantly.

Nevertheless, he heaved the woodwork up on edge and held it so, while eager eyes scanned the under part. Murmurs of disappointment followed. In these Kent did not join. He had inserted a finger in a crevice of the splintered wood and had extracted some small object which he held in the palm of his hand, examining it thoughtfully.

“Wot ye got there?” demanded the sheriff.

Professor Kent stretched out his hand, disclosing a small grayish object.

“I should take it to be the cocoon of Ephestia kuchniella,” he announced.

“An’ wot does he do for a livin’?” inquired the official, waxing humorous.

“Destroys crops. It’s a species of grain-moth.”

“Oh!” grunted Schlager. “You’re a bug collector, eh?”

“Exactly,” answered the other, transferring his trove to his pocket.

Thereafter he seemed to lose interest in the center of mystery. Withdrawing to some distance, he paced up and down the shore, whistling lively tunes, not always in perfect accord, from which a deductive mind might have inferred that his soul was not in the music.

Nearer and nearer to high-water mark his pacing took him. Presently, though all the time continuing his whistling, he was scanning the tangled débris that the highest tide of the year had heaped up, almost against the cliff’s foot. His whistling became slow, lugubrious, minor. It sagged. It died away. When it rose again, it was in march time, whereto the virtuoso stepped briskly toward the crowd. By this time the group had received several additions, but had suffered the loss of one of its component parts, the sheriff. Conjecture was buzzing from mouth to mouth as to the official’s sudden defection.

“Whatever it was he got from the pocket,” Kent heard one of the men say, “it started him quick.”

“Looked to me like an envelope,” hazarded some one.

“No,” contradicted Sailor Smith; “paper would have been all pulped up by the water.”

“Marked handkerchief, maybe,” suggested another.

“Like as not,” said Jarvis. “You bet that Len Schlager figured it out there was somethin’ in it for him, anyways. I could see the money-gleam in his eye.”

“That’s right, too,” confirmed the old sailor. “He looked just like that when he brought in that half-wit pedler, thinkin’ he was the thousan’-dollar-reward thief last year.”

“Trust Len Schlager to look out for number one first, an’ be sheriff afterward,” observed some one else.

Amidst this interchange of opinion, none of which was lost upon him, Professor Kent advanced and bent over the manacled corpse.

“Have to ask you to stand back, Perfessor,” said Jarvis. “Len’s appointed me special dep’ty till he comes back, and he says nobody is to lay finger on hide ner hair of the corpse; not even the doc, if he comes.”

“Quite right,” assented the other. “Sheriff Schlager exhibits commendable zeal and discretion.”

“Wonder if he knowed the corpse?” suggested somebody in the crowd.

“Tell you who did, if he didn’t,” said another man.

“Who, then?”

“Elder Iry Dennett. Didn’t none of you hear about his meetin’ up with a strange woman yestiddy evenin’?”

“Shucks! This couldn’t be that woman,” said Jarvis. “How’d she come to be washed ashore from a wreck between last night and this morning?”

“How’d she come to be washed ashore from a wreck, anyway?” countered Sailor Smith. “The’ ain’t been no storm for a week, an’ this body ain’t been dead twenty-four hour.”

“It plumb beats me,” admitted Jarvis.

“Who is this Dennett?” asked Professor Kent.

“Iry? He’s the town gab of Martindale Center. Does a little plumbin’ an’ tinkerin’ on the side. Just now he’s up to Cadystown. Took the ten-o’clock train last night.”

“Then it was early when he met this woman?”

“Little after sundown. He was risin’ the hill beyond the Nook—that’s Sedgwick’s place, the painter feller—when she come out of the shrubbery—pop! He quizzed her. Trust the Elder for that. But he didn’t get much out of her, until he mentioned the Nook. Then she allowed she guessed she’d go there. An’ he watched her go.”

“You say a man named Sedgwick lives at the Nook. Is that Francis Sedgwick, the artist?” asked Kent.

“That’s him,” said Sailor Smith. “Paints right purty pictures. Lives there all alone with a Chinese cook.”

“Well, the lady went down the hill,” continued Jarvis, “just as Sedgwick come out to smoke a pipe on his stone wall. Iry thought he seemed su’prised when she bespoke him. They passed a few remarks, an’ then they had some words, an’ the lady laughed loud an’ kinder scornful. He seemed to be pointin’ at a necklace of queer, fiery pink stones thet she wore, and tryin’ to get somethin’ out of her. She turned away, an’ he started to follow, when all of a sudden she grabbed up a rock an’ let him have it—blip! Keeled him clean over. Then she ran away up the road toward Hawkill Cliffs. That’s the way Iry Dennett tells it. But I ain’t never heard of a story losin’ anythin’ in the tellin’ when it come through Iry’s lips.”

“Well, this corpse ain’t got no pink necklace,” suggested somebody.

“Bodies sometimes gets robbed,” said Sailor Smith.

Chester Kent stooped over the writhen face, again peering close. Then he straightened up and began pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his ear.

He pulled and pulled, until, as if by that process, he had turned his face toward the cliff. His lips pursed. He began whistling softly, and tunelessly. His gaze was abstracted.

“Ain’t seen nothin’ to make you feel bad, have you, Perfessor?” inquired Temporary-Deputy-Sheriff Jarvis with some acerbity.

“Eh? What?” said Kent absently. “Seen anything? Nothing but what’s there for any one to see.”

Following his fixed gaze, the others studied the face of the cliff; all but Sailor Smith. He blinked near-sightedly at the corpse.

“Say,” said he presently, “what’s them queer little marks on the neck, under the ear?”

Back came Kent’s eyes. “Those?” he said smiling. “Why, those are, one might suppose, such indentations as would be made in flesh by forcing a jewel setting violently against it, by a blow or strong impact.”

“Then you think it was the wom—” began the old seaman when several voices broke in:

“There goes Len now!”

The sheriff’s heavy figure appeared on the brow of the cliff, moving toward the village.

“Who is it with him?” inquired Kent.

“Gansett Jim,” answered Jarvis.

“An Indian?”

“Gosh! You got good eyes!” said Jarvis. “He’s more Indian than anything else. Comes from down Amagansett way, and gets his name from it.”

“H-m! When did he arrive?”

“While you was trapesin’ around up yonder.”

“Did he see the body?”

“Yep. Just after the sheriff got whatever it was from the pocket, Gansett Jim hove in sight. Len went over to him quick, an’ said somethin’ to him. He come and give a look at the body. But he didn’t say nothing. Only grunted.”

“Never does say nothin’, only grunt,” put in Sailor Smith.

“That’s right,” agreed Jarvis. “Well, the sheriff tells me to watch the body. Then he says, ‘An’ I’ll need somebody to help me. I’ll take you, Jim.’ So he an’ the Indian goes away together.”

Professor Kent nodded. He looked seaward where the reefs were now baring their teeth more plainly through the racing currents, and he sighed. That sigh meant, in effect, “I wanted to play with my tides and eddies, and here is work thrown at my very feet!” Then he bade the group farewell, and set off up the beach.

“Seems kinder int’rested, don’t he?” remarked one of the natives.

“Who is he, anyway?” inquired another.

“Oh, he’s a sort of a harmless scientific crank,” explained Jarvis, with patronizing kindliness. “Comes from Washington. Something to do with the government work.”

“Kinder loony, I think,” conjectured a little, thin, piping man. “Musses and moves around like it.”

“Is that so!” said Sailor Smith, who still had his eyes fixed on the scarified neck. “Well, I ain’t any too dum sure thet he’s as big a fool as some folks I know thet thinks likelier of theirselves.”

Others, however, supported the little man’s diagnosis, and there was some feeling against Sailor Smith who refused to make the vote unanimous.

“No, sir,” he persisted sturdily. “That dude way of talkin’ of his has got somethin’ back of it, I’ll bet. He seen there was somethin’ queer about thet rope, an’ he ast me about the knots, right off. He knows enough not to spit to wind’ard, an’ don’t you forgit it! Wouldn’t surprise me none if he was p’intin’ pretty nigh as clus up into the wind as Len Schlager.”

Possibly the one supporter of the absent would have wavered in his loyalty had he seen the trove that Professor Chester Kent had carried unostentatiously from the beach, in his pocket, after picking it from the grating. It was the fuzzy cocoon of a small and quite unimportant insect. Perhaps the admiring Mr. Smith might even have come around to the majority opinion regarding Professor Kent’s intellectual futility, could he have observed the absorbed interest with which the Washington scientist, seated on a boulder, opened up the cocoon, pricked it until the impotent inmate wriggled in protest, and then, casting it aside to perish, threw himself on his back and whistled the whole of Chopin’s Funeral March, mostly off the key.

 Between the roadway and the broad front lawn of the Nook a four-foot, rough stone wall interposes. Looking up from his painting, Francis Sedgwick beheld, in the glare of the afternoon sun, a spare figure rise alertly upon the wall, descend to the road, and rise again. He stepped to the open window and watched a curious progress. A scrubby-bearded man, clad in serviceable khaki, was performing a stunt, with the wall as a basis. He was walking from east to west quite fast, and every third pace stepping upon the wall; stepping, Sedgwick duly noted, not jumping, the change of level being made without visible effort.

Now, Sedgwick himself was distinctly long of leg and limber, but he realized that he would be wholly incapable of duplicating the stranger’s gracefully accomplished feat without violent and clumsy exertion. Consequently, he was interested. Leaning out of the window, he called:

“Hello, there!”

“Good afternoon,” said the stranger, in a quiet cultivated voice.

“Would you mind telling me what you are doing on my wall.”

“Not in the least,” replied the bearded man, rising buoyantly into full view, and subsiding again with the rhythm of a wave.

“Well, what are you doing?”

“Taking a little exercise.”

By this time, having reached the end of the wall, he turned and came back, making the step with his right leg instead of his left. Sedgwick hurried down-stairs and out into the roadway. The stranger continued his performance silently. At closer inspection it appealed to the artist as even more mysterious both in purport and execution than it had looked at a distance.

“Do you do that often?” he asked presently.

The gymnast paused, poised like a Mercury on the high coping. “Yes,” said he. “Otherwise I shouldn’t be able to do it at all.”

“I should think not, indeed! Has it any particular utility, that form of exercise?”

“Certainly. It is in pursuance of a theory of self-defense.”

“What in the world has wall-hopping to do with self-defense?”

“I shall expound,” said the stranger in professional tones, taking a seat by the unusual method of letting himself down on one leg while holding the other at right angles to his body. “Do you know anything of jiu-jutsu?”

“Very little.”

“In common with most Americans. For that reason alone the Japanese system is highly effective here, not so effective in Japan. You perceive there the basis of my theory.”

“No, I don’t perceive it at all.”

“A system of defense is effective in proportion to its unfamiliarity. That is all.”

“Then your system consists in stepping up on a wall and diving into obscurity on the farther side, perhaps,” suggested Sedgwick ironically.

“Defense, I said; not escape. Escape is perhaps preferable to defense, but not always so practicable. No; the wall merely served as a temporary gymnasium while I was waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For you.”

“You have distinctly the advantage of me,” said Sedgwick, with a frown; for he was in no mood to welcome strange visitors.

“To return to my theory of self-defense,” said the other imperturbably. “My wall exercise serves to keep limber and active certain muscles that in the average man are half atrophied. You are familiar with the ostrich?”

“With his proverbial methods of obfuscation,” replied Sedgwick.

The other smiled. “That, again, is escape or attempted escape. My reference was to other characteristics. However, I shall demonstrate.” He rose on one foot with an ease that made the artist stare, descended, selected from the roadway a stone of ordinary cobble size, and handed it to Sedgwick.

“Let that lie on the palm of your hand,” said he, “and hold it out, waist high.”

As he spoke he was standing two feet from the other, to his right. Sedgwick did as he was requested. As his hand took position, there was a twist of the bearded man’s lithe body, a sharp click, and the stone, flying in a rising curve, swished through the leafage of a lilac fifty feet away.

“How did you do that?” cried the artist.

The other showed a slight indentation on the inside of his right boot heel, and then swung his right foot slowly and steadily up behind his left knee, and let it lapse into position again. “At shoulder height,” he explained, “I could have done the same; but it would have broken your hand.”

“I see,” said the other, adding with distaste, “but to kick an opponent! Why, even as a boy I was taught—”

“We were not speaking of child’s play,” said the visitor coolly; “nor am I concerned with the rules of the prize-ring, as applied to my theory. When one is in danger, one uses knife or gun, if at hand. I prefer a less deadly and more effective weapon. Kicking sidewise, either to the front or to the rear, I can disarm a man, break his leg, or lay him senseless. It is the special development of such muscles as the sartorius and plantaris,” he ran his long fingers down from the outside of his thigh round to the inside of his ankle, “that enables a human being, with practise, to kick like an ostrich. Since you found me exercising on your property, I owe you this explanation. I hope you won’t prosecute for trespass, Mr. Long-Lean-Leggy Sedgwick.”

“Leggy!” The artist had whirled at the name. “Nobody’s called me that for ten years.”

“Just ten years ago that you graduated, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Then I knew you in college. You must have been before my class.”

The bearded one nodded. “Senior to your freshman,” said he.

The younger man scrutinized him. “Chester Kent!” said he softly. “What on earth are you doing behind that bush?”

Kent caressed the maligned whiskers. “Utility,” he explained. “Patent, impenetrable mosquito screen. I’ve been off in the wilds, and am—or was—going back presently.”

“Not until you’ve stopped long enough to get reacquainted,” declared Sedgwick. “Just at present you’re going to stay to dinner.”

“Very good. Just now you happen to be in my immediate line of interest. It is a fortunate circumstance for me, to find you here; possibly for you, too.”

“Most assuredly,” returned the other with heartiness. “Come in on the porch and have a hammock and pipe.”

Old interests sprang to life and speech between them. And from the old interests blossomed the old easy familiarity that is never wholly lost to those who have been close friends in college days. Presently Francis Sedgwick was telling his friend the story of his feverish and thwarted ten years in the world. Within a year of his graduation his only surviving relative had died, willing to him a considerable fortune, the income of which he used in furtherance of a hitherto suppressed ambition to study art. Paris, his Mecca, was first a task-mistress, then a temptress, finally a vampire. Before succumbing he had gone far, in a few years, toward the development of a curious technique of his own. Followed then two years of dissipation, a year of travel to recuperate, and the return to Paris, which was to be once more the task-mistress. But, to his terror and self-loathing, he found the power of application gone. The muscles of his mind had become flabby. He quoted to Kent, with bitterness, the terrible final lines of Rossetti’s Known in Vain:

“When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath,
Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death?”

“‘When Work and Will awake too late,’” repeated Kent. “But is it too late in your case? Surely not, since you’re here, and at your task.”

“But think of the waste, man! Yet, here I am, as you say, and still able to fight. All by virtue of a woman’s laugh; the laugh of a woman without virtue. It was at the Moulin de la Galette—perhaps you know the dance hall on the slope of Montmartre—and she was one of the dancers, the wreck of what had once been beauty and, one must suppose, innocence. Probably she thought me too much absinthe-soaked to hear or understand, as I sat half asleep at my table. At all events she answered, full-voiced, her companion’s question, ‘Who is the drunken foreigner?’ by saying, ‘He was an artist. The studios talked of him five years ago. Look at him now! That is what life does to us, mon ami. I’m the woman of it: that’s the man of it.’ I staggered up, made her a bow and a promise, and left her laughing. Last month I redeemed the promise; sent her the first thousand dollars I made by my own work, and declared my debt discharged.”

A heavy cloud of smoke issued from Kent’s mouth, followed by this observation: “That formula about the inability to lift one’s self by one’s own boot-straps fails to apply in the spiritual world.”

“Right! You can pull yourself out of the ditch that way; but afterward comes the long hillside. Life has seemed all tilted on edge, at times, and pretty slippery, with little enough to cling to.”

“Work,” suggested Kent briefly.

“Wisdom lurks behind your screen. Work is the answer.”

“Good or bad, it’s the only thing. Which kind is yours?”

“Presently you shall sit in judgment. Meantime, suppose you account for yourself.”

Chester Kent stretched himself luxuriously. “A distinguished secretary of state has remarked that all the news worth telling on any subject can be transmitted by wire for twenty-five cents. The short and simple annals of the poor in my case can be recorded within that limit. ‘Postgraduate science. Agricultural Department job. Lectures. Invention. Judiciary Department expert. Signed, Chester Kent.’ Ten words—count them—ten.”

“Interesting, but unsatisfying,” retorted his friend. “Can’t you expand a bit? I suppose you haven’t any dark secret in your life?”

“No secret, dark or light,” sighed the other. “The newspapers won’t let me have.”

“Eh? Won’t let you? Am I to infer that you’ve become a famous person? Pardon the ignorance of expatriation. Have you discovered a new disease, or formulated a new theory of life, or become a golf champion, or a senator, or a freak aviator, or invented perpetual motion? Do you possess titles, honors, and ribboned decorations? Ought I to bat my brow against the floor in addressing you? What are you, anyway?”

“What I told you, an expert in the service of the Department of Justice.”

“On the scientific side?”

“Why—yes, generally speaking. I like to flatter myself that my pursuit is scientific.”

“Pursuit? What do you pursue?”

“Men and motives.”

Sedgwick’s intelligent eyes widened. “Wait,” he said, “something occurs to me, an article in a French journal about a wonderful new American expert in criminology, who knows all there is to know, and takes only the most abstruse cases. I recall now that the article called him ‘le Professeur Chêtre Kennat.’ That would be about as near as they would come to your name.”

“It’s a good deal nearer than that infernal French journalist whom Wiley brought to my table at the Idlers’ Club got to the facts,” stated Kent.

“Then you are the Professor Kent! But look here! The Frenchman made you out a most superior species of highfalutin detective, working along lines peculiarly your own—”

“Rot!” interjected Kent. “The only lines a detective can work along successfully are the lines laid down for him by the man he is after.”

“Sounds more reasonable than romantic,” admitted the artist. “Come now, Kent, open up and tell me something about yourself.”

“Only last month a magazine put that request in writing, and accompanied it with an offer of twenty-five hundred dollars—which I didn’t accept. However, as I may wish to ask you a number of leading questions later, I’ll answer yours now. You remember I got into trouble my senior year with the college authorities, by proving the typhoid epidemic direct against a forgotten defect in the sewer system. It nearly cost me my diploma; but it helped me too, later, for a scientist in the Department of Agriculture at Washington learned of it, and sent for me after graduation. He talked to me about the work that a man with the true investigation instinct—which he thought I had—could do, by employing his abilities along strictly scientific lines; and he mapped out for me a three-year’s postgraduate course, which I had just about enough money to take. While I specialized on botany, entomology, and bacteriology, I picked up a working knowledge of other branches; chemistry, toxicology, geology, mineralogy, physiology, and most of the natural sciences, having been blessed with an eager and catholic curiosity about the world we live in.

“Once in the Department, I found myself with a sort of roving commission. I worked under such men as Wiley, Howard, and Merriam, and learned from them something of the infinite and scrupulous patience that truly original scientific achievement demands. At first my duties were largely those of minor research. Then, by accident largely, I chanced upon the plot to bull the cotton market by introducing the boll weevil into the uninfested cotton area, and checked that. Soon afterward I was put on the ‘deodorized meat’ enterprise, and succeeded in discovering the scheme whereby it was hoped to sell spoiled meat for good. You might have heard of those cases; but you would hardly have learned of the success in which I really take a pride, the cultivation of a running wild grape to destroy Rhus Toxicodendron, the common poison ivy. What spare time I had I devoted to experimenting along mechanical lines, and patented an invention that has been profitable. Some time ago the Department of Justice borrowed me on a few cases with a scientific bearing, and more recently offered me incidental work with them on such favorable terms that I resigned my other position. The terms include liberal vacations, one of which I am now taking. And here I am! Is that sufficient?”

“Hardly. All this suggests the arts of peace. What about your forty-horse-power kick? You don’t practise that for drawing-room exhibitions, I take it?”

“Sometimes,” confessed the scientist, “I have found myself at close quarters with persons of dubious character. The fact is, that an ingenious plot to get rid of a very old friend, Doctor Lucius Carter the botanist, drew me into the criminal line, and since then, that phase of investigation has seemed fairly to obtrude itself on me, officially and unofficially. Even up here, where I hoped to enjoy a month’s rest—Do you know,” he said, breaking off, “that you have a most interesting inset of ocean currents hereabouts?”

“Of course. Lonesome Cove. But kindly finish that ‘even up here’. I recollect your saying that you were waiting for me. Haven’t traced any scientific crime to my door, have you?”

“Let me forget my work for a little while,” pleaded his visitor, “and look at yours.”

Sedgwick rose. “Come up-stairs,” he said, and led the way to the big, bare, bright studio.

From the threshold Chester Kent delivered an opinion, after one approving survey. “You really work, I see.”

“I really do. Where do you see it, though?”

“All over the place. No draperies or fripperies or fopperies of art here. The barer the room, the more work done in it.”

He walked over to a curious contrivance resembling a small hand-press, examined it, surveyed the empty easel, against which were leaning, face in, a number of pictures, all of a size, and turned half a dozen of them over, ranging them and stepping back for examination. Standing before them, he whistled a long passage from La Bohème, and had started to rewhistle it in another key, when the artist broke in with some impatience.

“Well?”

“Good work,” pronounced Kent quietly, and in some subtle way the commonplace words conveyed to their hearer the fact that the man who spoke them knew.

“It’s the best there is in me, at least,” said Sedgwick.

Kent went slowly around the walls, keenly examining, silently appraising. There were landscapes, genre bits, studies of the ocean in its various moods, flashes of pagan imaginings, nature studies; a wonderful picture of wild geese settling from a flight; a no less striking sketch of a mink, startled as he crept to drink among the sedges; a group of country children at hop-scotch on the sands; all the varied subjects handled with a deftness of truth and drawing, and colored with a clear softness quite individual.

“Have you found or founded a new system of coloring?” asked Kent as he moved among the little masterpieces. “No; don’t tell me.” He touched one of the surfaces delicately. “It’s not paint, and it’s not pastel. Oh, I see! They’re all of one size—of course.” He glanced at the heavy mechanism near the easel. “They’re color prints.”

Sedgwick nodded. “Monotypes,” said he. “I paint on copper, make one impress, and then—phut!—a sponge across the copper makes each one an original.”

“You certainly obtain your effects.”

“The printing seems to refine the color. For instance, moonlight on white water, a thing I’ve never been able to approach, either in straight oils or water. See here.”

From behind a cloth he drew a square, and set it on the easel. Kent whistled again, casual fragments of light and heavy opera intermingled with considerative twitches of his ear.

“It’s the first one I’ve given a name to,” said Sedgwick. “I call it The Rough Rider.”

A full moon, brilliant amid blown cloud-rack, lighted up the vast procession of billows charging in upon a near coast. In the foreground a corpse, the face bent far up and back from the spar to which it was lashed, rode with wild abandon headlong at the onlooker, on the crest of a roaring surge. The rest was infinite clarity of distance and desolation.

“The Rough Rider!” murmured Kent; then, with a change of tone, “For sale?”

“I don’t know,” hesitated the artist. “Fact is, I like that about well enough to keep.”

“I’ll give you five hundred dollars for it.”

“Five hundred! Man alive! A hundred is the most I’ve ever got for any of my prints!”

“The offer stands.”

“But, see here, Kent, can you afford it? Government salaries don’t make men rich, do they?”

“Oh, I’m rich enough,” said the other impatiently. “I told you I’d made inventions. And I can certainly afford to buy it better than you can afford to keep it here.”

“What’s that?” asked the painter, surprised.

Kent repeated his final sentence, with slow emphasis. “Do you understand what I mean?” he asked, looking flatly into Sedgwick’s eyes.

“No, not in the least. Another suggestion of mystery. Do you always deal in this sort of thing?”

“Very seldom. However, if you don’t understand so much the better. When did you finish this picture?”

“Yesterday.”

“H-m! Has any one else seen it?”

“That old fraud of a plumber, Elder Dennett, saw me working on it yesterday, when he was doing some repairing here, and remarked that it gave him the creeps.”

“Dennett? Well, then that’s all up,” said Kent, as if speaking to himself. “There’s a streak of superstition in all these New Englanders. He’d be sure to interpret it as a confession before the fact. However, Elder Dennett left this morning for a trip to Cadystown. That’s so much to the good.”

“He may have left for a trip to Hadestown for all I care,” stated Sedgwick with conviction. “What’s it all about, anyway?”

“I’ll tell you, as soon as I’ve mulled it over a little. Just let me cool my mind down with some more of your pictures.” He turned to the wall border again, and faced another picture out. “What’s this? You seem to be something of a dab in black and white, too.”

“Oh, that’s an imaginary face,” said Sedgwick carelessly.

“Imaginary face studied from various angles,” commented Kent. “It’s a very lovely face, and the most wistful I’ve ever seen. A fairy, prisoned on earth by cockcrow, might wear some such expression of startled wondering purity, I fancy.”

“Poetry as well as mystery! Kent, you grow and expand on acquaintance.”

“There is poetry in your study of that imaginary fay. Imaginary! Um-hum!” continued Kent dryly, as he stooped to the floor. “I suppose this is an imaginary hairpin, too.”

“My Chinaman—” began Sedgwick quickly, when the other caught him up.

“Don’t be uneasy. I’m not going to commit the bêtise of asking who she is.”

“If you did, I give you my word of honor I couldn’t tell you. I only wish I knew!”

There was silence between them for a moment; then the painter broke out with the air of one who takes a resolution:

“See here, Kent! You’re a sort of detective, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been called so.”

“And you like my picture of The Rough Rider?”

“Five hundred dollars’ worth.”

“You can have that and any other picture in my studio, except this one,” he indicated the canvas with the faces, “if you’ll find out for me who she is.”

“That might be done. We shall see. But frankly, Sedgwick, there’s a matter of more importance—”

“Importance? Good heavens, man! There’s nothing so important in this world!”

“Oh, is it as bad as that?”

A heavy knock sounded from below, followed by the Chinaman’s voice, intermingled with boyish accents demanding Sedgwick in the name of the Western Union Telegraph Company.

“Send him up,” ordered Sedgwick, and the boy arrived; but not before Kent had quietly removed The Rough Rider from its place of exhibit.

“Special from the village,” announced young Mercury. “Sign here.”

After the signature had been duly set down, and the signer had read his message with knit brows, the urchin lingered, big with news.

“Say, heard about the body on the beach?”

Kent turned quickly, to see Sedgwick’s face. It was interested, but unmoved as he replied:

“No. Where was it found?”

“Lonesome Cove. Woman. Dressed swell. Washed up on a grating last night or this morning.”

“It’s curious how they all come in here, isn’t it?” said the artist to Kent. “This is the third this summer.”

“And it’s a corkerino!” said the boy. “Sheriff’s on the case. Body was all chained up, they say.”

“I’m sure they need you at the office to help circulate the news, my son,” said Kent. “And I’ll bet you this quarter, payable in advance, that you can’t get back in half an hour on your wheel.”

With a grin the boy took the coin. “I got yer,” he said, and was off.

“And now, Sedgwick,” said Kent decisively, “if I’m to help you, suppose you tell me all that you know about the woman who called on you last evening?”

“Last evening? Ah, that wasn’t the girl of the picture. It’s an interminable six days since I’ve seen her.”

“No; I know it wasn’t she, having seen your picture, and since then your visitor of last night. The question is, who was it?”

“Wait! How did you know that a woman came here last night?”

“From common gossip.”

“And where have you seen her since?”

“On the beach, at Lonesome Cove.”

“Lonesome Cove,” repeated Sedgwick mechanically. Then with a startled glance: “Not the dead woman!”

Kent nodded, watching him closely. For a space of four heart-beats—one very slow, and three very quick—there was silence between them. Kent broke it.

“Do you see now the wisdom of frankness?”

“You mean that I shall be accused of having a hand in her death?”

“Strongly suspected, at least.”

“On what basis?”

“You are the last person known to have seen her alive.”

“Surely that isn’t enough?”

“Not of itself. There’s a bruise back of your right ear.”

Involuntarily Sedgwick’s hand went to the spot.

“Who gave it to you?” pursued Kent.

“You know it all without my telling you,” cried Sedgwick. “But I never saw the woman before in my life, Kent—I give you my word of honor! She came and went, but who she is or why she came or where she went I have no more idea than you have. Perhaps not nearly so much.”

“There you are wrong. I’m depending on you to tell me about her.”

“Not if my life hung on it. And how could her being found drowned on the beach be connected with me?”

“I didn’t say that she was found drowned on the beach.”

“You did! No; pardon me. It was the messenger boy. But you said that her body was found in Lonesome Cove.”

“That is quite a different matter.”

“She wasn’t drowned?”

“I should be very much surprised if the autopsy showed any water in the lungs.”

“But the boy said that the body was lashed to a grating, and that there were chains on it. Is that true?”

“It was lashed to a grating, and manacled.”

“Manacled? What a ghastly mystery!” Sedgwick dropped his chin in meditation. “If she wasn’t drowned, then she was murdered and thrown overboard from a boat. Is that it?”

Chester Kent smiled inscrutably. “Suppose you let me do the questioning a while. You can give no clue whatsoever to the identity of your yesterday’s visitor?”

There was the slightest possible hesitation before the artist replied, “None at all.”

“If I find it difficult to believe that, what will the villagers think of it when Elder Dennett returns from Cadystown and tells his story, as he is sure to do?”

“Does Dennett know the woman?”

“No; but it isn’t his fault that he doesn’t. He did his best in the interviewing line when he met her on her way to your place.”

“She wasn’t on her way to my place,” objected Sedgwick.

“Dennett got the notion that she was. Accordingly, with the true home-bred delicacy of our fine old New England stock, he hid behind a bush and watched.”

“Did he overhear our conversation?”

“He was too far away. He saw the attack on you. Now, just fit together these significant bits of fact. The body of a woman, dead by violence, is found on the beach not far from here. The last person, as far as is known, to have seen her alive is yourself. She called on you, and there was a colloquy, apparently vehement, between you, culminating in the assault upon you. She hurried away. One might well guess that later you followed her to her death.”

“I did follow her,” said Sedgwick in a low tone.

“For what purpose?”

“To find out who she was.”

“Which you didn’t succeed in doing?”

“She was too quick for me. The blow of the rock had made me giddy, and she got away among the thickets.”

“That’s a pity. One more point of suspicion. Dennett, you say, saw your picture, The Rough Rider. He will tell every one about it, you may be sure.”

“What of it?”

“The strange coincidence of the subject, and the apparent manner of the unknown’s death.”

“People will hardly suspect that I killed her and set her adrift for a model, I suppose,” said the artist bitterly; “particularly as Dennett can tell them that the picture was finished before her death.”

“Not that; but there will be plenty of witch-hangers among the Yankee populace, ready to believe that a fiend inspired both picture and murder in your mind. Why, the very fact of your being an artist would be prima facie evidence of a compact with the devil, to some people. And you must admit a certain diabolical ghastliness in that painting.”

“Evidently some devil of ill fate is mixing up in my affairs. What’s your advice in the matter?”

“Tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” suggested Chester Kent.

“Easily done. The question is whether you’ll believe it.”

“If I hadn’t felt pretty sure of your innocence, I shouldn’t have opened the case to you as I’ve done. I’ll believe the truth if you tell it, and tell it all.”

“Very well. I was sitting on my wall when the woman came down the road. I noticed her first when she stopped to look back, and her absurd elegance of dress, expensive and ill fitting, attracted my closer attention. She was carrying a bundle, wrapped in strong paper. It seemed to be heavy, for she shifted it from hand to hand. When she came near, I spoke to her—”

“You spoke to her first?”

“Well, we spoke simultaneously.”

“Why should you speak to her, if she was a stranger to you?”

“See here, Kent! You’ll have to let me tell this in my own way, if I’m to tell it at all.”

“So long as you do tell it. What did she say to you?”

“She asked me the time.”

“Casually?”

“Not as if she were making it a pretext to open a conversation, if that is what you mean.”

“It is.”

“Certainly it wasn’t that. She seemed anxious to know. In fact, I think she used the word ‘exact’; ‘the exact time,’ she said.”

“Presumably she was on her way to an appointment, then.”

“Very likely. When I told her, she seemed relieved; I might even say relaxed. As if from the strain of nervous haste, you know.”

“Good. And then?”

“She thanked me, and asked if I were Mr. Sedgwick. I answered that I was, and suggested that she make good by completing the introduction.”

“She wasn’t a woman of your own class, then?”

Sedgwick looked puzzled. “Well, no. I thought not, then, or I shouldn’t have been so free and easy with her. For one thing, she was painted badly, and the perspiration, running down her forehead, had made her a sight. Yet, I don’t know: her voice was that of a cultivated person. Her manner was awkward and her dress weird for that time of day, and, for all that, she carried herself like a person accustomed to some degree of consideration. That I felt quite plainly. I felt, too, something uncanny about her. Her eyes alone would have produced that impression. They were peculiarly restless and brilliant.”

“Insane?” questioned Kent.

“Not wholly sane, certainly; but it might have been drugs. That suggested itself to me.”

“A possibility. Proceed.”

“She asked what point of the headland gave the best view. ‘Anywhere from the first rise on is good,’ I said. ‘It depends on what you wish to see.’—‘My ship coming in.’ said she.—‘It will be a far view, then,’ I told her. ‘This is a coast of guardian reefs.’—‘What difference?’ she said, and then gave me another surprise; for she quoted:

“‘And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond—
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.’”

“That’s interesting,” remarked Kent. “Casual female wayfarers aren’t given to quoting The House of Life.”

“Nor casual ships to visiting this part of the coast. However, there was no ship. I looked for myself, when I was trying to find the woman later. What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

“She walked away from me a few paces, but turned and came back at once.

“‘I follow my star,’ she said, pointing to a planet that shone low over the sea. ‘Therein lies the only true happiness; to dare and to follow.’

“‘It’s a practise which has got many people into trouble and some into jail,’ I remarked.

“‘Do not be flippant,’ she replied in her deep tones. ‘Perhaps under that star you move on dim paths to an unknown glory.’

“‘See here,’ I broke out, ‘you’re making me uncomfortable. If you’ve got something to tell, please tell it, kindly omitting the melodrama.’

“‘Remember this meeting,’ she said in a tone of solemn command; ‘for it may mark an epoch in your life. Some day in the future I may send for you and recall to-day to your mind by what I have just said. In that day you will know the hidden things that are clear only to the chosen minds. Perhaps you will be the last person but one to see me as I now am.’”

Kent pulled nervously at the lobe of his ear. “Is it possible that she foresaw her death?” he murmured.

“It would look so, in the light of what has happened, wouldn’t it? Yet there was an uncanny air of joyousness about her, too.”

“I don’t like it,” announced Kent. “I do not like it!”

By which he meant that he did not understand it. What Chester Kent does not understand, Chester Kent resents.

“Love-affair, perhaps,” suggested the artist. “A woman in love will take any risk of death. However,” he added, rubbing his bruised head reminiscently, “she had a very practical bent, for a romantic person. After her mysterious prophecy she started on. I called to her to come back or I would follow and make her explain herself.”

“As to what?”

“Everything: her being there, her actions, her—her apparel, the jewelry, you know, and all that.”

“You’ve said nothing about jewelry.”

“Haven’t I? Well, when she turned—”

“Just a moment. Was it the jewelry that you were going to speak of when you first accosted her?”

“Yes, it was. Some of it was very valuable, I judge. Wasn’t it found on the body?”

“No.”

“Not? Robbery, then, probably. Well, she came back at a stride. Her eyes were alive with anger. There came a torrent of words from her; strong words, too. Nothing of the well-bred woman left there. I insisted on knowing who she was, and she burst out on me with laughter that was, somehow, more insulting than her speech. But when I told her that I’d find out about her if I had to follow her into the sea, she stopped laughing fast enough. Before I could guard myself she had caught up a rock from the road and let me have it. I went over like a tenpin. When I got up, she was well along toward the cliffs, and I never did find her trail in that maze of copses and thickets.”

“Show me your relative positions when she attacked you.”

The artist placed Kent, and moved off five paces. “About like that,” he said.

“Did she throw overhand or underhand?”

“It was so quick I hardly know. But I should say a short overhand snap. It came hard enough!”

“I do not like it at all,” said Kent again.

He wandered disconsolately and with half-closed eyes about the room, until he blundered into collision with a cot-lounge in the corner, spread with cushions. These he heaped up, threw his coat over them, stretched himself out with his feet propped high on the mound just erected, and closed his eyes.

“Sleepy?” inquired Sedgwick.

“Busy,” retorted his guest.

“Like some more pillows?”

“No; I’d like ten minutes of silence.” The speaker opened one eye. “At the end of that time perhaps you’ll think better of it.”

“Of what?”

“Of concealing an essentially important part of your experience, which has to do, I think, with the jewelry.”

At the end of the ten minutes, when Kent opened both eyes, his friend forestalled him with another query.

“You say that no jewels were found on the body. Was there any other mark of identification?”

“If there was, the sheriff got away with it before I saw it.”

“How can you be sure, then, that the dead woman was my visitor?”

“Dennett mentioned a necklace. On the crushed flesh of the dead woman’s neck there is the plain impress of a jewel setting. Now, come, Sedgwick! If I’m to help you in this, you must help me. Had you ever seen that necklace before?”

“Yes,” was the reply, given with obvious reluctance.

“Where?”

“On the neck of the girl of my picture.”

Kent’s fingers went to his ear, pulling at the lobe until that unoffending pendant stretched like rubber. “You’re sure?” he asked.

“There couldn’t be any mistake. The stones were matched rose-topazes; you mightn’t find another like it in the whole country.”

Kent whistled, soft and long. “I’m afraid, my boy,” he said at length, “I’m very much afraid that you’ll have to tell me the whole story of the romance of the pictured face; and this time without reservation.”

“That’s what I’ve been guarding against,” retorted the other. “It isn’t a thing that I can tell, man to man. Don’t you understand? Or,” he added savagely, “do you misunderstand?”

“No, I don’t misunderstand,” answered Kent very gently. “I know there are things that can’t be spoken, not because they are shameful, but because they are sacred. Yet I’ve got to know about her. Here! I have it. When I’m gone, sit down and write it out for me, simply and fully, and send it to my hotel as soon as it is done. You can do that, can’t you?”

“Yes, I can do that,” decided Sedgwick, after some consideration.

“Good! Then give me some dinner. And let’s forget this grisly thing for a time, and talk of the old days. Whatever became of Harkness, of our class, do you know?”

Between them that evening was no further mention of the strange body in Lonesome Cove.

Being a single autobiographical chapter from the life of Francis Sedgwick, with editorial comment by Professor Chester Kent.

Dear Kent: Here goes! I met her first on June 22, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Some wonderful cloud effects after a hard rain had brought me out into the open. I had pitched my easel in the hollow, on the Martindale Road, so as to get that clump of pine against the sky. There I sat working away with a will, when I heard the drumming of hoofs, and a horse with a girl in the saddle came whizzing round the turn almost upon me. Just there the rain had made a puddle of thick sticky mud, the mud-pie variety. As the horse went by at full gallop, a fine, fat, mud pie rose, soared through the air, and landed in the middle of my painting. I fairly yelped.

To get it all off was hopeless. However, I went at it, and was cursing over the job when I heard the hoofs coming back, and the rider pulled up close to me.

“I heard you cry out,” said a voice, very full and low. “Did I hurt you? I hope not.”

“No,” I said without looking up. “Small thanks to you that you didn’t!”

My tone silenced her for a moment. Somehow, though, I got the feeling that she was amused more than abashed at my resentment. And her voice was suspiciously meek when she presently spoke again.

“You’re an artist, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said, busily scraping away at my copperplate. “I’m an archeologist, engaged in exhuming an ancient ruin from a square mile of mud.”

She laughed; but in a moment became grave again. “I’m so sorry!” she said. “I know I shouldn’t come plunging around turns in that reckless way. May I—I should like to—buy your picture?”

“You may not,” I replied.

“That isn’t quite fair, is it?” she asked. “If I have done damage, I should be allowed to repair it.”

“Repair?” said I. “How do you propose to do it? I suppose that you think a picture that can be bought for a hundred-dollar bill can be painted with a hundred-dollar bill.”

“No; I’m not altogether a Philistine,” she said, and I looked up at her for the first time. Her face— (Elision and Comment by Kent: I know her face from the sketches. Why could he not have described the horse? However, there’s one point clear: she is a woman of means.)

She said, “I don’t wonder you’re cross. And I’m truly sorry. Is it quite ruined?”

At that I recovered some decency of manner. “Forgive a hermit,” I said, “who doesn’t see enough people to keep him civilized. The daub doesn’t matter.”

She leaned over from the saddle to examine the picture. “Oh, but it isn’t a daub!” she protested. “I—I know a little about pictures. It’s very interesting and curious. But why do you paint it on copper?”

I explained.

“Oh!” she said. “I should so like to see your prints!”

“Nothing easier,” said I. “My shack is just over the hill.”

“And there is a Mrs.—” her eyes suggested that I fill the blank.

“Sedgwick?” I finished. “No. There is no one but my aged and highly respectable Chinaman to play propriety. But in the case of a studio, les convenances are not so rigid but that one may look at pictures unchaperoned.”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do,” she answered, smiling. “No, I’ll have to wait until—” A shadow passed over her face. “I’m afraid I’ll have to give it up.”

Chance settled that point then and there. As she finished, she was in my arms. The girth had loosened, and the saddle had turned with her. I had barely time to twist her foot from the stirrup when the brute of a horse bolted. As it was, her ankle got a bit of a wrench. She turned quite white, and cried out a little. In a moment she was herself again.

“King Cole has been acting badly all day,” she said. “I shall have a time catching him.” She limped forward a few steps.

“Here, that won’t do!” said I. “Let me.”

“You couldn’t get near him—though, perhaps, if you had some salt—”

“I can get some at my place,” said I, gathering up my things. “Your horse is headed that way. You’d better come along and rest there while Ching Lung and I round up your mount.”

(Comment by C. K.: Here follows more talk, showing how young people imperceptibly and unconsciously cement an acquaintance; but not one word upon the vital point of how far the horse seemed to have come, whether he was ridden out, or fresh, etc.)

At the bungalow I called Ching, and we set out with a supply of salt. King Cole (Comment by C. K.: Probably a dead-black horse) was coy for a time, before he succumbed to temptation. On my return I found my visitor in the studio. She had said that she knew a little about pictures. She knew more than a little, a good deal, in fact, and talked most intelligently about them. I don’t say this simply because she tried, before she went, to buy some of mine. When I declined to sell she seemed put out.

“But surely these prints of yours aren’t the work of an amateur,” she said. “You sell?”

“Oh, yes, I sell—when I can. But I don’t sell without a good bit of bargaining; particularly when I suspect my purchaser of wishing to make amends by a purchase.”

“It isn’t that at all,” she said earnestly. “I want the pictures for themselves.”

“Call this a preliminary then, and come back when you have more time.”

She shook her head, and there was a shadow over the brightness of her face. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “But I have enjoyed talking again with some one who knows and loves the best in art. After all,” she added with a note of determination, almost of defiance, “there is no reason why I shouldn’t sometime.”

“Then I may look for you again?” I asked.

She nodded as she moved out across the porch. “If you’ll promise to sell me any print I may choose. Good-by. And thank you so much, Mr. Sedgwick!”

She held out her hand. It was a hand for a sculptor to model, as beautiful and full of character as her face. (Comment by C. K.: Bosh!) Afterward I remembered that never again in our friendship did I see it ungloved. (Comment by C. K.: “Bosh” retracted. Some observation in that!)

“Au revoir, then,” I said; “but you have the advantage of me, you see. I don’t know what to call you at all.”

She hesitated; then, with a little soft quiver of her eyelids, which I afterward learned to identify as an evidence of amusement, said, “Daw is a nice name, don’t you think?” (Comment by C. K.: False name, of course; but highly probable first name is Marjorie.) “By the way, what time is it?”

“Quarter to five, Miss Daw.”

She smiled at the name. “King Cole will have to do his best, if I am to be back for dinner. Good-by.” (Comment by C. K.: Good! The place where she is staying is a good way off, assuming a seven-thirty dinner-hour; say twelve to fifteen miles.)

That was the first of many visits, of days that grew in radiance for me. It isn’t necessary for me to tell you, Kent, how in our talks I came to divine in her a spirit as wistful and pure as her face. You do not want a love story from me; yet that is what it was for me almost from the first. Not openly, though. There was that about her which held me at arms’ length: the mystery of her, her quickly-given trust in me, a certain strained look that came into her face, like the startled attention of a wild thing poised for flight, whenever I touched upon the personal note. Not that I ever questioned her. That was the understanding between us: that I should leave to her her incognita without effort to penetrate it.

While I talked, I sketched her and studied her. Young as she seemed, she had been much about the world, knew her Europe, had met and talked with men of many pursuits, and had taken from all sources tribute for her mind and color for her imagination. She had read widely, too, and had an individual habit of thought. Combined with all her cosmopolitanism was a quaint and profound purity of standards. I remember her saying once—it was one of her rare flashes of self-revelation—“I am an anomaly and an anachronism, a Puritan in modern society.” After her first visit she did not ride on her horse; but came across lots and through the side hedge, swinging down the hillside yonder with her light dipping stride that always recalled to me the swoop of a swallow, her gloved hands usually holding a slender stick.

All those sketches that you saw were but studies for a more serious attempt to catch and fix her personality. (Comment by C. K.: Couldn’t he have given me in two words her height and approximate weight?) I did it in pastel, and, if I missed something of her tender and changeful coloring, I at least caught the ineffable wistfulness of her expression, the look of one hoping against hope for an unconfessed happiness. Probably I had put more of myself into it than I had meant. A man is likely to when he paints with his heart as well as his brain and hand. When it was done I made a little frame for it, and lettered on the frame this line:

“And her eyes dreamed against a distant goal.”

It was the next day that she read the line. I saw the color die from her face and flood back again.

“Why did you set that line there?” she breathed, her eyes fixed on me with a strange expression. (Comment by C. K.: Rossetti again. The dead woman of the beach quoted “The House of Life,” also.)

“Why not?” I asked. “It seems to express something in you which I have tried to embody in the picture. Don’t you like it?”

She repeated the line softly, making pure music of it. “I love it,” she said.

At that, I spoke as it is given to a man to speak to one woman in the world when he has found her. She listened, with her eyes on the pictured face. But when I said to her, “You, who have all my heart, and whose name, even, I have not—is there no word for me,” she rose, and threw out her hands in a gesture that sent a chill through me.

“Oh, no! No!” she cried vehemently. “Nothing—except good-by. Oh, why did you speak?”

I stood and watched her go. At the end of the garden walk she stooped and picked a rose with her gloved fingers, and as she disappeared in the thicket at the top of the hill I thought she half turned to look. That was five interminable days ago. I have not seen her since. I feel it is her will that I shall never see her again. And I must! You understand, Kent, you must find her!

I forgot to tell you that when I was sketching her I asked if she could bring something pink to wear, preferably coral. She came the next time with a string of the most beautiful rose-topazes I have ever seen, set in a most curious old gold design. It was that necklace and none other that the woman with the bundle wore, half concealed, when she came here.

To-day—it is yesterday really, since I am finishing this at three a. m.—the messenger boy brought me a telegram. It was from my love. It had been sent from Boston, and it read:

“Destroy the picture, for my sake. It tells too much of both of us.”

The message was unsigned. I have destroyed the picture. Help me! ⁠ F. S.

“Am I running a Strangers’ Rest here?” Francis Sedgwick asked of himself when he emerged upon his porch the morning after Kent’s visit.

The occasion of this query was a man stretched flat on the lawn, with his feet propped up comfortably against the stone wall. In this recumbent posture he was achieving the somewhat delicate feat of smoking a long, thin clay pipe. Except for this plebeian touch he was of the most unimpeachable elegance. His white serge suit was freshly pressed. His lavender silk hose, descending without a wrinkle under his buckskin shoes, accorded with a lavender silk tie and lavender striped shirt. A soft white hat covered his eyes against the sun glare. To put a point to this foppishness, a narrow silken ribbon, also pure white, depending from his lapel buttonhole, suggested an eye-glass in his pocket.

Sedgwick, who had risen late, having returned to his house at daybreak after delivering his manuscript at Kent’s hotel, regarded this sartorial marvel with a doubt as to whether it might not be a figment of latent dreams. Making a détour across the grass, he attained to a side view of the interloper’s face. It repaid the trouble. It was a remarkable face, both in contour and in coloring. From chin to cheek, the skin was white, with a tint of blue showing beneath; but the central parts of the face were bronzed. The jaw was long, lean and bony. The cheek-bones were high; the mouth was large, fine-cut, and firm; the nose, solid, set like a rock.

At the sound of a footstep, the man pushed his hat downward, revealing a knobby forehead and half-closed eyes in which there was a touch of somberness, of brooding. The artist remembered having seen that type of physiognomy on the Venetian coins of the sixteenth century, the likenesses in bronze, of men who were of iron and gold,—scholars, rulers, and poets. The eyes of the still face opened wide, and fixed themselves on Sedgwick, and the expression of melancholy vanished.

“Good morning,” said the artist, and then all but recoiled from the voice that replied, so harsh and raucous it was.

“You rise late,” it said.

“I hear your opinion on it,” retorted Sedgwick, a bit nettled. “Am I to infer that you have been waiting for me?”

“You wouldn’t go far wrong.”

“And what can I do for you—before you leave?” said Sedgwick significantly.

“Take a little walk with me presently,” said the man in another voice, brushing the hat clear of his face.

“Kent!” exclaimed the artist.

“Well, you appear surprised. What kind of artist are you, not to recognize a man simply because he shaves his beard and affects a false voice?”

“But you’re so completely changed. And why this disguise?”

“Disguise?” returned the other, astonished in his turn. “I’m not in disguise.”

“Your clothes. They’re—well, except for being offensive, I’d call them foppish.”

“Not at all!” protested the other warmly. “Just because I’m a scientific man, is it to be assumed that I ought to be a frump? I’m fond of good clothes; I can afford good clothes; I wear good clothes. It’s a hobby of mine; but I deny that it is a weakness.”

“Of course not,” assented the other, somewhat amused. “By the way, though, your socks and tie don’t match.”

“They do, absolutely,” replied the other with asperity.

“Perhaps in fact; but not in effect. In matching smooth silk with ribbed silk, you should get the latter one shade lighter.”

“Is that so?” said Kent with interest. “You’ve told me something I never knew. I’ll remember that. Now I’ll trouble you to tell me some more things.”

“While taking that walk you spoke of?”

“That comes later. I’ve read your story.”

“Already?”

“Already! Do you know it’s ten o’clock? However, it’s a good story.”

“Thank you.”

“As a story. As information, it leaves out most of the important points.”

“Thank you again.”

“You’re welcome. Color, size, and trappings of the horse?”

“I didn’t notice particularly. Black, I think; yes, certainly, black. Rather a large horse. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Humph! Color, size, and trappings of the rider?”

“Reddish brown hair with a gloss like a butterfly’s wing,” said the artist with enthusiasm; “deep hazel eyes; clear sun-browned skin; tall—I should say quite tall—but so—so feminine that you wouldn’t realize her tallness. She was dressed in a light brown riding costume, with a toque hat, very simple, tan gauntlets, and tan boots; that is, the first time I saw her. The next time—”

“Hold on! A dressmaker’s catalogue is no good to me. I couldn’t remember it all. Was she in riding clothes on any of her later visits?”

“No.”

“Any scars or marks?”

“Certainly not!”

“That’s a pity; although you seem to think otherwise. Age?”

“We—ell, twenty, perhaps.”

“Add five. Say twenty-five.”

“What for?” demanded Sedgwick indignantly.

“I’m allowing for the discount of romance. Did you notice her boots?”

“Not particularly; except that she was always spick and span from head to foot.”

“Humph! Was it pretty warm the last week she called on you?”

“Piping!”

“Did she show it?”

“Never a bit. Always looked fresh as a flower.”

“Then, although she came far, she didn’t walk far to get here. There’s a road back of the hill yonder, and a little copse in an open field where a motor-car has stood. I should say that she had driven herself there and come across the hill to you.”

“Could we track the car?” asked Sedgwick eagerly.

“No farther than the main road. What is the latest she ever left here, when she arrived afoot?”

“Once she stayed till half past six. I begged her to stay and dine; but she drew into herself at the mere suggestion.”

“Half past six. Allowing for a half past seven dinner, and time to dress for it, she would have perhaps twelve to fifteen miles to go in the car. That figures out with the saddle ride, too. Now, we have, as your visitor, a woman of rather inadequate description eked out by some excellent sketches—young, passably good-looking (don’t lose your temper, Sedgwick); passably good-looking, at least; with command of some wealth; athletic, a traveler, well informed. The name she gave is obviously not her own; not even, I judge, her maiden name.”

Sedgwick turned very white. “Do you mean that she is a married woman?” he demanded.

“How could you have failed to see it?” returned the other gently.

“But what is there to prove it?”

“Proof? None. Indication, plenty. Her visits, in the first place. A young girl of breeding and social experience would hardly have come to your studio. A married woman might, who respected herself with full confidence, and knew, with the same confidence, that you would respect her. And, my dear boy,” added Kent, with his quiet winning smile, “you are a man to inspire confidence. Otherwise, I myself might have suspected you of having a hand in the death of the woman on the beach.”

“Never mind the woman on the beach. This other matter is more than life or death. Is that flimsy supposition all you have to go on?”

“No. Her travel. Her wide acquaintance with men and events. Her obvious poise.”

“All might be found in a very exceptional girl, such as she is. Why shouldn’t she tell me, if she were married?”

“Oh, don’t expect me to dissect feminine psychology. There I’m quite beyond my depth. But you’ll note she doesn’t seem to have told you any slightest thing about herself. She’s let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, prey on your damask cheek.”

“Confound your misquotations! It’s true, though. But there might be many reasons.”

“Doubtless. Only, my imagination doesn’t seem to run to them. And reverting to tangible fact, as clenching evidence, there are her gloves, which she always wore.”

“What about her gloves?”

“You never saw her left hand, did you?”

“Oh, I see. You mean the wedding-ring. Well, I suppose,” continued Sedgwick, with a tinge of contempt in his voice, “she could have taken off her ring as easily as her gloves.”

There was no answering contempt in Chester Kent’s voice as he replied, “But a ring, constantly worn and then removed, leaves an unmistakable mark. Perhaps she gave you greater credit for powers of observation than you deserve. I’m afraid, Frank, that she is a married woman; and I’m sure, from reading between your lines, that she is a good woman. What the connection between her and the corpse on the beach may be, is the problem. My immediate business is to discover who the dead woman is.”

“And mine,” said Sedgwick hoarsely, “to discover the living.”

“We’ll at least start together,” replied Kent. “Come!”

Capacity for silence, that gift of the restful gods, was possessed by both men. Intent, each upon his own thoughts, they strode up the hillside and descended into a byway where stood a light runabout, empty. Throwing on the switch, Kent motioned his companion to get in. Twenty minutes of curving and dodging along the rocky roads brought them to the turnpike, in sight of the town of Annalaka. Not until then did Kent offer a word.

“The inquest is set for eleven o’clock,” he said.

“All right,” said Sedgwick with equal taciturnity.

They turned a corner, and ran into the fringe of a crowd hovering about the town hall. Halting his machine in a bit of shade, Kent surveyed the gathering. At one point it thickened about a man who was talking eagerly, the vocal center of a small circle of silence.

“Elder Dennett,” said Kent, “back from Cadystown. You’ll have to face the music now.”

“I’m ready.”

“You’re ready for attack. Are you ready for surprises?”

“No one is ever ready for surprise, or it wouldn’t be surprise, would it?”

“True enough. One word of warning: don’t lose your head or your temper if the suspicion raised against you by Dennett is strengthened by me.”

“By you!”

“Unfortunately. My concern is to get to the bottom of this matter. There is something the sheriff knows that I don’t know. Probably it is the identity of the body. To force him into the open, it may be necessary for me to augment the case against you.”

“Ought I to be ready for arrest?”

“Hardly probable at present. No; go on the stand when you’re called, and tell the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“But not the whole truth?”

“Nothing of the necklace. You won’t be questioned about that. By the way, you have never kept among your artistic properties anything in the way of handcuffs, have you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t suppose you had. Those manacles are a sticker. I don’t—I absolutely do not like those manacles. And on one wrist only! Perhaps that is the very fact, though—Well, we shall know more when we’re older; two hours older, say. Whether we shall know all that Mr. Sheriff Len Schlager knows, is another question. I don’t like Mr. Schlager, either, for that matter.”

“Dennett has seen me,” said Sedgwick in a low voice.

Indeed, the narrator’s voice had abruptly ceased, and he stood with the dropped jaw of stupefaction. One after another of his auditors turned and stared at the two men in the motor-car.

“Stay where you are,” said Kent, and stepped out to mingle with the crowd.

No one recognized, at first, the immaculate flannel-clad élégante as the bearded scientist whose strange actions had amused the crowd on the beach. A heavy solemn man addressed him:

“Friend of his?” he asked, nodding toward the artist.

“Yes.”

“He’ll need ’em. Going to give evidence?”

“To hear it, rather,” replied Kent pleasantly. “Where’s the body?”

“Inside. Just brought it over from Doctor Breed’s. He’s the medical officer, and he and the sheriff are running the show. Your friend want a lawyer, maybe?”

The thought struck Kent that, while a lawyer might be premature, a friend in the town might be very useful.

“Yes,” he said; “from to-morrow on.”

“Meanin’ that you’re in charge to-day,” surmised the big man shrewdly.

Kent smiled. “I dare say we shall get on very well together, Mr.—” his voice went up interrogatively.

“Bain, Adam Bain, attorney and counselor at law for thirty years in the town of Annalaka.”

“Thank you. My name is Kent. You already know my friend’s name. What kind of man is this medical officer?”

“Breed? Not much. More of a politician than a doctor, and more of a horse trader than either. Fidgety as a sandpaper undershirt.”

“Did he perform the autopsy at his own house?”

“Him and the sheriff last evening. Didn’t even have an undertaker to help lay out.”

The lobe of Kent’s ear began to suffer from repeated handling. “The body hasn’t been identified, I suppose?”

“Nobody’s had so much as a wink at it but those two and Ira Dennett. He viewed the corpse last night. That’s why I guess your friend needs his friends and maybe a lawyer.”

“Exactly. Mr. Dennett doesn’t seem to be precisely a deaf mute.”

Lawyer Bain emitted the bubbling chuckle of the fat-throated. “It’s quite some time since Iry won any prizes for silent thought,” he stated. “You are known, hereabouts?” he added, after a pause.

“Very little.”

“Gansett Jim, yonder, looks as if he kinder cherished the honor of your acquaintance.”

Over his shoulder Kent caught the half-breed’s glance fixed upon him with stolid intensity. A touch on his arm made him turn to the other side, where Sailor Smith faced him.

“Didn’t hardly know you, with your beard off,” piped the old man. “Howdy, Professor! You’re finickied up like your own weddin’.”

“Good morning,” said the scientist. “Are you going inside?”

“No hurry,” said the other. “Hotter’n Tophet in there.”

“I want a good seat; so I think I’ll go in at once,” said Kent. “Sit with us, won’t you? Mr. Sedgwick is with me.”

The ex-sailor started. “Him?” he exclaimed. “Here?”

Kent nodded. “Why not?”

“No reason. No reason at all,” said the old seaman hastily. “It’s a public proceedin’.”

“But you’re surprised to see him here?”

“There’s been quite a lot o’ talk—”

“Suspicion, you mean.”

“We—ell, yes.”

“People are inclined to connect Mr. Sedgwick with the death of the woman?”

“What else can you expect?” returned the old man deprecatingly. “Iry Dennett’s been tellin’ his story. He’s certain the woman he seen talkin’ to Mr. Sedgwick is the dead woman. Willin’ to swear to it anywheres.”

“What about Gansett Jim? Has he contributed anything to the discussion?”

“No. Jim’s as close-tongued as Iry is clatter-mouthed.”

“And probably with reason,” muttered Kent. “Well, I’ll look for you inside.”

He returned to join Sedgwick. Together they entered the building, while behind them a rising hum testified to the interest felt in them by the villagers.

Within, a tall wizened man, with dead fishy eyes, stalked nervously to and fro on a platform, beside which a hastily constructed coffin with a hasped cover stood on three sawhorses. On a chair near by slouched the sheriff, his face red and streaming. A few perspiring men and women were scattered on the benches. Outside a clock struck eleven. There was a quick inflow of the populace, and the man on the platform lifted up a chittering voice.

“Feller citizens,” he said, “as medical officer I declare these proceedings opened. Meaning no disrespect to the deceased, we want to get through as spry as possible. First we will hear witnesses. Anybody who thinks he can throw any light on this business can have a hearing. Then those as wants may view the remains. The burial will take place right afterwards, in the town buryin’-ground, our feller citizen and sheriff, Mr. Len Schlager, having volunteered the expenses.”

“That man,” said Sedgwick in Kent’s ear, “is a great deal more nervous this minute than I am.”

“Perhaps he has more cause to be,” whispered the scientist. “Here comes the first witness.”

A sheep-herder had risen in his place, and without the formality of an oath told of sighting the body at the edge of the surf at seven o’clock in the morning. Others, following, testified to the position on the beach, the lashing of the body to the grating, the wounds, and the manacles. Doctor Breed announced briefly that the deceased had come to her death by drowning, and that the skull had been crushed in, presumably, when the waves hammered the body upon the reefs.

“Then the corpse must have come from a good ways out,” said Sailor Smith; “for the reefs wouldn’t catch it at that tide.”

“Nobody knows how the dead come to Lonesome Cove,” said the sheriff in his deep voice.

There was a murmur of assent. The people felt a certain pride in the ill-omened locality.

Elder Ira Dennett was the next and last witness called. Somewhere beneath the Elder’s dry exterior lurked the instinct of the drama. Stalking to the platform, he told his story with skill and fervor. He made a telling point of the newly finished picture he had seen in Sedgwick’s studio, depicting the moonlit charge of the wave-mounted corpse. He sketched out the encounter between the artist and the dead woman vividly. As he proceeded, the glances turned upon Sedgwick darkened from suspicion to enmity. Kent was almost ready to wish that he had come armed, when Dennett, with a final fling of his arm toward the artist, stepped from the platform and resumed his seat, amid a surcharged silence.

Then Sedgwick rose. He was white; but his voice was under perfect control as he said, “I presume I have the right to be heard in my own defense?”

“Nobody’s accused you yet,” growled Schlager.

“Public opinion accuses me. That is not to be wondered at, in view of what Elder Dennett has just told you. It is all true. But I do not know the woman who accosted me. I never saw her before that evening. She spoke strangely to me, and indicated that she was to meet some one and go aboard ship, though I saw no sign of a ship.”

“You couldn’t see much of the ocean from your house,” said the medical officer.

“I walked on the cliffs later,” said Sedgwick, and a murmur went through the court room; “but I never found the woman. And as for throwing her out of a ship, or any such fantastic nonsense, I can prove that I was back in my house by a little after nine o’clock that night.”

He sat down, coolly enough; but his eyes dilated when Kent whispered to him:

“Keep your nerve. The probability will be shown that she was killed before ten o’clock.”

Now, however, Doctor Breed was on his feet again. “Form in line, ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “and pass the coffin as spry as possible.”

At this, Sheriff Schlager stepped forward and loosened the hasps, preparatory to removing the cover. “The body has been left,” said he, slipping the lid aside, “just as—” Of a sudden, his eyes stiffened. A convulsive shudder ran through his big body. He jammed the cover back, and, with fingers that actually drummed on the wood, forced the hasps into place.

“She’s come to life!” cried a voice from the rear.

“No, no!” rumbled the sheriff. Whirling upon the medical officer, he whispered in his ear; not more than a single word, it seemed to the watchful Kent.

The doctor turned ghastly. “Gents,” he said in a quavering voice to the amazed crowd, “the program will not be carried out as arranged. The—the—well, the condition of the deceased is not fitten—” He stopped, mopping his brow.

But Yankee curiosity was not so easily to be balked of its food. It found expression in Lawyer Adam Bain.

“That ain’t the law, Doc,” he said.

“I’m the law here,” declared Sheriff Schlager, planting himself solidly between the crowd and the coffin. One hand crept slowly back toward his hip.

“Don’t pull any gun on me,” retorted the lawyer quietly. “It ain’t necessary.”

“You heard Doc Breed say the body wasn’t fitten to be viewed,” pursued the sheriff.

“That’s all right, too. But the doc hasn’t got the final word. The law has.”

A quick murmur of assent passed through the room.

“And the law says,” continued Bain, “that the body shall be duly viewed. Otherwise, and the deceased being buried without view, an order of the court to exhume may be obtained.”

“Look at Breed,” whispered Kent to Sedgwick.

The medical officer’s lips were gray, as he leaned forward to pluck at the sheriff’s arm. There was a whispered colloquy between them. Then Breed spoke, with a pitiful effort at self-control:

“Lawyer Bain’s point is correct; undoubtedly correct. But the body must be prepared. It ought to ’a’ been looked to last night. But somehow I—we— Will six citizens kindly volunteer to fetch the coffin back to my house?”

Ten times six offered their services. The box was carried out swiftly, followed by the variable hum of excited conjecture. Quickly the room emptied itself, except for a few stragglers.

Sedgwick, who had followed the impromptu cortège with his vision, was brought up sharply by the glare of a pair of eyes outside the nearest window. The eyes were fixed on his own. Their expression was distinctly malevolent. Without looking round, Sedgwick said in a low voice:

“Kent!”

No answer came.

“Kent!” said the artist a little louder.

“Huh?” responded a muffled and abstracted voice behind him.

“See here for a moment.”

There was neither sound nor movement from the scientist.

“An Indian-looking chap outside the window is trying to hypnotize me, or something of the sort.”

This information, deemed by its giver to be of no small interest, elicited not the faintest response. Somewhat piqued, the artist turned, to behold his friend stretched on a bench, with face to the ceiling, eyes closed, and heels on the raised end. His lips moved faintly. Alarmed lest the heat had been too much for him, Sedgwick bent over the upturned face. From the moving lips issued a musical breath which began its career softly as Raff’s Cavatina and came to an inglorious end in the strains of Honey Boy. Sedgwick shook the whistler insistently.

“Eh? What?” cried Kent, wrenching his shoulder free. “Go away! Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“I’ll give you something to think about. Look at this face of a cigar-store Indian at the window. No! It’s gone!”

“Gansett Jim, probably,” opined Kent. “Just where his interest in this case comes in, I haven’t yet found out. He favored me with his regard outside. And he had some dealings with the sheriff on the beach. But I don’t want to talk about him now, nor about anything else.”

Acting on this hint, Sedgwick let his companion severely alone, until a bustle from without warned him that the crowd was returning. Being aroused, Kent accosted one of the villagers who had just entered.

“Body coming back?” he asked.

“Yep. On its way now.”

“What occurred in the house where they took it?”

“Search me! Everybody was shut out by the sheriff and the doc. They had that body to theirselves nigh twenty minutes.”

At this moment the sheriff entered the hall, followed by Doctor Breed, who escorted the coffin to its supporting sawhorses. The meager physician was visibly at the fag end of his self-control. Even the burly sheriff looked like a sick man, as he lifted aside the coffin lid and spoke.

“There was reasons, neighbors,” said he, “why the corpse wasn’t suitable to be looked at. Nobody had seen it since last night. We’ve fixed it up as good as we could, and you’ll now please pass by as quick as possible.”

In the line that formed Kent got a place behind Elder Dennett, who had decided to take another look for good measure, as he said. The look was a productive one. No sooner had it fallen on the face of the dead than Dennett jabbed an indicatory finger in that direction and addressed the sheriff:

“Hey, Len! What’s this?”

“What’s what?” growled Schlager.

“Why, there’s a cut on the lady’s right cheek. It wasn’t there when I seen the corpse last night.”

“Ah, what’s the matter with your eyes?” demanded the sheriff savagely. “You want to hog the lime-light, that’s your trouble!”

This was evidently a shrewd lash at a recognized weakness, and the Elder moved on amid jeering comments. But Sedgwick, whose eyes had been fixed upon Kent, saw a curious expression flicker and fade across the long-jawed face. It was exactly the expression of a dog that pricks up its ears. The next moment a titter ran through the crowd as a bumpkin in a rear seat called out:

“The dude’s eyes ain’t mates!”

Chester Kent, already conspicuous in his spotless white flannels, had made himself doubly so by drawing out a monocle and deftly fixing it in his right eye. He leaned over the body to look into the face, and his head jerked back the merest trifle. Bending lower, he scrutinized the unmanacled right wrist. When he passed on his lips were pursed in the manner of one who whistles noiselessly.

He resumed his seat beside Sedgwick. His eyes grew dull and melancholy. One would have thought him sunk in a daze, or a doze, while the procession filed past the unknown dead. His monocle, which had dropped from his eye as he turned from the coffin, dangled against his hand. Chancing to look down at it, Sedgwick started and stared. Kent’s knuckle, as seen through the glass, stood forth, monstrous and distorted, every line of the bronzed skin showing like a furrow.

The monocle was a powerful magnifying lens.

The sheriff’s heavy voice rose. “Any one here present recognize or identify the deceased?” he droned, and, without waiting for a reply, set the lid in place and signaled to the medical officer.

“Feller citizens,” began the still shaking physician, “we don’t need any jury to find that this unknown drowned woman—”

“The deceased was not drowned.” Emerging from his reverie, Chester Kent had leisurely risen in his place and made his statement.

“N-n-not drowned!” gasped the medical man.

“Certainly not! As you must know, if you made an autopsy.”

“No autopsy was necessary,” replied the other quickly. “There’s plenty of testimony without that. We’ve heard the witnesses that saw the drowned body on the grating it washed ashore on.”

“The body never washed ashore on that grating.”

A murmur ran through the crowd. “How do you figure that?” called a voice.

“On the under side of the grating I found a cocoon of a common moth. Half an hour in the water would have soaked the cocoon through and killed the insect inhabitant. The insect was alive.”

“How’d the grating get there, then?”

“Dragged down from the high-water mark on the beach. It was an old half-rotted affair such as no ship would carry. Ask Sailor Smith.”

“That’s true,” said the old seaman with conviction.

“You’re an expert, Mr. Smith. Now, was that grating large enough to float a full grown human body?”

“Why, as to that, a body ain’t but a mite heavier than the water. I should say it’d just barely float it, maybe.”

“Exactly; but plus several pounds of clothing, and some dead metal extra?”

“No.”

“The clothes would have been soaked, and handcuffs weigh something,” said Kent calmly.

“There might have been extra spars under the grating, that got pounded loose on the beach and washed away,” propounded the medical officer desperately.

“Look at the face,” said Kent with finality. “This is a bad coast. Most of you have seen drowned bodies. Did any one ever see an expression of such terror and agony on the face of one who came to death by drowning?”

“No, by thunder!” shouted somebody. “He’s right.”

Others took up the cry. Clamor rose and spread in the room. The sheriff silenced it with a stentorian voice. “What are you trying to get at?” he demanded, facing Kent.

“The truth. What are you?”

Schlager’s eyelids flickered; but he ignored the counter-stroke. “Look out it don’t lead you where you won’t want to follow,” he returned, with a significant look at Sedgwick.

“This is as far as it has led me,” said Kent, in his clear even voice. “The body, already dead, was dragged down and soaked in the sea, and then lashed to the grating by a man who probably is or has been a sailor.”

“Then the deceased met death on shore, and presumably by violence,” said Lawyer Bain.

“It’s murder!” cried a woman shrilly. “Bloody murder! That’s what it is!”

“Murder!” echoed a voice from the doorway. Gansett Jim, his half-Indian, half-negro face alight with fury, stood there pointing with stiffened hand at Sedgwick. “Dah de murderer!”

"Murder!" echoed a voice from the doorway.

No one moved in the court room for appreciable seconds after that pronouncement. As a flash-light photograph fixes an assemblage poised, with eyes staring in one direction, thus the half-breed’s words had cast a spell of immobility over all. It was a stillness fraught with danger. No man could say in what violent form it might break.

First to recover from the surprise was the sheriff. “You, Jim, set down!” he shouted. “If there’s to be any accusin’ done here, I’ll do it.”

“I do it,” persisted the half-breed. “Blood is on his han’. I see it.”

Involuntarily Sedgwick looked at his right hand. There was a low growl from the crowd.

“Steady!” came Kent’s voice at his elbow. “Mistakes like that are Judge Lynch’s evidence.”

“Whah was he the night of the killin’?” cried Gansett Jim. “Ast him. Whah was he?”

“Where was you, if it comes to that?” retorted the sheriff, and bit his lip with a scowl.

At that betrayal Chester Kent’s eyelids flashed up, and instantly drooped again into somberness.

“This hearing is adjourned,” twittered the medical officer. “Burial of the unknown, will take place at once. All are invited.”

“Invitation respectfully declined,” murmured Sedgwick to Kent. “I don’t know that I’m exactly frightened; but I think I’d breathe easier in the open country.”

“Well, I’m exactly frightened,” replied Kent in the same tone. “I want to run—which would probably be the end of us. Curious things about those handcuffs, isn’t it?” he went on in a louder and easily conversational voice.

During their slow progress to the door he kept up a running comment, which Sedgwick supported with equal coolness. The crowd, darkling and undecided, pressed around them. As they went through the doorway, they were jostled by a sudden pressure, following which Kent felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned to face the sheriff.

“Better get out of town quick,” advised Schlager in a half whisper.

“Thank you,” said Kent in a clear and cheerful voice. “Where can I get some tobacco?”

“Sterrett’s grocery keeps the best,” said some informant back of him. “End of the Square to the right.”

“Much obliged,” said Kent, and strolled leisurely to his car, followed by Sedgwick. As they took their seats and started slowly through the crowd, Sedgwick inquired earnestly:

“Do you crave tobacco at this particular moment worse than you do the peace and loneliness of the green fields?”

“Policy, my young friend,” retorted Kent. “I wish I could think up a dozen more errands to do. The more casually we get out of town, the less likely we are to be followed by a flight of rocks. I don’t want a perfectly good runabout spoiled by a mob.”

Both of them went into Sterrett’s store, where Kent earned the reputation from Sterrett of being “awful dang choosy about what he gets,” and came out into a considerable part of the populace, which had followed. As they reëmbarked, the sheriff put his foot on the running-board.

“Better take my tip,” he said significantly.

“Very well,” returned Kent. “There will be no arrest, then?”

“Not just now.”

A peculiar smile slid sidewise off a corner of the scientist’s long jaw. “Nor at any other time,” he concluded.

He threw in the clutch, leaving Schlager with his hand in his hair, and the crowd, which might so easily have become a mob, to disperse, slowly and hesitantly, having lacked the incentive of suggested flight on the part of the suspects to be spark to its powder. When the car had won the open road beyond the village Sedgwick remarked:

“Queer line the sheriff is taking.”

“Poor Schlager!” said Kent, chuckling. “No other line is open to him. He’s in a tight place. But it isn’t the sheriff that’s worrying me.”

“Who, then?”

“Gansett Jim.”

“What did the sheriff mean by asking Gansett Jim where he was the night of the murder?”

“Murder?” said Kent quizzically. “What murder?”

“The murder of the unknown woman, of course.”

“I don’t know that there was any murder.”

“Oh, well, the death of the unknown woman, then.”

“I don’t know that there was any unknown woman.”

“Quit it! From what you do know, what do you think the sheriff meant?”

“What do you think?”

“I think that Gansett Jim killed her and is trying to turn suspicion on me.”

“Humph!”

“But if the sheriff knows where Gansett Jim was at the time of the killing, he can’t suppose me guilty. I wonder if he really does believe me guilty?”

“If he does, he doesn’t care. His concern is quite apart from your guilt.”

“It’s too much for me,” confessed the artist.

“And for me. That is why I am going back to the village.”

“But I thought you were frightened.”

“If I stayed away from everything that alarms me,” said Kent, “I’d never have a tooth filled or speak to a woman under seventy. I’m a timid soul, Sedgwick; but I don’t think I shall be in any danger in Annalaka so long as I’m alone. Here we are. Out with you! I’ll be back by evening.”

To his surprise, Kent, turning into the village Square, found the crowd still lingering. A new focus of interest had drawn it to a spot opposite Sterrett’s store, where a wagon, decorated in the most advanced style of circus art, shone brilliant in yellow and green. Bright red letters across the front presented to public admiration the legend:

SIMON P. GROOT
SIMON PURE GOODS

A stout projection rested on one of the rear wheels. Here stood the proprietor of the vehicle, while behind him in a window were displayed his wares. It was evident that Simon P. Groot followed the romantic career of an itinerant hawker, dealing in that wide range of commodities roughly comprised in the quaint term, “Yankee notions.” Before the merchandizing voice came to the new arrival’s ears as anything more than a confused jumble, Kent was struck with the expansive splendor of the man’s gestures, the dignity of his robust figure, and the beauty of a broad whitening beard that spread sidewise like the ripples from a boat’s stem. Two blemishes unhappily marred the majesty of Simon P. Groot’s presence; a pair of pin-head eyes, mutually attracted to each other, and a mean and stringent little voice. Freed of these drawbacks, his oratory might well, one could not but feel, have rolled in any of our legislative chambers more superbly and just as ineffectually as much of the other oratory therein practised. That the Annalakans were truly spellbound by it was obvious. Indeed, Kent was at a loss to understand the depth of their absorption until he had come within the scope of the high-piping words.

“There, gentlemen and ladies,” Simon P. Groot was saying, “there in that place of vast silences and infolding shadows I met and addressed one who was soon to be no more. ‘Madam,’ I said, ‘you are worn. You are wan. You are weary. Trust the chivalry of one who might be your father. Rest and be comforted as with balm.’ Standing by the roadside, she drooped like a flower. ‘There is no rest for me,’ said she in mournful tones. ‘I must away upon my mission.’ ‘Stay!’ I bade her. ‘Ere you go, but touch your lips to this revivifying flagon. De Lorimer’s Life Giving Tonic, free from intoxicants, poisons, and deception, a boon to the blood, a balm to the nerves, a prop to the flagging spirit.’ She looked, she tasted, she drank. New color sprang to her cheeks. Her form pulsated with joyous vigor. ‘Aged sir,’ said she, ‘I know not your name; but if the blessings of a harried spirit are of avail, your sleep will be sweet this night.’ Of this wonderful balm, ladies and gentlemen of Annalaka, I have still a few bottles left at the low price of half a dollar each. Sickness flies before it. Amalgamating at once with the blood, it clears the precious life fluid of all impurities, and rehabilitates man, woman, and child, body, soul and mind.”

The shrill voice rose and fell, the wide beard quivered with the passion of salesmanship, the gaudy bottles on the shelf were replaced by half-dollars, until the market flagged. Whereupon again the orator took up his tale.

“Ever shall I give thanks for that inestimable privilege, the privilege of having given cheer to one on the brink of a dreadful doom. She vanished, that fair creature, into the forest. I looked at my watch—the unerring, warranted, sixteen-jeweled chronometer which I shall presently have the honor of showing to you at the unexampled price of three-seventy—and saw that the hour was exactly—for these timepieces vary not one fraction of a second in a day—eight-forty-five. When next I looked at the face of Father Time’s trustiest accountant, it was to mark the hour of the horrid shriek that shook my soul; precisely nine-thirty-one. And later, when I heard the dread news, I realized that my ears had thrilled to a death cry.”

He looked about him with a face of controlled emotion. His voice dropped to a throaty and mesmeric gurgle.

“How frail,” he continued: “How frail and uncertain is the life of mankind! Who of these happy faces before me may not to-morrow be bathed in tears for the loss of some loved one? Best be prepared against the time of sorrow. I show you here a unique collection of framed mottoes, suitable alike for the walls of the humblest home or the grandest palace. Within these tasty frames are enshrined comforting mortuary verses, delicately ornamented by the hands of our leading artists, such poetry as distils assuagement upon the wounded heart; and these priceless objects of art and agents of mercy I am distributing at the nominal charge of one dollar each.”

Kent moved away, his chin pressed down upon his chest. He went to the office of Lawyer Adam Bain, and spent an hour waiting, with his feet propped up on the desk. When the lawyer entered Kent remarked:

“You rather put our two official friends in a hole this morning.”

“Just a mite, maybe. But they’ve crawled out. I guess I spoke too quick.”

“How so?”

“Well, if they’d gone ahead and buried the body as it was, we could have had it exhumed. And then we’d have seen what we’d have seen.”

“True enough. And you didn’t see it as it was?”

“See what? Did you?”

Kent’s quiet smile sidled down from the corner of his mouth.

“Suppose,” he said, “you give me the fullest possible character sketch of our impulsive friend, the sheriff.”

Half an hour was consumed in this process. At the end of the time Kent strolled back to the Square where Simon P. Groot had been discoursing. There he found the ornate wagon closed, and its ornate proprietor whistling over some minor repairs that he had been making. An invitation to take a ride in Kent’s car was promptly accepted.

“Business first,” said Kent. “You’re a seller. I’m a buyer. You’ve got some information that I may want. If so, I’m ready to pay. Was any of your talk true?”

“Yep,” replied Simon P. Groot austerely. “It was all true but the frills.”

“Will you trim off the frills for ten dollars?”

“Fair dealing for a fair price is my motto; you’ll find it in gilt lettering on the back of the wagon. I will.”

“What were you doing on Hawkill Cliffs?”

“Sleeping in the wagon.”

“And you really met this mysterious wanderer?”

“Sure as you’re standing there.”

“What passed between you?”

“I gave her good evening, and she spoke to me fair enough but queer, and said that my children’s children might remember the day. Now, I ain’t got any children to have children; so I wouldn’t have thought of it again but for the man that came inquiring after her.”

“When was that?”

“Not fifteen minutes after.”

“Did you tell the crowd here that?”

“Yep. I sold two dozen wedding-rings on the strength and romance of that point. From my description they allowed it was a painter man named Sedgwick. I thought maybe I’d call in and have him touch up the wagon a bit where she’s rusty.”

“And you heard the woman cry out less than an hour later?”

“That’s a curious thing. I’d have almost sworn it was a man’s voice that yelled. It went through me like a sharpened icicle.”

“All this was night before last. What have you been doing meantime?”

“Drove over to Marcus Corners to trade yesterday. There I heard about the murder and came back here to make a little business out of it. I’ve done fine.”

“You made no attempt to trace the woman?”

“Look here!” said Simon P. Groot after a spell of thoughtfulness. “Your ten dollars is good, and you’re a gent, all right; but I think I’ve talked a little too much with my mouth around here, and I’m afraid they might dig up this lady and start something new and want me for a witness. Witnessing is bad for business.”

“I’m safe,” said Kent.

“So far so good. Now, would it be worth five dollars to you, likely, a relic of the murderer?” suggested the old man.

“Quite likely.”

“Mum’s the word, then, for my part in it. That next morning I followed her trail a ways. You see, the yell in the night had got me interested. It was an easy trail to follow for a man that’s acquainted in the woods, and I used to be a yarb-grubber. Do a little of it now, sometimes. She’d met somebody in a thicket. I found the string and the paper of the bundle she was carrying, there. Then there was a fight of some sort; for the twigs were broken right to the edge of the thicket, and the ground stamped down. One or both of ’em must have broken out into the open, and I lost the trail. But this is what I found on a hazel bush. Do I win the five on it?”

Kent’s eyes drooped, fixing themselves on a small object which the other had laid on his knee. His lips pursed. Nothing that could be interpreted as an answer came from them. Simon P. Groot waited with patience. Finally he said:

“That’s an awful pretty tune you’re whistlin’, mister, but sad, and terrible long. What about the five? Do we trade?”

The car came to a stop. Digging into his pocket, Kent produced a bill which he handed over, and still whistling the long-meter China, took possession of Simon P. Groot’s “relic”. It was an embroidered silver star, with a few torn wisps of cloth clinging to it.

“Facts that contradict each other are not facts,” pronounced Chester Kent.

Fumes of tobacco were rising from three pipes hovered about the porch of the Nook where Kent, Sedgwick and Lawyer Bain were holding late council. A discouraged observation from the artist had elicited Kent’s epigram.

“Not all of them, anyhow,” said Bain. “The chore in this case is to find facts enough to work on.”

“On the contrary,” declared Kent, “facts in this case are as plentiful as blackberries. The trouble is that we have no pail to put them in.”

“Maybe we could borrow Len Schlager’s,” suggested the lawyer dryly.

Kent received this with a subdued snort. “It is remarkable that the newspapers haven’t sent men down on such a sensational case,” he said.

“On the contrary to you, sir,” retorted Bain, “so much fake stuff has come out of Lonesome Cove that the papers discount any news from here.”

“All the better. The only thing that worries me more than the stupidity of professional detectives is the shrewdness of trained reporters. At least we can work this out in our own way.”

“We don’t seem to be getting much of anywhere,” complained Sedgwick.

“Complicated cases don’t clear themselves up in a day,” remarked Kent. “In this one we’ve got opponents who know more than we do.”

“Schlager?” asked the lawyer.

“And Doctor Breed. Also, I think, Gansett Jim. What do you think, Mr. Bain, is the mainspring of the sheriff’s action?”

“Money,” said the lawyer with conviction. “He’s as crooked as a snake with the colic.”

“Would it require much money to influence him?”

“As much as he could get. If the case was in the line of blackmail, he’d hold out strong. He’s shrewd.”

“Doctor Breed must be getting some of it.”

“Oh, Tim Breed is Len’s little dog. He takes orders. Of course he’ll take money too, if it comes his way. Like master, like man.”

“Those two,” said Kent slowly, “know the identity of the body. For good and sufficient reasons, they are keeping that information to themselves. Those reasons we aren’t likely to find out from them.”

“Murderer has bribed ’em,” opined Bain.

“Possibly. But that presupposes that the sheriff found something on the body which led him to the murderer, which isn’t likely. How improbable it is that a murderer—allowing, for argument, that there has been murder—who would go as far as to cover his trail and the nature of the crime by binding the body on a grating, would overlook anything like a letter incriminating himself!”

“What did the sheriff find, then, in the dead woman’s pocket?”

“Perhaps a handkerchief with a distinctive mark.”

“And that would lead him to the identity of the body?”

“Presumably. Also to some one, we may assume, who was willing to pay roundly to have that identity concealed.”

“That would naturally be the murderer, wouldn’t it?” asked Sedgwick.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“It looks to me so,” said the lawyer. “He’s the one naturally interested in concealment.”

“I’m almost ready to dismiss the notion of a murderer at all.”

“Why so?” demanded both the others.

“Because there was no murder, probably.”

“How do you make that out?” queried Bain.

“From the nature of the wounds that caused death.”

“They look to me to be just such wounds as would be made by a blow with a heavy club.”

“Several blows with a heavy club might have caused such wounds. But the blows would have had to be delivered peculiarly. A circle on the skull, six inches in diameter, impinging on the right ear, is crushed in. If you can imagine a man swinging a baseball bat at the height of his shoulder, repeatedly and with great force, at the victim’s head, you can infer such a crushing in of the bone. My imagination hardly carries me so far.”

“Beating down from above would be the natural way,” said Bain.

“Certainly. No such blow ever made that wound.”

“Then how was it made?” asked Sedgwick.

“Probably by a fall from the cliff to the rocks below.”

“And the fall broke the manacle from the right wrist?”

“The broken manacle was never on the right wrist.”

“That’s merely conjecture,” said the lawyer.

“No; it’s certainty. A blow heavy enough to break that iron, old as it is, must have left a mark on the flesh. There was no mark.”

“Why should any one put one handcuff on a woman and leave the other dangling?”

“Suppose the other was not left dangling?”

“Where was it, then?”

“On the wrist of some other person, possibly.”

“A man had chained the woman to himself?” said Sedgwick incredulously.

“More probably the other way round.”

“That’s even more unbelievable.”

“Not if you consider the evidence. You will remember that your mysterious visitor, while talking with you, carried a heavy bundle. The manacles were, I infer, in that.”

“But what conceivable motive could the dead woman have in dressing herself up like a party, going to meet a man, and chaining him to herself?”

“When you have a bizarre crime you must look for bizarre motives. Just at present I’m dealing with facts. The iron was on the left wrist of the body; therefore, it was on the right wrist of the unknown companion. It is natural to perform a quick deft act like snapping on a handcuff, with the right hand. Hence, presumably, your visitor was the one who clamped the cuffs.”

“And the man broke off his?”

“Yes. But only after a struggle, undoubtedly. If I could find a man with a badly bruised right wrist, I should consider the trail’s end in sight. You’ll make inquiries, will you, Mr. Bain?”

“I will, and I’ll keep an eye on Len Schlager and the doc. Anything more now? If not, I’ll say good night.”

After the lawyer had made his way into the darkness, Kent turned to his host. “This affair is really becoming a very pretty problem. Why didn’t you tell me of your meeting with Simon P. Groot?”

“Who?”

“The patriarch in the circus wagon.”

“Oh! I’d forgotten. Why, when I was trying to trail the woman, I chanced upon him and asked if he had seen her. He hadn’t.”

“He had. Also he heard a terrified cry shortly after. The cry, he thought, was in a man’s voice. Simon P. Groot isn’t wholly lacking in sense of observation.”

“A man’s voice in a cry? What could that mean?”

“Oh, any one of several hundred unthinkable things,” said Kent patiently.

“Wait! She must have attacked some other man, as she did me. She was going to a rendezvous, wasn’t she? Then she and the man she went to meet quarreled, and he killed her by throwing her over the cliff.”

“And the handcuffs?”

Sedgwick’s hands went to his head. “That, of course, is the inexplicable thing. But don’t you think that was the way she met her death?”

“No.”

“Then what do you think?”

“Never mind that at present. The point is that Simon P. Groot naturally supposed you to have been mixed up in whatever tragedy there was going. You’ve an unfortunate knack of manufacturing evidence against yourself, Sedgwick. The redeeming feature is that the sheriff can’t very well use it to arrest you.”

“I don’t see why.”

Kent chuckled. “Don’t you see that the last thing the sheriff wants to do is arrest anybody?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why, he has the body safely buried, now. You’ll remember that he was in a great hurry to get it buried. Identification is what he dreaded. Danger of identification is now over. If any one should be arrested, the body would be exhumed and the danger would return in aggravated form. No; he wants you suspected, not arrested.”

“He is certainly getting his wish!”

“For the present. Well, I’m off.”

“Why don’t you move your things from the hotel and stay here with me?” suggested Sedgwick.

“Getting nervous?” inquired Kent.

“It isn’t that; but I think I could make you more comfortable.”

Kent shook his head. “Thank you; but I don’t believe I’d better. When I’m at work on a case I need privacy.”

“And so you stick to a public hotel! Queer notions you have of privacy.”

“Not at all. A hotel is absolutely mine to do with as I please, as long as I pay my bills. I’m among strangers; I’m not interfered with. No house, not even a man’s own, can possibly be so private as a strange hotel.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” admitted the other, with a laugh; then, lapsing into pronounced gloom for the first time, he said, “It seems pretty tough that I should be in all this coil and tangle because a crazy woman happened by merest chance to make a call on me.”

Kent’s pipe glowed in the darkness and silence before he replied. Then he delivered himself as follows: “Sedgwick”—puff—“try”—puff—“to forget if you can”—puff—puff—“that stuff about the crazy woman”—puff—puff—puff.

“Forget it? How should I? Why should I?”

“Because”—puff—“you’re absolutely on the”—puff—puff—“wrong track. Good night.”

Slowly Kent climbed the road to the crest of the hill; then stopped and looked back into the studio, which had sprung into light as soon as he left. Sedgwick’s figure loomed, tall and spare, in the radiance. The artist was standing before his easel, looking down at it fixedly. Kent knew what it was that he gazed on, and as the lovely wistful girl-face rose in his memory he sighed, a little.

“I mustn’t forget that quest,” he said. “Poor old Sedgwick!”

But, once in his room, the picture faded, and there came before his groping mental vision instead the spectacle of two dark figures, chained together and battling, the one for life, the other for some mysterious elusive motive that fluttered at the portals of his comprehension like a half-remembered melody. And the second struggling figure, whose face was hidden, flashed in the moonlight with the sheen of silver stars against black.

Sundayman’s Creek Road, turning aside just before it gains the turnpike to the Eyrie Hotel to evade a stretch of marsh, travels on wooden stilts across a deep clear pool fed by a spring. Signs at each end of the crossing threaten financial penalties against any vehicle traversing the bridge faster than a walk. Now, the measure of a walk for an automobile is dubious; but the most rigorous constable could have found no basis for protest in the pace maintained by a light electric car, carrying a short, slender, elderly man, who peered out with weary eyes into the glory of the July sunshine. At the end of the bridge the car stopped to allow its occupant a better view of a figure prostrate on the brink of the pool. Presently the figure came to the posture of all fours. The face turned upward, and the motorist caught the glint of a monocle. Then the face turned again to its quest.

“Are you looking for something lost?” asked the man in the car.

“Yes,” was the reply. “Very much lost.”

“When did you lose it, if it’s not an impertinent question?”

“Not in the least,” answered the other cordially. “I didn’t lose it at all.”

“Ah!” The motorist smiled. “When was it lost, then?”

Across the monocled face passed a shadow of thoughtful consideration. “About four million years ago, I should judge.”

“And you are still looking? I perceive that you are an optimist,” said the elderly man.

“Just at present I’m a limnologist.”

“Pardon me?”

“A limnologist. Limnology is the science of the life found on the banks of small bodies of water. It is a fascinating study, I assure you. There is only one chair of limnology in the world.”

“And you, I presume, are the incumbent?” asked the other politely.

“No, indeed! The merest amateur, on the contrary. I’m humbly hoping to discover the eggs of certain neuropterous insects. We know the insects, and we know they lay eggs; but how they conceal them has been a secret since the first dragon-fly rose from the first pool.”

“Ah! You are an entomologist, then.”

“To some extent.”

“So was I, once—when I had more time. Business has drawn my attention, though never my interest, away from it. I’ve entirely dropped my reading in the last year. By the way, were you here in time to witness the swarm of antiopas last month? Rather unusual, I think.”

“No, I missed that. What was the feature, specially?”

“The suddenness of the appearance. You know, Helmund says that—”

“Pardon me, who?”

“Helmund, the Belgian.”

“Oh, yes, certainly. Go on!”

The stranger went on at some length. He appeared to be an interested rather than a learned student of the subject. As he talked, sitting on the step of his car, from which he had descended, the other studied him, his quiet but forceful voice, his severely handsome face, with its high brows, harsh nose, and chiseled outlines, from which the eyes looked forth, thoughtful, alert, yet with the gaze of a man in pain. Presently he said courteously:

“If you are going back to the hotel, may I take you along? I am Alexander Blair.”

“Thank you. I’ll be glad of a lift. My name is Chester Kent.”

“Not the Professor Kent of the Ramsay case?”

“The same. You know, Mr. Blair, I’ve always believed that you had more of a hand in Ramsay’s death than I. Now, if you wish to withdraw your offer of a lift—”

“Not at all. A man who has been so abused by the newspapers as I, can stand a little plain speaking. For all that, on my word, Professor Kent, I had no hand in sending Ramsay on that dirty business of his.”

The scientist considered him thoughtfully. “Well, I believe you,” said he shortly, and got into the machine.

“This meeting is a fortunate chance for me,” said Blair presently.

“Chance?” murmured Kent interrogatively.

The car swerved sharply, but immediately resumed the middle of the road.

“Certainly, chance,” said the motorist. “What else should it be?”

“Of course,” agreed Kent. “As you say.”

“I said fortunate,” continued the other, “because you are, I believe, the very man I want. There is an affair that has been troubling me a good deal. I haven’t been able to look into it personally, because of the serious illness of my son, who is at my place on Sundayman’s Creek. But it is in your line, being entomological, and perhaps criminal.”

“What is it?” asked Kent.

“An inexplicable destruction of our stored woolens by the clothes moth. You may perhaps know that I am president of the Kinsella Mills. We’ve been having a great deal of trouble this spring, and our superintendent believes that some enemy is introducing the pest into our warehouses. Will you take the case?”

“When?”

“Start to-night for Connecticut.”

Chester Kent’s long fingers went to the lobe on his ear. “Give me until three o’clock this afternoon to consider. Can I reach you by telephone?”

“Yes, at Hedgerow House, my place.”

“That is how far from here?”

“Fourteen miles; but you need not come there. I could return to the hotel to conclude arrangements. And I think,” he added significantly, “that you would find the project a profitable one.”

“Doubtless. Are you well acquainted with this part of the country, Mr. Blair?”

“Yes, I’ve been coming here for years.”

“Is there an army post near by?”

“Not within a hundred miles.”

“Nor any officers on special detail about?”

“None, so far as I know.”

Kent produced from his pocket the silver star with the shred of cloth hanging to it. “This may or may not be an important clue to a curious death that occurred here three days ago.”

“Yes, I’ve heard something of it,” said the other indifferently. “I took it to be mostly gossip.”

“Before the death there was a struggle. This star was found at the scene of the struggle.”

“It looks like the star from the collar of an officer. I should say positively that it was from an army or navy uniform.”

“Positiveness is the greatest temptation and snare that I have to fight against,” remarked Chester Kent. “Otherwise I should say positively that no officer, going to a dubious rendezvous, would wear a uniform which would be certain to make him conspicuous. Are you yourself an expert in woolen fabrics, Mr. Blair?”

“I have been.”

“Could you tell from that tiny fragment whether or not the whole cloth is all wool?”

Without replying, Blair gave the steering handle a quick sweep, and the car drew up before a drug store. He took the star and was gone a few minutes.

“Not all wool,” he announced on his return.

“Exit the army or navy officer,” remarked Kent.

“Why so?”

“Because regulations require all-wool garments—and get them. What is the fabric?”

“A fairly good mixture, from the very elemental chemical test I made. Something in the nature of a worsted batiste, I should judge, from what I could make out under the inferior magnifying-glass that they loaned me.”

“Thank you, Mr. Blair. You’ve eliminated one troublesome hypothesis for me. I’ll telephone you before three o’clock. Good day.”

From the woolen manufacturer, Chester Kent went direct to the Martindale Center library, where he interviewed the librarian.

“Do you get the Agriculture Department publications?”

“Yes.”

“Have you a pamphlet issued by the Bureau of Entomology, Helmund on The Swarm Phenomenon in Lepidoptera?”

“Yes, sir. It was inquired for only yesterday by Mr. Blair.”

“Ah, yes. He’s quite interested in the subject, I believe.”

“It must be quite recent, then,” said the librarian. “We haven’t seen him here for a long time until two days ago, when he came and put in a morning, reading on insects.”

“So, Mr. Alexander Blair,” said Kent, addressing the last fence post on the outskirts of the town, after a thoughtful walk, “that was a fatal break on your part, that mention of Helmund. Amateurs who have wholly dropped a subject since years back don’t usually know publications issued only within three months. That casual meeting with me was well carried out, and you called it chance. A very palpably manufactured chance! But why am I worth so much trouble to know? And why does Alexander Blair leave a desperately ill son to arrange an errand for me at this particular time? And is Hedgerow House, fourteen miles distant and possessing just such an electric car as a woman would use in driving round the country, perhaps the place whence came Sedgwick’s sweet lady of mystery? Finally, what connection has all this with the body lying in Annalaka burying-ground?”

Eliciting no reply from the fence post, Kent returned to the Eyrie, called up Hedgerow House, and declined Blair’s proposition.

Early that evening Francis Sedgwick came to the hotel. The clerk, at first negligent, pricked up his ears and exhibited unmistakable signs of human interest when he heard the name; for the suspicion attaching to the artist had spread swiftly. Moreover, the caller was in a state of hardly repressed excitement.

“Mr. Kent? I’m afraid you can’t see him, sir. He isn’t in his room.”

“Isn’t he about the hotel?”

The clerk hesitated. “I ought not to tell you, sir, for it’s Mr. Kent’s strict orders not to be disturbed; but he’s in his special room. Is it anything very important? Any new evidence, or something of that sort?”

“That is what I want Mr. Kent to decide.”

“In that case I might take the responsibility. But I think I had better take you to him myself.”

After the elevator had carried them to the top of its run, they mounted a flight of stairs, and walked to a far corner of the building.

“Nobody’s been in here since he took it,” explained the clerk as they walked. “Turned all the furniture out. Special lock on the door. Some kind of scientific experiments, I suppose. He’s very quiet about it.”

Having reached the door, he discreetly tapped. No answer came. Somewhat less timidity characterized his next effort. A growl of surpassing savagery from within was his reward.

“You see, Mr. Sedgwick,” said the clerk. Raising his voice he called, “Mr. Kent, I’ve brought—”

“Get away and go to the devil!” cried a voice from inside in fury. “What do you mean by—”

“It’s I, Kent, Sedgwick. I’ve got to see you.”

There was a silence of some seconds.

“What do you want?” asked Kent at length.

“You told me to come at once if anything turned up.”

“So I did,” sighed Kent. “Well, chase that infernal bell-boy to the stairs, and I’ll let you in.”

With a wry face the clerk retired. Kent opened the door, and his friend squeezed through into a bare room. The walls were hung and the floor was carpeted with white sheets. There was no furniture of any kind, unless a narrow mattress in one corner could be so reckoned. Beside the mattress lay a small pad and a pencil. Only on the visitor’s subconscious self did these peculiarities impress themselves, such was his absorption in his own interests.

“It’s happened!” he announced.

“Has it?” said Kent. “Lean up against the wall and make yourself at home. Man, you’re shaking!”

“You’d shake, too,” retorted the artist, his voice trembling.

“No; anger doesn’t affect me that way. Wait! Now, don’t tell me yet. If I’m to have a report, it must be from a sane man, not from one in a blind fury. Take time and cool down. What do you think of my room?”

“It looks like the abode of white silence. Have you turned Trappist monk?”

“Not such a bad guess. This is the retreat of my mind. I think against the blank walls.”

“What’s the game?” asked Sedgwick, interested in spite of himself.

“It dates back to our college days. Do you remember that queer freshman, Berwind?”

“The mind-reader? Yes. The poor chap went insane afterward.”

“Yes. It was a weak mind, but a singularly receptive one. You know we used to force numbers or playing-cards upon his consciousness by merely thinking of them.”

“I recollect. His method was to stand gazing at a blank wall. He said the object we were thinking of would rise before him visually against the blankness. Did you ever figure out how he managed to do it?”

“Not exactly. But his notion of keeping the mind blank for impressions has its points. If you throw off the clutch of the brain, as it were, and let it work along its own lines, it sometimes arranges and formulates ideas that you wouldn’t get from it under control.”

“Sort of self-hypnosis?”

“In a sense. For years I’ve kept a bare white room in my Washington house to do my hard thinking in. When your affair promised to become difficult for me, I rigged up this spot. And I’m trying to see things against the walls.”

“Any particular kind of things?”

Kent produced the silver star from his pocket, and told of its discovery. “The stars in their courses may have fought against Sisera,” he remarked; “but they aren’t going out of their way to fight—to fight—to—to—” Kent’s jaw was sagging down. His lean fingers pulled savagely at the lobe of his long-suffering ear. “The stars in their courses—in their courses— That’s it!” he half whispered. “Sedgwick; what was it your visitor said to you about Jupiter?”

“She didn’t mention Jupiter.”

“No, of course not. Not by name. But what was it she said about the planet that she pointed out, over the sea?”

“Oh; was that Jupiter? How did you know?”

“Looked last night, of course,” said Kent impatiently. “There’s no other planet conspicuous over the sea at that hour, from where you stood. That’s not important; at least, not now. What did she say?”

“Oh, some rot about daring to follow her star and find happiness, and that perhaps it might lead me to glory or something.”

A kind of snort came from Kent. “Where have my brains been!” he cried. He thrust the bit of embroidery back into his pocket. Then, with an abrupt change of tone:

“Well, is your temper in hand?”

“For the present.”

“Tell me about it, then.”

“You remember the—the picture of the face?” said Sedgwick with an effort.

“Nobody would easily forget it.”

“I’ve been doing another portrait from the sketches. It was on opaque glass, an experimental medium that I’ve worked on some. Late this afternoon I went out, leaving the glass sheet, backed against a light board, on my easel. The door was locked with a heavy spring. There’s no possible access by the window. Yet somebody came in and smashed my picture to fragments. If I can find that man, Kent, I’ll kill him!”

Kent glanced at the artist’s long strong hands. They were clenched on his knees. The fingers were bloodless.

“I believe you would,” said the scientist with conviction. “You mustn’t, you know. No luxuries, at present.”

“Don’t joke with me about this, Kent.”

“Very good. But just consider, please, that I’m having enough trouble clearing you of a supposed murder of your doing, to want a real one, however provoked, on my hands.”

“Keep the man out of my way, then.”

“That depends. Anything else in your place damaged?”

“Not that I noticed. But I didn’t pay much attention to anything else. I came here direct to find you.”

“That’s right. Well, I’m with you, for the Nook.”

Locking his curious room after him, Kent led the way to the hotel lobby, where he stopped only long enough to send some telegrams. The sun was still a few minutes short of its setting when he and his companion emerged from the hotel. Kent at once broke into a trot.

Such ruin as had been wrought in Sedgwick’s studio was strictly localized. The easel lay on the floor, with its rear leg crumpled. Around it were scattered the fragments of the glass upon which the painter had set his labor of love. A high old-fashioned chair faced the wreckage. On its peak was hung a traveling cap. Lopping across the back sprawled a Norfolk jacket belonging to Sedgwick. Chester Kent lifted the coat, and after a swift survey let it drop.

“Did you leave that there?” he asked.

“I hung it across the back of the chair,” answered Sedgwick.

“North window closed?”

“Yes, as you see it now.”

“And west one open?”

“Nothing has been changed, I tell you, except this.” Sedgwick’s hand, outstretched toward the destroyed portrait, condensed itself involuntarily into a knotty fist.

“The lock of the door hasn’t been tampered with,” said Kent. “As for this open window,” he leaned out, looking around, “any man gaining access here must have used a ladder, which is unlikely in broad daylight.”

“How about a pass-key for the door?”

“There’s a simpler solution nearer at hand, I fancy. You didn’t chance to notice that things have happened to the coat, as well as to the easel.”

“Then the invader went through the coat and, not finding what he was looking for, smashed my picture,” cried Sedgwick.

“Through the coat, certainly,” agreed Kent, with his quiet smile. “Now hang it across the chair back just as it was, please.”

Sedgwick took the Norfolk jacket from him. “Why, there’s a hole through it!” he exclaimed.

“Exactly: the path of the invader.”

“A bullet!”

“Right again. Instead of murdering, as you pine to do, you’ve been murdered. That the picture was destroyed is merely a bit of ill fortune. That you weren’t inside the coat when the bullet went through it and cut the prop from your easel, is a bit of the other kind. Hang up the coat, please.”

Sedgwick obeyed.

“There,” said Kent viewing the result from the window. “At a distance of, say, a quarter of a mile, that arrangement of coat and cap would look uncommonly like a man sitting in a chair before his work. At least, I should think so. And yonder thicket on the hillside,” he added, looking out of the window again, “is just about that distance, and seems to be the only spot in sight giving a straight range. Suppose we run up there.”

Sound as was his condition, Sedgwick was panting when he brought up at the spot, some yards behind his long-limbed leader. As the scientist had surmised, the arrangement of coat and cap in the studio presented, at that distance, an excellent simulacrum of the rear view of a man lounging in a chair. Bidding the artist stay outside the copse, Kent entered on hands and knees and made extended exploration. After a few moments the sound of low lugubrious whistling was heard from the trees, and presently the musician emerged leading himself by the lobe of his ear.

“Evidently you’ve found something,” commented Sedgwick, who had begun to comprehend his friend’s peculiar methods of expression.

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you so pleased with yourself?”

“That is why.”

“Because you’ve found nothing?”

“Exactly.”

“It seems an easy system,” observed the artist sarcastically.

“So it is, to a reasoning being. I’m satisfied that some one fired a shot from here. The marksman—a good one—saw you, as he supposed, jerk to the shot as if with a bullet through you, and went away satisfied.”

“Leaving no trace behind him,” added Sedgwick.

“No trace that is tangible. Therein lies the evidence.”

“Of course you don’t expect me to follow that.”

“Why not? Look at the ground in the thicket.”

“What is there to be seen there, since you’ve said there are no marks?”

“The soil is very soft.”

“Yes; there’s a spring just back of us.”

“Yet there’s not a footprint discernible on it.”

“I’ve got that part of the lesson by heart, I think.”

“Use your brain on it, then. Some one designing to make you his target, has been in this thicket; been and gone, and left the place trackless. That some one was a keen soft-footed woodsman. Putting it in words of one syllable, I should say he probably had the racial instinct of the hunt. Does that flush any idea from the deep and devious coverts of your brain?”

“Racial instinct? Gansett Jim!” said Sedgwick.

“Exactly. If I had found tracks all over the place, I should have known it wasn’t he. Finding nothing, I was naturally pleased.”

“That’s more than I am,” retorted the other. “I suppose he’s likely to resume his gunnery at any time.”

“Unless we can discourage him—as I expect we can.”

“By having him arrested?”

“Difficulties might be put in our way. Sheriff Len Schlager and the half-breed are in some sort of loose partnership in this affair, as you know. Gansett Jim honestly thinks that you had a hand in the Lonesome Cove murder, as he believes it to be. It isn’t impossible that the sheriff has subtly egged him on to kill you in revenge.”

“Why does the sheriff want me killed?”

“Nothing personal, I assure you,” answered Kent with mock courtesy. “I’ve already explained that he will not arrest you. But you’re the suspect, and if you were put out of the way every one would believe you the murderer. There would be a perfunctory investigation, the whole thing would be hushed up, and the body in Annalaka churchyard would rest in peace—presumably a profitable peace for the sheriff.”

“Flat out, Kent, do you know who the dead woman is?”

“Flat out, I don’t. But I’ve a shrewd guess that I’ll find out before long.”

“From Gansett Jim?”

“No hope there. He’s an Indian. What I’m going to see him about now is your safety.”

“Now? Where do you expect to find him?”

“In the village, I hope. It wouldn’t do for you to come there. But I want you to go to the spot where you met the circus-wagon man, and wait, until I bring Jim.”

It was a long wait for the worried artist, in the deep forest that bounded the lonely road along Hawkill Heights. Ten o’clock had chimed across the hill from the distant village, when he heard footsteps, and at a call from Kent, stepped out into the clear, holding the lantern above him. The light showed a strange spectacle. Kent, watchful, keen, ready as a cat to spring, stood with his eyes fixed upon the distorted face of the half-breed. Terror, rage, overmastering amazement, and the soul-panic of the supernatural glared from the blue-white eyeballs of the negro; but the jaw and chin were set firm in the stoicism of the Indian. In that strange racial conflict of emotions the fiercer finer strain won. Gansett Jim’s frame relaxed. He grunted.

“Good boy, Jim!” Chester Kent’s voice, at the half-breed’s ear, was the voice of one who soothes an affrighted horse. “I didn’t know whether you could stand it or not. You see, you didn’t shoot Mr. Sedgwick, after all.”

"You see, you didn’t shoot Mr. Sedgwick, after all."

“Dun’no what you mean,” grunted Gansett Jim.

“And you mustn’t shoot at him any more,” continued the scientist. The tone was soft as a woman’s; but Sedgwick felt in it the tensity of a man ready for any extreme. Perhaps the half-breed, too, felt the peril of that determination; for he hung his head. “I’ve brought you here to show you why. Pay good heed, now. A man traveling in a wagon was met here, as he says, by a woman—you understand—who questioned him and then went on. He followed the trail through the brush and found the signs of a fight. The fight took place before the death. Here’s the lantern. Take his trail from here.”

Without a word the half-breed snatched the light and plunged into a by-path. After a few minutes of swift going he pulled up short, in an open copse of ash, and set the lantern on the ground. Hound-like, he nosed about the trodden earth. Suddenly he darted across and, seizing Sedgwick’s ankle, lifted his foot, almost throwing him from his balance. Sedgwick wrenched himself free and, with a swinging blow, into which he put all the energy of his repressed wrath, knocked the half-breed flat.

“Hands off, damn you!” he growled.

Gansett Jim got to his feet a little unsteadily. Expectant of a rush, his assailant stood, with weight thrown forward; but the other made no slightest attempt at reprisal. Catching up the lantern, which had rolled from his hand, he threw its light upon Sedgwick’s forward foot. Then he turned away. Kent whistled softly. The whistle had a purring quality of content.

“Not the same as the footprint, eh?” he remarked.

“Footprint too small,” grunted Gansett Jim.

“How many people; two?”

“Three.”

“Three, of course. I had forgotten the circus-wagon man. He came later. But, Jim, you see it wasn’t Mr. Sedgwick.”

“What he follow for?” demanded the other savagely.

“No evil purpose. You can take his trail from the circus wagon and follow that, if you want to satisfy yourself further that he wasn’t here. I’ll let you have the lantern. Only, remember, now! No more shooting at the wrong man!”

The half-breed made no reply.

“And you, Sedgwick. Here’s the destroyer. Do you still want to kill him?”

“I suppose not,” replied the artist lifelessly.

“Since his design was only against your life and not against your picture,” commented Kent with a smile. “Well, our night’s work is done.” Lifting the lantern, he held it in the face of the half-breed. “Jim!”

“Huh?”

“When you really want to know who made those footprints, come and tell me who the body in Annalaka burying-ground is. A trade for a trade. You understand?”

The eyes stared, immovable. The chin did not quiver. Reaching for the lantern, Gansett Jim, now nine of Indian to one of negro, turned away from them to the pathway. “No,” he said stolidly.

As the flicker of radiance danced and disappeared in the forest Sedgwick spoke. “Well, do you consider that we’ve made a friend?”

“No,” answered Chester Kent; “but we’ve done what’s as good. We’ve quashed an enmity.”

Answers to the telegrams Chester Kent had despatched arrived in the form of night letters, bringing information regarding the Blairs of Hedgerow House: not sufficient information to satisfy the seeker, however. Therefore, having digested their contents at breakfast, the scientist cast about him to supply the deficiency. The feet of hope led him to the shop of Elder Ira Dennett.

Besides being an able plumber and tinker, Elder Dennett performed, by vocation, the pleasurable duties of unprinted journalism. That is to say, he was the semiofficial town gossip. As Professor Kent was a conspicuous figure in the choicest titbit the Elder had acquired in stock for many years, and as the Elder had been unable to come to speech with him since the inquest (Kent had achieved some skilful dodging), there was joy in the plumber-tinker’s heart over the visit. Unhappily, it appeared that Kent was there strictly on business. He did not wish to talk of the mystery of Lonesome Cove. He wished his acetylene lamp fixed. At once, if Elder Dennett pleased.

Glum was the face of the Elder as he examined the lamp, which needed very little attention. It lightened when his visitor observed:

“I’ve been thinking a little of getting an electric car, to run about here in. There was a neat little one in town yesterday.”

“Old Blair’s,” replied Dennett. “I seen you in it. Known Mr. Blair long?”

“He offered me a lift into town, very kindly. He was a stranger to me,” said Kent truthfully, and with intent to deceive. “Who did you say he was?”

“Gosh sakes! Don’t you know who Aleck Blair is?”

“Blair? Blair?” said Kent innocently. “Is he the author of Blair’s Studies of Neuropterae?”

Elder Dennett snorted. “He’s a millionaire, that’s what he is! Ain’t you read about him in the Fabric Trust investigations?”

“Oh, that Blair! Yes, I believe I have.”

Kent yawned. It was a well-conceived bit of strategy, and met with deserved success. Regarding that yawn as a challenge to his vocational powers, the Elder set about eliminating the inhuman indifference of which it was the expression. Floods of information poured from his eager mouth. He traced the history of the Blairs in and out of concentric circles of scandal; financial, political, social—and mostly untrue. Those in which the greatest proportion of truth inhered dealt with the escapades of Wilfrid Blair, the only son and heir of the household, who had burned up all the paternal money he could lay hands on, writing his name in red fire across the night life of London, Paris, and New York. Tiring of this, he had come home and married a girl of nineteen, beautiful and innocent, whose parents, the Elder piously opined, had sold her to the devil, per Mr. Blair, agent. The girl, whose maiden name was Marjorie Dorrance—Kent’s fingers went to his ear at this—had left Blair after a year of marriage, though there was no legal process, and he had returned to his haunts of the gutter, until retribution overtook him, in the form of tuberculosis. His father had brought him to their place on Sundayman’s Creek, and there he was kept in semi-seclusion, visited from time to time by his young wife, who helped to care for him.

“That’s the story they tell,” commented the Elder; “but some folks has got suspicions.”

“It’s a prevalent complaint,” murmured Kent, “and highly contagious.”

Dennett stared. “My own suspicions,” he proceeded firmly, “is that the young feller hasn’t got no more consumption than you have. I think old Blair has got him here to keep him out of the papers.”

“Publicity is not to Mr. Blair’s taste, then?”

“‘Not’s’ no word for it,” declared the human Bureau of Information, delighted at this evidence of dawning interest on the part of his hearer. “He’s crazy against it. They says he pays Town Titbits a thousand dollars a year to let young Blair’s name alone. I don’t believe the old man would hardly stop short of murder to keep his name out of print. He’s kind o’ loony on the subject.”

“You’ve been to his country place?”

“Only wunst. Mostly they have one o’ them scientific plumber fellers from Boston.” The Elder’s tone was as essence of gall and wormwood. “Wunst I had a job there, though, an’ I seen young Blair moonin’ around the grounds with a man nurse.”

“Quite a place, I hear,” suggested Kent.

“Sailor Milt Smith is the feller that can tell you about the place as it used to be. Here he comes, up the street.”

He thrust his head out of the door and called. Sailor Smith, sturdy and white, entered and greeted Kent courteously.

“Mr. Dennett was saying,” remarked Kent, “that you know something of the history of Hedgerow House, as I believe they call it.”

“They call it!” repeated the old sailor. “Who calls it? If you mean the Blair place, that’s Hogg’s Haven, that is! You can’t wipe out that name while there’s a man living as knew the place at its worst. Old Captain Hogg built it and lived in it and died in it. And if there’s a fryin’-pan in hell, the devil is fryin’ bacon out of old Hogg to-day for the things he done in that house.”

“How long since did he die?”

“Oh, twenty year back.”

“And the house was sold soon after?”

“Stood vacant for ten years. Then this rich feller, Blair, bought it. I don’t know him; but he bought a weevilly biscuit, there. A bad house, it is—rotten bad!”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Men’s bones in the brick and women’s blood in the mortar.”

“Was the old boy a cannibal?” asked Kent, amused by the sea veteran’s heroics.

“Just as bad: slave-trader.”

“Have you ever been in the house?”

“Many’s the time, when it was Hogg’s Haven. Only once, since. They do tell that the curse has come down with the house and is heavy on the new owner’s son.”

“So I’ve heard.”

The old white head wagged bodingly. “The curse of the blood,” he said. “It’s on all that race.”

“But that wouldn’t affect the Blairs.”

“Not Aleck Blair. But the boy.”

“How so?”

“Didn’t you know there was the same strain in young Wilfrid Blair, as there was in old Captain Hogg?”

“Hogg’s oldest sister was the grandmother of this young feller’s mother, wasn’t she?” put in Elder Dennett.

“That’s right. Wilfrid Blair’s great grandmother.”

“And a bad ’un, too, I guess,” continued the Elder relishingly.

“Don’t you say it!” cried the old seaman. “The curse of the blood was on her. Strange she was, and beautiful, so my mother used to tell me; but not bad. She came in at Lonesome Cove, too.”

“Drowned at sea?” asked Kent.

“They never knew. One day she was gone; the next night her body came in. They said in the countryside that she had the gift of second sight, and foretold her own death.”

“Hum-m,” mused Kent. “And now the Blairs have changed the name of the place. No wonder.”

“There’s one thing they haven’t changed, the private buryin’-plot.”

“Family?”

“Hogg’s there, all right, an’ never a parson in the countryside dared to speak to God about his soul, when they laid him there. His nephew, too, that was as black-hearted as himself. But the rest of the graves has got no headstones.”

“Slaves?”

“Them as he kept for his own service an’ killed in his tantrums. Nobody knows how many. You can see the bend of the creek where they lie, from the road, and the old willows that lean over ’em.”

“Cheerful sort of person the late Mr. Hogg seems to have been. Any relics of his trade in the house?”

“Relics? You may say so! His old pistols, and compasses, guns, nautical instruments, and the leaded whalebone whip that they used to say he slept with. They’ve got ’em hung on the walls now for ornyments. Ornyments! If they’d seen ’em as I’ve seen ’em, they’d sink the dummed things in a hundred fathom o’ clean sea.”

“Sailor Smith was cabin-boy on one of the old Hogg fleet one voyage,” explained Elder Dennett.

“God forgive me for it!” said the old man. “There they hang; and with ’em the chains and—”

“Isn’t that lamp finished yet?” demanded Kent, turning sharply upon Elder Dennett.

Having paid for it—with something extra for his curtness—he led the seaman out of the place.

“You were going to say ‘and handcuffs’, weren’t you?” he inquired.

“Why, yes. What of that?” asked the veteran, puzzled. Suddenly he brought his hand down with a slap on his thigh. “Where was my wits?” he cried. “Them irons on the dead woman’s wrist—I knew I’d seen their like before! Slave manacles! They must ’a’ come from Hogg’s Haven!”

“Very likely. But that suspicion had better be kept quiet, at present.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” agreed the other. “More devilment from the old Haven? A bad house—a rotten bad house!”

“Yet I’ve a pressing desire to take a look at it,” said Chester Kent musingly. “Going back to Annalaka, Mr. Smith? I’ll walk with you as far as the road to Mr. Sedgwick’s.”

Freed of the veteran’s company at the turn of the road, Kent sat down and took his ear in hand, to think.

“Miss Dorrance,” he mused, “Marjorie Dorrance. What simpler twist for a nickname than to transform that into Marjorie Daw? Poor Sedgwick!”

At the Nook he found the object of his commiseration mournfully striving to piece together, as in a mosaic, the shattered remnants of his work. Sedgwick brightened at his friend’s approach.

“For heaven’s sake, come out and do me a couple of sets of tennis!” he besought. “I’m no sport for you, I know, particularly as my nerves are jumpy; but I need the work.”

“Sorry, my boy,” said Kent, “but I’ve got to make a more or less polite call.”

“Didn’t know you had friends in this part of the world,” said Sedgwick in surprise.

“Oh, friends!” said Kent rather disparagingly. “Say acquaintances. People named Blair. Ever know ’em?”

“Used to know a Wilfrid Blair in Paris,” said the artist indifferently.

“What kind of a person was he?”

“An agreeable enough little beast; but a rounder of the worst sort. I won’t go so far as to say that he shocked my moral sense in those days; but he certainly offended my sense of decency. He came back to America, and I lost track of him. Is he the man you’re going to see?”

“No such luck,” said Chester Kent. “I never expect to see Mr. Wilfrid Blair. Probably I shan’t even be invited to his funeral.”

“Oh! Is he dead?”

“His death is officially expected any day.”

Sedgwick examined his friend’s expression with suspicion. “Officially? Then he’s very ill.”

“No, he isn’t ill at all.”

“Don’t you think you overdo this business of mystification sometimes, Kent?”

“Merely a well-meant effort,” smiled the other, “to divert your mind from your own troubles—before they get any worse.”

With which cheering farewell Kent stepped out and into his waiting car.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.