The Secret of Lonesome Cove/Chapter 13

Meditation furrowed the brow of Lawyer Adam Bain. Customarily an easy-minded participant in the placid affairs of his community, he had been shaken out of his rut by the case in which Kent had enlisted him, and in which he had, thus far, found opportunity for little more than thought.

“Nobody vs. Sedgwick,” grumbled he. “Public opinion vs. Sedgwick,” he amended. “How’s a self-respecting lawyer going to earn a fee out of that? And Len Schlager standing over the grave of the corpus delicti with a warrant against searching, so to speak, in his hand. For that matter, this Professor Kent worries me more than the sheriff.”

A sharp humming rose in the air, and brought the idle counselor to his window, whence he beheld the prime author of his bewilderment descending from a car. A minute later the two men were sitting with their feet on one desk, a fairly good sign of mutual respect and confidence.

“Blair?” said Lawyer Bain. “No, I don’t know him, not even to see. Took Hogg’s Haven, didn’t he?”

“Then he doesn’t use this post-office?”

“No. Might use any one of half a dozen. See here.” He drew a county map from a shelf. “Here’s the place. Seven railroad stations on three different roads, within ten miles of it. Annalaka would be way out of his reach.”

“Yet Gansett Jim seems to be known here.”

“Oh; is it Blair that the Indian works for? I never knew. Closer’n a deaf mute with lockjaw, he is. Well, I expect the reason he comes here occasionally is that it’s the nearest license town.

“Do you know most of the post-offices around here?”

“There isn’t but one postmaster within twenty miles that I don’t call by his first name, and she’s a postmistress.”

“Then you could probably find out by telephone where the Blair family get their mail.”

“Easy!”

“And perhaps what newspapers they take.”

“H’m! Yes, I guess so.”

“Try it, as soon as you get back.”

“Back from where?”

“Back from the medical officer’s place. I think he must have returned by this time.”

“You want to see Tim Breed?”

“No; just his records. Burial permits, I suppose, are a matter of public record.”

“Yes. All you’ve got to do is to go and ask for ’em. You won’t need me.”

“Regrettable as his bad taste is,” said Kent with a solemn face, “I fear that Doctor Breed doesn’t regard me with that confidence and esteem which one reads of in illuminated resolutions.”

“And you want me as an accelerator, eh?” smiled the lawyer. “All right. It’s the Jane Doe permit you’re after, I suppose.”

“Which?”

“Jane Doe. They buried the corpse from Lonesome Cove under that name. Unidentified dead, you know.”

“Of course! Of course!” assented Kent.

“If you’re looking for anything queer in the official paper you won’t find it.”

“You’ve examined it yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Good! Nevertheless, I’d like to see the record.”

Together they went to the medical officer’s quarters. Doctor Breed had come in fifteen minutes before. Without preliminary, Lawyer Bain said:

“I want to see that Jane Doe certificate again.”

“Aren’t you afraid of wearin’ out the ink on it, Adam?” retorted the other with a furtive grin.

“And I,” said Chester Kent in his suavest manner, “venture to trouble you to show me the certificate in the case of Wilfrid Blair.”

Something like a spasm shook the lineaments of Doctor Breed’s meager face. “Blair!” he repeated. “How did you know—” He stopped short.

“How did I know that Wilfrid Blair is dead?” Kent finished for him. “Why, there has been time enough, hasn’t there?”

The physician’s hands clawed nervously at his straggling hair.

“Time enough?” he murmured. “Time enough? I’m only just back from the Blair place myself.”

“News travels faster than a horse,” observed Kent.

“It don’t travel as fast as all that,” retorted the medical officer, and shut his teeth on the sentence as if he could have bitten the tongue that spoke it.

“Ah,” commented Kent negligently. “Then he died within two hours or so?”

“This morning,” retorted the other. “It’s all in the certificate.”

“All?” inquired Kent, so significantly that Lawyer Bain gave him a quick look.

“All that’s your business or anybody else’s,” said Breed, recovering himself a bit.

“Doubtless. And I’m to be permitted to see this document?”

Breed pushed a paper across the table. “There it is. I just finished making it out.”

“I see,” said Kent, giving the paper a scant survey, “that the cause of death is set down as ‘cardiac failure’.”

“Well. What’s the matter with that?”

“Just a trifle non-committal, isn’t it? You see, we all die of cardiac failure, except those of us who fall from air-ships.”

“That record’s good enough for the law,” declared the medical officer doggedly.

“Who was the attending physician?”

“I was.”

“Indeed! And to what undertaker was the permit issued?”

“It was issued to the family. They can turn it over to what undertaker they please.”

“Where is the interment to be?”

“Say, looky here, Mr. Man!” cried the physician, breaking into the sudden whining fury of hard-pressed timidity. “Are you trying to learn me my business? You can go to hell! That’s what you can do!”

“With your signature on my certificate?” inquired the scientist, unmoved. “I won’t trouble you so far, Doctor Breed. I thank you.”

Outside in the street, Lawyer Bain turned to his client. “You didn’t look at the Jane Doe paper at all.”

“No. I’m not so interested in that as in the other.”

“Something queer about this Blair death?”

“Why, the fact that the attending physician and the certificating officer are one and the same, that there doesn’t appear to be any real cause of death given, or any undertaker, and that the interment is too private for Breed even to speak of with equanimity, might seem so, to a man looking for trouble.”

“Not another murder?” said the lawyer.

One side of Chester Kent’s face smiled. “No,” said he positively, “certainly not that.”

“There has been a lot of scandal about young Blair, I’m told. Perhaps they’re burying him as quietly as possible just to keep out of the papers.”

“I shouldn’t consider his method of burial likely to prove particularly quiet,” returned Kent. “Of course I may be wrong; but I think not. The most private way to get buried is in public.”

“Well, if a death was crooked I’d want no better man than Breed to help cover it. By the way, the sheriff has been away since yesterday afternoon on some business that he kept to himself.”

“That also may mean something,” remarked Kent thoughtfully. “Now, if you’ll find out about that newspaper matter, I’ll go on over to Sedgwick’s. You can get me there by telephone.”

In the studio Kent found Sedgwick walking up and down with his hands behind his back and his head forward.

“Why the caged lion effect?” inquired the scientist.

“Some one has been having a little fun with me,” growled Sedgwick.

“Apparently it was one-sided. What’s this on the easel?”

“What would you take it to be?”

“Let’s have a closer look.”

Walking across the room Kent planted himself in front of the drawing-board, upon which had been fixed, by means of thumb-tacks, a square of rather soft white paper, exhibiting evidence of having been crumpled up and subsequently smoothed out. On the paper was a three-quarter drawing of a woman’s head, the delicate face beneath waves of short curly hair, turned a little from the left shoulder, which was barely indicated. Setting his useful monocle in his eye, Kent examined the work carefully.

“I should take it,” he pronounced at length, “to be a sort of a second-hand attempt at a portrait.”

“You recognize it, though?”

“It bears a resemblance to the face of the corpse at Lonesome Cove.”

“Pretty good likeness, for a thing done from memory, I think.”

“Memory? Whose memory?”

“Well—mine, for instance.”

“Oh, no. That won’t do, you know. It isn’t your style of drawing at all.”

“Setting up for an art critic, are we?”

“Aside from which you certainly wouldn’t be using this sort of paper, when you’ve cardboard to your hand.”

“So you’re not to be caught, I see,” said Sedgwick, with a nervous laugh.

“Not in so plain a trap, at any rate. Where did that precious work of art come from?”

“Heaven knows! Ching Lung found it lying on the door-step, with a cobblestone holding it down. I’d like to lay my hands on the artist.”

“You’d crumple him up as you did his little message, eh?” smiled Kent.

“At least I’d have an explanation out of him. It’s a fact though, that I lost my temper and threw that thing into a corner, when Ching first handed it to me. Then it occurred to me that it might be well worth saving. Interesting little sketch, don’t you think?”

“No.”

“What? You don’t find it interesting?”

“Profoundly. But it isn’t a sketch.”

“What would you call it, then?”

“A copy.”

“How can you tell that? You haven’t seen the original from which it was made, have you?”

“No.”

“Then, what’s the basis?”

“Quite simple. If you had used your eyes on it instead of your temper, you might have seen at once that it is a tracing. Look for yourself, now.”

Taking the magnifying monocle that Kent held out, the artist scrutinized the lines of the picture.

“By Jove! You’re right,” said he. “It’s been transferred through tracing-paper, and touched up afterward. Rather roughly, too. You can see where the copyist has borne down too hard on the lead.”

“What’s your opinion of the likeness—if it is the likeness which you suppose?” inquired Kent.

“Why, as I remember the woman, this picture is a good deal idealized. The hair and the eyes are much the same. But the lines of the face in the picture are finer. The chin and mouth are more delicate, and the whole effect softer and of a higher type.”

“Do you see anything strange about the neck, on the left side?”

“Badly drawn; that’s all.”

“Just below the ear there is a sort of blankness, isn’t there?”

“Why, yes. It seems curiously unfinished, just there.”

“If you were touching it up how would you correct that?”

“With a slight shading, just there, where the neck muscle should be thrown up a bit by the turn of the head.”

“Or by introducing a large pendant earring which the copier has left out?”

“Kent, you’re a wonder! That would do it, exactly. But why in the name of all that’s marvelous, should the tracer of this drawing leave out the earring?”

“Obviously to keep the picture as near like as possible to the body on the beach.”

“Then you don’t think it is the woman of the beach?”

“No; I don’t.”

“Who else could it possibly be?”

“Perhaps we can best find that out by discovering who left the drawing here.”

“That looks like something of a job.”

“Not very formidable, I think. Suppose we run up to the village and ask the local stationer who has bought any tracing-paper there within a day or two.”

As the demand for tracing-paper in Martindale Center was small, the stationer upon being called on, had no difficulty in recalling that Elder Dennett had been in that afternoon and made such a purchase.

“Then he must have discovered something after I left him,” said Kent to Sedgwick, “for he never could have kept his secret if he’d had it then.”

“But what motive could he have?” cried the artist.

“Just mischief, probably. That’s enough motive for his sort.” Turning to the store-keeper Kent asked: “Do you happen to know how Mr. Dennett spent the early part of this afternoon?”

“I surely do. He was up to Dimmock’s rummage auction, an’ he got something there that tickled him like a feather. But he wouldn’t let on what it was.”

“The original!” said Sedgwick.

“What does Dimmock deal in?”

“All kinds of odds and ends. He scrapes the country for bankrupt sales, an’ has a big auction once a year. Everybody goes. You can find anything from a plough-handle to a second-hand marriage certificate at his place.”

“We now call on Elder Dennett,” said Kent.

That worthy was about closing up shop when they entered.

“Don’t your lamp work right, yet, Professor Kent?” he inquired.

“Perfectly,” responded the scientist. “We have come to see you on another matter, Mr. Sedgwick and I.”

“First, let me thank you,” said Sedgwick, “for the curious work of art which you left at my place.”

“Hay-ee?” inquired the Elder, with a rising inflection.

“Don’t take the trouble to lie about it,” put in Kent. “Just show us the original of the drawing which you traced so handily.”

The town gossip shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “How’d you know I got the picture?” he giggled. “I didn’t find it, myself, till I got back from the auction.”

“Never mind the process. Have you the original here?”

“Yes,” said Elder Dennett; and, going to his desk he brought back a square of heavy bluish paper, slightly discolored at the edges.

“That’s a very good bit of drawing,” said Sedgwick, as he and Kent bent over the paper.

“But unsigned,” said his companion. “Now, Mr. Dennett, whom do you suppose this to be?”

“Why, the lady that stopped to talk with Mr. Sedgwick, and was killed in Lonesome Cove.”

“Then why did you leave out this earring in copying the picture?”

“Aw—well,” explained the other in some confusion, “she didn’t have no earrings on when I seen her. And it looks a lot more like, without it.”

“Your bent for gratuitous mischief amounts to a passion,” retorted the scientist. “Some day it will get you into deserved trouble, I trust.”

“I guess there ain’t no law to prevent my givin’ away a picture, if I like,” sulked the Elder.

“Perhaps you’d like to give away another one.”

Yankee shrewdness sparkled in the eye of Mr. Dennett. “Mr. Sedgwick said that was a good drawin’, and I guess he knows. I guess it’s worth money.”

“How much money, would you guess?”

“Five dollars,” replied the other, in a bold expulsion of breath.

At this moment, Sedgwick, who had been studying the picture in the light, made a slight signal with his hand, which did not escape Kent.

“Five dollars is a big price for a rough pencil sketch,” said the scientist. “I’d have to know more of the picture to pay that for it. Where did you find it?”

“In this book. I bought the book at Dimmock’s rummage auction.” He produced a decrepit, loosely-bound edition of the Massachusetts Agricultural Reports. “The picture was stuck in between the leaves.”

“No name in the book,” said Kent. “The flyleaf is gone. But here’s the date of publication: 1830.”

“That would be just about right,” said Sedgwick with lively interest.

“Right for what?” demanded Dennett.

Before there was time for reply, Kent had pressed a five-dollar bill into his hand, with the words:

“You’ve made a trade.”

“Wait,” protested the Elder. But the sketch was already in Sedgwick’s possession.

“It’s an Elliott,” said that gentleman. “I’m sure of it. I’ve seen his sketches before—though they’re very rare—and there’s an unmistakable touch about his pencil work.”

“In that case,” said Kent suavely, “Mr. Dennett will be gratified to know that he has sold for five dollars an article worth fifty times that.”

They left him, groaning at his door, and went to look up Dimmock, the rummage man. But he was wholly unable to throw any light on the former owner of the reports, in which the drawing had been tucked away. There the investigation seemed to be up against a blank wall.

“Isn’t it astounding!” said Sedgwick. “Here’s a portrait antedating 1830, of a woman who has just died, young. What was the woman I saw; a revenant in the flesh?”

“If you ask me,” said Kent slowly, “I should say, rather, an imitation.”

Further he would not say, but insisted on returning to the Nook. As they arrived, the telephone bell was ringing with the weary persistence of the long-unanswered. To Kent’s query, Lawyer Bain’s voice announced:

“I’ve been trying to get you for an hour.”

“Sorry,” said Kent. “Is it about the newspapers?”

“Yes,” said the lawyer. “I’ve got the information.” And he stated that four newspapers went regularly to Hedgerow House,—The New York Star and Messenger and The Boston Eagle to Alexander Blair, and The Boston Free Press to Wilfrid Blair.

Over this information Kent whistled in such melancholy tones that his host was moved to protest.

“You’re on the track of something, and you’re keeping it dark from me!”

“I’m not traveling the most brilliantly illuminated paths myself, my young friend,” replied Kent, and lapsed into silence.

The artist set the Elliott sketch beside the copy, and compared them for a time. Then he fell to wandering desolately about the studio. Suddenly he turned, walked over to his friend, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Kent, for the love of heaven, can’t you do something for me?”

“You mean about the girl?”

Sedgwick nodded. “I can’t get my mind to stay on anything else. Even this infernal puzzle of the pictures doesn’t interest me for more than the minute. The longing for her is eating the heart out of me.”

“My dear Frank,” said the other quietly, “if there were anything I could do, don’t you think I’d be doing it? It’s a very dark tangle. And first of all I have to clear you—”

“Never mind me! What do I care what people think?”

“Or what she may think?”

Sedgwick’s head drooped. “I didn’t consider that.”

“It may be the very center-point for consideration.”

“If there were only something to do!” fretted the artist. “It’s this cursed inaction that is getting my nerve!”

“If that’s all,” returned Kent slowly, “I’ll give you something to do. And I fancy,” he added grimly, “it will be sufficiently absorbing to take your mind from your troubles for a time at least.”

“Bring it on. I’m ready!”

“All in good time. Meantime, here’s a little test for your intelligence. Problem,” continued Kent, with a smile: “when the bewildered medieval mind encountered a puzzle too abstruse for ordinary human solution, what was its refuge?”

“Magic, I suppose,” said Sedgwick after some consideration.

“Good! You get a high mark. The medieval mind, I may observe, was at times worthy of emulation.”

“Explain.”

“I am seriously thinking, my dear young friend,” said Kent solemnly, “of consulting an astrologer.”

“You’re crazy!” retorted Sedgwick.

“I wish I were for a few hours,” said Kent with entire seriousness. “It might help.”

“Well, that’s where I’ll be if you don’t find something for me to do soon. So, come on, and materialize this promised activity.”

“If you regard a trip to the Martindale Public Library as activity, I can furnish that much excitement.”

“What are you going to do there?”

“Consult the files of the newspapers, and pick out a likely high-class astrologer from the advertisements.”

“That has a mild nutty flavor; but it doesn’t excite any profound emotion in me except concern for your sanity.”

“You’ve said that before,” retorted Kent. “However, I’m not sure I shall take you with me, anyway.”

“Then that isn’t the coming adventure?”

“No; nothing so mild and innocuous.”

“Are you asking me to run some danger? Is it to see her?” said Sedgwick eagerly.

“Leave her out of it for the present. There is no question of seeing her now.”

The artist sighed and turned away.

“But the danger is real enough, and pretty ugly.”

“Life isn’t so wholly delightful to me just at present that I wouldn’t risk it in a good cause.”

“But this is a bigger risk than life. There’s an enterprise forward which, if it fails, means the utter damning of reputation. What do you say?”

“Kent,” said Sedgwick after a moment’s thought, “I’m thirty-two years old. Ten years ago I’d have said ‘yes’ at the drop of the question. Perhaps I value my life less and my good name more, than I did then. What’s the inducement?”

“The probable clearing up of the case we’re on.”

“Is that all the information I get?”

“I’d rather not tell you any more at present. It would only get on your nerves and unfit you for the job.”

Again Sedgwick fell into thought.

“When I come to tackle it,” continued Kent, “I may find that one man could do it alone. But—”

“Wait. You’re going into it, are you?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“With, or without me?”

“Yes.”

“Why couldn’t you have said so at first and saved this discussion?” cried his host. “Of course, if you’re in for it, so am I. But what about your reputation?”

“It’s worth a good deal to me,” confessed the scientist. “And I can’t deny I’m staking it all on my theory of this case. If I’m wrong—well, it’s about the finis of my career.”

“See here, Chet!” broke out his friend. “Do you think I’m going to let you take that kind of a chance for me?”

“It isn’t for you,” declared the other with irritation. “It’s for myself. Can’t you understand that this is my case? You’re only an incident in it. I’m betting my career against—well, against the devil of mischance, that I’m right. As I told you, I’m naturally timid. I don’t plunge, except on a practically sure thing. So don’t get any foolish notions of obligation to me. Think it over. Meantime, do you care to run over to the library? No? Well, for the rest of the evening I can be found—no; I can not be found, though I’ll be there—in room 571.”

“All right,” said Sedgwick. “You needn’t fear any further intrusion. But when is our venture?”

“To-morrow night,” replied Kent, “Wilfrid Blair having officially died, as per specifications, to-day.”