The Secret of Lonesome Cove/Chapter 6

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.”