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Read Ebook: The Secret of Lonesome Cove by Adams Samuel Hopkins Schoonover Frank E Illustrator
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Ebook has 2193 lines and 58673 words, and 44 pages
Professor Kent stretched out his hand, disclosing a small grayish object.
"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.
"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.
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