The Secret of Lonesome Cove Part 23

"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 G.o.d 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. n.o.body 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 compa.s.ses, 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.

"G.o.d 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.

CHAPTER XII-THE UNBIDDEN VISITOR

One of Kent's Washington friends once criticized the scientist's mode of motoring, as follows: "Kent's a good driver, and a fast one, and careful; but he can never rid himself of the theory that there's a strain of hunter in every well-bred motor-car."

Cross-country travel was, in fact, rather a fad of Kent's, and he had trained his light car to do everything but take a five-barred gate.

After departing from the Nook, it rolled along beside Sundayman's Creek sedately enough until it approached the wide bend, where it indulged in a bit of path-finding across the country, and eventually crept into the shade of a clump of bushes and hid. Its occupant emerged, and went forward afoot until he came in view of Hedgerow House. At the turn of the stream he leaped a fence, and made his way to a group of willows beneath which the earth was ridged with little mounds. Professor Chester Kent was trespa.s.sing. He was invading the territory of the dead.

From the seclusion of the graveyard amid the willows a fair view was afforded of Hedgerow House. Grim as was the repute given it, it presented to the intruder an aspect of homely hospitable sweetness and quaintness. Tall hollyhocks lifted their flowers to smile in at the old-fashioned windows. Here and there, on the well-kept lawn, peonies glowed, crimson and white. A great, clambering rose tree had thrown its arms around the square porch, softening the uncompromising angles into curves of leaf.a.ge and bloom. Along the paths pansies laughed at the sun, and mignonette scattered its scented summons to bee and b.u.t.terfly. The place was a loved place; so much Kent felt with sureness of instinct. No home blooms except by love.

But the house was dead. Its eyes were closed. Silence held it. The garden buzzed and flickered with vivid multicolored life; but there was no stir from the habitation of man. Had its occupants deserted it?

Chester Kent, leaning against the headstone of Captain Hogg of d.a.m.nable memory, pondered and wondered.