The Secret of Lonesome Cove Part 30

"About the garden? Why, somewhere about the garden there must be, I should guess, certain implements which we need in our enterprise." He executed a solemn dance-step upon the floor and warbled,

"'Oh, a pickax and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet!'"

A sudden thought struck cold into the heart of Sedgwick. "Be sensible, can't you?" he exclaimed. "What do you want with a pickax and spade!"

"My wants are few and small. If you haven't a pick, two spades will do.

In fact, they'll be better. I was merely sticking to the text of my _Hamlet_."

His shoulders slumped, his jaw slackened, and, as his figure warped into the pose of the gravedigger he wheezed out the couplet again. The cold thought froze around Sedgwick's heart. He visioned the wet soil of Annalaka burying-ground, heaped above a loose-hasped pine box, within which went forward the unthinkable processes of earth reclaiming its own.

"Good G.o.d! Is it _that_?" he muttered.

The mummer straightened up. "In plain prose, do you possess two spades?"

he inquired.

Speechless, Sedgwick went out into the dark, presently returning with the tools. Kent took them out and disposed them in the car.

"Get in," he directed.

"If we had to do this, Kent," said Sedgwick, shuddering in his seat, "why haven't we done it before?"

The other turned on the power. "You're on the wrong track as usual," he remarked. "It couldn't be done before."

"Well, it can't be done now," cried the artist in sudden sharp excitement. "It won't do. Stop the car, Kent!"

Kent's voice took an ominously deliberate measure. "Listen," said he; "I am going through with this-now-to-night. If you wish to withdraw-"

"That's enough," growled the artist. "No man alive can say that to me."

The car slowed up. "I beg your pardon, Frank," said Kent. "We're both of us a little on edge to-night. This is no time for misunderstandings.

What is on your mind?"

"Just this. Annalaka burying-ground is watched. Lawyer Bain said as much. Don't you remember? He told us that the house next door is occupied by an old sleepless asthmatic who spends half her nights in her window overlooking the graves."

The car shot forward again. "Is that all?" asked Kent.

"Isn't it enough?"

"Hardly. We're not going within miles of Annalaka."

"Then our night's work is not-" Kent could feel his companion's revolt at the unuttered word, and supplied it for him.

"Grave robbery? It is."

"Where?"

"In a private burying-ground on the Blairs' estate."

"Wilfrid Blair's grave? When was the funeral?"

"This morning. I was among those present, though I don't think my name will be mentioned in the papers."

"Why should you have been there?"

"Oh, set it down to vulgar curiosity," said Kent.

"Probably you'd say the same if I asked you the motive for this present expedition. I suppose you fully appreciate the chance we are taking?"

"Didn't I tell you that it was rather more than a life-and-death risk?"

Something cold touched Sedgwick's hand in the darkness. His fingers closed around a flask. "No, no Dutch courage for me. Where is this place?"

"On Sundayman's Creek, some fourteen miles from the Nook as the motor-car flies."

"Fourteen miles," repeated Sedgwick musingly, following a train of thought that suddenly glowed, a beacon-light of hope. "And these Blairs have some connection with the dead woman of the cove, the woman who wore _her_ jewels." His fingers gripped and sank into Kent's hard-fibered arm. "Chet, for the love of heaven, tell me! Is she one of these Blairs?"

"No nonsense, Sedgwick," returned the other sternly. "You're to act,-yes, and _think_-under orders till the night's job is done."

There was silence for nearly half an hour, while the car slipped, ghostlike, along the wet roadway. Presently it turned aside and stopped.

"Foot work now," said Kent. "Take the spades and follow."

He himself, leading the way, carried a coil of rope on his shoulders.

For what Sedgwick reckoned to be half a mile they wallowed across soaked meadows, until the whisper of rain upon water came to his ears.

"Keep close," directed his guide, and preceded him down a steep bank.

The stream was soon forded. Emerging on the farther side they scrambled up the other bank into a thicker darkness, where Sedgwick, colliding with a gnarled tree trunk, stood lost and waiting. A tiny bar of light appeared. It swept across huddled and half-obliterated mounds, marked only by the carpet of myrtle-that faithful plant whose mission it is to garland the graves of the forsaken and the forgotten-shone whitely back from the headstone of the old slave-trader, came to a rest upon a fresh garish ridge of earth, all pasty and yellow in the rain, and abruptly died.

"Too dangerous to use the lantern," murmured Kent. "Take the near end and dig."

Delving, even in the most favorable circ.u.mstances, is a fairly stern test of wind and muscle. In the pitch blackness, under such nerve-thrilling conditions, it was an ordeal. Both men, fortunately, were in hard training. The heavy soil flew steadily and fast. Soon they were waist deep. Kent, in a low voice, bade his fellow toiler stop.

"Mustn't wear ourselves out at the start," he said. "Take five minutes'

rest."

At the end of three minutes, Sedgwick was groping for his spade. "I've got to go on, Chet," he gasped. "The silence and idleness are too much for me."

"It's just as well," a.s.sented his commander. "The clouds are breaking, worse luck. And some one might possibly be up and about, in the house.

Go to it!"

This time there was no respite until, with a thud which ran up his arm to his heart, Kent's iron struck upon wood. Both men stood, frozen into att.i.tudes of attention. No sound came from the house.

"Easy now," warned Kent, after he judged it safe to continue. "I thought that Jim dug deeper than that. Spade it out gently. And feel for the handles."

"I've got one," whispered Sedgwick.

"Climb out, then, and pa.s.s me down the rope."