Night came on in murk and mist. As the clouds gathered thicker, Chester
Kent's face took on a more and more satisfied expression. Sedgwick, on
the contrary, gloomed sorely at the suspense. Nothing could be elicited
from the director of operations, who was, for him, in rather wild
spirits. The tennis match seemed to have sweated the megrims out of him.
He regaled his chafing friend with anecdotes from his varied career; the
comedy of the dynamiter's hair; the tragedy of the thrice fatal
telephone message at the Standard Club; the drama of the orchid hunt on
Weehawken Heights. From time to time he thrust a hand out of the window.
Shortly after midnight there was a splatter of rain on the roof.
"Good!" said Kent, stretching elaborately. "Couldn't be better. Life's a
fine sport!"
"Couldn't be worse, I should think," contradicted Sedgwick.
"Depends on the point of view, my boy. No longer can my buoyant spirit
support your determined melancholy--without extraneous aid. The time has
come for action. Be thankful. Get on your coat."
Sedgwick brightened at once. "Right-o!" he said. "Get your lamps lighted
and I'll be with you."
"No lights. Ours is a deep, dark, desperate, devilish, dime-novel
design."
"Ending, most likely, in the clutch of some night-hawk constable for
violation of the highway laws."
"Possibly. We've got to chance it. 'Come into the garden, Maud,'"
chanted the scientist.
Sedgwick started. "I thought we were going to motor somewhere. What
about the garden?"
"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 God! 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 circumstances, 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," assented 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
attitudes 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 pass me down the rope."
As Sedgwick gained the earth's level, the moon, sailing from behind a
cloud, poured a flood of radiance between the tree trunks. Kent's face,
as he raised it from the grave, stretching out his hand for the cord,
was ghastly, but his lips smiled encouragement.
"All right! One minute, now, and we're safe."
"Safe!" repeated the other. "With that opened grave! I shall never feel
safe again."
From between the earthen walls Kent's voice came, muffled. "Safe as a
church," he averred, "from the minute that we have the coffin. Take this
end of the rope. Got it? Now this one. It's fast, fore and aft. Here I
come."
With a leap he clambered out of the excavation. He took one end of the
rope from Sedgwick's hand. "All ready to haul?" he inquired in
matter-of-fact tones.
"Wait. What are we going to do with this--this _thing_?" demanded his
co-laborer. "We can never get it to the car."
A low chuckle sounded from the shrubbery back of them. The
resurrectionists stood, stricken.
"An owl," whispered Sedgwick at length.
"No," replied Kent in the same tone. Then, in full voice, and with vivid
urgency, "_Haul_!"
Up came the heavy casket, bumping and grating. Even through the rope
Sedgwick felt, with horror, the tumbling of the helpless sodden body
within. With a powerful effort Kent swung his end up on the mound. The
lantern flashed. By its gleam Sedgwick saw Kent striving to force his
spade-edge under the coffin lid, to pry it loose. The chuckle sounded
again.
"That's enough," said a heavy voice, with a suggestion of mirthful
appreciation.
Sheriff Len Schlager stepped from behind a tree. He held a revolver on
Kent. Sedgwick made a swift motion and the muzzle swung accurately on
him.
"Steady, Frank," warned Kent anxiously.
"I'm steady enough," returned the other. "What a fool I was not to bring
a gun."
"Oh, no," contradicted the scientist. "Of what use is my gun? We're in
the light, and he is in the shadow."
"So you've got a gun on you, eh?" remarked the sheriff, his chuckle
deepening.
"I didn't say so."
"No; but you gave yourself away. Hands up, please. Both of you."
Four hands went up in the air. Kent's face, in the light, was very
downcast, but from the far corner of his mouth came the faintest ghost
of a whistled melody--all in a minor key. It died away on the night air
and the musician spoke in rapid French.
"_Attention! La ruse gagne. Quand lui donnerai le coup de pied,
battez-le a terre._"
"What's that gibberish?" demanded Schlager.
"Very well," said Sedgwick quickly, in the tone of one who accepts
instructions. "I'll be still enough. Go ahead and do the talking."
"Better both keep still," advised the deceived sheriff. "Anything you
say can be used against you at the trial. And the penalty for
body-snatching is twenty years in this state."
"Yes; but what constitutes body-snatching?" murmured Kent.
"You do, I guess," retorted the humorous sheriff. "Steady with those
hands. Which pocket, please, Professor?"
"Right-hand coat, if you want my money," answered the scientist
sullenly.
"Nothing like that," laughed the officer. "Your gun will do, at
present."
"I haven't got any gun."
"I heard you say it! Remember, mine is pointed at your stomach."
"Correct place," approved Kent, quietly shifting his weight to his left
foot. "It's the seat of human courage. Well!" as Schlager tapped pocket
after pocket, without result, "you can't say I didn't warn you. _Now_,
Frank!"
With the word there was a sharp spat as the heel of Kent's heavy boot,
flying up in the _coup de pied_ of his own devising, caught the sheriff
full on the wrist breaking the bones, and sending the revolver a-spin
into the darkness. As instantly Sedgwick struck, swinging full-armed,
and Schlager went down, half-stunned.
"Pin him, Frank," ordered Kent.
But Sedgwick needed no directions, now that resolute action was the
order of the moment. His elbow was already pressed into the sheriff's
bull neck. Schlager lay still, moaning a little.
"Good work, my boy," approved Kent, who had retrieved the revolver.
"Who clubbed me?" groaned the fallen man. "I didn't see no third feller.
And what good's it going to do you, anyway? There you are, and there's
the robbed grave. Exaggerated by assault on an officer of the law," he
added technically.
"That is right, too, Kent," added Sedgwick with shaking voice. "Whatever
we do, I don't see but what we are disgraced and ruined."
"Unless," suggested Kent with mild-toned malice, "we rid ourselves of
the only witness to the affair."
A little gasp issued from the thick lips of Len Schlager. But he spoke
with courage, and not without a certain dignity. "You got me," he
admitted quietly. "If it's killin'--why, I guess it's as good a way to
go as any. An officer in the discharge of his duty."
"Not so sure about the duty, Schlager," said Kent with a change of tone.
"But your life is safe enough, in any event. Pity you're such a grafter,
for you've got your decent points. Let him up, Sedgwick."
Relieved of his assailant's weight, Schlager undertook to rise, set his
hand on the ground, and collapsed with a groan.
"Too bad about that wrist," said Kent. "I'll take you back in my car to
have it looked after as soon as we've finished here."
"I s'pose you know I'll have to arrest you, just the same."
"Don't bluff," retorted the other carelessly. "It wastes time. Steady!
Here comes the rest of the party."
Across the moonlit lawn moved briskly the spare alert figure of the
owner of Hedgerow House. His hand grasped a long-barreled pistol. He
made straight for the grove of graves. Within five yards of the willows
he stopped, because a voice from behind one of them had suggested to him
that he do so.
"I also am armed," the voice added.
Hesitancy flickered in Mr. Blair's face for a brief moment. Then, with
set jaw, he came on.
"Two men of courage to deal with in a single night. That's all out of
proportion," commented the voice with a slight laugh. "Mr. Blair; I
really should dislike shooting you."
"Who are you?" demanded Mr. Blair.
"Chester Kent."
"What are you doing on my property at this hour?"
"Digging."
"Ah!" It was hardly an exclamation; rather it was a contained
commentary. Mr. Blair had noted the exhumed casket. "You might better
have taken my offer," he continued after a pause of some seconds. "I
think, sir, you have dug the grave of your own career."
"That remains to be seen."
"Schlager! Are you there?"
"Yes, Mr. Blair. They've broken my wrist and got my gun."
Mr. Blair took that under consideration. "It doesn't strike me that you
are much of a man-hunter," he observed judicially. "Who are _they_?"
"Francis Sedgwick is the other, at your service," answered the owner of
that name.
An extraordinary convulsion of rage distorted the set features of the
elderly man.
"You!" he cried. "Haven't you done enough--without this! I would come on
now if hell yawned for me."
Stricken with amazement at the hatred in the tone, Sedgwick stood
staring. But Kent stepped before the advancing man. "This won't do," he
said firmly. "We can't any of us afford killing."
"I can," contradicted Mr. Blair.
"You would gain nothing by it. If one of us is killed the other will
finish the task. You know what I am here for, Mr. Blair. I purpose to
open that coffin and then go."
"No," said the master of Hedgerow House; and it was twenty years since
his "no" had been overborne.
"Yes," returned Chester Kent quietly.
Mr. Blair's arm rose, steady and slow, with the inevitable motion of
machinery.
"If you shoot," pointed out Kent, "you will rouse the house. Is there no
one there from whom you wish to conceal that coffin?"
The arm rose higher until the muzzle of the pistol glared, like a
baleful lusterless eye, into Kent's face. Instead of making any
counter-motion with the sheriff's revolver, the scientist turned on his
heel, walked to Sedgwick, and handed him the weapon. "I'm going to open
the coffin, Frank," he announced. "That pistol of Mr. Blair's is a
target arm. It has only one shot."
"True," put in its owner, "but I can score one hundred and twenty with
it at a hundred yards' range."
"If he should fire, Frank, wing him. And then, whatever happens, get
that casket open. That is the one thing you _must_ do--for me and
yourself."
"But he may kill you," cried Sedgwick in an agony of apprehension.
"He may; but I think he won't."
"Won't he!" muttered the older man on an indrawn breath. "I'd rather it
was the other scoundrel. But either--or both."
Sedgwick stepped to within two paces of him. "Blair," he said with a
snarl, "you so much as _think_ with that trigger finger, and you're
dead!"
"No, no killing, Frank," countermanded Kent. "In his place, you'd
perhaps do as he is doing."
"Don't take any chances, Mr. Blair," besought the sheriff. "They're
desperate characters. Look what they done to me!"
"There's a testimonial," murmured Kent, as he picked up his spade, "for
one who has always worked on the side of law and order."
He worked the blade craftily under the lid and began to pry. The cover
gave slightly. Mr. Blair's pistol sank to his side. "I should have shot
before warning you," he said bitterly. "Violating graves is, I suppose,
your idea of a lawful and orderly proceeding."
The rending crackle of the hard heavy wood was his answer. Kent stooped,
and struggled up bearing a shapeless heavy object in his arms. The
object seemed to be swathed in sacking. Kent let it fall to the ground,
where it lopped and lay. "All right," said he, with a strong exhalation
of relief. "I knew it must be. And yet--well, one never is absolute in
certainty. And if I'd been wrong, I think, Frank, we could profitably
have used that gun on ourselves. You can drop it, now. Come over here."
Courageous though Sedgwick was, his nerves were of a highly sensitive
order. He shuddered back. "I don't believe I can do it, Chet."
"You must. As a witness. Come! Brace up!"
Setting the bull's-eye lantern down, Kent produced a pocket-knife.
Sedgwick drew a long breath, and walking over, crouched, steeling his
nerves against the revelation that should come when the cords should be
cut and the swathings reveal their contents. "If I keel over, don't let
me tumble into the grave," he said simply, and choked the last word off
from becoming a cry of horror as he beheld his friend drive the
knife-blade to the hilt in the body, and then whip it across and
downward with a long ripping draw under which the harsh cloth sang
hideously.
"Open your eyes! Look! Look!" cried Kent heartily.
A strong trickle of sand flowed out of the rent in the sack and spread
upon the ground.
"That is all," said Kent.
Relief clamored within Sedgwick for expression. He began to laugh in
short choking spasms.
"Quiet!" warned Mr. Blair, in a broken tone of appeal. "You've found out
the secret. God knows what you'll do with it. But there are innocent
people in the house. I see a light stirring there now. We--I must do
what I may to shelter them."
A glimmer shone from the ground floor of one of the wings. Thither Mr.
Blair ran, calling out as he went. When he returned, his face was like a
mask.
"Now," said he, "what is this matter? Blackmail?"
Kent's face withdrew, as it were, behind his inscrutable half smile.
"Peace, if you will," said he. "A truce, at least."
"I should like to know just how much you know."
"An offer. I will tell you whenever you are ready to tell me all that
you know. I think we are mutually in need of each other."
"I wish you were at the bottom of that pit," retorted the other grimly.
"You and your scoundrel of a friend with you."
"Thank you for myself," said Sedgwick. "If you were twenty years younger
I would break every bone in your body for that."
"Steady, Frank," put in Kent. "Judge no man by his speech who has been
through what Alexander Blair has been through to-night. Mr. Blair," he
added, "you've refused my offer. It is still open. And as an extra, I
will undertake, for Mr. Sedgwick and myself, that this night's affair
shall be kept secret. And now, the next thing is to cover the evidence.
Spades, Frank."
The two men took up their tools.
"I'll spell you," said Alexander Blair.
While the sheriff, mourning softly over his fractured wrist, sat
watching the house in case of alarm, the scientist, the painter, and the
trust magnate, sweating amid the nameless graves, hurriedly reinterred
the sack of clean sand which bore the name of Wilfrid Blair.
"And now," said Chester Kent, petting his blistered palms, as the last
shovelful of dirt was tamped down, "I'll take you back with me, Mr.
Sheriff, to Sedgwick's place, and do the best I can for you till the
morning. About six o'clock we'll find you unconscious below the cliffs
where you fell in the darkness. Eh?"
Despite his pain the sheriff grinned. "I guess that's as good as the
next lie," he acquiesced. "You fight fair, Professor."
"Then answer me a fair question. What were you doing at Hedgerow House
to-night?"
"Why, you see," drawled the official, "I saw you fishin' that stream,
and it come to my mind that you was castin' around for more than trout
that wasn't there. But I didn't hardly think you'd come so soon, and I
was asleep when the noise of the spade on the coffin woke me."
"Bad work and clumsy," commented Kent with a scowl. "Come along. My car
will carry three. Sedgwick can sit on the floor. Good night, Mr. Blair.
All aboard, Frank."
There was no answer.
"What became of Sedgwick?" demanded Kent.
"He was here half a minute ago; I'll swear to that," muttered the
sheriff.
Kent stared anxiously about him. "Frank! Frank!" he called half under
his breath.
"Not too loud," besought Alexander Blair.
The clouds closed over the moon. Somewhere in the open a twig crackled.
Sedgwick had disappeared.