THE SECRET OF LONESOME COVE.
by Samuel Hopkins Adams.
CHAPTER I-THE BODY ON THE BEACH
Lonesome Cove is one of the least frequented stretches on the New England seaboard. From the land side, the sheer hundred-foot drop of Hawkill Cliffs shuts it off. Access by water is denied; denied with a show of menacing teeth, when the sea curls its lips back, amid a swirl of angry currents, from its rocks and reefs, warning boats away. There is no settlement near the cove. The somber repute suggested by its name has served to keep cottagers from building on the wildly beautiful uplands that overbrood the beach. Sheep browse between the thickets of ash and wild cherry extending almost to the brink of the height, and the straggling pathways along the edge, worn by the feet of their herders, afford the only suggestion of human traffic within half a mile of the spot. A sharp-cut ravine leads down to the sea by a rather treacherous descent.
Near the mouth of this opening, a considerable gathering of folk speckled the usually deserted beach, at noon of July sixth. They centered on a dark object, a few yards within the flood-tide limit. Some scouted about, peering at the sand. Others pointed first to the sea, then to the cliffs with the open gestures of those who argue vehemently.
But always their eyes returned, drawn back by an unfailing magnetism, to the central object.
From some distance away a lone man of a markedly different type from the others observed them with an expression of displeasure. He had reached the cove by an arduous scramble, possible only to a good climber, around the jutting elbow of the cliff to the northward. It was easily to be read in his face that he was both surprised and annoyed to find people there before him. One of the group presently detached himself and ambled over to the newcomer, with an accelerated speed as he drew nearer.
"Swanny!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "if it ain"t Perfessor Kent! Didn"t know you at first under them whiskers. You remember me, don"t you? I used to drive you around when you was here before."
"How are you, Jarvis?" returned the other. "Still in the livery business, I suppose?"
"Yes. What brings you here, Perfessor?"
"Holidays. I"ve just come out of the woods. And as you have some very interesting sea currents just here, I thought I"d have a look at them.
n.o.body really knows anything about coast currents, you know. Now my opportunity is spoiled." He indicated the crowd by a movement of his head.
"Spoilt? I guess not. You couldn"t have come at a better time," said the local man eagerly.
"Ah, but you see, I had planned to swim out to the eddy, and make some personal observations."
"You was going to swim into Dead Man"s Eddy?" asked the other, aghast.
"Why, Perfessor, you must have turned foolish. They ain"t a man on this coast would take a chance like that."
"Superst.i.tion," retorted the other curtly. "On a still day such as this there would be no danger to an experienced swimmer. The conditions are ideal except for this crowd. What is it? Has the village gone picnicking?"
"Not sca"cely! Ain"t you heard? Another one"s come in through the eddy.
Lies over yonder."
Professor Kent"s eyebrows went up, as he glanced toward the indicated spot; then gathered in a frown.
"Not washed up there, surely?" he said.
"Thet"s what," answered Jarvis.
"When?"
"Sometime early this morning."
"Pshaw!" said the other, turning to look at the curving bulwark of rocks over which the soft slow swell was barely breaking. "If it were the other end of the cove, now, I could understand it."
"Yes," agreed Jarvis, "they mostly come in at the other end, on this tide."
"Mostly? Always." The professor"s tone was positive. "Unless my charts are wrong. But this-well, it spoils at least one phase of my theory."
"Theery!" exclaimed the liveryman, his pale eyes alight. "You got a theery? But I thought you didn"t know anything about the body, till I told you, just now."
"Oh, my ruined theory has reference to the currents," sighed the other.
"It has nothing to do with dead men, as such."
"Neither has this," was the prompt response, delivered with a jerk of the thumb toward the dark object.
"No? What is it then, if not a dead man?"
"A dead woman."
"Oh! All the same, it shouldn"t have come in on this section of the beach at all."
"Thet ain"t half the strangeness of it, the way it washed in. Lonesome Cove has had some queer folks drift home to it, but nothing as queer as this. Come and see for yourself."
Still frowning, Professor Kent suffered himself to be led to the spot.
Two or three of the group, as it parted before him, greeted him. He found himself looking down on a corpse clad in a dark silk dress and stretched on a wooden grating, to which it was lashed with a small rope.
Everything about the body indicated wealth. The dress was expensively made. The shoes were of the best type, and the stockings were silk. The head was marred by a frightful bruise which had crushed in the right side and extended around behind the ear. Blood had clotted thickly in the short close-curled hair. The left side was unmarked. The eyes were closed and the mouth was slightly open, showing a glint of gold amid very white and regular teeth. An expression of deadly terror distorted the face. Professor Kent bent closely over it.
"That"s strange; very strange," he murmured. "It should be peaceful."
"But look at the hand!" cried Jarvis.
Here, indeed, was the astounding feature of the tragedy; the aspect that brought Kent to his knees, the more closely to observe. The body lay twisted slightly to the right, with the left arm extended. The left wrist was enclosed in a light rusted handcuff to which a chain was fastened. At the end of the chain was the companion cuff, shattered, evidently by a powerful blow, and half buried in the sand. As Kent leaned over the corpse, a fat, powerful, grizzled man with a metal badge on his shirt-front pushed forward.
"Them"s cast-iron cuffs," he announced. "That kind ain"t been used these forty years."
"What kind of a ship "ud be carryin" "em nowadays?" asked some one in the crowd.
"An" what kind of a seaman"d be putting of "em on a lady"s wrists?"
growled a formidable voice, which Kent, looking up, perceived to have come from amid a growth of heavy white whiskers, sprouting from a weather-furrowed face.
"Seafaring man, aren"t you?" inquired Kent.
"No more. Fifty year of it, man an" boy, has put me in harbor."
"That"s Sailor Smith," explained Jarvis, who had a.s.sumed the duties of a self-appointed cicerone. "Not much about the sea and its ways, good or bad, that he don"t know."
"True for you," confirmed several voices.
"Then, Mr. Smith, will you take a look at those lashings and tell me whether in your opinion they are the work of a sailor?" asked Kent.
The old hands fumbled expertly. The old face puckered. Judgment came forth presently.
"The knots is well enough. The lashin"s a pa.s.sable job. What gits me is the rope."
"Well, what"s wrong with the rope?"