Involuntarily Sedgwick looked at his right hand. There was a low growl from the crowd.
"Steady!" came Kent"s voice at his elbow. "Mistakes like that are Judge Lynch"s evidence."
"Whah was he the night of the killin"?" cried Gansett Jim. "Ast him.
Whah was he?"
"Where was you, if it comes to that?" retorted the sheriff, and bit his lip with a scowl.
At that betrayal Chester Kent"s eyelids flashed up, and instantly drooped again into somberness.
"This hearing is adjourned," twittered the medical officer. "Burial of the unknown, will take place at once. All are invited."
"Invitation respectfully declined," murmured Sedgwick to Kent. "I don"t know that I"m exactly frightened; but I think I"d breathe easier in the open country."
"Well, I"m exactly frightened," replied Kent in the same tone. "I want to run-which would probably be the end of us. Curious things about those handcuffs, isn"t it?" he went on in a louder and easily conversational voice.
During their slow progress to the door he kept up a running comment, which Sedgwick supported with equal coolness. The crowd, darkling and undecided, pressed around them. As they went through the doorway, they were jostled by a sudden pressure, following which Kent felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned to face the sheriff.
"Better get out of town quick," advised Schlager in a half whisper.
"Thank you," said Kent in a clear and cheerful voice. "Where can I get some tobacco?"
"Sterrett"s grocery keeps the best," said some informant back of him.
"End of the Square to the right."
"Much obliged," said Kent, and strolled leisurely to his car, followed by Sedgwick. As they took their seats and started slowly through the crowd, Sedgwick inquired earnestly:
"Do you crave tobacco at this particular moment worse than you do the peace and loneliness of the green fields?"
"Policy, my young friend," retorted Kent. "I wish I could think up a dozen more errands to do. The more casually we get out of town, the less likely we are to be followed by a flight of rocks. I don"t want a perfectly good runabout spoiled by a mob."
Both of them went into Sterrett"s store, where Kent earned the reputation from Sterrett of being "awful dang choosy about what he gets," and came out into a considerable part of the populace, which had followed. As they reembarked, the sheriff put his foot on the running-board.
"Better take my tip," he said significantly.
"Very well," returned Kent. "There will be no arrest, then?"
"Not just now."
A peculiar smile slid sidewise off a corner of the scientist"s long jaw.
"Nor at any other time," he concluded.
He threw in the clutch, leaving Schlager with his hand in his hair, and the crowd, which might so easily have become a mob, to disperse, slowly and hesitantly, having lacked the incentive of suggested flight on the part of the suspects to be spark to its powder. When the car had won the open road beyond the village Sedgwick remarked:
"Queer line the sheriff is taking."
"Poor Schlager!" said Kent, chuckling. "No other line is open to him.
He"s in a tight place. But it isn"t the sheriff that"s worrying me."
"Who, then?"
"Gansett Jim."
"What did the sheriff mean by asking Gansett Jim where he was the night of the murder?"
"Murder?" said Kent quizzically. "What murder?"
"The murder of the unknown woman, of course."
"I don"t know that there was any murder."
"Oh, well, the death of the unknown woman, then."
"I don"t know that there was any unknown woman."
"Quit it! From what you do know, what do you think the sheriff meant?"
"What do _you_ think?"
"I think that Gansett Jim killed her and is trying to turn suspicion on me."
"Humph!"
"But if the sheriff knows where Gansett Jim was at the time of the killing, he can"t suppose me guilty. I wonder if he really does believe me guilty?"
"If he does, he doesn"t care. His concern is quite apart from your guilt."
"It"s too much for me," confessed the artist.
"And for me. That is why I am going back to the village."
"But I thought you were frightened."
"If I stayed away from everything that alarms me," said Kent, "I"d never have a tooth filled or speak to a woman under seventy. I"m a timid soul, Sedgwick; but I don"t think I shall be in any danger in Annalaka so long as I"m alone. Here we are. Out with you! I"ll be back by evening."
CHAPTER VII-SIMON P. GROOT DOES BUSINESS
To his surprise, Kent, turning into the village Square, found the crowd still lingering. A new focus of interest had drawn it to a spot opposite Sterrett"s store, where a wagon, decorated in the most advanced style of circus art, shone brilliant in yellow and green. Bright red letters across the front presented to public admiration the legend:
SIMON P. GROOT SIMON PURE GOODS
A stout projection rested on one of the rear wheels. Here stood the proprietor of the vehicle, while behind him in a window were displayed his wares. It was evident that Simon P. Groot followed the romantic career of an itinerant hawker, dealing in that wide range of commodities roughly comprised in the quaint term, "Yankee notions." Before the merchandizing voice came to the new arrival"s ears as anything more than a confused jumble, Kent was struck with the expansive splendor of the man"s gestures, the dignity of his robust figure, and the beauty of a broad whitening beard that spread sidewise like the ripples from a boat"s stem. Two blemishes unhappily marred the majesty of Simon P.
Groot"s presence; a pair of pin-head eyes, mutually attracted to each other, and a mean and stringent little voice. Freed of these drawbacks, his oratory might well, one could not but feel, have rolled in any of our legislative chambers more superbly and just as ineffectually as much of the other oratory therein practised. That the Annalakans were truly spellbound by it was obvious. Indeed, Kent was at a loss to understand the depth of their absorption until he had come within the scope of the high-piping words.