The Secret of Lonesome Cove Part 22

The eyes stared, immovable. The chin did not quiver. Reaching for the lantern, Gansett Jim, now nine of Indian to one of negro, turned away from them to the pathway. "No," he said stolidly.

As the flicker of radiance danced and disappeared in the forest Sedgwick spoke. "Well, do you consider that we've made a friend?"

"No," answered Chester Kent; "but we've done what's as good. We've quashed an enmity."

CHAPTER XI-HEDGEROW HOUSE

Answers to the telegrams Chester Kent had despatched arrived in the form of night letters, bringing information regarding the Blairs of Hedgerow House: not sufficient information to satisfy the seeker, however.

Therefore, having digested their contents at breakfast, the scientist cast about him to supply the deficiency. The feet of hope led him to the shop of Elder Ira Dennett.

Besides being an able plumber and tinker, Elder Dennett performed, by vocation, the pleasurable duties of unprinted journalism. That is to say, he was the semiofficial town gossip. As Professor Kent was a conspicuous figure in the choicest t.i.tbit the Elder had acquired in stock for many years, and as the Elder had been unable to come to speech with him since the inquest (Kent had achieved some skilful dodging), there was joy in the plumber-tinker's heart over the visit. Unhappily, it appeared that Kent was there strictly on business. He did not wish to talk of the mystery of Lonesome Cove. He wished his acetylene lamp fixed. At once, if Elder Dennett pleased.

Glum was the face of the Elder as he examined the lamp, which needed very little attention. It lightened when his visitor observed:

"I've been thinking a little of getting an electric car, to run about here in. There was a neat little one in town yesterday."

"Old Blair's," replied Dennett. "I seen you in it. Known Mr. Blair long?"

"He offered me a lift into town, very kindly. He was a stranger to me,"

said Kent truthfully, and with intent to deceive. "Who did you say he was?"

"Gosh sakes! Don't you know who Aleck Blair is?"

"Blair? Blair?" said Kent innocently. "Is he the author of Blair's _Studies of Neuropterae_?"

Elder Dennett snorted. "He's a millionaire, that's what he is! Ain't you read about him in the Fabric Trust investigations?"

"Oh, that Blair! Yes, I believe I have."

Kent yawned. It was a well-conceived bit of strategy, and met with deserved success. Regarding that yawn as a challenge to his vocational powers, the Elder set about eliminating the inhuman indifference of which it was the expression. Floods of information poured from his eager mouth. He traced the history of the Blairs in and out of concentric circles of scandal; financial, political, social-and mostly untrue.

Those in which the greatest proportion of truth inhered dealt with the escapades of Wilfrid Blair, the only son and heir of the household, who had burned up all the paternal money he could lay hands on, writing his name in red fire across the night life of London, Paris, and New York.

Tiring of this, he had come home and married a girl of nineteen, beautiful and innocent, whose parents, the Elder piously opined, had sold her to the devil, per Mr. Blair, agent. The girl, whose maiden name was Marjorie Dorrance-Kent's fingers went to his ear at this-had left Blair after a year of marriage, though there was no legal process, and he had returned to his haunts of the gutter, until retribution overtook him, in the form of tuberculosis. His father had brought him to their place on Sundayman's Creek, and there he was kept in semi-seclusion, visited from time to time by his young wife, who helped to care for him.

"That's the story they tell," commented the Elder; "but some folks has got suspicions."

"It's a prevalent complaint," murmured Kent, "and highly contagious."

Dennett stared. "My own suspicions," he proceeded firmly, "is that the young feller hasn't got no more consumption than you have. I think old Blair has got him here to keep him out of the papers."

"Publicity is not to Mr. Blair's taste, then?"

"'Not's' no word for it," declared the human Bureau of Information, delighted at this evidence of dawning interest on the part of his hearer. "He's crazy against it. They says he pays _Town t.i.tbits_ a thousand dollars a year to let young Blair's name alone. I don't believe the old man would hardly stop short of murder to keep his name out of print. He's kind o' loony on the subject."

"You've been to his country place?"

"Only wunst. Mostly they have one o' them scientific plumber fellers from Boston." The Elder's tone was as essence of gall and wormwood.

"Wunst I had a job there, though, an' I seen young Blair moonin' around the grounds with a man nurse."

"Quite a place, I hear," suggested Kent.

"Sailor Milt Smith is the feller that can tell you about the place as it used to be. Here he comes, up the street."

He thrust his head out of the door and called. Sailor Smith, st.u.r.dy and white, entered and greeted Kent courteously.

"Mr. Dennett was saying," remarked Kent, "that you know something of the history of Hedgerow House, as I believe they call it."

"They call it!" repeated the old sailor. "Who calls it? If you mean the Blair place, that's Hogg's Haven, that is! You can't wipe out that name while there's a man living as knew the place at its worst. Old Captain Hogg built it and lived in it and died in it. And if there's a fryin'-pan in h.e.l.l, the devil is fryin' bacon out of old Hogg to-day for the things he done in that house."

"How long since did he die?"

"Oh, twenty year back."

"And the house was sold soon after?"

"Stood vacant for ten years. Then this rich feller, Blair, bought it. I don't know him; but he bought a weevilly biscuit, there. A bad house, it is-rotten bad!"

"What's wrong with it?"

"Men's bones in the brick and women's blood in the mortar."

"Was the old boy a cannibal?" asked Kent, amused by the sea veteran's heroics.

"Just as bad: slave-trader."

"Have you ever been in the house?"

"Many's the time, when it was Hogg's Haven. Only once, since. They do tell that the curse has come down with the house and is heavy on the new owner's son."

"So I've heard."

The old white head wagged bodingly. "The curse of the blood," he said.

"It's on all that race."

"But that wouldn't affect the Blairs."

"Not Aleck Blair. But the boy."

"How so?"

"Didn't you know there was the same strain in young Wilfrid Blair, as there was in old Captain Hogg?"

"Hogg's oldest sister was the grandmother of this young feller's mother, wasn't she?" put in Elder Dennett.

"That's right. Wilfrid Blair's great grandmother."