The Secret of Lonesome Cove Part 25

"This morning," retorted the other. "It's all in the certificate."

"All?" inquired Kent, so significantly that Lawyer Bain gave him a quick look.

"All that's your business or anybody else's," said Breed, recovering himself a bit.

"Doubtless. And I'm to be permitted to see this doc.u.ment?"

Breed pushed a paper across the table. "There it is. I just finished making it out."

"I see," said Kent, giving the paper a scant survey, "that the cause of death is set down as 'cardiac failure'."

"Well. What's the matter with that?"

"Just a trifle non-committal, isn't it? You see, we all die of cardiac failure, except those of us who fall from air-s.h.i.+ps."

"That record's good enough for the law," declared the medical officer doggedly.

"Who was the attending physician?"

"I was."

"Indeed! And to what undertaker was the permit issued?"

"It was issued to the family. They can turn it over to what undertaker they please."

"Where is the interment to be?"

"Say, looky here, Mr. Man!" cried the physician, breaking into the sudden whining fury of hard-pressed timidity. "Are you trying to learn me my business? You can go to h.e.l.l! That's what you can do!"

"With your signature on my certificate?" inquired the scientist, unmoved. "I won't trouble you so far, Doctor Breed. I thank you."

Outside in the street, Lawyer Bain turned to his client. "You didn't look at the Jane Doe paper at all."

"No. I'm not so interested in that as in the other."

"Something queer about this Blair death?"

"Why, the fact that the attending physician and the certificating officer are one and the same, that there doesn't appear to be any real cause of death given, or any undertaker, and that the interment is too private for Breed even to speak of with equanimity, might seem so, to a man looking for trouble."

"Not another murder?" said the lawyer.

One side of Chester Kent's face smiled. "No," said he positively, "certainly not that."

"There has been a lot of scandal about young Blair, I'm told. Perhaps they're burying him as quietly as possible just to keep out of the papers."

"I shouldn't consider his method of burial likely to prove particularly quiet," returned Kent. "Of course I may be wrong; but I think not. The most private way to get buried is in public."

"Well, if a death was crooked I'd want no better man than Breed to help cover it. By the way, the sheriff has been away since yesterday afternoon on some business that he kept to himself."

"That also may mean something," remarked Kent thoughtfully. "Now, if you'll find out about that newspaper matter, I'll go on over to Sedgwick's. You can get me there by telephone."

In the studio Kent found Sedgwick walking up and down with his hands behind his back and his head forward.

"Why the caged lion effect?" inquired the scientist.

"Some one has been having a little fun with me," growled Sedgwick.

"Apparently it was one-sided. What's this on the easel?"

"What would you take it to be?"

"Let's have a closer look."

Walking across the room Kent planted himself in front of the drawing-board, upon which had been fixed, by means of thumb-tacks, a square of rather soft white paper, exhibiting evidence of having been crumpled up and subsequently smoothed out. On the paper was a three-quarter drawing of a woman's head, the delicate face beneath waves of short curly hair, turned a little from the left shoulder, which was barely indicated. Setting his useful monocle in his eye, Kent examined the work carefully.

"I should take it," he p.r.o.nounced at length, "to be a sort of a second-hand attempt at a portrait."

"You recognize it, though?"

"It bears a resemblance to the face of the corpse at Lonesome Cove."

"Pretty good likeness, for a thing done from memory, I think."

"Memory? Whose memory?"

"Well-mine, for instance."

"Oh, no. That won't do, you know. It isn't your style of drawing at all."

"Setting up for an art critic, are we?"

"Aside from which you certainly wouldn't be using this sort of paper, when you've cardboard to your hand."

"So you're not to be caught, I see," said Sedgwick, with a nervous laugh.

"Not in so plain a trap, at any rate. Where did that precious work of art come from?"

"Heaven knows! Ching Lung found it lying on the door-step, with a cobblestone holding it down. I'd like to lay my hands on the artist."

"You'd crumple him up as you did his little message, eh?" smiled Kent.

"At least I'd have an explanation out of him. It's a fact though, that I lost my temper and threw that thing into a corner, when Ching first handed it to me. Then it occurred to me that it might be well worth saving. Interesting little sketch, don't you think?"

"No."

"What? You don't find it interesting?"

"Profoundly. But it isn't a sketch."