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,
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.”