Such ruin as had been wrought in Sedgwick’s studio was strictly localized. The easel lay on the floor, with its rear leg crumpled. Around it were scattered the fragments of the glass upon which the painter had set his labor of love. A high old-fashioned chair faced the wreckage. On its peak was hung a traveling cap. Lopping across the back sprawled a Norfolk jacket belonging to Sedgwick. Chester Kent lifted the coat, and after a swift survey let it drop.
“Did you leave that there?” he asked.
“I hung it across the back of the chair,” answered Sedgwick.
“North window closed?”
“Yes, as you see it now.”
“And west one open?”
“Nothing has been changed, I tell you, except this.” Sedgwick’s hand, outstretched toward the destroyed portrait, condensed itself involuntarily into a knotty fist.
“The lock of the door hasn’t been tampered with,” said Kent. “As for this open window,” he leaned out, looking around, “any man gaining access here must have used a ladder, which is unlikely in broad daylight.”
“How about a pass-key for the door?”
“There’s a simpler solution nearer at hand, I fancy. You didn’t chance to notice that things have happened to the coat, as well as to the easel.”
“Then the invader went through the coat and, not finding what he was looking for, smashed my picture,” cried Sedgwick.
“Through the coat, certainly,” agreed Kent, with his quiet smile. “Now hang it across the chair back just as it was, please.”
Sedgwick took the Norfolk jacket from him. “Why, there’s a hole through it!” he exclaimed.
“Exactly: the path of the invader.”
“A bullet!”
“Right again. Instead of murdering, as you pine to do, you’ve been murdered. That the picture was destroyed is merely a bit of ill fortune. That you weren’t inside the coat when the bullet went through it and cut the prop from your easel, is a bit of the other kind. Hang up the coat, please.”
Sedgwick obeyed.
“There,” said Kent viewing the result from the window. “At a distance of, say, a quarter of a mile, that arrangement of coat and cap would look uncommonly like a man sitting in a chair before his work. At least, I should think so. And yonder thicket on the hillside,” he added, looking out of the window again, “is just about that distance, and seems to be the only spot in sight giving a straight range. Suppose we run up there.”
Sound as was his condition, Sedgwick was panting when he brought up at the spot, some yards behind his long-limbed leader. As the scientist had surmised, the arrangement of coat and cap in the studio presented, at that distance, an excellent simulacrum of the rear view of a man lounging in a chair. Bidding the artist stay outside the copse, Kent entered on hands and knees and made extended exploration. After a few moments the sound of low lugubrious whistling was heard from the trees, and presently the musician emerged leading himself by the lobe of his ear.
“Evidently you’ve found something,” commented Sedgwick, who had begun to comprehend his friend’s peculiar methods of expression.
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you so pleased with yourself?”
“That is why.”
“Because you’ve found nothing?”
“Exactly.”
“It seems an easy system,” observed the artist sarcastically.
“So it is, to a reasoning being. I’m satisfied that some one fired a shot from here. The marksman—a good one—saw you, as he supposed, jerk to the shot as if with a bullet through you, and went away satisfied.”
“Leaving no trace behind him,” added Sedgwick.
“No trace that is tangible. Therein lies the evidence.”
“Of course you don’t expect me to follow that.”
“Why not? Look at the ground in the thicket.”
“What is there to be seen there, since you’ve said there are no marks?”
“The soil is very soft.”
“Yes; there’s a spring just back of us.”
“Yet there’s not a footprint discernible on it.”
“I’ve got that part of the lesson by heart, I think.”
“Use your brain on it, then. Some one designing to make you his target, has been in this thicket; been and gone, and left the place trackless. That some one was a keen soft-footed woodsman. Putting it in words of one syllable, I should say he probably had the racial instinct of the hunt. Does that flush any idea from the deep and devious coverts of your brain?”
“Racial instinct? Gansett Jim!” said Sedgwick.
“Exactly. If I had found tracks all over the place, I should have known it wasn’t he. Finding nothing, I was naturally pleased.”
“That’s more than I am,” retorted the other. “I suppose he’s likely to resume his gunnery at any time.”
“Unless we can discourage him—as I expect we can.”