The Secret of Lonesome Cove. Samuel Hopkins Adams
lurks behind your screen. Work is the answer.”
“Good or bad, it’s the only thing. Which kind is yours?”
“Presently you shall sit in judgment. Meantime, suppose you account for yourself.”
Chester Kent stretched himself luxuriously. “A distinguished secretary of state has remarked that all the news worth telling on any subject can be transmitted by wire for twenty-five cents. The short and simple annals of the poor in my case can be recorded within that limit. ‘Postgraduate science. Agricultural Department job. Lectures. Invention. Judiciary Department expert. Signed, Chester Kent.’ Ten words—count them—ten.”
“Interesting, but unsatisfying,” retorted his friend. “Can’t you expand a bit? I suppose you haven’t any dark secret in your life?”
“No secret, dark or light,” sighed the other. “The newspapers won’t let me have.”
“Eh? Won’t let you? Am I to infer that you’ve become a famous person? Pardon the ignorance of expatriation. Have you discovered a new disease, or formulated a new theory of life, or become a golf champion, or a senator, or a freak aviator, or invented perpetual motion? Do you possess titles, honors, and ribboned decorations? Ought I to bat my brow against the floor in addressing you? What are you, anyway?”
“What I told you, an expert in the service of the Department of Justice.”
“On the scientific side?”
“Why—yes, generally speaking. I like to flatter myself that my pursuit is scientific.”
“Pursuit? What do you pursue?”
“Men and motives.”
Sedgwick’s intelligent eyes widened. “Wait,” he said, “something occurs to me, an article in a French journal about a wonderful new American expert in criminology, who knows all there is to know, and takes only the most abstruse cases. I recall now that the article called him ‘le Professeur Chêtre Kennat.’ That would be about as near as they would come to your name.”
“It’s a good deal nearer than that infernal French journalist whom Wiley brought to my table at the Idlers’ Club got to the facts,” stated Kent.
“Then you are the Professor Kent! But look here! The Frenchman made you out a most superior species of highfalutin detective, working along lines peculiarly your own—”
“Rot!” interjected Kent. “The only lines a detective can work along successfully are the lines laid down for him by the man he is after.”
“Sounds more reasonable than romantic,” admitted the artist. “Come now, Kent, open up and tell me something about yourself.”
“Only last month a magazine put that request in writing, and accompanied it with an offer of twenty-five hundred dollars—which I didn’t accept. However, as I may wish to ask you a number of leading questions later, I’ll answer yours now. You remember I got into trouble my senior year with the college authorities, by proving the typhoid epidemic direct against a forgotten defect in the sewer system. It nearly cost me my diploma; but it helped me too, later, for a scientist in the Department of Agriculture at Washington learned of it, and sent for me after graduation. He talked to me about the work that a man with the true investigation instinct—which he thought I had—could do, by employing his abilities along strictly scientific lines; and he mapped out for me a three-year’s postgraduate course, which I had just about enough money to take. While I specialized on botany, entomology, and bacteriology, I picked up a working knowledge of other branches; chemistry, toxicology, geology, mineralogy, physiology, and most of the natural sciences, having been blessed with an eager and catholic curiosity about the world we live in.
“Once in the Department, I found myself with a sort of roving commission. I worked under such men as Wiley, Howard, and Merriam, and learned from them something of the infinite and scrupulous patience that truly original scientific achievement demands. At first my duties were largely those of minor research. Then, by accident largely, I chanced upon the plot to bull the cotton market by introducing the boll weevil into the uninfested cotton area, and checked that. Soon afterward I was put on the ‘deodorized meat’ enterprise, and succeeded in discovering the scheme whereby it was hoped to sell spoiled meat for good. You might have heard of those cases; but you would hardly have learned of the success in which I really take a pride, the cultivation of a running wild grape to destroy Rhus Toxicodendron, the common poison ivy. What spare time I had I devoted to experimenting along mechanical lines, and patented an invention that has been profitable. Some time ago the Department of Justice borrowed me on a few cases with a scientific bearing, and more recently offered me incidental work with them on such favorable terms that I resigned my other position. The terms include liberal vacations, one of which I am now taking. And here I am! Is that sufficient?”
“Hardly. All this suggests the arts of peace. What about your forty-horse-power kick? You don’t practise that for drawing-room exhibitions, I take it?”
“Sometimes,” confessed the scientist, “I have found myself at close quarters with persons of dubious character. The fact is, that an ingenious plot to get rid of a very old friend, Doctor Lucius Carter the botanist, drew me into the criminal line, and since then, that phase of investigation has seemed fairly to obtrude itself on me, officially and unofficially. Even up here, where I hoped to enjoy a month’s rest—Do you know,” he said, breaking off, “that you have a most interesting inset of ocean currents hereabouts?”
“Of course. Lonesome Cove. But kindly finish that ‘even up here’. I recollect your saying that you were waiting for me. Haven’t traced any scientific crime to my door, have you?”
“Let me forget my work for a little while,” pleaded his visitor, “and look at yours.”
Sedgwick rose. “Come up-stairs,” he said, and led the way to the big, bare, bright studio.
From the threshold Chester Kent delivered an opinion, after one approving survey. “You really work, I see.”
“I really do. Where do you see it, though?”
“All over the place. No draperies or fripperies or fopperies of art here. The barer the room, the more work done in it.”
He walked over to a curious contrivance resembling a small hand-press, examined it, surveyed the empty easel, against which were leaning, face in, a number of pictures, all of a size, and turned half a dozen of them over, ranging them and stepping back for examination. Standing before them, he whistled a long passage from La Bohème, and had started to rewhistle it in another key, when the artist broke in with some impatience.
“Well?”
“Good work,” pronounced Kent quietly, and in some subtle way the commonplace words conveyed to their hearer the fact that the man who spoke them knew.
“It’s the best there is in me, at least,” said Sedgwick.
Kent went slowly around the walls, keenly examining, silently appraising. There were landscapes, genre bits, studies of the ocean in its various moods, flashes of pagan imaginings, nature studies; a wonderful picture of wild geese settling from a flight; a no less striking sketch of a mink, startled as he crept to drink among the sedges; a group of country children at hop-scotch on the sands; all the varied subjects handled with a deftness of truth and drawing, and colored with a clear softness quite individual.
“Have you found or founded a new system of coloring?” asked Kent as he moved among the little masterpieces. “No; don’t tell me.” He touched one of the surfaces delicately. “It’s not paint, and it’s not pastel. Oh, I see! They’re all of one size—of course.” He glanced at the heavy mechanism near the easel. “They’re color prints.”
Sedgwick nodded. “Monotypes,” said he. “I paint on copper, make one impress, and then—phut!—a sponge across the copper makes each one an original.”
“You certainly obtain your effects.”