Part 3 (1/2)
”Waiting for what?”
”For you.”
”You have distinctly the advantage of me,” said Sedgwick, with a frown; for he was in no mood to welcome strange visitors.
”To return to my theory of self-defense,” said the other imperturbably.
”My wall exercise serves to keep limber and active certain muscles that in the average man are half atrophied. You are familiar with the ostrich?”
”With his proverbial methods of obfuscation,” replied Sedgwick.
The other smiled. ”That, again, is escape or attempted escape. My reference was to other characteristics. However, I shall demonstrate.”
He rose on one foot with an ease that made the artist stare, descended, selected from the roadway a stone of ordinary cobble size, and handed it to Sedgwick.
”Let that lie on the palm of your hand,” said he, ”and hold it out, waist high.”
As he spoke he was standing two feet from the other, to his right.
Sedgwick did as he was requested. As his hand took position, there was a twist of the bearded man's lithe body, a sharp click, and the stone, flying in a rising curve, swished through the leaf.a.ge of a lilac fifty feet away.
”How did you do that?” cried the artist.
The other showed a slight indentation on the inside of his right boot heel, and then swung his right foot slowly and steadily up behind his left knee, and let it lapse into position again. ”At shoulder height,”
he explained, ”I could have done the same; but it would have broken your hand.”
”I see,” said the other, adding with distaste, ”but to kick an opponent!
Why, even as a boy I was taught-”
”We were not speaking of child's play,” said the visitor coolly; ”nor am I concerned with the rules of the prize-ring, as applied to my theory.
When one is in danger, one uses knife or gun, if at hand. I prefer a less deadly and more effective weapon. Kicking sidewise, either to the front or to the rear, I can disarm a man, break his leg, or lay him senseless. It is the special development of such muscles as the sartorius and plantaris,” he ran his long fingers down from the outside of his thigh round to the inside of his ankle, ”that enables a human being, with practise, to kick like an ostrich. Since you found me exercising on your property, I owe you this explanation. I hope you won't prosecute for trespa.s.s, Mr. Long-Lean-Leggy Sedgwick.”
”Leggy!” The artist had whirled at the name. ”n.o.body's called me that for ten years.”
”Just ten years ago that you graduated, wasn't it?”
”Yes. Then I knew you in college. You must have been before my cla.s.s.”
The bearded one nodded. ”Senior to your freshman,” said he.
The younger man scrutinized him. ”Chester Kent!” said he softly. ”What on earth are you doing behind that bush?”
Kent caressed the maligned whiskers. ”Utility,” he explained. ”Patent, impenetrable mosquito screen. I've been off in the wilds, and am-or was-going back presently.”
”Not until you've stopped long enough to get reacquainted,” declared Sedgwick. ”Just at present you're going to stay to dinner.”
”Very good. Just now you happen to be in my immediate line of interest.
It is a fortunate circ.u.mstance for me, to find you here; possibly for you, too.”
”Most a.s.suredly,” returned the other with heartiness. ”Come in on the porch and have a hammock and pipe.”
Old interests sprang to life and speech between them. And from the old interests blossomed the old easy familiarity that is never wholly lost to those who have been close friends in college days. Presently Francis Sedgwick was telling his friend the story of his feverish and thwarted ten years in the world. Within a year of his graduation his only surviving relative had died, willing to him a considerable fortune, the income of which he used in furtherance of a hitherto suppressed ambition to study art. Paris, his Mecca, was first a task-mistress, then a temptress, finally a vampire. Before succ.u.mbing he had gone far, in a few years, toward the development of a curious technique of his own.