Part 5 (1/2)

His was a large, well-proportioned frame that suggested, not corpulence but physical power. His hands were powerful but not thick. His whole bearing was self-a.s.sured, almost haughty. But it was the eyes, not the carriage, that gave the impression of arrogance. They were the clearest amber color with a mere dot of black pupil. Here and there tiny specks were visible showing like dark grains of sand in a sea of brown. A woman had once called them ”tiger eyes,” and he had been pleased. A child had once described them as ”freckled” eyes, and he had been annoyed. As he knelt there now, searching the face of the dead man, his eyes, under their drooping lids, narrowed to the merest slits. When at last he rose and drew the blanket back over the still form, he moved with the brisk effectiveness of one animated by definite purpose.

First, he drove the mud-spattered roadster into the garage and left it there beside the beetle-black limousine. Then he let himself into the deserted house again, went up to the second bedroom in the left wing, and began sorting over some miscellaneous objects from one of the chiffonier drawers. ”Ghastly!” he muttered once. ”Ghastly! I'll have to take something to brace me up.”

Back in the dining-room he took one of the long-stemmed gla.s.ses from the sideboard and poured himself a drink from a bottle in the cupboard underneath. But first he scrutinized its contents under the light. ”Why didn't you take it all?” he inquired sardonically of some invisible being.

For a few hours he slept with a sort of determined tranquillity. But by eight o'clock he was up and dressed, and a few minutes later he answered a summons at the front door. Swinging it open he admitted a short sandy man with the ruddy complexion of the Nors.e.m.e.n. ”I'm Annisen, the coroner,” this visitor announced.

”Yes. I was expecting you. Come in.” The other man swung the portal wider. ”Doctor Annisen, is it?”

The visitor nodded and stepped into the hall that was still dim in the cold light of the winter morning. He unwound a black silk m.u.f.fler from about his throat. ”Devilish cold,” he commented. ”Devilish cold for a place that advertises summer all the year round.”

His host smiled with sympathetic appreciation. ”California publicity,”

he commented, ”is far and away ahead of anything that we have in the unimaginative East. My furnace-man left me yesterday and I haven't got around to making the fires myself yet. But let me give you something to warm you up, doctor.”

While he filled one of the small gla.s.ses on the buffet, his guest eyed him stolidly. ”Still got some on hand, have you?” he said with a heavy attempt at the amenities. ”Well, this wouldn't be a bad place for moons.h.i.+ning out here. Guess you could put almost anything over without fearing a visit from the authorities.”

There was a moment of silence. ”You've got a beautiful place though,” he went on at last. ”But Rest Hollow! What a name for it! Rest! Lord!

Anything might happen out here, and I guess most everything has. I wasn't much surprised at the message I found waiting me when I got back to town this morning. I've always said that this place fairly yells for a suicide.”

The other man's eyes were fixed upon his face with a curious intentness.

It was as though he were deaf and were reading the words from his companion's lips. The coroner had raised his gla.s.s and was waiting. ”No, I don't drink,” his host explained. ”Very seldom touch anything. I can't and do my kind of work.”

Annisen set down his empty gla.s.s. ”I shouldn't think you could do your kind of work and not drink,” he remarked. ”Well, let's get this over. I suppose you left everything just as you found it?”

There was the ghost of a smile in his host's eyes. ”Glad he didn't put that question the other way around,” he was thinking. ”It would have been an embarra.s.sment if he had asked if I found everything just as I left it.” And then aloud, ”Certainly. I haven't touched anything. The body is out here.”

”Good. Gifford sent his wagon out last night, but fortunately his man knew enough not to disturb anything until I'd been out. Were you here when he came last night?”

”No. I didn't get here till later.”

The two men crawled out through the broken window and in the gray light of the November morning knelt together beside the still form under the Indian blanket. Mechanically the coroner examined it and the empty revolver which they discovered a few feet away. But he offered no comment until he had finished. Then his verdict was curt. ”Gunshot wound in the head, self-inflicted. When did this happen?” He took out a small book and noted down the answers to this and a variety of other questions. Then he stood for a moment staring down at the white, drawn face of the dead man.

”Young, too,” he murmured. ”But I suppose it's a merciful thing. There was no life ahead for him, poor devil.”

They followed the path around to the front of the house where Annisen's car was waiting. ”Be in to the inquest about two o'clock this afternoon,” he instructed. ”That hour suit you all right, Mr.----? Don't believe I know your name.”

”Glover. Richard Glover. I'll be there at two, doctor.”

Late that morning the hea.r.s.e made its second trip out of the side entrance of Rest Hollow. A mud-splashed roadster followed it. The cortege had just pa.s.sed the last gaunt eucalyptus-tree and turned out upon the public highway when it was halted. A man in heavy-rimmed goggles got out of his car and made his way across the road. His glance wavered uncertainly between the driver of the hea.r.s.e and the man in the muddy roadster. He decided to address the latter.

”I heard the news last night. It got around the neighborhood. But I thought----I didn't know----Those rumors get started sometimes with no foundation of fact. But it's true then--that he is dead.”

”That who is dead?”

The question seemed to be shot back at him. And he had the uncanny conviction that it emanated, not from the lips, but from the amber eyes of the man in the roadster. He stammered out his reply.

”Why--I think his name----He told me his name was Kenwick; Roger Kenwick, I think.”

The roadster started again. ”Yes, that's the name. Did you know him?”