Back came Kent's eyes. "Those?" he said smiling. "Why, those are, one might suppose, such indentations as would be made in flesh by forcing a jewel setting violently against it, by a blow or strong impact."

"Then you think it was the wom-" began the old seaman when several voices broke in:

"There goes Len now!"

The sheriff's heavy figure appeared on the brow of the cliff, moving toward the village.

"Who is it with him?" inquired Kent.

"Gansett Jim," answered Jarvis.

"An Indian?"

"Gosh! You got good eyes!" said Jarvis. "He's more Indian than anything else. Comes from down Amagansett way, and gets his name from it."

"H-m! When did he arrive?"

"While you was trapesin' around up yonder."

"Did he see the body?"

"Yep. Just after the sheriff got whatever it was from the pocket, Gansett Jim hove in sight. Len went over to him quick, an' said somethin' to him. He come and give a look at the body. But he didn't say nothing. Only grunted."

"Never does say nothin', only grunt," put in Sailor Smith.

"That's right," agreed Jarvis. "Well, the sheriff tells me to watch the body. Then he says, 'An' I'll need somebody to help me. I'll take you, Jim.' So he an' the Indian goes away together."

Professor Kent nodded. He looked seaward where the reefs were now baring their teeth more plainly through the racing currents, and he sighed.

That sigh meant, in effect, "I wanted to play with my tides and eddies, and here is work thrown at my very feet!" Then he bade the group farewell, and set off up the beach.

"Seems kinder int'rested, don't he?" remarked one of the natives.

"Who is he, anyway?" inquired another.

"Oh, he's a sort of a harmless scientific crank," explained Jarvis, with patronizing kindliness. "Comes from Washington. Something to do with the government work."

"Kinder loony, _I_ think," conjectured a little, thin, piping man.

"Musses and moves around like it."

"Is that so!" said Sailor Smith, who still had his eyes fixed on the scarified neck. "Well, I ain't any too dum sure thet he's as big a fool as some folks I know thet thinks likelier of theirselves."

Others, however, supported the little man's diagnosis, and there was some feeling against Sailor Smith who refused to make the vote unanimous.

"No, sir," he persisted st.u.r.dily. "That dude way of talkin' of his has got somethin' back of it, _I'll_ bet. He seen there was somethin' queer about thet rope, an' he ast me about the knots, right off. _He_ knows enough not to spit to wind'ard, an' don't you forgit it! Wouldn't surprise me none if he was p'intin' pretty nigh as clus up into the wind as Len Schlager."

Possibly the one supporter of the absent would have wavered in his loyalty had he seen the trove that Professor Chester Kent had carried unostentatiously from the beach, in his pocket, after picking it from the grating. It was the fuzzy coc.o.o.n of a small and quite unimportant insect. Perhaps the admiring Mr. Smith might even have come around to the majority opinion regarding Professor Kent's intellectual futility, could he have observed the absorbed interest with which the Washington scientist, seated on a boulder, opened up the coc.o.o.n, p.r.i.c.ked it until the impotent inmate wriggled in protest, and then, casting it aside to perish, threw himself on his back and whistled the whole of Chopin's _Funeral March_, mostly off the key.

CHAPTER II-PROFESSOR KENT MAKES A CALL

Between the roadway and the broad front lawn of the Nook a four-foot, rough stone wall interposes. Looking up from his painting, Francis Sedgwick beheld, in the glare of the afternoon sun, a spare figure rise alertly upon the wall, descend to the road, and rise again. He stepped to the open window and watched a curious progress. A scrubby-bearded man, clad in serviceable khaki, was performing a stunt, with the wall as a basis. He was walking from east to west quite fast, and every third pace stepping upon the wall; stepping, Sedgwick duly noted, not jumping, the change of level being made without visible effort.

Now, Sedgwick himself was distinctly long of leg and limber, but he realized that he would be wholly incapable of duplicating the stranger's gracefully accomplished feat without violent and clumsy exertion.

Consequently, he was interested. Leaning out of the window, he called:

"h.e.l.lo, there!"

"Good afternoon," said the stranger, in a quiet cultivated voice.

"Would you mind telling me what you are doing on my wall."

"Not in the least," replied the bearded man, rising buoyantly into full view, and subsiding again with the rhythm of a wave.

"Well, what _are_ you doing?"

"Taking a little exercise."

By this time, having reached the end of the wall, he turned and came back, making the step with his right leg instead of his left. Sedgwick hurried down-stairs and out into the roadway. The stranger continued his performance silently. At closer inspection it appealed to the artist as even more mysterious both in purport and execution than it had looked at a distance.

"Do you do that often?" he asked presently.

The gymnast paused, poised like a Mercury on the high coping. "Yes,"

said he. "Otherwise I shouldn't be able to do it at all."

"I should think not, indeed! Has it any particular utility, that form of exercise?"

"Certainly. It is in pursuance of a theory of self-defense."

"What in the world has wall-hopping to do with self-defense?"

"I shall expound," said the stranger in professional tones, taking a seat by the unusual method of letting himself down on one leg while holding the other at right angles to his body. "Do you know anything of jiu-jutsu?"

"Very little."

"In common with most Americans. For that reason alone the j.a.panese system is highly effective here, not so effective in j.a.pan. You perceive there the basis of my theory."

"No, I don't perceive it at all."

"A system of defense is effective in proportion to its unfamiliarity.

That is all."

"Then your system consists in stepping up on a wall and diving into obscurity on the farther side, perhaps," suggested Sedgwick ironically.

"Defense, I said; not escape. Escape is perhaps preferable to defense, but not always so practicable. No; the wall merely served as a temporary gymnasium while I was waiting."