“An Indian-looking chap outside the window is trying to hypnotize me, or something of the sort.”
This information, deemed by its giver to be of no small interest, elicited not the faintest response. Somewhat piqued, the artist turned, to behold his friend stretched on a bench, with face to the ceiling, eyes closed, and heels on the raised end. His lips moved faintly. Alarmed lest the heat had been too much for him, Sedgwick bent over the upturned face. From the moving lips issued a musical breath which began its career softly as Raff’s Cavatina and came to an inglorious end in the strains of Honey Boy. Sedgwick shook the whistler insistently.
“Eh? What?” cried Kent, wrenching his shoulder free. “Go away! Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“I’ll give you something to think about. Look at this face of a cigar-store Indian at the window. No! It’s gone!”
“Gansett Jim, probably,” opined Kent. “Just where his interest in this case comes in, I haven’t yet found out. He favored me with his regard outside. And he had some dealings with the sheriff on the beach. But I don’t want to talk about him now, nor about anything else.”
Acting on this hint, Sedgwick let his companion severely alone, until a bustle from without warned him that the crowd was returning. Being aroused, Kent accosted one of the villagers who had just entered.
“Body coming back?” he asked.
“Yep. On its way now.”
“What occurred in the house where they took it?”
“Search me! Everybody was shut out by the sheriff and the doc. They had that body to theirselves nigh twenty minutes.”