"_Annalaka_, July 15.
"_To Hotel Eyrie_, Martindale Center: Dust 571 and send up seven
chairs. _Chester Kent._"
"Now I wonder what that might mean?" mused the day-clerk of the Eyrie,
as he read the telegram through for the second time. "Convention in the
Room of Mystery, maybe?"
To satisfy his curiosity he went up to the room himself. Its white
bareness confirmed a suspicion of long standing.
"Any man," he remarked to the scrub woman, "who would pay five a day for
a room just to put nothing at all in it, has sure got a kink in his
cogs."
Nor did the personnel of the visitors who, in course of the late
afternoon, arrived with requests to be shown to 571, serve to efface
this impression. First came the sheriff from Annalaka. He was followed
by a man of unmistakably African derivation, who gave the name of Jim
and declined to identify himself more specifically. While the clerk was
endeavoring, with signal lack of success, to pump him, Lawyer Adam Bain
arrived, and so emphatically vouched for his predecessor as to leave the
desk-lord no further excuse for obstructive tactics. Shortly afterward
Alexander Blair came in, with a woman heavily veiled, and was
deferentially conducted aloft. Finally, Chester Kent himself appeared,
accompanied by Sedgwick and a third man, unknown to the clerk, pompously
arrayed in frock coat and silk hat, and characterized by a painfully
twitching chin.
"Who have come?" Kent asked the clerk.
That functionary ran over the list. "Looks like something to do with the
woman found in Lonesome Cove last week," he essayed hopefully.
Kent glanced out of the window. "It looks like rain," he observed, "and
it looks like wind. And it looks like a number of things that are
anybody's business. Furthermore, I may mention that we shall not need,
in 571, ice-water, stationery, casual messages, calling-cards, or any
other form of espionage." He favored the wilting clerk with a sunny
smile and led his companions to the elevator.
Sedgwick put a hand on his arm. "The woman with Blair?" he asked under
his breath.
Kent nodded. "I rather hoped that she wouldn't come," he said. "Blair
might better have told her--so far as he knows."
"Then he doesn't know all?"
"No. And perhaps she would be content with nothing else. It is her
right. And she is a brave woman, is Marjorie Blair, as Jax here can
testify. We have seen her under fire."
"She is that," confirmed the man with the twitching chin.
"This, then, is the final clear-up?" asked Sedgwick.
"Final and complete."
"Thank God! It will be a weight off my shoulders."
"Off many shoulders," said Kent. "Here we are."
Greetings among the little group, so strangely and harshly thrown
together by the dice-cast of the hand of Circumstance, were brief and
formal. Only Preston Jax was named by Kent, with the comment that his
story would be forthcoming. The seven guests seated themselves, the
Blairs at one end of the half-circle, Sedgwick and the astrologer at the
other. Kent, leaning against the wall, fumbled uncertainly at his ear.
"I hardly know where to begin," he said, his eyes roving along the
intent line. "Not that the case isn't perfectly clear; but there are
certain startling phases which--which--" He glanced toward the Blairs.
Marjorie Blair smiled bravely at him. "Don't be alarmed for me,
Professor Kent," she said. "What I most want is to have everything
cleared up--everything!"
"First, your jewels, then."
Kent turned to Preston Jax, who handed him a package. Opening it, Kent
displayed the wonderful Grosvenor rose-topazes, with a miscellaneous lot
of rings sparkling amid their coils. With a cry, Marjorie caught up the
necklace.
"Are all the remainder of the lost valuables there, Mrs. Blair?" asked
Kent.
She glanced carelessly at the rings. "I think so. Yes. But this is what
matters to me."
"These are all that Preston Jax found on the body."
Alexander Blair leaned from his seat the better to take Preston Jax, at
the other end of the crescent, under consideration.
"It was you who found the body?" he demanded.
"Yes," said the astrologer uneasily.
"Were you alone when you found it?"
"Yes. No. I don't know. There was a man somewheres near. I heard him,
but I never saw him."
"Was Mr. Francis Sedgwick with you that night?" pursued Mr. Blair in
measured tones.
"I never saw Mr. Sedgwick until to-day."
There was a little soft sigh of relief from where Marjorie Blair sat.
"That may or may not be true," said Alexander Blair sternly. "It is the
word of a man who has robbed a dead body, if, indeed, he did not also
kill--"
"Steady, Mr. Blair," broke in Chester Kent. "Perhaps, considering who is
present, we would better approach this in a somewhat calmer spirit."
"I didn't kill or rob any one."
The words seemed to be jerked out from between Preston Jax's teeth by
the spasmodic quiverings of his chin.
"How came you by my daughter's jewels, then, if you did not take them
from the body?"
"Who ever said I didn't take 'em from the body?" retorted the other. "I
did take 'em. But it wasn't robbery. And what I want to know is, how did
they come to be on the body, anyhow? What was that Astraea woman doing
with your daughter's rings and necklace? Tell me that!"
"Wait a moment," put in Kent. "Explain to Mr. Blair, Jax, what your
purpose was in taking the jewels."
"To hide 'em. I thought the less there was on the body to identify it,
the better chance I'd have of getting away. I was so scared that I guess
I was half crazy, anyway. And now, I hear, she never has been
identified. Is that right?"
Sheriff Schlager half rose from his chair. "Ain't you told 'em,
Professor Kent?"
Kent shook his head.
"Nor you, Mr. Blair?"
"No."
"Then I don't see why we can't keep it amongst ourselves," said the
sheriff. "Gansett Jim's tight as a clam. Nobody'll ever get anything out
of him. And, Lord knows, the less that's known of it the better I'm
suited. I ain't none too proud of my part in it."
"There is no reason why it should ever be known outside of this room,"
said Kent, and, at the words, Alexander Blair exhaled a pent-up breath
of relief. "But it is due to one person here that she should know
everything. The question is how to make it clear in the best and--and
kindest way."
"If it will make it easier for any one here to speak," said Marjorie
Blair, "I can say that I understand certain phases of my husband's past
life, thoroughly. There is no need to spare me on that ground."
"But this pertains to a phase that you do not understand at all."
"Yes, I think so," she persisted gently. "This dead woman had some hold
over my husband. To maintain it she came to live near Hedgerow House,
and while she was blackmailing Wilfrid, she got into communication with
Mr. Jax."
"Perhaps they were in collusion," suggested Lawyer Bain.
"Oh, no, no!" broke in Alexander Blair impatiently. "You're wide of the
truth."
"I understand," persisted the young woman, "that the woman persuaded or
compelled Wilfrid to write the letter to Mr. Jax, which she signed
Astraea. And that, when she went to keep the rendezvous, she took my
jewels, which, I suppose, she forced poor Wilfrid to steal for her. Am I
not right, Professor Kent?"
"No. Far from it."
"Why not?" cried Sedgwick eagerly. "She certainly had the jewels on when
she met me. And the handcuffs must have been in the bundle. I heard them
clink."
"Exactly; the handcuffs," said Kent dryly. "What use, to your mind,
would a woman of that sort have for manacles, in those circumstances?"
"Yes," put in Adam Bain: "they fit in about as nice as a pink silk hat
at a funeral."
"I know what use she had for 'em," muttered Preston Jax, caressing his
wrist. "It's simply a case of crazy woman; isn't it, Professor Kent?"
"No. Not if you mean that your assailant was a crazy woman," said Kent
patiently.
"Then who, in heaven's name, is or was Astraea?" cried Sedgwick.
"Astraea is, I take it, a lady long since dead. A very strange and
interesting lady who adopted that name for her own peculiar pursuits
along our friend Jax's lines of interest."
"They call themselves all sorts of things," observed the astrologer
philosophically. "I had a follower once that used to sign herself Carrie
Nation, and she wasn't the real Carrie at all. No name is sacred to 'em
when they go dippy over the stars."
"Then the woman of Lonesome Cove borrowed that name from some old
record?" asked Sedgwick.
"Follow me through a page of unwritten local history," said Chester
Kent, straightening up. "The beginning of this story goes back some
seventy-five years, when there lived, not far from Hogg's Haven, in a
house which has since been destroyed, an older sister of Captain Hogg,
who married into the Grosvenor family. She was, from the evidence of the
Grosvenor family historian, who, by the way, has withheld all this from
his pages, a woman of the most extraordinary charm and magnetism. Not
beautiful, in the strict sense of the word, she had a gift beyond
beauty, and she led men in chains. Her husband appears to have been a
weakling who counted for nothing in her life after the birth of her
children. Seeking distraction, she flung herself into mysticism and
became the priestess of a cult of star-worshipers, which included many
of the more cultivated people of this region. Among them was a young
German mystic and philosopher, who had fled to this country to escape
punishment for political offenses. Hermann von Miltz was his name."
"That's why she called me Hermann," broke in Preston, in an awed half
whisper.
"Don't jump to wild conclusions," said Kent smilingly. "Some of their
correspondence is still extant. She signed herself Astraea, in
handwriting similar to the signature of that note of yours, Jax. There
seems to have been no guilt between them, as the law judges guilt. The
bond was a mystic one. But it was none the less fatal. It culminated in
a tragedy of which the details are lost. Perhaps it was an elopement
that they planned; perhaps a double suicide, with the idea that their
souls would be united in death. There are hints of that in the old
letters in the historian's possession and in the library at Hedgerow
House. This much is known: The couple embarked together in a small boat.
Von Miltz was never again heard of. Camilla Grosvenor's body came ashore
in Lonesome Cove. She was the Cove's earliest recorded victim. The
sketch which that mischief-monger, Elder Dennett, left at your door,
Sedgwick, supposing it to be a likeness of the unfortunate creature he
had seen on the road to your house, is a Charles Elliott sketch for the
portrait of Camilla Grosvenor."
"My God!" Jax burst out, "was it a ghost I met up with that night on
Hawkill Heights?"
"As near a ghost as you are ever likely to encounter, probably,"
answered Kent.
"But, see here," said Adam Bain, "I'm a lawyer. The law doesn't deal
with ghosts or near-ghosts. Are you trying to tell us, Professor Kent,
that the soul of this long-dead Astraea-Camilla Grosvenor, came back to
inhabit the body of the Jane Doe of Lonesome Cove?"
"Not precisely that, either. Everything is strictly within the limits of
the law's cognizance, Mr. Bain, as you will see. Now I'm going to make a
long jump down to the present. If I fail to keep the trail clear,
anywhere, you are any of you at liberty to interrupt me. First, then, I
want you to follow with me the course of a figure that leaves Hedgerow
House on the late afternoon of July fifth. By chance, the figure is not
seen, except at a distance by Gansett Jim, who suspected nothing, then.
Otherwise it would have been stopped, as it wears Mrs. Blair's necklace
and rings."
"Dressing the part of Astraea," guessed Lawyer Bain.
"Precisely. Our jeweled figure, in a dress that is an old one of Mrs.
Blair's, and with a package in hand, makes its way across country to the
coast."
"To join me," said Preston Jax.
"To join you. Chance brings the wayfarer face to face with that
gentleman of the peekaboo mind, Elder Dennett. They talk. The stranger
asks--quite by chance, though the Elder assumed it was otherwise--about
the home of Francis Sedgwick. At the entrance to Sedgwick's place the
pair met. There was a curious encounter, ending in Sedgwick's demanding
an explanation of the rose-topazes, which he knew to be Mrs. Blair's."
"How did he know that?" demanded Alexander Blair.
"Because I had worn them when I sat to him," said Marjorie Blair
quietly.
"You sat to Sedgwick? For your picture? Why didn't you tell me of this?"
"No explanation was due you. It was a matter of chance, our
acquaintance. Mr. Sedgwick did not even know who I was."
"Nor who his other visitor was, I suppose!" said Blair with a savage
sneer.
"No," said Sedgwick, "nor do I know to this day."
"The stranger," continued Kent, "refused to give Sedgwick any
explanation, and when he threatened to follow, stunned him with a rock,
and escaped. Some distance down the road the wayfarer encountered Simon
P. Groot, the itinerant merchant. Sedgwick afterward met him and made
inquiries, but obtained no satisfaction."
"Why was Mr. Sedgwick so eager to recover the trail, if he had not
murder in his mind?" demanded Blair.
"You are proceeding on the theory that Sedgwick, knowing who Mrs. Blair
was, and who the strange visitor was, deliberately killed the latter for
motives of his own. But Sedgwick can prove that he was back in his house
by nine o'clock, and we have a witness here who was talking with the
wearer of the necklace at that hour. Jax, let us have your statement."
Holding the copy of the confession in his hand, in case of confusion of
memory, the Star-master told of his rendezvous, of the swift savage
attack, of the appalling incident of the manacles, of the wild race
across the heights, and of the final tragedy.
"I've thought and wondered and figured, day and night," he said, in
conclusion, "and I can't get at what that rope and the handcuffs meant."
"The handcuffs must have come from that dreadful collection of Captain
Hogg's things, in the big hallway at Hedgerow House," said Marjorie
Blair.
"Yes," assented Kent, "and the dim clue to their purpose goes back
again, I fancy, to the strange mysticism of the original Astraea. The
disordered mind, with which we have to deal, seems to have been guarding
against any such separation as divided, in death, Astraea from her
Hermann."
"But, Chester," objected Sedgwick, "you speak of a disordered mind, and
yet you've told us that it isn't a case of insanity."
"Never," contradicted Kent. "You've misinterpreted what I said. In the
early stages of the affair I told you, if you remember, that a very
bizarre situation indicated a very bizarre motive. What could be more
bizarre than insanity?"
"Was it suicidal insanity, then?" asked Bain.
"Not in the ordinary and intentional sense."
"Then it was the other man that killed her," said Preston Jax; "the man
I heard yell, when she went over. But what became of him?"
"Simon P. Groot spoke of hearing that man's scream, too," confirmed
Bain. "Have you got any clue to him, Professor Kent?"
"The other man was Francis Sedgwick," declared Alexander Blair doggedly.
Chester Kent shook his head.
"I've got a witness against that theory, from your own side, Mr. Blair,"
said he. "Gansett Jim at first thought as you do. In that belief he
tried to kill Mr. Sedgwick. Now he knows his mistake. Isn't that so,
Jim?"
"Yeh," grunted the half-breed.
"You were out through the countryside that night trying to trace the
wanderer."
"Yeh."
"And later when I showed you the footprints at the scene of the
struggle, you saw that they were not Mr. Sedgwick's?"
"Yeh."
"You examined the cliff for footprints. Do you think any one pushed or
pursued the victim over the brink?"
"No."
"Whose were the footprints, that you found, Jim?" demanded Alexander
Blair.
The half-breed pointed, in silence, to Preston Jax.
"Of course. His and--and the other's. But there were the marks of a
third person, weren't there?"
"No."
"There must have been," insisted Mr. Blair. "Are you positive?"
"Yeh."
"Then did the other man, the man whom Jax heard cry out, walk without
leaving any trace?"
"There was no other man," said Chester Kent. "Don't you understand, Mr.
Blair," he added with significant emphasis, "the source of that cry in
the night, heard by Jax and Simon Groot?"
A flash of enlightenment swept Blair's face. "Ah-h-h!" he said in a
long-drawn breath. Then: "I was wrong. I beg Mr. Sedgwick's pardon."
Sedgwick bowed. Marjorie Blair's hand went out, and her fingers closed
softly on the tense hand of her father-in-law.
"No third person had any part whatsoever in the drama which Jax has
recounted to us," pursued Kent. "In the morning the body was discovered.
Sheriff Schlager was sent for. He found in the pocket something that
betrayed the connection of the body with Hedgerow House."
"A bit of writing-paper, with the heading still legible," said the
sheriff.
"With this he accosted Gansett Jim, who after a night-long search had
come out on the cliff. Jim, assuming that the sheriff knew all, told him
of the identity of the body. The sheriff saw a chance for money in
it--if I do you an injustice, Schlager, you'll correct me."
"Go right ahead. Don't mind me. I'll take my medicine."
"Very well. Schlager adopted the ready-made theory which Mr. Jax had
prepared for him, so to speak, that the body was washed ashore; and
arranged, with the connivance of Doctor Breed, the medical officer, to
bury it as an unknown. For this perversion of their duty, Mr. Blair
rewarded them handsomely. As I understand it, he dreaded any publicity
attaching itself to Hedgerow House and his family."
"God knows I had suffered enough of that!" murmured Blair.
"Let us hope it is now ended. To avoid this, Mr. Blair was willing even
to let the supposed murderer, whom he believed to be Sedgwick, go
unscathed of justice. By chance, however, I saw the body on the beach.
The most important discovery of all, I missed at that time very
stupidly--the more so in that I had a clue, in the character of the
assault upon Sedgwick--but I could not overlook the fact that the corpse
had not been washed ashore. Moreover, the matter of the manacles
stimulated my interest. Not until the inquest, however, did I realize
the really startling and unique feature of the case. There is where you
and Doctor Breed made your fatal error, Mr. Sheriff."
"That's right. You saw the face when we lifted the lid, I s'pose."
"No. You were too quick in replacing it."
"Then how did you get on to the thing?"
"From seeing the face after the body was returned to the court room."
"Hold on a bit," interrupted Lawyer Bain. "I remember there was a fuss
about the corpse not being publicly shown for identification. Some of us
insisted. The sheriff gave in. The coffin lid wasn't quarter off when
Breed gave a yell and clapped it on again, and they took the body back
to his house and shut themselves in with it for half an hour before they
took it to the hall again. Naturally being suspicious, I looked at it
pretty close; but I didn't see anything queer."
"Possibly you didn't notice a cut on the cheek?" suggested Kent.
"Yes. Dennett spoke of it and the sheriff shut him up. But what of it?
It might have been done in any one of a dozen ways."
"But it wasn't there when the body lay on the beach."
"In the rolling and tossing of the journey there might easily be minor
scarifications," said Sedgwick.
"True. But, Frank, what did you suppose that sudden shift on the part of
the officers of the law meant?"
"Perhaps that the body was not in fit condition to be viewed."
"In that case what could they have done to make it more fit?"
"Nothing, I suppose. I didn't consider that."
"I rather opined," said Lawyer Bain, "that some one had changed bodies
on 'em."
"That's what made you so cussed curious, was it, Adam?" barked the
sheriff.
"There was no exchange of bodies," said Kent. "But there was a change in
the body itself."
"What kind of a change?" asked Sedgwick.
"Has it ever occurred to you to think that, after death, the hair grows
fast?"
"I've heard it said," said Lawyer Bain, "that it grows faster than in
life."
"And that it grows, not only on the head, but on the face as well?"
"The face! A woman's face?" exclaimed Sedgwick.
"No; a man's."
"What man?"
"The man in the coffin."
"Have you lost your mind, Chet? The body in the coffin was that of the
woman who met me at the entrance to the Nook."
"No. It was the body of the man who, dressed in woman's clothing, met
you at the Nook, and knocked you down with a stone flung overhand as not
one woman in a thousand could have thrown it. That, in itself, ought to
have suggested the secret to me, long before I discovered it."
"But how did you discover it?" inquired Sedgwick in bewilderment; "since
you didn't see the growth of beard on the dead face yourself?"
"By the cut on the cheek. You see, the sheriff had failed to foresee
that telltale beard. So, when in deference to Mr. Bain's protest against
burial without a formal view of the body, they opened up the casket and
saw the obvious change in the face, there was nothing for the officials
to do but remedy their carelessness. They had the body taken to the
house, and did the best they could. That cut on the cheek was a razor
cut. Having realized that much, I had to deal thenceforth with the
mystery of a dead man masquerading as a woman, and being abetted in the
deception by the officers of the law--"
"Astraea a man!" broke in Preston Jax, his chin in a spasm. "No wonder
she--he put up such a fight. Who was he?"
"My son, Wilfrid Blair," said Alexander Blair.
Sedgwick took a swift involuntary step toward Marjorie, but Kent was
before him, setting a firm hand on his shoulder.
"Not now, Frank," he said. Then, turning to the girl-widow, "You see,
Mrs. Blair," he said very gently, "it isn't so bad as you feared. There
was no other woman in the case, no disgrace, no shame. You need feel
nothing but pity for an unhappy wrecked mind, for which death was the
happiest refuge."
Marjorie Blair sat very still and white. "Let me think!" she whispered.
"Let me think!"
"But the man's voice!" exclaimed Jax. "The voice of the man on the
cliff!"
"Wilfrid Blair's," said Kent. "In the final moment he came to himself.
At last he resumed his voice. Up to then he had been, in voice, manner,
thought, purpose, unconsciously playing a part."
"Astraea!" said Sedgwick and Jax in a breath.
"Yes. It was one of those strange and complete assumptions of
personality which puzzle the alienists. Wilfrid Blair's diseased mind
had fastened upon the strange history of his ancestress, and brooded on
it until he became convinced that her spirit was reincarnated in
himself. Undoubtedly his striking likeness to the portrait of Camilla
Grosvenor powerfully aided the obsession. There were her letters, in the
library, to give color to his unconscious imitation. As is common in
this form of dementia, he was secretive. But there can be no doubt that
from the time when he recognized in Preston Jax's advertisement, the
call of Astraea's kindred soul, Hermann von Miltz, his one overwhelming
desire was to reenact the drama of the last century, in his own assumed
personality. Jax has told us how cleverly and secretly the plan for the
double suicide was matured. This obsession must have been of long
standing."
"We thought it melancholia," said Alexander Blair. "As you say, he had
been very secretive. Very silent, too. We kept Gansett Jim with him as a
sort of body-guard."
Marjorie Blair got to her feet. She was ghost-white; but her voice and
eyes were steady, as she faced Kent.
"I must understand this all," she said. "Wilfrid's body is where?"
"In Annalaka churchyard."
"Then who--what is buried in his grave at Hedgerow House?"
"Nothing," said Alexander Blair.
"A mock funeral!"
"My dear," said the man--he seemed to have grown suddenly old under the
unspoken arraignment--"I could not tell you what I thought the truth. I
thought then that Wilfrid had encountered Mr. Sedgwick, and that--that
there had been a fight in which he was killed. Rather than face the
scandal of a murder trial, a scandal in which the family name would have
been dragged through the mire of the public prints again, I chose the
part of deceit. I'd have bribed a hundred officers of the law rather
than have had you dragged to the witness-stand, and have been compelled
to give testimony myself. There has been enough of public shame in my
life."
"But you made me believe that Mr. Sedgwick killed Wilfrid!" she accused.
"I believed it myself," he retorted.
"But what basis had _you_ for suspecting me of the crime?" cried
Sedgwick, turning to Marjorie Blair. "You didn't know of his visit to me
in women's clothes. You knew nothing of the quarrel, it seems, until
just now. For what possible reason, in your belief, should I have killed
him?"
She flushed to her temples. "I--I--thought," she murmured, "that he
might have known of our acquaintance, and have misconstrued: that he
might have gone to find you, and attacked you, and that you killed him.
In self-defense, I mean."
"Thank you for that last, at least," said Sedgwick rather bitterly.
Then, as he saw her wince, "Forgive me!" he added in a low tone. "But,
to be suspected by you, even though you were misled--" He stopped,
catching Kent's frowning glance.
"Who discovered that the burial was a false one?" she asked, after a
pause.
"Professor Kent," said Blair. "He and Mr. Sedgwick exhumed the coffin."
"That was the night--" her eyes questioned Sedgwick.
"That I found you at Hedgerow House. Yes," he said gently.
"And that my father-in-law charged you with being my husband's
murderer."
"My dear Mrs. Blair!" said Kent uncomfortably. "Remember what
justification he thought he had."
She considered a moment. "You are right," she said with an effort. "I
don't mean to be unjust." Her head dropped in thought. "Whatever Wilfrid
may have been," she continued, after a moment's silence, "he was my
husband. I bear his name. And to leave him in a nameless grave is to
dishonor not him alone, but myself."
"You would claim the body?" cried Alexander Blair.
"What else is there for us to do?" she countered.
"And bring down upon us unavoidably the publicity which we have escaped
at so bitter a price?" cried the elder Blair. "Have we not suffered
enough from the scandal of his life, that we should be further involved
in the scandal of his death?"
"He's right, miss. It won't do," said the sheriff kindly.
"Silence is best," said Sedgwick.
"What the papers would do with this," opined Preston Jax, "would be a
plenty."
"My advice is to let be," proffered Lawyer Bain.
"Yeh," grunted the half-breed.
"Oh, are you all against me?" she cried. "Mr. Kent, you, too? Do you
think me wrong?"
"No," said Kent.
"Will you drag our name, hers as well as mine, in the mud?" cried the
head of the house of Blair.
"No," said Kent again.
"But how, then--tell me what you intend--"
"No," said Kent, and with such absolute flat finality that the others
looked at him in blank silence.
The silence was broken by a tremendous sigh. All eyes turned to Preston
Jax, who had risen and was leaning against the wall, his chin jerking
galvanically.
"Well?" said Kent.
"What about me?" asked the Star-master miserably.
Kent's fingers twitched at his ear lobe. "Well, what about you?" he
repeated.
"What are you going to do with me?"
"You? Oh! You go back to Irene," said Kent, with his half smile. "That's
your sentence, if Mrs. Blair approves."
The astrologer drew a quick breath. The light of a great relief softened
his hard little eyes. A startled look widened them as Marjorie Blair,
her own trouble forgotten for the moment, rose and went over to him, the
reflection of another's happiness shining in her face and making it
doubly lovely. A ring glinted in her outstretched hand.
"Take this," she said softly, "for your Irene. May you be very, very
happy together!"
For the space of five seconds Preston Jax's chin was motionless. Then a
minor cataclysm convulsed it. Speech emerged from that facial quake, in
a half-stutter, half-blubber, wholly absurd and laughter-provoking and
heart-moving.
"Wh-wh-whut'll I say? Whut'll I do, to thank you, ma'am? I--I--I'll just
tell you this. It's me for the straight-and-narrow from now on. And if
ever you or Professor Kent or any of you want an A-1, special charted,
extra-celestial star-reading for self or friends, you--you--you
c-c-c-come--" He made a rush for the hallway, and the door banged a
period to his emotion.
"I think," said Chester Kent gravely, "that lesson will last."
As Marjorie Blair stood smiling, soft-eyed, at the door whence the
overcome Star-master had disappeared, Sedgwick started to pass. With
quick and unexpected tact, Alexander Blair drew the sheriff and the
lawyer aside, giving to the young people their moment. She looked up at
Sedgwick with lifted eyebrows.
"Are you not going to speak to me?" she said sorrowfully.
"What is there to say, except one thing--and that I may not say now."
"No, no!" she whispered, in affright. "But say you forgive me."
"You! For what?"
"For having believed, even for an instant, what Father Blair said, that
you were the murderer."
Sedgwick smiled bravely. "That is all past."
"And you'll think of me at least kindly?"
"I'll think of you with every beat of my heart," he said passionately.
Across her face passed the look of fairy wistfulness that was all her
own. "No," she said, "it would be better--for both of us--that you
should forget, for the time."
He leaned over her:
"'What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
And teach the unforgetful to forget?'"
he quoted very low.
"And yet," she persisted, "it would be easier, now that I am going
away."
"Going away! For long?"
She nodded with compressed lips. Sedgwick turned very white.
"Oh, don't look like that!" she faltered. "I can't bear it! Can't you
see that, after what has happened, I must go? I must have time to
forget. There is so much to forget! Surely you can be patient--and
trust."
Again he smiled at her, with a courage shining through his pain that
brought the quick tears to her eyes.
"Yes. I can wait and trust--and love." Again he leaned to her:
"'And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
Sees, through the untuneful bough the wingless skies.'"
He drew her gaze to his own, held it for the space of a heart-beat, and
was gone.