""All, all is as it is foreordained in the stars; the curve of the astral courses, the illimitable, unchangeable curve that has made us what we are, and shall draw us on and on to our mighty destiny. You, you have pointed out the way."
"That is what she gave me, waving her arms in the air.
"Didn"t I curse myself for not remembering what I had written her? No clue, except that the poor soul was plumb dippy-too dippy for me to marry at any price. It wouldn"t have held in the courts. Yet, there might have been five thousand dollars of diamonds on her. It was a tight place. I wanted to duck the whole thing; but the rings held me. I have always been dotty about diamonds. I suppose she felt me weakening. Women are queer, that way.
""You dare to break our pact?" she says in a voice like a woman on the stage. Then she changed and spoke very gently. "You are looking at these gewgaws," she said, and took a diamond circlet from her finger. "What do these count for?" And she put it in my hand. Another ring dropped at my feet. Mind, she was giving them to me. I do not know if it would hold in law, she being a lunatic; but I was going to take all I could, on the chance, and watch for a getaway. The diamonds had me hypnotized.
""These are as nothing compared to what we shall have," she went on, "after the plunge. Wait!"
"She had dropped the rope, and now she went into her paper parcel again, kneeling at my side. I had stooped to look for the fallen ring, when I felt her hand slide up my wrist, and then a quick little snap of something cold and close. A bracelet, I thought. And it was a bracelet!
""Forever! Together!" she said, and stood up beside me, chained to me by the handcuffs she had slipped on my right wrist and her left. Never you think your nerve is sound till you have felt something like that. I thought mine was-and I squalled aloud like a child at a ghost.
""Hush!" she said, and her free arm pressed across my mouth.
""How much to let me off?" I asked as soon as I could get breath. You see, it flashed on me that it was a trap. You can never tell, in our line, when the detectives may be after you, or what kind of a game they"ll put up. I looked around for the rest of the bunch to come and jump me, but I didn"t see a thing. Her next words put me on.
""The stars! The stars!" she whispered. "See ours, how they light our pathway across the sea. The sea that awaits us!"
"More breath came back to me. It wasn"t a trap, then. She was only a crazy woman, that I had to get rid of. I looked down at the handcuff. It was of iron, and had dull rusted edges. A hammer would have made short work of it; but I did not have any hammer. I did not even have a stone.
There would be stones in the broken land beyond the thicket. I thought I saw a way.
""Yes. Let"s go," I said.
"We set out. At the edge of the thicket was a flattish rock with small stones near it. Here I pretended to slip. I fell with my right wrist across a rock, and caught up a cobblestone with my left hand. At the first crack of the stone on the handcuff I could feel the old iron weaken. I got no chance for a second blow. Her hands were at my throat.
They bit in. Then I knew it was a fight for my life.
"She was light; but she was strong like a panther. If her dress bound her, I was as bad off in my robe. At the first grip I was forced back into a bush, and sprawled there, in a tangle of branches and flying cloth. Somehow, I twisted her fingers from my throat. We struggled out into the moonlight again. I got a fair look at her face, and I guess I went mad myself, with the terror of it. The next thing I remember clearly she was quiet on the ground and I was hammering, hammering, hammering at my wrist with a blood-stained stone. I do not know if it was her blood or mine. Both, maybe, for my wrist was like pulp when the iron finally cracked open and I was free. I caught a glimpse of blood on her temple. I suppose I had hit her there with the stone. She looked dead.
"All I wanted was to think-to think-to think. How could I think with her lying there? I crept out of sight of her and kneeled down. Her star, the star I had faked for hers, was shining in my eyes like a cold glare.
That very minute a wisp of cloud blew across and wiped it out, and I heard myself squeal again. I was pretty much dotty, I guess.
"While I was trying to think she came alive. She didn"t stir slow and moan like I have seen men, in my sea days, when they were knocked out.
She was on her feet before I knew it, and off at a dead run. The broken handcuff went jerking and jumping around her as she ran. That was an awful night full of awful things. But the one worst sight of all-worse, even, than the finding of her afterward-was that mad figure leaping over the broken ground toward the cliff"s edge.
"Even if I had tried to follow I never could have caught her. And she was going straight for her death. She dropped down out of sight into a hollow and came up on the rise beyond. I yelled to her to stop, for G.o.d"s sake to stop. Then I held my breath to listen for her scream when she went over. I never heard it.
"But I heard something else. I heard a man"s voice. It was clear and strong and high. There was death in it, I tell you, Mr. Kent, living horror gripped at the throat that gave that cry. Then there was a rush of little stones and gravel down the face of the cliff. That was all.
"Beyond me the ground rose. I ran up on it. It gave me a clear view of the cliff-top. I thought sure I would see the man who had cried out, from there. Not a sight of him! Nothing moved in the moonlight. I thought he must have gone over the cliff, too. I threw myself down and buried my face.
"How long I lay on the ground I do not know. The wisp of cloud had blotted out the woman"s star, now, and by that I knew she was dead. But the moon was shining high. It gave me light enough to see my way into the gully, and I stumbled and slid down through to the beach.
"I found her body right away. It lay with the head against a rock. But there was no sign of the man"s body, the man who had yelled. So I thought perhaps he had not gone over the cliff, and I sat and waited to see if he would come and care for her. It was quite clear to me what I must do, if he did not come. Perhaps my own brain was queer from the shock and the beating she had given me with her manacled wrist; but I felt that before I went away from there I must conceal the cause of her death, and everything about it that I could. If it was known how she was killed, they would be more likely to suspect me.
"I went back and got the rope. I got an old grating from the sh.o.r.e. I dragged the body into the sea and let it soak. I lashed it to the grating. I stripped the jewelry from her. But I could not take it. That would have made me a murderer.
"There is a rock in the gully that I marked. n.o.body else would ever notice it. Under it I hid the jewelry. I can take you to it, and I will.
"I got on my coat and sunk my robe in a creek, and got myself to the railroad station for a morning train. And when I got home I married Irene, and I am through with the crooked work forever.
"This is the whole truth. I did not kill her. I do not know to-day who or what she is. I have looked in the papers, and there is nothing, and that is so strange that I would think it was all a fearful dream, if it was not for my smashed-up wrist. But if any human being knows more about the death of Astraea, it must be the man who shouted as she fell from the cliff, and who went away and did not come back.
"And may G.o.d have no mercy for me if this is not all a true statement, so far as I know the truth.
"(Signed) _Preston Jax_, S-M."
CHAPTER XX-IN THE WHITE ROOM
"_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 G.o.d! It will be a weight off my shoulders."
"Off many shoulders," said Kent. "Here we are."