"When you have a bizarre crime you must look for bizarre motives. Just at present I"m dealing with facts. The iron was on the left wrist of the body; therefore, it was on the right wrist of the unknown companion. It is natural to perform a quick deft act like snapping on a handcuff, with the right hand. Hence, presumably, your visitor was the one who clamped the cuffs."
"And the man broke off his?"
"Yes. But only after a struggle, undoubtedly. If I could find a man with a badly bruised right wrist, I should consider the trail"s end in sight.
You"ll make inquiries, will you, Mr. Bain?"
"I will, and I"ll keep an eye on Len Schlager and the doc. Anything more now? If not, I"ll say good night."
After the lawyer had made his way into the darkness, Kent turned to his host. "This affair is really becoming a very pretty problem. Why didn"t you tell me of your meeting with Simon P. Groot?"
"Who?"
"The patriarch in the circus wagon."
"Oh! I"d forgotten. Why, when I was trying to trail the woman, I chanced upon him and asked if he had seen her. He hadn"t."
"He had. Also he heard a terrified cry shortly after. The cry, he thought, was in a man"s voice. Simon P. Groot isn"t wholly lacking in sense of observation."
"A man"s voice in a cry? What could that mean?"
"Oh, any one of several hundred unthinkable things," said Kent patiently.
"Wait! She must have attacked some other man, as she did me. She was going to a rendezvous, wasn"t she? Then she and the man she went to meet quarreled, and he killed her by throwing her over the cliff."
"And the handcuffs?"
Sedgwick"s hands went to his head. "That, of course, is the inexplicable thing. But don"t you think that was the way she met her death?"
"No."
"Then what do you think?"
"Never mind that at present. The point is that Simon P. Groot naturally supposed you to have been mixed up in whatever tragedy there was going.
You"ve an unfortunate knack of manufacturing evidence against yourself, Sedgwick. The redeeming feature is that the sheriff can"t very well use it to arrest you."
"I don"t see why."
Kent chuckled. "Don"t you see that the last thing the sheriff wants to do is arrest anybody?"
"No, I don"t."
"Why, he has the body safely buried, now. You"ll remember that he was in a great hurry to get it buried. Identification is what he dreaded.
Danger of identification is now over. If any one should be arrested, the body would be exhumed and the danger would return in aggravated form.
No; he wants you suspected, not arrested."
"He is certainly getting his wish!"
"For the present. Well, I"m off."
"Why don"t you move your things from the hotel and stay here with me?"
suggested Sedgwick.
"Getting nervous?" inquired Kent.
"It isn"t that; but I think I could make you more comfortable."
Kent shook his head. "Thank you; but I don"t believe I"d better. When I"m at work on a case I need privacy."
"And so you stick to a public hotel! Queer notions you have of privacy."
"Not at all. A hotel is absolutely mine to do with as I please, as long as I pay my bills. I"m among strangers; I"m not interfered with. No house, not even a man"s own, can possibly be so private as a strange hotel."
"Perhaps you"re right," admitted the other, with a laugh; then, lapsing into p.r.o.nounced gloom for the first time, he said, "It seems pretty tough that I should be in all this coil and tangle because a crazy woman happened by merest chance to make a call on me."
Kent"s pipe glowed in the darkness and silence before he replied. Then he delivered himself as follows: "Sedgwick"-puff-"try"-puff-"to forget if you can"-puff-puff-"that stuff about the crazy woman"-puff-puff-puff.
"Forget it? How should I? Why should I?"
"Because"-puff-"you"re absolutely on the"-puff-puff-"wrong track. Good night."
Slowly Kent climbed the road to the crest of the hill; then stopped and looked back into the studio, which had sprung into light as soon as he left. Sedgwick"s figure loomed, tall and spare, in the radiance. The artist was standing before his easel, looking down at it fixedly. Kent knew what it was that he gazed on, and as the lovely wistful girl-face rose in his memory he sighed, a little.
"I mustn"t forget that quest," he said. "Poor old Sedgwick!"
But, once in his room, the picture faded, and there came before his groping mental vision instead the spectacle of two dark figures, chained together and battling, the one for life, the other for some mysterious elusive motive that fluttered at the portals of his comprehension like a half-remembered melody. And the second struggling figure, whose face was hidden, flashed in the moonlight with the sheen of silver stars against black.
CHAPTER IX-CHESTER KENT DECLINES A JOB
Sundayman"s Creek Road, turning aside just before it gains the turnpike to the Eyrie Hotel to evade a stretch of marsh, travels on wooden stilts across a deep clear pool fed by a spring. Signs at each end of the crossing threaten financial penalties against any vehicle traversing the bridge faster than a walk. Now, the measure of a walk for an automobile is dubious; but the most rigorous constable could have found no basis for protest in the pace maintained by a light electric car, carrying a short, slender, elderly man, who peered out with weary eyes into the glory of the July sunshine. At the end of the bridge the car stopped to allow its occupant a better view of a figure prostrate on the brink of the pool. Presently the figure came to the posture of all fours. The face turned upward, and the motorist caught the glint of a monocle. Then the face turned again to its quest.
"Are you looking for something lost?" asked the man in the car.
"Yes," was the reply. "Very much lost."
"When did you lose it, if it"s not an impertinent question?"
"Not in the least," answered the other cordially. "I didn"t lose it at all."
"Ah!" The motorist smiled. "When was it lost, then?"
Across the monocled face pa.s.sed a shadow of thoughtful consideration.
"About four million years ago, I should judge."
"And you are still looking? I perceive that you are an optimist," said the elderly man.