Greetings among the little group, so strangely and harshly thrown together by the dice-cast of the hand of Circ.u.mstance, 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. n.o.body"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 circ.u.mstances?"
"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 a.s.sailant 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 ash.o.r.e 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."