"My G.o.d!" 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 a.s.sumed 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," a.s.sented 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.