Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/289

 V

Which Mr. Flaherty Does Not Quite Explain

With the preceding preachment I wish I might end the story. For what follows—which is my own little part in the story of Felix Kennaston—is that discomfortable sort of anticlimax wherein the key to a mystery, by unlocking unsuspected doors, discloses only another equally perplexing riddle.

Kathleen Kennaston died in her sleep some eleven months after her husband discovered the missing half of the sigil

"I have a sort of headache," she said, toward nine o'clock in the evening. "I believe I will go to bed, Felix." So she kissed him goodnight, in just that emotionless preoccupied fashion that years of living together had made familiar; and so she left him in the music-room, to smoke and read magazines. He never saw her living any more.

Kathleen stopped in the hall, to wind the clock.