The Secret of Lonesome Cove/Chapter 16

Hope had surged up, sudden and fierce, in Sedgwick’s heart, at the gleam of the candle in Hedgerow House. He was ready for any venture after the swift climax of the night, and his hope hardened into determination. Faithfully he had taken Kent’s orders. But now the enterprise was concluded, to what final purpose he could not guess. He was his own man again, and, perhaps, behind that gleam from the somber house, waited the woman—his own woman. Silently he laid his revolver beside his spade, and slipped into the shadows.

He heard Kent’s impatient query. He saw him as he picked up the relinquished weapon and examined it: and, estimating the temper of his friend, was sure that the scientist would not stop to search for him. In this he was right. Taking the sheriff by the arm, Kent guided him through the creek and into the darkness beyond. Mr. Blair, walking with heavy steps and fallen head, made his way back to the house. Sedgwick heard the door close behind him. A light shone for a time in the second story. It disappeared. With infinite caution, Sedgwick made the détour, gained the rear of the house, and skirting the north wing, stepped forth in the bright moonlight, the prescience of passion throbbing wildly in his breast.

She sat at the window, head high to him, bowered in roses. Her face was turned slightly away. Her long fine hands lay, inert, on the sill. Her face, purity itself in the pure moonlight, seemed dimmed with weariness and strain, a flower glowing through a mist.

With a shock of remembrance that was almost grotesque, Sedgwick realized that he had no name by which to call her. So he called her by the name that is Love’s own.

She did not change her posture. But her lips parted. Her lids drooped and quivered. She was as one in a lovely dream.

He stepped toward her and spoke again.

“You!” she cried; and her voice breaking from a whisper into a thrill of pure music: “You!”

There was, in the one syllable, so much of terror that his heart shivered; so much of welcome that his heart leaped; so much of joy that his heart sang.

Bending, he pressed his lips on her hands, and felt them tremble beneath his kiss. They were withdrawn, and fluttered for the briefest moment, at his temples. Then she spoke, hurriedly and softly.

“You must go. At once! At once!”

“When I have just found you?”

“If you have any care for me—for my happiness—for my good name—go away from this house of dread.”

“What?” said Sedgwick sharply. “Of dread? What do you do here, then?”

“Suffer,” said she. Then bit her lips. “No! No! I didn’t mean it. It is only that the mystery of it— I am unstrung and weak. To-morrow all will be right. Only go.”

“I will,” said Sedgwick firmly. “And you shall go with me.”

“I! Where?”

He caught her hand again and held it to his heart. “To

he whispered.

“Don’t!” she begged. “Not that! It brings back that week too poignantly. Oh, my dear; please, please go.”

“Listen,” he said. “Heart of my heart, I don’t know what curse hangs over this house; but this I do know, that I can not leave you here. Come with me now. I will find some place for you to-night, and to-morrow we will be married.”

With a sharp movement she shrank back from him.

“Married! To-morrow!” The words seemed to choke her. “Don’t you know who I am?”

Fear chilled his mounting blood as Kent’s analysis of the probabilities came back to him.

“If you are married already,” he said unsteadily, “it—it would be better for me that Kent had let him shoot.”

“Who?” she cried. “What has been passing, here? You have been in danger?”

“What does it matter?” he returned. “What does anything matter but—”

“Hark!” she broke in, a spasm of terror contracting her face.

Footsteps sounded within. There was the noise of a door opening and closing. Around the turn of the wing Alexander Blair stepped into view. His pistol was still in his hand.

“Still here, sir?” he inquired with an effect of murderous courtesy. “You add spying to your other practises, then.” He took a step forward and saw the girl. “My God! Marjorie!” he cried.

Sedgwick turned white, at the cry, but faced the older man steadily.

“I fear, sir,” he said, “that I have made a terrible mistake. The blame is wholly mine. I beg you to believe that I came here wholly without the knowledge of—of your wife—”

“Of whom?” exclaimed Blair; and, in the same moment, the girl cried out, “Oh, no, no. Not that!”

“Not?” exclaimed Sedgwick. “Then—”

“Marjorie,” interrupted Mr. Blair, “do you know this man?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Since when?”

“Since two weeks.”

“And he has come here before?”

“No.”

“Then why do I find him here with you to-night: this night of all nights?”

“He is not here with me,” said she, flushing.

“I came from—from where you saw me,” began Sedgwick, “on a reckless impulse. Believe me, sir—”

“One moment! Marjorie, I think you had best go to your room.”

The girl’s soft lips straightened into a line of inflexibility. “I wish to speak to Mr. Sedgwick,” she said.

“Speak then, and quickly.”

“No; I wish to speak to him alone. There is an explanation which I owe him.”

“And there is one which he owes you,” retorted Blair. “As he seems to have been too cowardly to give it, I will supply his deficiencies. In order that there may be no misunderstanding, let me present Mr. Francis Sedgwick, the murderer.”

A low cry, the most desolate, the most stricken sound that Sedgwick had ever heard from human lips, trembled on the air. Before he could gather his senses to retort and deny, she had drawn herself to her feet—and the rose-bowered window framed only emptiness. Sedgwick whirled upon the other man. “Of course,” he said with deceptive calmness; “you know that you lie.”

“I know that I speak truth,” retorted Mr. Blair with so profound a conviction that the other was shaken.

“Is it possible that you really believe it?” he exclaimed.

“So possible that, but for the scandal, I would do what I can not invoke the law to do, and exact life for life. And to crown all, I find you with my son’s wife—”

“Your son’s wife!” The cry burst from Sedgwick’s lips.

“—in the dead of night, at a rendezvous,” concluded Blair.

“That is a lie,” said Sedgwick very low, “for which I shall kill you if you dare repeat it even to your own thoughts. It was no rendezvous. Is your mind so vicious that you can’t believe in innocence? Stop and think! How could it have been a rendezvous, when I came here, as you know, for another purpose?”

“That is true,” said the other thoughtfully. “That still remains to be explained.”

“By you,” returned the artist. “You speak of your son’s wife. To carry out the farce of the sham burial, shouldn’t you have said his ‘widow’?”

“The widow of a day—as you well know,” answered Mr. Blair bitterly.

“As I do not know, at all. But I think I begin to see light. The rose-topazes on the dead woman’s neck. Her topazes. That helps to clear it up. The dead woman was some past light-o’-love of Wilfrid Blair’s. She came here either to reassert her sway over him or to blackmail him. He gave her his wife’s jewels. Then he followed her to the cliffs and killed her, perhaps in a drunken frenzy. And you, Mr. Alexander Blair, to save your son, have concealed him somewhere, bribed the sheriff and the medical officer, contrived this false death and burial, and are now turning suspicion on a man you know to be innocent further to fortify your position. But what damnable lie have you told her?”

During this exposition, Alexander Blair’s face was a study in changing emotions. At the close his thin lips curled in the suggestion of a sardonic grin.

“I leave you to the company of your theory, sir,” said he, and the door closed sharply after him.

Three hours later, wet and bedraggled, but with a fire at his heart, the night-farer came to his home and roused Kent from slumber on the studio couch.

“And where have you been?” demanded the scientist.

“She was in the house. I’ve seen her.”

“Exactly what I wished to prevent. I don’t think you’ve done yourself any good.”

“Any good,” groaned his friend. “She left me believing that I am the murderer of the unknown woman.”

“Indeed! You’ve done worse, even, than I had feared. Tell me.”

In brief outline, Sedgwick told of the moonlight interview. Kent gripped at his ear lobe, and for a time sought silently to draw clarification of ideas from it.

“Do you know,” he said at length, “I wouldn’t wonder if Blair really thought you the murderer.”

“I would,” declared Sedgwick savagely. “He knows who murdered that woman. It was his own son, whom he pretended to bury, for a blind.” And the artist proceeded to outline eagerly his newly developed idea.

“That’s an interesting theory,” said Chester Kent slowly. “A very interesting and ingenious theory. I’ll admit to you now that something of the sort occurred to my mind early in the development of the mystery, but I forsook it because of one fact that rather militates against its probability.”

“What is that?”

“The fact,” replied Kent with a slow smile, “that Wilfrid Blair was dead before his father ever learned of the tragedy of Lonesome Cove.”