The Secret of Lonesome Cove/Chapter 17

Suit case at his side, Chester Kent stood on the platform of the Martindale Center station, waiting for the morning train to Boston. Before him paced Sedgwick, with a face of storm.

“This is something I must do for myself,” the artist declared, with that peculiar flatness of obstinacy which goes with an assertion repeatedly made. “Not you, nor any other man, can do it for me.”

“Not you, nor any other man, should attempt it at all, now,” retorted the scientist.

“That’s the view of the pedant,” cried Sedgwick. “What do you know of love?”

“Nothing, except as a force obstructive to reason.”

“But, Chet, I must see her again,” pleaded Sedgwick; “I must—”

“Exhibit that tact and delicacy which you displayed at your last meeting,” broke in Kent curtly. “Asking a woman to marry you, on the day of her husband’s burial!”

“It wasn’t her husband’s burial.”

“She supposed it was.”

Sedgwick checked his nervous pacing. “Do you think so? You believe she wasn’t a party to that ghastly fraud?”

“Certainly not. She attended the funeral ceremony in good faith. In my belief the real circumstances of Blair’s death are as unknown to her as they are to—to you.”

“Assuming always that he is dead. Your confidence being so sound, it must be based on something. How did he come to his death?”

“If I knew that, I shouldn’t be going to Boston to consult an astrologer.”

“Have you still got astrology on the brain?”

“Hopelessly,” smiled Kent.

“Luck go with you. And I—”

“Yes: and you?” queried Kent, as the other hesitated.

“I am going back to Hedgerow House,” concluded the artist obstinately.

“If I were employed to work on this case,” observed Kent dispassionately; “if it were a mere commission, undertaken on money terms, I should throw it up right here and now.” He took a long strong pull at the extension end of his ear, and whistled a bar or two of Pagliacci. “Do you know room 571 at the Eyrie?” he asked abruptly.

“No. Yes; I do, too. That’s your temple of white silence, isn’t it?”

“Correct. Humor me thus far. Walk up to the hotel. Give this card to the clerk. Get the key. Go to that room at once. Lie down on your back with your eyes open, and think for one hour by the watch. If at the end of that time, you still believe you’re right, go ahead. Will you do it?”

“Agreed. It’s a bargain. But it won’t change my mind.”

“A bargain’s a bargain. It won’t need to,” said Kent coolly. “By that time, if I have any understanding of Mr. Alexander Blair, he will have put your Lady of Mystery on the morning train which leaves for Boston by one of the other roads. If not—why, you may take your chance.”

“Tricked!” said Sedgwick. “Well, I owe you too much to go back on my agreement. But—see here, Kent. She’s going to Boston. You’re going to Boston. You can easily find out where the Blairs live. Go to her for me and find—”

“Heaven forbid!” cried Kent piously.

“Why?”

“Haven’t I told you that I am a timid creature and especially about females? Over seventy I like ’em, and under seven I love ’em. Between, I shun ’em. I’ll do anything for you but that, my boy,” he concluded, as the train came rumbling in.

“Then I shall have to follow, and look her up myself,” returned his friend. “I’ll wire you before I come. Good-by.”

“By the way,” said Kent, leaning out from the car step upon which he had swung himself, “don’t be disturbed if you miss that drawing which we bought from Elder Dennett, at a bargain.”

“Miss it? Why, where is it?”

“In my suit case.”

“What’s it doing there?”

“Why, you see, if it’s a sketch for a finished portrait by Elliott, as I suspect, some of the art people in Boston might recognize it. Good luck! I hope not to see you soon; too soon, that is!”

Chance and a deranged railway schedule conspired against the peace of mind of the shy and shrinking Kent. Outside of Boston a few miles is a junction and a crossing. Here Kent’s train was held up by some minor accident. Here, too, the train from the north on the other road stopped for orders. Thus it was that Kent, stepping out to take the air, found himself looking into an open Pullman window, at a woman’s face framed in deepest black: a young face, but saddened and weary, whose unforgettable appeal of wistfulness had looked out upon him from the canvas in Sedgwick’s studio.

“Mrs. Blair!”

For once in his life, Chester Kent’s controlled tongue had broken the leash. Immediately he would have given a considerable sum of money to recall his impulsive exclamation. He was in an agony of shyness. But it was too late. The girlish face turned. The composed eyes scanned a serious-looking man of indeterminate age, clad in the cool elegance of light gray, and obviously harassed by some catastrophic embarrassment.

“I beg p-p-pardon,” stuttered the man. “Are you Mr. Blair? I’m Mrs. Kent.”

At this astonishing announcement, amusement gleamed in the woman’s eyes, and gave a delicate up-twist to the corners of the soft mouth.

“I don’t recognize you in your present attire, Mrs. Kent,” she murmured.

“No. Of course not. I—I—meant to say—that is you know—” Kent gathered his forces, resolved desperately to see it through, now. “I’m M-M-Mrs. Blair and I suppose you’re Mr. Kent.”

The soft music of her laughter made Kent savage. “Damn!” he muttered beneath his breath; and then went direct to the point. “There are things I want to speak to you about. I wish to get on your car.”

“Certainly not,” replied she decisively. “I do not know you.”

“I am a friend of Francis Sedgwick’s.”

The warm blood flushed her cheeks rose-color, and died away. Her lips quivered. So much of mute helpless misery did her face show, that Kent’s embarrassment vanished.

“Try to believe me,” he said earnestly, “when I tell you that I wish only to save both of you misunderstanding and suffering. Needless misunderstanding and suffering,” he added.

“It is too late,” she said hopelessly.

“Forgive me, but that is foolish. Your mind has been led astray. Sedgwick is absolutely blameless.”

“Please,” she begged in a half whisper, “I can’t listen. I mustn’t listen. I have tried to make myself believe that he acted in self-defense. But, even so, don’t you see, it must stand forever between us?”

“Now, what cock-and-bull story has Alexander Blair told her?” Kent demanded of his mind. “How much does she know, or how little?”

The jar and forward lurch of the car before him brought him out of his reverie.

“Can I see you in Boston?” he asked hurriedly.

She shook her head. “Not now. I can see no one. And, remember, I do not even know you.”

Kent cast about rapidly in his mind, as he walked along with the car, for some one who might be a common acquaintance. He mentioned the name of a very great psychologist at Harvard. “Do you know him?” he asked.

“Yes. He is my mother’s half-brother.”

“And my valued friend,” he cried. “May I get him to bring me?” He was almost running now beside the window.

“Yes,” she assented. “If you insist. But I will hear no word of—of your friend.”

“I understand. Agreed,” called Kent. “To-morrow morning, then.”

And he walked, whistling a melancholious theme, to the platform. Another whistle answered his. It was that of his train, disappearing around the curve a mile down the track.

Belated, but elated, Kent, after some inquiries, reached his destination by an intricate exchange of trolley lines, and went direct to Cambridge. He found his friend, one of the finest and profoundest philosophers of his time, sitting in a closed house over a game of that form of solitaire appropriately denominated “Idiot’s Delight.”

“Very soothing to the mind,” murmured the professor, after welcoming his guest. “So many matters turn out wrong in this world that one finds relief in a problem which usually turns out right.”

“I’ve a little problem of my own which may or may not turn out right,” said Kent, “and I want your help.”

“It is long since you have done me the honor to consult me,” said the old scholar, smiling. “Not, indeed, since the instance of the cabinet member who was obsessed with a maniacal hatred of apples.”

“Without you, I should never have so much as approached the solution of Mr. Carolan’s recall,” returned Kent. “But this present affair calls for aid, not advice.”

“Either is equally at your service,” replied the philosopher courteously.

Kent outlined the case to him.

“You see,” he said, “there is an obvious connection between the unknown body on the beach, and the Blair tragedy.”

“Poor Marjorie!” exclaimed the old man. “For her marriage I blame myself, largely. When Marjorie Dorrance was left an orphan, I was her nearest relative of an age and position such as to constitute a moral claim of guardianship. She visited here when she was eighteen; came like a flood of sunlight into this house. A beautiful vivid girl, half-child, half-woman; with a beautiful vivid mind. For her mother’s sake, if not for her own, I should have watched over her, and warded her against the danger of an ‘advantageous’ marriage, such as is always imminent in the set which she entered. Ah, well, I live among the dust and cobwebs of my own dim interests—and when I returned from one of my journeys into the past, I found that Marjorie was engaged to that wretched creature. Now, he is dead. Let be. I have seen little of her in late years. God grant the life with him has not crushed out of her all her sweetness and happiness.”

“While I am no judge of women,” said Kent judicially, “I should venture to aver that it hasn’t. But about calling on her—my being a stranger, you see—and in the first days of her widowhood—social conventions, and that sort of thing.”

The old scholar made a sweeping gesture of surprising swiftness, suggesting incongruously the possession of great muscular power. The cards flew far and wide, from the stand.

“Mist and moonshine, my dear sir! Moonshine and mist! Marjorie is one of those rare human beings who deal honestly with themselves. Her husband’s death can be nothing but a welcome release. She feels no grief; she will pretend to none. Not even to herself. I will take you to her to-morrow.”

“Blair ill-treated her?” asked Kent.

“Oh, ill-treatment! That is a wide term. I believe that the poor weakling did his best to keep faith and honor. But ropes of mud are strong. Those with which he had bound himself drew him resistlessly back to the sewers. Hers was but a marriage of glamour, at best. And, at the first scent of foulness in her nostrils, it became only a marriage of law. Society does her the justice to believe her faithful to him, and praises the devotion with which, since his breakdown and retirement, she has given up her world to devote herself to his care. Essentially the girl is Puritan in her concepts of duty.”

“Does she know anything of the manner of Blair’s death?”

“No one knows much of it, from what I understand, unless it be Alexander Blair. One of the family, who went to Hedgerow House for the funeral, called upon me, as a courtesy due to Mrs. Blair’s nearest relative. Alexander Blair, he said, was reticent; his dread of publicity is notorious. But from what he, the relative, could ascertain, the affair was substantially this: On the evening before the woman’s body was found, Wilfrid Blair, who had been exhibiting symptoms of melancholia, left the house secretly. No one saw him go; but, about the time that he left, the unknown woman was seen in the vicinity of Hedgerow House.”

“By whom?”

“By a half-breed Indian, a devoted servant of the family, who was practically young Blair’s body-servant.”

“Gansett Jim! That helps to explain.”

“Whether or not Wilfrid Blair had arranged a meeting with this woman is not known. As you know, she was found with her skull crushed, on the sea beach. Blair was afterward discovered by his half-breed servant, mortally injured, and was brought home to die.”

“That is Alexander Blair’s version of the tragedy?”

“As I understand it.”

“Well, it’s ingenious.”

“But untrue?”

“In one vital particular, at least.”

“Are you at liberty to state what it is?”

“Wilfrid Blair never was brought home.”

“Ah? In any case, Alexander Blair is striving to conceal some scandal, the nature of which I have no wish to guess. By the way, I should have added that he suspects a third person, an artist, resident not far from his place, of being his son’s assailant.”

“Francis Sedgwick.”

“You know the man?”

“It is on his behalf that I am acting,” replied Kent.

“My informant, however, inclines to the belief that Alexander Blair is wrong: that Wilfrid Blair killed the woman and then inflicted mortal wounds upon himself. Perhaps you would better see my informant for yourself.”

“Unnecessary, thank you. Mr. Blair is not telling quite all that he knows. Nevertheless, the theory which he propounds as to his son’s assailant, is natural enough, from his point of view. Although,” added Kent thoughtfully, “it will be most unfortunate if it leads him to distrust Mrs. Blair.”

“Marjorie? Am I to infer that her good name is involved?” demanded the old man.

“Hardly her good name. Mr. Blair believes—if I correctly follow his mental processes—that Francis Sedgwick met his son on the night of the tragedy, by chance or otherwise, and that in the encounter which he believes followed, Wilfrid Blair was killed. Unfortunately, some color of motive is lent to this by the fact that Sedgwick had fallen desperately in love with Mrs. Blair.”

“Impossible! Marjorie is not the woman to permit such a thing.”

“Without blame to her, or, indeed, to either of them. She also believes, now, that Sedgwick killed her husband.”

“And—and she was interested in your friend?” asked the old scholar slowly.

“I fear—that is, I trust so.”

“You trust so? With this horror standing between them!”

“It must be cleared away,” said Kent earnestly. “Circumstantial evidence is against Sedgwick: but, I give you my word, sir, it is wholly impossible that he should have killed your niece’s husband.”

“To doubt your certainty would be crassly stupid. And are you hopeful of clearing up the circumstances?”

“There I want your aid. The night of the tragedy a person wearing a dark garment embroidered with silver stars, was on Hawkill Heights. I have reason to believe that this person came there to meet some one from the Blair place; also, that he can tell me, if I can find him, the facts which I lack to fill out my theory. It is to run him down that I have come to Boston.”

“A man wearing a dark garment embroidered with silver stars,” said the philosopher. “Surely a strange garb in this age of sartorial orthodoxy.”

“Not for an astrologer.”

“Ah; an astrologer! And you think he came from Boston?”

“I think,” said Chester Kent, drawing some newspaper clippings from his pocket; “that somewhere among these advertisements, taken from the newspapers which are subscribed for at Hedgerow House, he is to be found.”

“There I ought to be able to help. Through my association with the occult society I have investigated many of these gentry. Great rascals, most of them.”

“Whom would you consider the most able of the lot?”

The old man set a finger on one of the clippings. “Preston Jax,” said he, “is the shrewdest of them all. Sometimes I have thought that he had dim flashes of real clairvoyance. Be that as it may, he has a surprising clientele of which he makes the most, for he is a master-hand at cozening women out of their money. More than once he has been in the courts.”

“Probably he is my man. Anyway, I shall visit him first, and, if I find that his office was closed on July fifth—”

“It was, and for a day or two thereafter as I chance to know, because one of the occult society’s secret agents was to have visited him, and could not get an appointment.”

“Good! I shall see you, then, to-morrow, sir.”

“Clarity of vision go with you, amid your riddles,” said his host with a smile, shuffling the cards which Kent had gathered up for him. “Here is my all-sufficient riddle. Watch me now, how I meet and vanquish the demon mischance.” He turned up a card. “Ah,” said he with profound satisfaction, “the seven of spades. My luck runs in sevens.”