Having paid for it—with something extra for his curtness—he led the seaman out of the place.
“You were going to say ‘and handcuffs’, weren’t you?” he inquired.
“Why, yes. What of that?” asked the veteran, puzzled. Suddenly he brought his hand down with a slap on his thigh. “Where was my wits?” he cried. “Them irons on the dead woman’s wrist—I knew I’d seen their like before! Slave manacles! They must ‘a’ come from Hogg’s Haven!”
“Very likely. But that suspicion had better be kept quiet, at present.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” agreed the other. “More devilment from the old Haven? A bad house—a rotten bad house!”
“Yet I’ve a pressing desire to take a look at it,” said Chester Kent musingly. “Going back to Annalaka, Mr. Smith? I’ll walk with you as far as the road to Mr. Sedgwick’s.”
Freed of the veteran’s company at the turn of the road, Kent sat down and took his ear in hand, to think.
“Miss Dorrance,” he mused, “Marjorie Dorrance. What simpler twist for a nickname than to transform that into Marjorie Daw? Poor Sedgwick!”
At the Nook he found the object of his commiseration mournfully striving to piece together, as in a mosaic, the shattered remnants of his work. Sedgwick brightened at his friend’s approach.
“For heaven’s sake, come out and do me a couple of sets of tennis!” he besought. “I’m no sport for you, I know, particularly as my nerves are jumpy; but I need the work.”