“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.”