The Secret of Lonesome Cove

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

The reader ran through it with increasing absorption. Then, pencil in hand, he attacked the first part of the precious screed and emerged from a scene of literary carnage with one brief paragraph in hand and the slaughtered bodies of many eloquent pages strewing the floor. That one paragraph stated that Preston Jax, whose real name was John Preston, had, after a rebellious boyhood, run away to sea, lived two years before the mast, picked up a smattering of education, been assistant and capper for a magnetic healer, and had finally formulated a system of astrological prophecy that won him a slow but increasing renown. The gist of the system was to assign some particular and often imaginary star to every subject, and, by a natural aptitude for worming out secrets from the credulous, lead them along the celestial paths of mysticism to a point where he could reach their pocketbooks. He had been specially successful with women. One bit of his philosophy Kent had preserved unaltered.

“They bite slower than men; but when they do take hold, they swallow the hook so deep that you’re lucky to get it back at all.”

An hour’s work with a pencil that should have been blue resolved the document, under Kent’s skilful and remorseless editorship, into its salient elements. Obviously it was impossible to put it into alien hands for copying. Kent ordered up a typewriter and copied it himself. The duplicate he enclosed in his letter to Sedgwick. The original he put aside to sleep upon. Thus it ran:

“This Astræa affair looked good from the first,” so began Preston Jax’s confession, as beheaded and stripped down by its editor. “It looked like one of the best. You could smell money in it with half a nose. She bit first on one of the occult ads—the number four of the old series, a double-column with display in heavy-faced italics and leaded out strong. That ad always was a good woman-fetcher. Her first letter came in on a Monday, I recollect. It was a big mail. There were a lot of Curiositys and a couple of Suspiciouses, and this was one of half a dozen in the True Believers’ pile. Irene, my assistant, had put the red pencil on it, when she sorted out the mail, to show it was something special. But don’t get her into this, Professor Kent. If you do, it’s all off, jewels and all. Irene has always been for the straight star business and forecast game, and no extras or side lines. Besides, we were married last week.

“What attracted Irene’s red pencil, and caught me right away, was the style of the thing. The handwriting was classy. The paper was elegant. There was something rich about it all. This was no Biddy, pinching out the missis’ stationery to make a play with. She quoted poetry, swell poetry. First off she signed herself ‘An Adept’. I gave her the Personal, No. 3, and followed it up with the Special Friendly, No. 5. Irene never liked that No. 5. She says it’s spoony. Just the same, it fetches them. But not this one. She began to get personal and warm-hearted, all right, and answered up with the kindred-soul racket. But come to Boston? Not a move! Said she couldn’t. There were reasons. It looked like the old game—flitter-headed wife and jealous husband. Nothing in that game, unless you go in for the straight holdup. And blackmail was always too strong for my taste. So I did the natural thing; gave her special readings and doubled on the price. She paid like a lamb.

“Then, blame if it didn’t slip out she wasn’t married at all! I lost that letter. It was kind of endearing. Irene put up a howl. It was getting too personal for her taste. I told her I would cut it out. Then I gave my swell lady another address and wrote her for a picture. Nothing doing. But she began to hint around at a meeting. One day a letter came with a hundred-dollar bill in it. Loose, too, just like you or me might send a two-cent stamp. ‘For expenses’, she wrote, and I was to come at once. Our souls had returned to recognize and join each other, she said. Here is the only part of the letter I could dig up from the waste basket:

Here the specimen of handwriting that had caught Kent’s eye was pasted upon the document.

“‘You have pointed out to me that our stars, swinging in mighty circles, are rushing on to a joint climax. Together we may force open the doors to the past, and sway the world as we sought to do in bygone days.’

“And so on and cetera,” continued the narrative. “Well, of course, she was nutty, that is, about the star business. But that don’t prove anything. The dippiest star-chaser I ever worked was the head of a department in one of the big stores, and the fiercest little business woman in business hours, you ever knew. It’s the romantic in the sex that sets them skidding when it comes to stars, and such like. And Astræa was not a patch on some of them that has been paying me good sane money for years. That was the letter she first called me Hermann in and signed Astræa to. Said there was no use pretending to conceal her identity any longer from me. Seemed to think I knew all about it. That jarred me some. And, with the change of writing in the signature, it all looked pretty queer. You remember the last letter with the copperplate-writing name at the bottom? Well, they all came that way after this; the body of the letter very bold and careless; signature written in an entirely different hand. I took it to Chorio, the character-reader, and he said so, too. What’s more, he advised me to quit the game. Said there was trouble back of that handwriting. Those character fellows ain’t such fools, either!

“But hundred-dollar bills loose in letters mean a big stake. I wrote her I would come, and I signed it ‘Hermann’, just to play up to her lead. Irene got on and threw a fit. She said her woman’s intuition told her there was danger in it. Truth is, she was stuck on me herself, and I was on her; but we did not find it out until after the crash. So I was all for prying Astræa loose from her money, if I had to marry her to do it. She wrote some slush about the one desperate plunge together and then the glory that was to be ours. That looked like marriage to me.