“Nor who his other visitor was, I suppose!” said Blair with a savage sneer.
“No,” said Sedgwick, “nor do I know to this day.”
“The stranger,” continued Kent, “refused to give Sedgwick any explanation, and when he threatened to follow, stunned him with a rock, and escaped. Some distance down the road the wayfarer encountered Simon P. Groot, the itinerant merchant. Sedgwick afterward met him and made inquiries, but obtained no satisfaction.”
“Why was Mr. Sedgwick so eager to recover the trail, if he had not murder in his mind?” demanded Blair.
“You are proceeding on the theory that Sedgwick, knowing who Mrs. Blair was, and who the strange visitor was, deliberately killed the latter for motives of his own. But Sedgwick can prove that he was back in his house by nine o’clock, and we have a witness here who was talking with the wearer of the necklace at that hour. Jax, let us have your statement.”
Holding the copy of the confession in his hand, in case of confusion of memory, the Star-master told of his rendezvous, of the swift savage attack, of the appalling incident of the manacles, of the wild race across the heights, and of the final tragedy.
“I’ve thought and wondered and figured, day and night,” he said, in conclusion, “and I can’t get at what that rope and the handcuffs meant.”
“The handcuffs must have come from that dreadful collection of Captain Hogg’s things, in the big hallway at Hedgerow House,” said Marjorie Blair.
“Yes,” assented Kent, “and the dim clue to their purpose goes back again, I fancy, to the strange mysticism of the original Astræa. The disordered mind, with which we have to deal, seems to have been guarding against any such separation as divided, in death, Astræa from her Hermann.”
“But, Chester,” objected Sedgwick, “you speak of a disordered mind, and yet you’ve told us that it isn’t a case of insanity.”