“Yeh.”
“Then did the other man, the man whom Jax heard cry out, walk without leaving any trace?”
“There was no other man,” said Chester Kent. “Don’t you understand, Mr. Blair,” he added with significant emphasis, “the source of that cry in the night, heard by Jax and Simon Groot?”
A flash of enlightenment swept Blair’s face. “Ah-h-h!” he said in a long-drawn breath. Then: “I was wrong. I beg Mr. Sedgwick’s pardon.”
Sedgwick bowed. Marjorie Blair’s hand went out, and her fingers closed softly on the tense hand of her father-in-law.
“No third person had any part whatsoever in the drama which Jax has recounted to us,” pursued Kent. “In the morning the body was discovered. Sheriff Schlager was sent for. He found in the pocket something that betrayed the connection of the body with Hedgerow House.”
“A bit of writing-paper, with the heading still legible,” said the sheriff.
“With this he accosted Gansett Jim, who after a night-long search had come out on the cliff. Jim, assuming that the sheriff knew all, told him of the identity of the body. The sheriff saw a chance for money in it—if I do you an injustice, Schlager, you’ll correct me.”
“Go right ahead. Don’t mind me. I’ll take my medicine.”
“Very well. Schlager adopted the ready-made theory which Mr. Jax had prepared for him, so to speak, that the body was washed ashore; and arranged, with the connivance of Doctor Breed, the medical officer, to bury it as an unknown. For this perversion of their duty, Mr. Blair rewarded them handsomely. As I understand it, he dreaded any publicity attaching itself to Hedgerow House and his family.”