“Facts that contradict each other are not facts,” pronounced Chester Kent.
Fumes of tobacco were rising from three pipes hovered about the porch of the Nook where Kent, Sedgwick and Lawyer Bain were holding late council. A discouraged observation from the artist had elicited Kent’s epigram.
“Not all of them, anyhow,” said Bain. “The chore in this case is to find facts enough to work on.”
“On the contrary,” declared Kent, “facts in this case are as plentiful as blackberries. The trouble is that we have no pail to put them in.”
“Maybe we could borrow Len Schlager’s,” suggested the lawyer dryly.
Kent received this with a subdued snort. “It is remarkable that the newspapers haven’t sent men down on such a sensational case,” he said.
“On the contrary to you, sir,” retorted Bain, “so much fake stuff has come out of Lonesome Cove that the papers discount any news from here.”
“All the better. The only thing that worries me more than the stupidity of professional detectives is the shrewdness of trained reporters. At least we can work this out in our own way.”
“We don’t seem to be getting much of anywhere,” complained Sedgwick.
“Complicated cases don’t clear themselves up in a day,” remarked Kent. “In this one we’ve got opponents who know more than we do.”
“Schlager?” asked the lawyer.
“And Doctor Breed. Also, I think, Gansett Jim. What do you think, Mr. Bain, is the mainspring of the sheriff’s action?”
“Money,” said the lawyer with conviction. “He’s as crooked as a snake with the colic.”
“Would it require much money to influence him?”
“As much as he could get. If the case was in the line of blackmail, he’d hold out strong. He’s shrewd.”
“Doctor Breed must be getting some of it.”
“Oh, Tim Breed is Len’s little dog. He takes orders. Of course he’ll take money too, if it comes his way. Like master, like man.”
“Those two,” said Kent slowly, “know the identity of the body. For good and sufficient reasons, they are keeping that information to themselves. Those reasons we aren’t likely to find out from them.”
“Murderer has bribed ’em,” opined Bain.
“Possibly. But that presupposes that the sheriff found something on the body which led him to the murderer, which isn’t likely. How improbable it is that a murderer—allowing, for argument, that there has been murder—who would go as far as to cover his trail and the nature of the crime by binding the body on a grating, would overlook anything like a letter incriminating himself!”
“What did the sheriff find, then, in the dead woman’s pocket?”
“Perhaps a handkerchief with a distinctive mark.”
“And that would lead him to the identity of the body?”
“Presumably. Also to some one, we may assume, who was willing to pay roundly to have that identity concealed.”
“That would naturally be the murderer, wouldn’t it?” asked Sedgwick.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“It looks to me so,” said the lawyer. “He’s the one naturally interested in concealment.”
“I’m almost ready to dismiss the notion of a murderer at all.”
“Why so?” demanded both the others.
“Because there was no murder, probably.”
“How do you make that out?” queried Bain.
“From the nature of the wounds that caused death.”
“They look to me to be just such wounds as would be made by a blow with a heavy club.”
“Several blows with a heavy club might have caused such wounds. But the blows would have had to be delivered peculiarly. A circle on the skull, six inches in diameter, impinging on the right ear, is crushed in. If you can imagine a man swinging a baseball bat at the height of his shoulder, repeatedly and with great force, at the victim’s head, you can infer such a crushing in of the bone. My imagination hardly carries me so far.”
“Beating down from above would be the natural way,” said Bain.
“Certainly. No such blow ever made that wound.”
“Then how was it made?” asked Sedgwick.
“Probably by a fall from the cliff to the rocks below.”
“And the fall broke the manacle from the right wrist?”
“The broken manacle was never on the right wrist.”
“That’s merely conjecture,” said the lawyer.
“No; it’s certainty. A blow heavy enough to break that iron, old as it is, must have left a mark on the flesh. There was no mark.”
“Why should any one put one handcuff on a woman and leave the other dangling?”
“Suppose the other was not left dangling?”
“Where was it, then?”
“On the wrist of some other person, possibly.”
“A man had chained the woman to himself?” said Sedgwick incredulously.
“More probably the other way round.”
“That’s even more unbelievable.”
“Not if you consider the evidence. You will remember that your mysterious visitor, while talking with you, carried a heavy bundle. The manacles were, I infer, in that.”
“But what conceivable motive could the dead woman have in dressing herself up like a party, going to meet a man, and chaining him to herself?”
“When you have a bizarre crime you must look for bizarre motives. Just at present I’m dealing with facts. The iron was on the left wrist of the body; therefore, it was on the right wrist of the unknown companion. It is natural to perform a quick deft act like snapping on a handcuff, with the right hand. Hence, presumably, your visitor was the one who clamped the cuffs.”
“And the man broke off his?”
“Yes. But only after a struggle, undoubtedly. If I could find a man with a badly bruised right wrist, I should consider the trail’s end in sight. You’ll make inquiries, will you, Mr. Bain?”
“I will, and I’ll keep an eye on Len Schlager and the doc. Anything more now? If not, I’ll say good night.”
After the lawyer had made his way into the darkness, Kent turned to his host. “This affair is really becoming a very pretty problem. Why didn’t you tell me of your meeting with Simon P. Groot?”
“Who?”
“The patriarch in the circus wagon.”
“Oh! I’d forgotten. Why, when I was trying to trail the woman, I chanced upon him and asked if he had seen her. He hadn’t.”
“He had. Also he heard a terrified cry shortly after. The cry, he thought, was in a man’s voice. Simon P. Groot isn’t wholly lacking in sense of observation.”
“A man’s voice in a cry? What could that mean?”
“Oh, any one of several hundred unthinkable things,” said Kent patiently.
“Wait! She must have attacked some other man, as she did me. She was going to a rendezvous, wasn’t she? Then she and the man she went to meet quarreled, and he killed her by throwing her over the cliff.”
“And the handcuffs?”
Sedgwick’s hands went to his head. “That, of course, is the inexplicable thing. But don’t you think that was the way she met her death?”
“No.”
“Then what do you think?”
“Never mind that at present. The point is that Simon P. Groot naturally supposed you to have been mixed up in whatever tragedy there was going. You’ve an unfortunate knack of manufacturing evidence against yourself, Sedgwick. The redeeming feature is that the sheriff can’t very well use it to arrest you.”
“I don’t see why.”
Kent chuckled. “Don’t you see that the last thing the sheriff wants to do is arrest anybody?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Why, he has the body safely buried, now. You’ll remember that he was in a great hurry to get it buried. Identification is what he dreaded. Danger of identification is now over. If any one should be arrested, the body would be exhumed and the danger would return in aggravated form. No; he wants you suspected, not arrested.”
“He is certainly getting his wish!”
“For the present. Well, I’m off.”
“Why don’t you move your things from the hotel and stay here with me?” suggested Sedgwick.
“Getting nervous?” inquired Kent.
“It isn’t that; but I think I could make you more comfortable.”
Kent shook his head. “Thank you; but I don’t believe I’d better. When I’m at work on a case I need privacy.”
“And so you stick to a public hotel! Queer notions you have of privacy.”
“Not at all. A hotel is absolutely mine to do with as I please, as long as I pay my bills. I’m among strangers; I’m not interfered with. No house, not even a man’s own, can possibly be so private as a strange hotel.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” admitted the other, with a laugh; then, lapsing into pronounced gloom for the first time, he said, “It seems pretty tough that I should be in all this coil and tangle because a crazy woman happened by merest chance to make a call on me.”
Kent’s pipe glowed in the darkness and silence before he replied. Then he delivered himself as follows: “Sedgwick”—puff—“try”—puff—“to forget if you can”—puff—puff—“that stuff about the crazy woman”—puff—puff—puff.
“Forget it? How should I? Why should I?”
“Because”—puff—“you’re absolutely on the”—puff—puff—“wrong track. Good night.”
Slowly Kent climbed the road to the crest of the hill; then stopped and looked back into the studio, which had sprung into light as soon as he left. Sedgwick’s figure loomed, tall and spare, in the radiance. The artist was standing before his easel, looking down at it fixedly. Kent knew what it was that he gazed on, and as the lovely wistful girl-face rose in his memory he sighed, a little.
“I mustn’t forget that quest,” he said. “Poor old Sedgwick!”
But, once in his room, the picture faded, and there came before his groping mental vision instead the spectacle of two dark figures, chained together and battling, the one for life, the other for some mysterious elusive motive that fluttered at the portals of his comprehension like a half-remembered melody. And the second struggling figure, whose face was hidden, flashed in the moonlight with the sheen of silver stars against black.