“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.” “Never,” contradicted Kent. “You’ve misinterpreted what I said. In the early stages of the affair I told you, if you remember, that a very bizarre situation indicated a very bizarre motive. What could be more bizarre than insanity?” “Was it suicidal insanity, then?” asked Bain. “Not in the ordinary and intentional sense.” “Then it was the other man that killed her,” said Preston Jax; “the man I heard yell, when she went over. But what became of him?” “Simon P. Groot spoke of hearing that man’s scream, too,” confirmed Bain. “Have you got any clue to him, Professor Kent?” “The other man was Francis Sedgwick,” declared Alexander Blair doggedly. Chester Kent shook his head. “I’ve got a witness against that theory, from your own side, Mr. Blair,” said he. “Gansett Jim at first thought as you do. In that belief he tried to kill Mr. Sedgwick. Now he knows his mistake. Isn’t that so, Jim?” “Yeh,” grunted the half-breed. “You were out through the countryside that night trying to trace the wanderer.” “Yeh.” “And later when I showed you the footprints at the scene of the struggle, you saw that they were not Mr. Sedgwick’s?” “Yeh.” “You examined the cliff for footprints. Do you think any one pushed or pursued the victim over the brink?” “No.” “Whose were the footprints, that you found, Jim?” demanded Alexander Blair. The half-breed pointed, in silence, to Preston Jax. “Of course. His and—and the other’s. But there were the marks of a third person, weren’t there?” “No.” “There must have been,” insisted Mr. Blair. “Are you positive?” “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.”