“Hardly her good name. Mr. Blair believes—if I correctly follow his mental processes—that Francis Sedgwick met his son on the night of the tragedy, by chance or otherwise, and that in the encounter which he believes followed, Wilfrid Blair was killed. Unfortunately, some color of motive is lent to this by the fact that Sedgwick had fallen desperately in love with Mrs. Blair.” “Impossible! Marjorie is not the woman to permit such a thing.” “Without blame to her, or, indeed, to either of them. She also believes, now, that Sedgwick killed her husband.” “And—and she was interested in your friend?” asked the old scholar slowly. “I fear—that is, I trust so.” “You trust so? With this horror standing between them!” “It must be cleared away,” said Kent earnestly. “Circumstantial evidence is against Sedgwick: but, I give you my word, sir, it is wholly impossible that he should have killed your niece’s husband.” “To doubt your certainty would be crassly stupid. And are you hopeful of clearing up the circumstances?” “There I want your aid. The night of the tragedy a person wearing a dark garment embroidered with silver stars, was on Hawkill Heights. I have reason to believe that this person came there to meet some one from the Blair place; also, that he can tell me, if I can find him, the facts which I lack to fill out my theory. It is to run him down that I have come to Boston.” “A man wearing a dark garment embroidered with silver stars,” said the philosopher. “Surely a strange garb in this age of sartorial orthodoxy.” “Not for an astrologer.” “Ah; an astrologer! And you think he came from Boston?” “I think,” said Chester Kent, drawing some newspaper clippings from his pocket; “that somewhere among these advertisements, taken from the newspapers which are subscribed for at Hedgerow House, he is to be found.” “There I ought to be able to help. Through my association with the occult society I have investigated many of these gentry. Great rascals, most of them.” “Whom would you consider the most able of the lot?” The old man set a finger on one of the clippings. “Preston Jax,” said he, “is the shrewdest of them all. Sometimes I have thought that he had dim flashes of real clairvoyance. Be that as it may, he has a surprising clientele of which he makes the most, for he is a master-hand at cozening women out of their money. More than once he has been in the courts.” “Probably he is my man. Anyway, I shall visit him first, and, if I find that his office was closed on July fifth—” “It was, and for a day or two thereafter as I chance to know, because one of the occult society’s secret agents was to have visited him, and could not get an appointment.” “Good! I shall see you, then, to-morrow, sir.”