To satisfy his curiosity he went up to the room himself. Its white bareness confirmed a suspicion of long standing. “Any man,” he remarked to the scrub woman, “who would pay five a day for a room just to put nothing at all in it, has sure got a kink in his cogs.” Nor did the personnel of the visitors who, in course of the late afternoon, arrived with requests to be shown to 571, serve to efface this impression. First came the sheriff from Annalaka. He was followed by a man of unmistakably African derivation, who gave the name of Jim and declined to identify himself more specifically. While the clerk was endeavoring, with signal lack of success, to pump him, Lawyer Adam Bain arrived, and so emphatically vouched for his predecessor as to leave the desk-lord no further excuse for obstructive tactics. Shortly afterward Alexander Blair came in, with a woman heavily veiled, and was deferentially conducted aloft. Finally, Chester Kent himself appeared, accompanied by Sedgwick and a third man, unknown to the clerk, pompously arrayed in frock coat and silk hat, and characterized by a painfully twitching chin. “Who have come?” Kent asked the clerk. That functionary ran over the list. “Looks like something to do with the woman found in Lonesome Cove last week,” he essayed hopefully. Kent glanced out of the window. “It looks like rain,” he observed, “and it looks like wind. And it looks like a number of things that are anybody’s business. Furthermore, I may mention that we shall not need, in 571, ice-water, stationery, casual messages, calling-cards, or any other form of espionage.” He favored the wilting clerk with a sunny smile and led his companions to the elevator. Sedgwick put a hand on his arm. “The woman with Blair?” he asked under his breath. Kent nodded. “I rather hoped that she wouldn’t come,” he said. “Blair might better have told her—so far as he knows.” “Then he doesn’t know all?” “No. And perhaps she would be content with nothing else. It is her right. And she is a brave woman, is Marjorie Blair, as Jax here can testify. We have seen her under fire.” “She is that,” confirmed the man with the twitching chin. “This, then, is the final clear-up?” asked Sedgwick. “Final and complete.” “Thank God! It will be a weight off my shoulders.” “Off many shoulders,” said Kent. “Here we are.” Greetings among the little group, so strangely and harshly thrown together by the dice-cast of the hand of Circumstance, were brief and formal. Only Preston Jax was named by Kent, with the comment that his story would be forthcoming. The seven guests seated themselves, the Blairs at one end of the half-circle, Sedgwick and the astrologer at the other. Kent, leaning against the wall, fumbled uncertainly at his ear. “I hardly know where to begin,” he said, his eyes roving along the intent line. “Not that the case isn’t perfectly clear; but there are certain startling phases which—which—” He glanced toward the Blairs.