"Everything: her being there, her actions, her--her apparel, the jewelry, you know, and all that."
"Just a moment. Was it the jewelry that you were going to speak of when you first accosted her?"
"Yes, it was. Some of it was very valuable, I judge. Wasn't it found on the body?"
"Not? Robbery, then, probably. Well, she came back at a stride. Her eyes were alive with anger. There came a torrent of words from her; strong words, too. Nothing of the well-bred woman left there. I insisted on knowing who she was, and she burst out on me with laughter that was, somehow, more insulting than her speech. But when I told her that I'd find out about her if I had to follow her into the sea, she stopped laughing fast enough. Before I could guard myself she had caught up a rock from the road and let me have it. I went over like a tenpin. When I got up, she was well along toward the cliffs, and I never did find her trail in that maze of copses and thickets."
"Show me your relative positions when she attacked you."
The artist placed Kent, and moved off five paces. "About like that," he said.
"It was so quick I hardly know. But I should say a short overhand snap. It came hard enough!"
"I do not like it at all," said Kent again.
He wandered disconsolately and with half-closed eyes about the room, until he blundered into collision with a cot-lounge in the corner, spread with cushions. These he heaped up, threw his coat over them, stretched himself out with his feet propped high on the mound just erected, and closed his eyes.
"No; I'd like ten minutes of silence." The speaker opened one eye. "At the end of that time perhaps you'll think better of it."
"Of concealing an essentially important part of your experience, which has to do, I think, with the jewelry."
At the end of the ten minutes, when Kent opened both eyes, his friend forestalled him with another query.
"You say that no jewels were found on the body. Was there any other mark of identification?"
"If there was, the sheriff got away with it before I saw it."
"How can you be sure, then, that the dead woman was my visitor?"
"Dennett mentioned a necklace. On the crushed flesh of the dead woman's neck there is the plain impress of a jewel setting. Now, come, Sedgwick! If I'm to help you in this, you must help me. Had you ever seen that necklace before?"