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Updated: May 18, 2025
He began at once and told of the occurrences of the night, from the moment when Patricia had arrived at Cedarcrest alone, till the receipt of the telephonic messages from Gardner; and he concluded by saying: "There is no mystery in the affair, at all, as I regard it. Patricia left the house, at Cedarcrest, half an hour after Morton left it.
Then, it seemed to shoot high into the air, and fell again, in a confused heap of wreckage, among the broken stones of the quarry. Morton was thrown from it, like the projectile from a catapult, and he came down in a crumpled heap, somewhere among that mass of rocks; and after that there was silence. At Cedarcrest, the night was still young.
"Gentlemen," he said to them, standing with his glass in hand and addressing all, impersonally, "what I have to say now, is said to all, alike. Two of you are strangers to me; the others are more or less intimately my friends. It is my particular wish that we should all bind ourselves to secrecy, concerning what has happened at Cedarcrest, and in this vicinity, to-night.
I'll help you out, for I don't think your suggestion is a bad one, at all. You may leave it all to me, without even going so far as to communicate with the two members of your party whom you wish to rid yourself of. I'll attend to that, by telephoning; and I'll take them to Cedarcrest for dinner, and remain for the night; but I shall have to return early to-morrow morning.
You see, Patricia found out that she loved Morton, when he got his calling-down; only, I suppose, even then, she wasn't quite sure. But, when the time came for him to go away entirely, she had no more doubts about it! She didn't remain long at Cedarcrest, after that; she followed him. She knew that Patrick was there, and that he would go with her.
Tell them all to be at Cedarcrest before dark, to-morrow. That is all. As I said before, I'll attend to the details."
An hour later, when he called upon the lawyer, he said, after greetings had been exchanged: "Melvin, I don't know whether you are aware of it or not, but Jack Gardner and his wife are having a little impromptu house-party, at their place, Cedarcrest, beginning at dinner time, this evening.
The exhilaration she had experienced when she triumphed over Richard Morton and escaped from him, increased rather than diminished as she sped onward, and when, almost an hour later, she guided the car between the huge gate-posts which admitted it to the grounds of Cedarcrest, and followed the winding driveway toward the entrance to the stone mansion, she was altogether a different Patricia Langdon from the one who had started out, in company with the young Westerner, shortly after five o'clock that afternoon.
The story of the wreck of the White Steamer on the rocks under the derrick remained untold. Patricia Langdon did not reappear among her friends and acquaintances in the city. The mysteries born of that party at Cedarcrest continued unsolved.
Even as a little girl something had rankled in my heart, too, when our once unrestricted fields and hills gradually became posted with signs such as, "Idlewold, Private Grounds," "Cedarcrest, No Picnickers Allowed," "Grassmere, No Trespassing." I wasn't eighteen when I had my coming-out party.
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