CHAPTER XVII
In ten seconds, it seemed to Kent, Marette Radisson was again thesplendid creature who had held the three men at bay over the end of herlittle black gun at barracks. The sound of Mooie's second warning cameat first as a shock. Accompanying it there was a moment of fear, offear driven almost to the point of actual terror. Following it came areaction so swift that Kent was dazed. Within those ten seconds thegirl's slender body seemed to grow taller; a new light flamed in herface; her eyes, turning swiftly to him, were filled with the same firewith which they had faced the three constables. She was unafraid. Shewas ready to fight.
In such moments as these it was the quiet and dispassionate composureof her voice that amazed him most. It was musical in its softness now.Yet in that softness was a hidden thing. It was like velvet coveringsteel. She had spoken of Niska, the Gray Goose, the goddess of theThree Rivers. And he thought that something of the spirit of a goddessmust be in Marette Radisson to give her the courage with which shefaced him, even as the metallic thing outside tapped its warning againat the window.
"Inspector Kedsty is coming back," she said. "I did not think he woulddo that--tonight."
"He has not had time to go to barracks," said Kent.
"No. Possibly he has forgotten something. Before he arrives, I want toshow you the nest I have made for you, Jeems. Come quickly!"
It was her first intimation that he was not to remain in her room, apossibility that had already caused him some inward embarrassment. Sheseized a number of matches, turned down her light, and hurried into thehall. Kent followed her to the end of this hall, where she pausedbefore a low half-door that apparently opened into some sort of a spaceclose under the sloping roof of the bungalow.
"It is an old storeroom," she whispered. "I have made it quitecomfortable, I think. I have covered the window, so you may light thelamp. But you must see that no light shows under this door. Lock it onthe inside, and be very quiet. For whatever you find in there you mustthank M'sieu Fingers."
She pulled the door slightly open and gave him the matches. Theillumination in the lower hall made its way only dimly to where theystood. In the gloom he found himself close to the soft glow of hereyes. His fingers closed about her hand as he took the matches.
"Marette, you believe me?" he entreated. "You believe that I love you,that I didn't kill John Barkley, that I am going to fight for you aslong as God gives me breath to fight?"
For a moment there was silence. Her hand withdrew gently from his.
"Yes, I think that I believe. Good-night, Jeems."
She went from him quickly. At her door she turned. "Go in now, please,"she called back softly. "If you care as you say you do, _go in_."
She did not wait for his reply. Her own door closed behind her, andKent, striking a match, stooped low and entered his hiding-place. In amoment he saw directly ahead of him a lamp on a box. He lighted this,and his first movement then was to close the door and turn the key thatwas in the lock. After that he looked about him. The storeroom was notmore than ten feet square, and the roof was so close over his head thathe could not stand upright. It was not the smallness of the place thatstruck him first, but the preparations which Marette had made for him.In a corner was a bed of blankets, and the rough floor of the place wascarpeted with blankets, except for a two-or-three-foot space around theedge of it. Beyond the box was a table and a chair, and it was theburden of this table that made his pulse jump quickest. Marette had notforgotten that he might grow hungry. It was laid sumptuously, with aplate for one, but with food for half a dozen. There were a brace ofroasted grouse, brown as nuts; a cold roast of moose meat or beef; adish piled high with golden potato salad; olives, pickles, an open canof cherries, a loaf of bread, butter, cheese--and one of Kedsty'streasured thermos bottles, which undoubtedly held hot coffee or tea.And then he noticed what was on the chair--a belt and holster and aColt automatic forty-five! Marette had not figured on securing a gun inthe affair at barracks, and her foresight had not forgotten a weapon.She had placed it conspicuously where he could not fail to see it atonce. And just beyond the chair, on the floor, was a shoulder-pack. Itwas of the regulation service sort, partly filled. Resting against thepack was a Winchester. He recognized the gun. He had seen it hanging inDirty Fingers' shack.
For a matter of five minutes he scarcely moved from where he stoodbeside the table. Nothing but an unplastered roof was between him andthe storm, and over his head the thunder crashed, and the rain beat intorrents. He saw where the window was, carefully covered with ablanket. Even through the blanket he caught faintly the illumination oflightning. This window overlooked the entrance to Kedsty's bungalow,and the idea came to him of turning out the light and opening it. Indarkness he took down the blanket. But the window itself was notmovable, and after assuring himself of this fact he flattened his faceagainst it, peering out into the chaos of the night.
In that instant came a flare of lightning, and to Kent, looking down,was revealed a sight that tightened every muscle in his body. Morevividly than if it had been day he saw a man standing below in thedeluge. It was not Mooie. It was not Kedsty. It was no one that he hadever seen. Even more like a ghost than a man was that apparition of thelightning flare. A great, gaunt giant of a ghost, bare-headed, withlong, dripping hair and a long, storm-twisted beard. The picture shotto his brain with the swiftness of the lightning itself. It was likethe sudden throwing of a cinema picture on a screen. Then blacknessshut it out. Kent stared harder. He waited.
Again came the lightning, and again he saw that tragic, ghost-likefigure waiting in the storm. Three times he saw it. And he knew thatthe mysterious, bearded giant was an old man. The fourth time thelightning came, the figure was gone. And in that flare it was the bowedfigure of Kedsty he saw hurrying up the gravel path to the door.
Quickly Kent covered the window, but he did not relight the lamp.Before Kedsty could have reached the foot of the stair, he had unlockedthe door. Cautiously he opened it three or four inches and sat downwith his back against the wall, listening. He heard Kedsty pass throughinto the big room where Marette had waited for him a short time before.After that there was silence except for the tumult of the storm.
For an hour Kent listened. In all that time he did not hear a soundfrom the lower hall or from Marette's room. He wondered if she wassleeping, and if Kedsty had gone to bed, waiting for morning before heset in action his bloodhounds of the law.
Kent had no intention of disturbing the comfortable looking bed ofblankets. He was not only sleepless, but filled with a premonition ofevents about to happen. He felt impinging itself more and more upon hima sense of watchfulness. That Inspector Kedsty and Marette Radissonwere under the same roof, and that there was some potent and mysteriousreason which kept Kedsty from betraying the girl's presence, was thethought which troubled him most. He was not developing further theplans for his own escape.
He was thinking of Marette. What was her power over Kedsty? Why was itthat Kedsty would like to see her dead? Why was she in his house? Againand again he asked himself the questions and found no answers to them.And yet, even in this purgatory of mystery that environed him, he felthimself happier than he had ever been in his life. For Marette was notfour or five hundred miles down the river. She was in the same housewith him. And he had told her that he loved her. He was glad that hehad been given courage to let her know that. He relighted the lamp, andopened his watch and placed it on the table, where frequently he couldlook at the time. He wanted to smoke his pipe, but the odor of tobacco,he was sure, would reach Kedsty, unless the Inspector had actuallyretired into his bedroom for the night.
Half a dozen times he questioned himself as to the identity of theghostly apparition he had seen in the lightning flare of the storm.Perhaps it was some one of Fingers' strange friends from out of thewilderness, Mooie's partner in watching the bungalow. The picture ofthat giant of a man with his great beard and long hair, as his eyes hadcaught him in a sea of electrical fire, was indelibly burned into hisbrain. It w
as a tragic picture.
Again he put out the light and bared the blanketed window, but he sawnothing but the sodden gleam of the earth when the lightning flashed. Asecond time he opened the door a few inches and sat down with his backto the wall, listening.
How long it was before drowsiness stole upon him he did not know, butit came, and for a few moments at a time, as his eyes closed, it robbedhim of his caution. And then, for a space, he slept. A sound broughthim suddenly into wide wakefulness. His first impression was that thesound had been a cry. For a moment or two, as his senses adjustedthemselves, he was not sure. Then swiftly the thing grew upon him.
He rose to his feet and widened the crack of his door. A bar of lightshot across the upper hall. It was from Marette's room. He had takenoff his boots to deaden the sound of his feet, and he stepped outsidehis door. He was positive he heard a low cry, a choking, sobbing cry,only barely audible, and that it came from down the stair.
No longer hesitating, he moved quickly to Marette's room and looked in.His first glimpse was of the bed. It had not been used. The room wasempty.
Something cold and chilling gripped at his heart, and an impulse whichhe no longer made an effort to resist pulled him to the head of thestair. It was more than an impulse--it was a demand. Step by step hewent down, his hand on the butt of his Colt.
He reached the lower hall, which was still lighted, and a step or twobrought him to a view of the door that opened into the big living-roombeyond. That door was partly open, and the room itself was filled withlight. Soundlessly Kent approached. He looked in.
What he saw first brought him relief together with shock. At one end ofthe long desk table over which hung a great brass lamp stood Marette.She was in profile to him. He could not see her face. Her hair fellloose about her, glowing like a rich, sable cape in the light of thelamp. She was safe, alive, and yet the attitude of her as she lookeddown was the thing that gave him shock. He was compelled to move a fewinches more before he could see what she was staring at. And then hisheart stopped dead still.
Huddled down in his chair, with his head flung back so that theterrible ghastliness of his face fronted Kent, was Kedsty. And Kent, inan instant, knew. Only a dead man could look like that.
With a cry he entered the room. Marette did not start, but an answeringcry came into her throat as she turned her eyes from Kedsty to him. ToKent it was like looking upon the dead in two ways. Marette Radisson,living and breathing, was whiter than Kedsty, who was white with theunbreathing pallor of the actually dead. She did not speak. She made nosound after that answering cry in her throat. She simply looked. AndKent spoke her name gently as he saw her great, wide eyes blazing dullytheir agony and despair. Then, like one stunned and fascinated, shestared down upon Kedsty again.
Every instinct of the man-hunter became alive in Kent's brain as he,too, turned toward the Inspector of Police. Kedsty's arms hung limpover the side of his chair. On the floor under his right hand was hisColt automatic. His head was strained so far over the back of the chairthat it looked as though his neck had been broken. On his forehead,close up against his short-cropped, iron-gray hair, was a red stain.
Kent approached and bent over him. He had seen death too many times notto recognize it now, but seldom had he seen a face twisted anddistorted as Kedsty's was. His eyes were open and bulging in a glassystare. His jaws hung loose. His--
It was then Kent's blood froze in his veins. Kedsty had received ablow, but it was not the blow that had killed him. Afterward he hadbeen choked to death. And the thing that had choked him was _a tressof woman's hair_.
In the seconds that followed that discovery Kent could not have movedif his own life had paid the penalty of inaction. For the story wastold--there about Kedsty's throat and on his chest. The tress of hairwas long and soft and shining and black. It was twisted twice aroundKedsty's neck, and the loose end rippled down over his shoulder,_glowing like a bit of rich sable in the lamplight_. It was that thoughtof velvety sable that had come to him at the doorway, looking atMarette. It was the thought that came to him now. He touched it; hetook it in his fingers; he unwound it from about Kedsty's neck, whereit had made two deep rings in the flesh. From his fingers it rippledout full length. And he turned slowly and faced Marette Radisson.
Never had human eyes looked at him as she was looking at him now. Shereached out a hand, her lips mute, and Kent gave her the tress of hair.And the next instant she turned, with a hand clasped at her own throat,and passed through the door.
After that he heard her going unsteadily up the stairs.