s not
accustomed. Marette, as if to give him time to acquaint himself with
his environment, was taking off her raincoat. Under it her slim little
figure was dry, except where the water had run down from her uncovered
head to her shoulders. He noticed that she wore a short skirt, and
boots, adorably small boots of splendidly worked caribou. And then
suddenly she came toward him with both hands reaching out to him.

"Please shake hands and say you're glad," she said. "Don't look
so--so--frightened. This is my room and you are safe here."

He held her hands tight, staring into the wonderful, violet eyes that
were looking at him with the frank and unembarrassed directness of a
child's. "I--I don't understand," he struggled. "Marette, where is
Kedsty?"

"He should be returning very soon."

"And he knows you are here, of course?"

She nodded. "I have been here for a month."

Kent's hands closed tighter about hers. "I--I don't understand," he
repeated. "Tonight Kedsty will know that it was you who rescued me and
you who shot Constable Willis. Good God, we must lose no time in
getting away!"

"There is great reason why Kedsty dare not betray my presence in his
house," she said quietly. "He would die first! And he will not suspect
that I have brought you to my room, that an escaped murderer is hiding
under the very roof of the Inspector of Police! They will search for
you everywhere but here! Isn't it splendid? He planned it all, every
move, even to the screaming in front of your cell--"

"You mean--Kedsty?"

She withdrew her hands and stepped back from him, and again he saw in
her eyes a flash of the fire that had come into them when she leveled
her gun at the three men in the prison alcove. "No, not Kedsty. He
would hang you, and he would kill me, if he dared. I mean that great,
big, funny-looking friend of yours, M'sieu Fingers!"

CHAPTER XIV

The manner in which Kent stared at Marette Radisson after her
announcement that it was Dirty Fingers who had planned his escape must
have been, he thought afterward, little less than imbecile. He had
wronged Fingers, he believed. He had called him a coward and a
backslider. In his mind he had reviled him for helping to raise his
hopes to the highest pitch, only to smash them in the end. And all the
time Dirty Fingers had been planning this! Kent began to grin. The
thing was clear in a moment--that is, the immediate situation was
clear--or he thought it was. But th