fronted Kent, was Kedsty. And Kent, in
an instant, knew. Only a dead man could look like that.

With a cry he entered the room. Marette did not start, but an answering
cry came into her throat as she turned her eyes from Kedsty to him. To
Kent it was like looking upon the dead in two ways. Marette Radisson,
living and breathing, was whiter than Kedsty, who was white with the
unbreathing pallor of the actually dead. She did not speak. She made no
sound after that answering cry in her throat. She simply looked. And
Kent spoke her name gently as he saw her great, wide eyes blazing dully
their agony and despair. Then, like one stunned and fascinated, she
stared 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 limp
over the side of his chair. On the floor under his right hand was his
Colt automatic. His head was strained so far over the back of the chair
that 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 not
to recognize it now, but seldom had he seen a face twisted and
distorted as Kedsty's was. His eyes were open and bulging in a glassy
stare. His jaws hung loose. His--

It was then Kent's blood froze in his veins. Kedsty had received a
blow, but it was not the blow that had killed him. Afterward he had
been choked to death. And the thing that had choked him was _a tress
of woman's hair_.

In the seconds that followed that discovery Kent could not have moved
if his own life had paid the penalty of inaction. For the story was
told--there about Kedsty's throat and on his chest. The tress of hair
was long and soft and shining and black. It was twisted twice around
Kedsty's neck, and the loose end rippled down over his shoulder,
_glowing like a bit of rich sable in the lamplight_. It was that thought
of velvety sable that had come to him at the doorway, looking at
Marette. It was the thought that came to him now. He touched it; he
took it in his fingers; he unwound it from about Kedsty's neck, where
it had made two deep rings in the flesh. From his fingers it rippled
out full length. And he turned slowly and faced Marette Radisson.

Never had human eyes looked at him as she was looking at him now. She
reached out a hand, her lips mute, and Kent gave her the tress