he had caught in her wide-open
eyes. It was not hatred. It was not madness. It was a quivering,
bleeding soul crying out to him in an agony that no other human eyes
had ever revealed to him before. And suddenly a great voice cried out
in his brain, drowning all other things, telling him how contemptible a
thing was love unless in that love was faith.

With his heart choking him, he turned again to Kedsty. The futility of
the thing which he had told himself was faith gripped at him
sickeningly, yet he fought for that faith, even as his eyes looked
again upon the ghastly torture that was in Kedsty's face.

He was becoming calmer. He touched the dead man's cheek and found that
it was no longer warm. The tragedy must have occurred an hour before.
He examined more closely the abrasion on Kedsty's forehead. It was not
a deep wound, and the blow that had made it must have stunned the
Inspector of Police for only a short time. In that space the other
thing had happened. In spite of his almost superhuman effort to keep
the picture away from him, Kent saw it vividly--the swift turning to
the table, the inspiration of the scissors, the clipping of the long
tress of hair, the choking to death of Kedsty as he regained
consciousness. Over and over again he whispered to himself the
impossibility of it, the absurdity of it, the utter incongruity of it.
Only a brain gone mad would have conceived that monstrous way of
killing Kedsty. And Marette was not mad. She was sane.

Like the eyes of a hunting ferret his own eyes swept quickly about the
room. At the four windows there were long curtain cords. On the walls,
hung there as trophies, were a number of weapons. On one end of
Kedsty's desk, used as a paperweight, was a stone tomahawk. Still
nearer to the dead man's hands, unhidden by papers, was a boot-lace.
Under his limp right hand was the automatic. With these possible
instruments of death close at hand, ready to be snatched up without
trouble or waste of time, why had the murderer used a tress of woman's
hair?

The boot-lace drew Kent's eyes. It was impossible not to see it,
forty-eight inches long and quarter-inch-wide buckskin. He began
seeking for its mate, and found it on the floor where Marette Radisson
had been standing. And again the unanswerable question pounded in
Kent's brain--why had Kedsty's murderer used a tress of hair instead of
a buckskin lace or one of the curtain cords hanging conspicuously at
the windows?

H