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Jaood and bad, possessed a s, but never, in that opinion, had he fallen so low as in the interval which i of his door behind the irl who had told hione than the overwhel superiority of her childlike cleverness smote him until, ashaeant Kent, the coolest man on the force next to Inspector Kedsty, thecri quietly and with deadly sureness the ers, had been beaten--horribly beaten--by a girl! And yet, in defeat, an irrepressible and at tiive credit to the victor The shament that a bit of feminine beauty had done the trick He had eant had described the effect of the girl's eyes on Inspector Kedsty

And, now, if O'Connor could knohat had happened here-And then, like a rubber ball, that saving sense of humor bounced up out of the rew cooler His visitor had coone, and he knew no more about her than when she had entered his room, except that her very pretty na to think of the questions he had wanted to ask, a dozen, half a hundred of them--more definitely who she was; how and why she had coer; the mysterious relationship that must surely exist between her and Inspector Kedsty; and, chiefly, her realHe comforted his had she not left him so suddenly He had not expected that

The question which seated itself most insistently in his mind hy had she come? Was it, after all, merely a er such that inquisitiveness alone had brought her to see the ed by a sense of gratitude, for in no way had she given expression to that On his death-bed she had aler froe For the first tian to doubt that she knew thethat had happened under O'Connor's eyes But she must know Kedsty She hadup at the Inspector's bungalow He had used that word--"hiding" It should have had an effect And she was as beautifully unconscious of it as though she had not heard him, and he knew that she had heard hiiven hi lashes and had countered softly, "What if you shouldn't die?"