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In that instant ca doas revealed a sight that tightened every muscle in his body More vividly than if it had been day he saw a e It was not Mooie It was not Kedsty It was no one that he had ever seen Even htning flare A great, gaunt giant of a ghost, bare-headed, with long, dripping hair and a long, storm-twisted beard The picture shot to his brain with the swiftness of the lightning itself It was like the sudden throwing of a cinema picture on a screen Then blackness shut it out Kent stared harder He waited

Again caure waiting in the storm Three tiiant was an old one And in that flare it was the bowed figure of Kedsty he saw hurrying up the gravel path to the door

Quickly Kent covered the , but he did not relight the lamp Before Kedsty could have reached the foot of the stair, he had unlocked the door Cautiously he opened it three or four inches and sat doith his back against the wall, listening He heard Kedsty pass through into 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 sound from the lower hall or fro, and if Kedsty had gone to bed, waiting forbefore he set in action his bloodhounds of the law

Kent had no intention of disturbing the co bed of blankets He was not only sleepless, but filled with a pre itself more and more upon him a sense of watchfulness That Inspector Kedsty and Marette Radisson were under the same roof, and that there was some potent and irl's presence, was the thought which troubled hi further the plans for his own escape

He was thinking of Marette What was her power over Kedsty? Why was it that Kedsty would like to see her dead? Why was she in his house? Again and again he asked himself the questions and found no answers to theatory of mystery that environed him, he felt himself happier than he had ever been in his life For Marette was not four or five hundred miles down the river She was in the same house with hilad that he had been given courage to let her know that He relighted the lamp, and opened his watch and placed it on the table, where frequently he could look at the time He wanted to smoke his pipe, but the odor of tobacco, he was sure, would reach Kedsty, unless the Inspector had actually retired into his bedrooht