bewildering.

For the time being, however, he was most concerned about the woman. She was not in the cabin--that much was settled. She must have managed to get away somehow.

His glance strayed to the door, hanging partly open on its broken hinges. There remained this one possibility. She might have been standing by the wall when he battered his way into the cabin. Waiting her chance, she could have slipped behind him in the darkness as he stumbled over the threshold, and then passed out unseen through the open doorway. In which event her departing footsteps would betray her. Dexter crossed the cabin, and stepped outside.

His flash-lamp served him once more. The light scintillated upon the fresh fallen snow, awakening a sparkle of diamonds. From the darkness beyond the clearing came the trail of hobnail boots that had led him in the first place to this dismal habitation in the forest. Also the marks of his own making were clearly defined. But there were no other prints.

He rubbed his wet sleeve across his eyes, and gazed searchingly about him. And there was nothing to be seen but whited stumps, and the soft, unscuffled surface of snowy ground. The woman had not come out that direction.

There were windows in the cabin--one on each side and two in the rear--which were large enough, perhaps, to allow a small and frightened fugitive to squeeze her body through. He walked around the building, throwing the light rays back and forth as he advanced, examining the ground underfoot and each window sill as well. So he made the circuit of the cabin, and came back, hopelessly perplexed, to his starting place at the front door. The snow lay as it had fallen on the sills and under the windows, without any imprints of human making. The slayer of the two men in the cabin bunks had vanished without leaving any trace behind.

Dexter was ready to confess his utter mystification. A queer feeling of unreality gripped him, as though he suddenly discovered himself in contention with some strange, unnatural denizen of the forest, who flitted about on darksome errands without touching foot to the earth. Someone was there a few minutes ago; murder had been done; and now this someone was gone--disappeared like a shadow in a dream.

The ringing sound he had heard only added to his bewilderment. It really was absurd to suspect the existence of a telephone circuit in the wilderness, nevertheless in his tour of the outer premises, the corporal had looked for telephone wires. Had there been a line of 

 Prev. P 16/195 next