how had she crossed the open stretch?  In what manner had she escaped, without leaving shoe marks in the clearing?  There was no way she could have swung across above the ground, and there was no underground passage.  Dexter's stern mouth relaxed for a moment in a grin of self-depreciation.  He did not know the answer.  There was nothing he could do but follow the trail, and try to wring the truth from the woman when he caught her.

Still he felt no great need for haste.  He returned to the cabin, and paused for a final survey of the scene of crime.  Again he bent over the lifeless forms in the bunks, and this time ascertained the caliber of the bullets that had carried sudden death.  Mudgett had been shot through the heart; a brain shot had flicked out the life of his dark-faced comrade.  The muzzle of the weapon had been thrust close in each instance.  The bullets were short .32 caliber, but the killer evidently had aimed with deliberate care, and at such nearness of range, the small bits of lead were instantly effective.

The weapon with the two fired chambers, which Dexter had picked up from the floor was a .32 caliber revolver.  As in the tragic case of Constable Graves, cause and consequence were logically brought together.  The fouled firearms and the bullets were left in his hands as grewsome relics; but the murderers had escaped him--one by death, the other by inexplicably vanishing.

In the bushwhacking of the constable, followed by the killing of his assassin, Dexter sensed the working out of some strange, vaguely revealed drama that apparently involved the fate of several actors.  He had pushed his way into an uninhabited country, expecting eventually to encounter a single individual who was fleeing from the penalty attached to a lesser offense; and he had walked unexpectedly upon the stage of wholesale crime.

The motive underlying the attack upon the constable was understandable.  The young policeman had traveled across the range on official business, and his slayer no doubt had reason to put him out of the way.  But the man who shot Graves, in his turn was shot and killed.  And Mudgett also!  It was not so easy to fathom the motive of this double affair in the cabin.

Dexter recalled every word spoken by the mysterious voice, before the gun reports sounded behind the closed door.  The woman had mentioned the prisoners under arrest, and expressed the fear that they might be forced to talk.  What could they talk about--what dangerous secret did they know?  It must be something dreadful, if such a desperate 

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