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284 loves me. I could make him do it as the price for myself and Jim."

Slim laughed shortly.

"One thing's certain," he mused. "If you did get away with it, I could keep you and the inspector straight. I'd take Garth, bound tight, some guns, and the acid along as gilt-edge securities. Hadn't thought of that, eh? Expected to trip me, didn't you? Well, Nora, you have let yourself in for a dicker, and, by gad I'm inclined to think it over, because I've got you this far: the minute you played queer Garth would go blind and burnt."

Nora conquered her disappointment.

"You'd swear to let Jim go at the border?"

"On my oath I'd let him go clean."

"Not for a million," George broke in angrily. "She gets herself away, then she throws Garth down to see us roast in the chair. You ought to know the skirt. She'd double cross the devil himself."

Garth waited for Slim's answer, his gaze controlled again by the acid.

"George," Slim said slowly, "any chance is worth playing now, for we're as good as in the chair already. And I don't believe she'd throw Garth down. You know what she went through with for the sake of a dead lover."

"You've got to show me," George sneered, "that she's forgotten the dead one to take on Garth."

"We heard in the Tombs," Slim said drily, "that these pigeons wanted to roost on the same stool."

With a growing wonder Garth watched Nora fling