“What were you doing?” Graham asked.

“I was asleep.  Katherine’s call woke me up.”

“Asleep!” Paredes echoed.  “And she didn’t call at once—­”

He broke off.  Bobby grasped his arm.

“What are you trying to do?”

“I’m sorry,” Paredes said.  “Now, really, you mustn’t think of that.  I shouldn’t have spoken.  I’m more inclined to agree with the doctor’s theory, impossible as it seems.”

“Yesterday,” Katherine said, “I would have thought it impossible.  After last night and just now I’m not so sure.  I—­I wish the doctor were right.  It would clear you, Bobby.”

He smiled.

“Do you think any jury would listen to such a theory?”

Katherine put her finger to her lips.  Howells and the doctor came from the corridor of the old wing.  At the head of the stairs the detective turned.

“You will find it very warm and comfortable by the fire in the lower hall, Mr. Blackburn.”

He waited until Katherine had slipped to her room until Graham, Paredes, the doctor, and Bobby were on the stairs.  Then he walked slowly into the new corridor.

Bobby knew what he was after.  The detective had made no effort to disguise his intention.  He wanted Bobby out of the way while he searched his room again, this time for a sharp, slender instrument capable of penetrating between the bones at the base of a man’s brain.

Paredes lighted a cigarette and warmed his back at the fire.  The doctor settled himself in his chair.  He paid no attention to the others.  He wouldn’t answer Paredes’s slow remarks.

“Interesting, doctor!  I am a little psychic.  Always in this house I have responded to strange, unfriendly influences.  Always, as now, the approach of night depresses me.”

Bobby couldn’t sit still.  He nodded at Graham, arose, got his coat and hat, and stepped into the court.  The dusk was already thick there.  Dampness and melancholy seemed to exude from the walls of the old house.  He paused and gazed at one of the foot-prints in the soft earth by the fountain.  Shreds of plaster adhered to the edges, testimony that the detective had made his cast from this print.  He tried to realize that that mute, familiar impression had the power to send him to his execution.  Graham, who had come silently from the house, startled him.

“What are you looking at?”

“No use, Hartley.  I was on the library lounge.  I heard every word Howells said.”

“Perhaps it’s just as well,” Graham said.  “You know what you face.  But I hate to see you suffer.  We’ve got to find a way around that evidence.”

Bobby pointed to the windows of the room of death.

“There’s no way around except the doctor’s theory.”

He laughed shortly.

“Much as I’ve feared that room, I’m afraid the psychic explanation won’t hold water.  Paredes put his finger on it.  I would have had time to get back to my room before Katherine called—­”