“Dollars to doughnuts they’re not here.  They’ve probably gone on.  I’ll have to take a chance and show the light again.”

Fresh footprints were revealed in the narrow circle of illumination.  Testifying to Paredes’s continued stealth, they made a straight line to the water’s edge.  Rawlins exclaimed: 

“He stepped into the lake.  How deep is it?”

The black surface of the water seemed to Bobby like an opaque glass, hiding sinister things.  Suppose Paredes, instead of coming to a rendezvous, had been led?

“It’s deep enough in the centre,” he answered.

“Shallow around the edges?”

“Quite.”

“Then he knew we were after him,” Groom said.

Rawlins nodded and ran his light along the shore.  A few yards to the right a ledge of smooth rock stretched from the water to a grove of pine trees.  The detective arose and turned off his light.

“He’s blocked us,” he said.  “He knew he wouldn’t leave his marks on the rocks or the pine needles.  No way to guess his direction now.”

Doctor Groom cleared his throat.  With a hesitant manner he recited the discovery of the queer light in the deserted house, its unaccountable disappearances their failure to find its source.

“I was thinking,” he explained, “that Paredes alone saw the light give out.  It was his suggestion that he go to the front of the house to investigate.  This path might be used as a short cut to the deserted house.  The rendezvous may have been there.”

Rawlins was interested again.

“How far is it?”

“Not much more than a mile,” Groom answered.

“Then we’ll go,” the detective decided.  “Show the way.”

Groom in the lead, they struck off through the woods.  Bobby, who walked last, noticed the faint messengers of dawn behind the trees in the east.  He was glad.  The night cloaked too much in this neighbourhood.  By daylight the empty house would guard its secret less easily.  Suddenly he paused and stood quite still.  He wanted to call to the others, to point out what he had seen.  There was no question.  By chance he had accomplished the task that had seemed so hopeless yesterday.  He had found the spot where his consciousness had come back momentarily to record a wet moon, trees straining in the wind like puny men, and a figure in a mask which he had called his conscience.  He gazed, his hope retreating before an unforeseen disappointment, for with the paling moon and the bent trees survived that very figure on the discovery of whose nature he had built so vital a hope; and in this bad light it conveyed to him an appearance nearly human.  Through the underbrush the trunk of a tree shattered by some violent storm mocked him with its illusion.  The dead leaves at the top were like cloth across a face.  Therefore, he argued, there had been no conspiracy against him.  Paredes was clean as far as that was concerned.  He had wandered about the Cedars alone.  He had opened his eyes at a point between the court and the deserted house.