For only a little while they talked of the mystery.
While Graham regretted his failure to find any trace
of Maria, their voices dwindled sleepily. Bobby
recalled his last thought before losing himself last
night. He tried to force from his mind now the
threat in Robinson’s eyes. He told himself
again and again that the man wasn’t actually
unfriendly. Then the blackness encircled him.
He slept.
Almost at once, it seemed to him, he was fighting
away, demanding drowsily:
“What’s the matter? Leave me alone.”
He heard Graham’s voice, unnaturally subdued
and anxious.
“What are you doing, Bobby?”
Then Bobby knew he was no longer in his bed, that
he stood instead in a cold place; and the meaning
of his position came with a rush of sick terror.
“Get hold of yourself,” Graham said.
“Come back.”
Bobby opened his eyes. He was in the upper hall
at the head of the stairs. Unconsciously he had
been about to creep quietly down, perhaps to the library.
Graham had awakened him. It seemed to offer the
answer to everything. It seemed to give outline
to a monstrous familiar that drowned his real self
in the black pit while it conducted his body to the
commission of unspeakable crimes.
He lurched into the bedroom and sat shivering on the
bed. Graham entered and quietly closed the door.
“What time is it?” Bobby asked hoarsely.
“Half-past two. I don’t think Robinson
was aroused.”
The damp moon gave an ominous unreality to the room.
“What did I do?” Bobby whispered.
“Got softly out of bed and went to the hall.
It was uncanny. You were like an automaton.
I didn’t wake you at once. You see, I—I
thought you might go to the old room.”
Bobby shook again. He drew a blanket about his
shoulders.
“And you believed I’d show the way in
and out, but the room was empty, so I was going downstairs—”
He shuddered.
“Good God! Then it’s all true.
I did it for the money. I put Howells out to
protect myself. I was going after Robinson.
It’s true. Hartley! Tell me.
Do you think it’s true?”
Graham turned away.
“Don’t ask me to say anything to help
you just now,” he answered huskily, “for
after this I don’t dare, Bobby. I don’t
dare.”
THE AMAZING MEETING IN THE SHADOWS OF THE OLD COURTYARD
Bobby returned to his bed. He lay there still
shivering, beneath the heavy blankets. “I
don’t dare!” He echoed Graham’s words.
“There’s nothing else any one can say.
I must decide what to do. I must think it over.”
But, as always, thought brought no release. It
merely insisted that the case against him was proved.
At last he had been seen slipping unconsciously from
his room—and at the same hour. All
that remained was to learn how he had accomplished
the apparent miracles. Then no excuse would remain
for not going to Robinson and confessing. The
woman at the lake and in the courtyard, the movement
of the body and the vanishing of the evidence under
his hand, Paredes’s odd behaviour, all became
in his mind puzzling details that failed to obscure
the chief fact. After this something must be
done about Paredes’s detention.
