“Bobby!” Katherine breathed in his ear.

He understood why the little light from the hall had failed to disclose her when she had come from the kitchen.  She wore the black cloak.  Against the darkness at the end of the room she had made no silhouette.  When he put his arms around her and touched her cheek, he noticed that that, too, was cold; and the shoulders of the cloak were damp as if she had just come in from the falling snow.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Looking outside,” she answered frankly.  “I couldn’t sit still.  I wondered if the woman in black would be around the house to-night.  Then I was afraid, so I came in.”

Doctor Groom’s voice reached them.

“Have you found her?  Is she in the dining room?”

Without any thought of disloyalty Bobby recognized the menace of coincidence.

“Take your cloak off,” he whispered.  “Leave it here.”

“Why?”

While he drew the cloak from her shoulders he raised his voice.

“Carlos has been hurt.  The doctor asked me to find you.”

His simple strategy was destroyed by the appearance of Rawlins.  The detective came directly to them; nor was the coincidence lost on him, and it was his business to advertise rather than to conceal it.  Without ceremony he took the cloak from Bobby.  He draped it over his arm.

“The doctor,” he said to Katherine, “wants a basin of warm water, some old linen, carbolic acid, if you have it.”

She nodded and went back to the kitchen while Bobby returned with the detective to the hall.  Paredes’s eyes remained closed.

“Where did you get the cloak, Rawlins?” Robinson asked.

“The young lady,” Rawlins answered with soft satisfaction, “just wore it in.  At least it’s still wet from the snow.”

Paredes opened his eyes.  He looked for a moment at the black cloak.  He closed his eyes again.

“You could recognize the woman who attacked you?” Rawlins said.

Paredes shook his head.

“You’ve forgotten how dark it is.  Please don’t ask me even to swear that it was a woman.”

“You’re trying to say it wasn’t flesh and blood,” Blackburn quavered.

Paredes smiled weakly.

“I’m trying to say nothing at all.”

“Tell us each detail of the attack,” Robinson said.

But Katherine’s footsteps reached them from the dining room and Paredes wouldn’t answer.  Under those conditions Robinson’s failure to press the question was as disturbing as the detective’s matter-of-fact capture of the cloak.

Paredes glanced at Katherine once.  There was no softness in her attitude as she knelt beside his chair.  Neither, Bobby felt, was there the slightest uneasiness.  With a facile grace she helped the doctor bathe and bandage the slight wound.

“A silk handkerchief for a sling—­” the doctor suggested.

“I won’t have a sling,” Paredes said.  “I wouldn’t know what to do without the use of both my hands.”