rful shoulder against the door. The lock strained.
Bobby added his weight. With a splintering of wood the door flew open,
precipitating them across the threshold. Through the darkness Graham
sprang for the opposite door.

"It's locked," he called, "and the key's on this side."

Bobby took the candle from Katherine and forced himself to approach the
bed. The flame flickered a little in the breeze which stole past the
curtain of the open window. It shook across the body of Howells, fully
clothed with his head on the stained pillow. His face, intricately lined,
was as peaceful as Silas Blackburn's had been. Its level smile persisted.

Bobby caught his breath.

"Howells--"

He set the candle on the bureau.

"It's no use. We must look at the back of his head."

"The back of his head!" Katherine echoed.

"It's illegal," Graham said.

"Look!" Bobby cried. "We've got to look!"

Graham tiptoed forward. He stretched out his hand. With a motion of
abhorrence he drew it back. Bobby watched him hypnotically, thinking:

"I wanted this. I hated him. I thought of it just before I went to
sleep."

Graham reached out again. This time he touched Howells's head. It rolled
over on the pillow.

"Good God!" he said.

They stared at the red hole, near the base of the brain, at a fresh
crimson splotch, straying beyond the edges of the darker one they had
seen that afternoon.

Graham turned away, his hand still outstretched, as if it had touched
some poisonous thing and might retain a contamination.

"He was prepared against it," he whispered, "expected it, yet it got
him."

He glanced rapidly around the room whose shadows seemed crowding about
the candle to stifle it.

"Unless we're all mad," he cried, "the murderer must be hidden in this
room now. Don't you see? He's got to be, or Groom's right, and we're
fighting the dead. Go out, Katherine. Stand by that broken door, Bobby.
I'm going to look."

CHAPTER IV

A STRANGE LIGHT APPEARS AT THE DESERTED HOUSE

Graham's intention, logical as it was, impressed Bobby as quite futile.
Silas Blackburn had died in this ancient, melancholy room behind locked
doors. This afternoon, with a repetition of the sounds that had probably
accompanied his death, they had been drawn to find that, behind locked
doors again, the position of the body had changed incredibly, as if to
expose to them the tiny fatal wound at the base of the brain. Now for the
third time those stealthy mo