w failed to brighten. Its pallid
quality persisted. It seemed to radiate from a point close to the ground.

"It comes from the front of the house," Bobby murmured.

He stepped from the automobile.

"What are you going to do?" Paredes wanted to know.

"Find out who is in that house."

For Bobby had experienced a quick hope. If there was a man or a woman
secreted in the building the truth as to his own remarkable presence
there last night might not be so far to seek after all. There was,
moreover, something lawless about this light escaping from the place at
such an hour. A little while ago, when Paredes and he had driven past,
the house had been black. They had remarked its lonely, abandoned
appearance. It had led Paredes to speak of the neighbourhood as the
domain of death. Yet the strange, pallid quality of the light itself made
him pause by the broken fence. It did come from the lower part of the
front of the house, yet, so faint was it, it failed to outline the
aperture through which it escaped. The doctor and Paredes joined him.

"When I was here," he said, "all the shutters were closed. This glow is
too white, too diffused. We must see."

As he started forward Paredes grasped his arm.

"There are too many of us. We would make a noise. Suppose I creep up and
investigate."

"There is one way in--at the back," Bobby told the doctor. "Let us go
there. We'll have whoever's inside trapped. Meantime, Carlos, if he
wishes, will steal up to the front; he'll find out where the light comes
from. He'll look in if he can."

"That's the best plan," Paredes agreed.

But they had scarcely turned the corner of the house, beyond reach of the
glow, when Paredes rejoined them. His feet were no longer careful in the
underbrush. He came up running. For the first time in their acquaintance
Bobby detected a lessening of the man's suave, unemotional habit.

"The light!" the Panamanian gasped. "It's gone! Before I could get close
it faded out."

Bobby called to the doctor and ran toward the door at the rear. It was
unhinged and half open as it had been when he had awakened to his painful
and inexplicable predicament. He went through, fumbling in his pocket for
matches. The damp chill of the hall nauseated him as it had done before,
seemed to place about his throat an intangible band that made breathing
difficult. Before he could get his match safe out the doctor had struck a
wax vesta. Its strong flame played across the dingy