e justified in protecting yourself, Bobby,
in the only way you can. No one will see you go in the room. We'll
arrange it so that no one can testify against you."

Bobby felt himself at a cross roads. During the commission of those
crimes he had been unconscious. If he had, in fact, had anything to do
with them, his personality, his real self, had known nothing, had done no
wrong. His body had merely reacted to hideous promptings whose source
lurked at the bottom of the black pit. To tamper with evidence would be a
conscious crime. All the more, because of his doubt of himself, he shrank
from that. Katherine saw his hesitation.

"It's a matter of your life or death."

But although Katherine decided him it wasn't with that. She came closer.
She looked straight at him, and her eyes were full of an affection that
stirred him profoundly:

"For my sake, Bobby--"

He studied the dead ashes of the fire which a little while ago had
played on Howells, vital and antagonistic, by the door of the private
staircase. The man had challenged him to do just the thing from which he
shrank. But Howells was no longer vital or antagonistic, and it occurred
to him that a little of his shrinking arose from the thought of
approaching and robbing the still thing upstairs, all that was left of
the man who had not been afraid of the mystery of the locked room.

"For my sake," Katherine repeated.

Bobby squared his shoulders. He fought back his momentary cowardice. The
affection in Katherine's eyes was stronger than that.

"All right," he said. "Howells never gave me a chance while he was alive.
He'll have to now he's dead."

Katherine relaxed. Graham's face was quite white, but he gave his
instructions in a cold, even tone:

"We'll go to the hall now. Katherine will go on upstairs. She mustn't see
you enter the room, but she will watch in the corridor while you are
there to be sure you aren't disturbed. You and I will chat for awhile
with the others, Bobby, then you will go up. You understand? Paredes
mustn't even guess what you are doing. I'll keep him and Groom
downstairs. If he spied, if he knew what you were at, he'd have a weapon
in his hands I'd hate to think about. He may be all right, but we can't
risk any more than we have to. We must go on tiptoe."

He opened the door. Katherine gave Bobby's hand a quick,
encouraging pressure.

"Take the stuff to my room," Graham whispered. "The first chance, we'll
destroy it so that no tr