detective didn't answer. He shot rapid, uneasy glances about the room
in which a single candle burned. After a time he said with an accent of
complete conviction:

"That man was murdered."

Perhaps the doctor's significant words, added to her earlier dread of the
abnormal, made Katherine read in the detective's manner an apprehension
of conditions unfamiliar to the brutal routine of his profession. Her
glances were restless, too. She had a feeling that from the shadowed
corners of the faded, musty room invisible faces mocked the man's
stubbornness.

All this she recited to Bobby when, under extraordinary circumstances
neither of them could have foreseen, he arrived at the Cedars many
hours later.

Of the earlier portion of the night of his grandfather's death Bobby
retained a minute recollection. The remainder was like a dim, appalling
nightmare whose impulse remains hidden.

When he went to his apartment to dress for dinner he found the letter of
which Silas Blackburn had spoken to Katherine. It mentioned the change in
the will as an approaching fact nothing could alter. Bobby fancied that
the old man merely craved the satisfaction of terrorizing him, of
casting him out with all the ugly words at his command. Still a good deal
more than a million isn't to be relinquished lightly as long as a chance
remains. Bobby had an engagement for dinner. He would think the situation
over until after dinner, then he might go.

It was, perhaps, unfortunate that at his club he met friends who drew him
in a corner and offered him too many cocktails. As he drank his anger
grew, and it wasn't all against his grandfather. He asked himself why
during the last few months he had avoided the Cedars, why he had drifted
into too vivid a life in New York. It increased his anger that he
hesitated to give himself a frank answer. But always at such moments it
was Katherine rather than his grandfather who entered his mind. He had
cared too much for her, and lately, beyond question, the bond of their
affection had weakened.

He raised his glass and drank. He set the glass down quickly as if he
would have liked to hide it. A big man, clear-eyed and handsome, walked
into the room and came straight to the little group in the corner. Bobby
tried to carry it off.

"'Lo, Hartley, old preacher. You fellows all know Hartley Graham? Sit
down. We're going to have a little cocktail."

Graham looked at the glasses, shaking his head.

"If you've ti