he hall talking of ghosts."

"A rendezvous!" Graham answered. "He may have been waiting for just that.
The crying may have been a signal. Perhaps you'll believe now, Bobby,
that the man has had an underhanded purpose in staying here."

"I've made too many hasty judgments in my life, Hartley. I'll go slow on
this. I'll wait until we see what we find at the lake."

Rawlins snapped off his light. The little party paused at the black
entrance of the path into the thicket.

"He's buried himself in the woods," Rawlins said.

They crowded instinctively closer in the sudden darkness. A brisk wind
had sprung up. It rattled among the trees, and set the dead leaves in
gentle, rustling motion. It suggested to Bobby the picture which had been
forced into his brain the night of his grandfather's death. The moon now
possessed less light, but it reminded him again of a drowning face, and
through the darkness he could fancy the trees straining in the wind like
puny men. Abruptly the thought of penetrating the forest became
frightening. The silent loneliness of the stagnant lake seemed as
unfriendly and threatening as the melancholy of the old room.

"There are too many of us," Robinson was saying. "You'd better go on
alone, Rawlins, and don't take any chances. I've got to have this man.
You understand? I think he knows things worth while."

The rising wind laughed at his whisper. The detective flashed his
lamp once, shut it off again, and stepped into the close embrace of
the thicket.

Suddenly Bobby grasped Graham's arm. The little group became
tense, breathless. For across the wind with a diffused quality, a
lack of direction, vibrated to them again the faint and mournful
grief of a woman.

CHAPTER VI

THE ONE WHO CREPT IN THE PRIVATE STAIRCASE

The odd, mournful crying lost itself in the restless lament of the wind.
The thicket from which it had seemed to issue assumed in the pallid
moonlight a new unfriendliness. Instinctively the six men moved closer
together. The coroner's thin tones expressed his alarm:

"What the devil was that? I don't really believe there could be a woman
around here."

"A queer one!" the detective grunted.

The district attorney questioned Bobby and Graham.

"That's the voice you heard from the house?"

Graham nodded.

"Perhaps not so far away."

Doctor Groom, hitherto more captured than any of them by the imminence of
a spiritual responsibility for the mystery of the Cedars, wa