e any use raking up such things, anyway. Maybe I'd been pretty harsh
with him. Anyway, I knew he hated the ground I walked on and would be
glad enough to see me drop in my tracks."

"That isn't so," Bobby said.

"You keep quiet now. You always talked too much."

So the old feeling survived.

"Go on," Robinson urged.

"I'd always been a hard worker," Blackburn whined, "and he was a waster.
Naturally we didn't get along. I'd decided to make a new will, leaving my
money to the Bedford Foundation, and I wrote him that, thinking it would
bring him hot foot to make it up with me. I'd been nervous about him
before, because I didn't know what might come into his head when he was
on these wild parties. So I'd spoken to Howells, thinking I'd trip him if
he tried any funny business. When he didn't come that night I got scared.
He knew I wouldn't make the new will until morning, and since I couldn't
see any man throwing all that money away, I figured he'd guessed he
couldn't turn me and wouldn't waste any time talking.

"When you got a lot of money and a grandson who hates you, you have to
think of such things. Suppose, I thought, he should come out here drunk
when I was sound asleep. I knew he had a latch key, and he might sneak up
to my room before I could even get to the telephone. Or I was afraid he
might hire somebody. You can buy men for that sort of work in New York. I
tell you the more I thought of it the more I was sure he'd do something.
You'd understand if you lived in this lonely place with all that money
and nobody you wanted to will it to. I nearly sent for Howells right
then. But if nothing had happened I'd have looked a fool."

"I wanted you to send for a man," Katherine cried.

Bobby leaned against the wall, repeating to himself the words of Maria's
note which accused him of having made the very threat his grandfather
had feared.

"So," Blackburn rambled on, "I decided I wouldn't sleep in my room that
night, and I picked out the least likely place for anybody to find me. I
was more afraid of him than I was of the old room, but, as I've told you,
the old room made me forget Master Robert."

Robinson stepped to Bobby's side.

"All along Howells was right. Tell me what you did with that evidence."

Bobby turned away. Katherine tried to laugh. Graham beckoned to Robinson.

"What's the use of bothering with evidence against a suspected murderer
when the murdered man stands talking to you?"

Robinson frow