en now was without emotion.

"I can't think anything of the kind," he said softly.

"That's very nice," Paredes said. "If you had answered differently I'd
have let these clever policemen lay their own ghosts."

He turned to Robinson.

"Even you must begin to see that I'm not guilty. Your common sense will
tell you so. If I had been planning to kill Bobby, why didn't I bring
the weapon? Why did I put my hand through the opening before I was ready
to strike? Why did I use my left hand--my injured hand? I was like
Howells. I couldn't consider the case finished until I had solved the
mystery of the locked doors. I supposed the room was empty. When I found
the secret to-night, I reached through to see how far my hand would be
from the pillow."

Bobby's assurance of Paredes's innocence clouded his own situation; made
it, in a sense, more dangerous than it had ever been. His wanderings
about the Cedars remained unexplained, and they knew now it had never
been necessary for the murderer to enter the room, Katherine, too,
evidently realized the menace.

"Do you think I--" she began.

Paredes bowed.

"You dislike me, Miss Katherine, but don't be afraid for yourself or
Bobby. I think I can tell you how the evidence got in your room. I can
answer nearly everything. There's one point--"

He broke off, glancing at his watch.

"Extraordinary courage!" he mused enigmatically. "I scarcely
understand it."

Rawlins looked at him suspiciously.

"All this explaining may be a trick, Mr. Robinson. The man's slippery."

"I've had to be slippery to work under your noses," Paredes laughed.
"By the way, Bobby, did you hear a woman crying about the time I opened
this door?"

"Yes. It sounded like the voice we heard at the grave."

"I thought I heard it from the library," Robinson put in. "Then the
rumpus up here started, and I forgot about it."

"The woman in black is very brave," Paredes mused. "We should have had a
visit from her long before this."

"Do you know who she is?" Robinson asked. "And as Rawlins says, no
tricks. We haven't let you go yet."

"I thought," Paredes mocked, "that you had identified the woman in black
as Miss Katherine. She hasn't had anything to do with the mystery
directly. Neither has Bobby. Neither have I."

"Then what the devil have you been doing here?" Robinson snapped.

"Seeing your job through," Paredes answered, "for Bobby's sake."

With a warm gratitude Bobby knew that Paredes had told