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They stepped through the doorway. Half way down the hall Robinson, Graham, and Rawlins held a fourth, who had ceased struggling. Bobby paused, yet, since seeing Katherine step from the corridor, his reason had taught him to expect just this. The fourth man was Paredes, nearly effeminate, slender-fingered. "Carlos!" Bobby cried. "You can't have done these unspeakable things!"
The doctor's deep bass answered thoughtfully: "Paredes is probably right. The man has a special sense, but I have felt it myself. The Cedars and the forest are full of things that seem to whisper, things that one never sees. Such things might have an excuse for evil." "Let's get out of it," Robinson said gruffly. Katherine withdrew her hand.
"That's the rottenest thing I've ever known you to do, Carlos. Take it back." Paredes shrugged his shoulders. "There is nothing to take back. I accuse no one. I merely call attention to a chain of exceptional coincidences." "You make me wonder," Bobby said, "if Hartley isn't justified in his dislike of you. You'll kill such a ridiculous suspicion." "Or?" Paredes drawled. "Very well.
Paredes drawled unexpectedly: "There is nothing as lonely anywhere in the world." He stooped behind the windshield and lighted a cigarette. "At least. Bobby," he said between puffs, "the Cedars has taken from you the fear of Howells."
Perhaps a nightmare, or they've heard us moving around the front part of the house. I am going to see." Katherine and Bobby followed him downstairs. Doctor Groom and Paredes stood in front of the fireplace, questioningly looking upward. Paredes didn't speak at first, but Doctor Groom burst out in his grumbling, bass voice: "What's been going on up there?" "Did you hear just now a queer crying?"
There was no point in going to bed, and all day I had been without exercise." "Yet," Graham said harshly, "you have had practically no sleep since you came here." Paredes nodded. "Very distressing, isn't it?" "Maybe," Rawlins sneered, "you'll tell us why you went on tiptoe, and I suppose you didn't hear a woman crying in the woods?" "That's just it," Paredes answered.
I'll get all that out of my man when I lock him up. I'll get it to-night if he dares come." "Why," Graham said, "do you announce your plans so accurately to us?" The detective's level smile widened. "You shouldn't ask that, Mr. Graham. I've caused the servants to know my plans. Mr. Paredes knows them. I wish every one in the house to know them.
He turned, and grasped the door knob. They followed him into the hall, shaking the snow from their coats. Paredes sat alone by the fire, languidly engaged in the solitaire which exerted so potent a fascination for him. He didn't turn at their entrance. It wasn't until Bobby called out that he moved. "Carlos!"
"Paredes and the dancer," he said at last, "practically forced me away from you last night. It's obvious, Bobby, you must have been drugged." Bobby shook his head. "I thought of that right away, but it won't do. If I had been drugged I wouldn't have moved around, and I did come out somehow, I managed to get to the empty house to sleep.
He stared at the bend, expecting to see the stiff, plain figure of the detective emerge from the forest. Instead with a dawning amazement he watched Carlos Paredes stroll into view. The Panamanian was calm and immaculate. His Van Dyke beard was neatly trimmed and combed. As he advanced he puffed in leisurely fashion at a cigarette. Graham flushed. "After last night he has the nerve "
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