Bobby saw Katherine’s shoulders shake.  She had dried her eyes, but in her face was expressed an aversion for solitude, a desire for any company, even that of the man she disliked and feared.

Robinson took Rawlins to the library for another futile consultation, Bobby guessed.  Katherine sat on the arm of a chair, thrusting one foot toward the fresh blaze.

“It will snow,” she said.  “It is very early for that.”

No one answered.  The strain tightened.  The flames leapt, throwing evanescent pulsations of brilliancy about the dusky hall.  They welcomed Jenkins’s announcement that luncheon was ready, but they scarcely disturbed the hurriedly prepared dishes, and afterward they gathered again in the hall, silent and depressed, appalled by the long, dreary afternoon, which, however, possessed the single virtue of dividing them from another night.

For long periods the district attorney and the detective were closeted in the library.  Now and then they passed upstairs, and they could be heard moving about, but no one, save Graham, seemed to care.  Already the officers had had every opportunity to search the house.  The old room no longer held an inhabitant to set its fatal machinery in motion.  Yet Bobby realized in a dull way that at any moment the two men might come down to him, saying: 

“We have found something.  You are guilty.”

The heavy atmosphere of the house crushed such forecasts, made them seem a little trivial.  Bobby fancied it gathering density to cradle new mysteries.  The long minutes loitered.  Doctor Groom made a movement to go.

“Why should I stay?” he grumbled.  “What is there to keep me?”

Yet he sat back in his chair again and appeared to have forgotten his intention.

Graham wandered off.  Bobby thought he had joined Rawlins and Robinson in the library.

The only daylight entered the hall through narrow slits of windows on either side of the front door.  Bobby, watching these, was, even with the problems night brought to him now, glad when they grew paler.

Paredes, who had been smoking cigarette after cigarette, arose and brought his card table.  Drawing it close to him, he arranged the cards in neat piles.  The uncertain firelight made it barely possible to identify their numbers.  Doctor Groom gestured his disgust.  Katherine stooped forward, placing her hands on the table.

“Is it kind,” she asked, “so soon after he has left his house?”

Paredes started.

“Wait!” he said softly.

Puzzled, she glanced at him.

“Stay just as you are,” he directed.  “There has been so much death in this house—­who knows?”

Languidly he placed his fingers on the edge of the table opposite hers.

“What are you doing?” Dr. Groom asked hoarsely.

“Wait!” Paredes said again.

Then Bobby, scarcely aware of what was going on, saw the cards glide softly across the face of the table and flutter to the floor.  The table had lifted slowly toward the Panamanian.  It stood now on two legs.