“What is it?” Katherine said.  “It’s moving.  I can feel it move beneath my fingers.”

Her words recalled to Bobby unavoidably his experience in the old room.

“Don’t do that!” the doctor cried.

Paredes smiled.

“If,” he answered, “the source of these crimes is, as you think, spiritual, why not ask the spirits for a solution?  You see how quickly the table responds.  It is as I thought.  There is something in this hall.  Haven’t you a feeling that the dead are in this dark hall with us?  They may wish to speak.  See!”

The table settled softly down without any noise.  It commenced to rise again.  Katherine lifted her hands with a visible effort, as if the table had tried to hold them against her will.  She covered her face and sat trembling.

“I won’t!  I—­”

Paredes shrugged his shoulders, appealing to the doctor.  The huge, shaggy head shook determinedly.

“I’m not so sure I don’t agree with you.  I’m not so sure the dead aren’t in this hall.  That is why I’ll have nothing to do with such dangerous play.  It has shown us, at least, that you are psychic, Mr. Paredes.”

“I have a gift,” Paredes murmured.  “It would be useful to speak with them.  They see so much more than we do.”

He lifted his hands.  He waved them dejectedly.  He stooped and commenced picking up the cards.  The doctor arose.

“I shall go now.”  He sighed.  “I don’t know why I have stayed.”

Bobby got his coat and hat.

“I’ll walk to the stable with you.”

He was glad to escape from the dismal hall in which the firelight grew more eccentric.  The court was colder and damper, and even beyond the chill was more penetrating than it had been at the grave that noon.  Uneven flakes of snow sifted from the swollen sky, heralds of a white invasion.

“No more sleep-walking?” the doctor asked when he had taken the blanket from his horse and climbed into the buggy.

Bobby leaned against the wall of the stable and told how Graham had brought him back the previous night from the stairhead, to which he had gone with a purpose he didn’t dare sound.  The doctor shook his head.

“You shouldn’t tell me that.  You shouldn’t tell any one.  You place yourself too much in my hands, as you are already in Graham’s hands.  Maybe that is all right.  But the district attorney?  You’re sure he knows nothing of this habit which seems to have commenced the night of the first murder?”

“No, and I think Paredes alone of those who know about that first night would be likely to tell him.”

“See that he doesn’t,” the doctor said shortly.  “I’ve been watching Robinson.  If he doesn’t make an arrest pretty soon with something back of it he’ll lose his mind.  He mightn’t stop to ask, as I do, as Howells did, about the locked doors and the nature of the wounds.”

“How shall I find the courage to sleep to-night?” Bobby asked.