Paredes hurried on.

“How long had you been asleep?”

“What makes you ask that?” the other whined.  “I don’t know.”

“It was a long time?”

Blackburn’s voice rose complainingly.

“How did you guess that?  I never slept so.  I dozed nearly three days, but I’m tired now—­tired as if I hadn’t slept at all.”

Paredes made a gesture of surrender.  Bobby struggled against the purpose of the man’s questions, against the suggestion of his grandfather’s unexpected answers.

“Your idea is madness, Carlos,” he whispered.

“This house is filled with it,” Paredes said.  “I wish Groom were here.  Groom ought to be here.”

“He’s coming back,” Bobby told him.  “He shouldn’t be long now.  He said before dinner time.”

Paredes stirred.

“I wish he would hurry.”

The Panamanian said nothing more, as if he realized the futility of pressing the matter before Doctor Groom should return.  Necessary questions surged in Bobby’s brain.  The two that Paredes had put, however, disturbed his logic.

Katherine, who hadn’t spoken since entering, kept her eyes fixed on her uncle.  Her lips were slightly parted.  She had the appearance of one afraid to break a silence covering impossible doubts.

Bobby called on his reason.  His grandfather stood before him in flesh.  With the old man, in spite of Paredes’s ghastly hint, probably lay the solution of the entire mystery and his own safety.  He was about to speak when he heard footsteps in the upper hall.  His grandfather glanced inquiringly through the stair-well, asking: 

“Who’s that up there?”

The sharp tone confessed that fear of the Cedars was active in the warped brain.

“The district attorney,” Bobby answered, “a detective, probably Hartley Graham.”

“What they doing here?”

He indicated Paredes.

“What’s this fellow doing here?  I never liked him.”

Katherine answered: 

“They’ve all come because I thought I saw you dead, lying in the old room.”

“We all saw,” Bobby cried angrily, and Paredes nodded.

Blackburn shrank away from them.

The three men descended the stairs.  Half way down they stopped.

“Who is that?” Robinson cried.

Graham’s face whitened.  He braced himself against the banister.

“Next time, Mr. District Attorney,” Paredes said, “you’ll believe me when I say the court is full of ghosts.  He walked in from the court.  I tell you they found him in the court.”

Silas Blackburn’s voice rose, shrill and angry: 

“What’s the matter with you all?  Why do you talk of ghosts and my being dead?  Haven’t I a right to come in my own house?  You all act as if you were afraid of me.”

Paredes’s questions had clearly added to the uncertainty of his manner.  Katherine spoke softly: