“You trying to scare me, Katy?” he asked suspiciously.

“Evidently,” Robinson commented to Graham, “Howells wasn’t as dull as we thought him.  Go on, Mr. Blackburn.  Why were you afraid of your grandson?”

“Maybe he can tell you better than I can,” the old man answered.  “Don’t see any use raking up such things, anyway.  Maybe I’d been pretty harsh with him.  Anyway, I knew he hated the ground I walked on and would be glad enough to see me drop in my tracks.”

“That isn’t so,” Bobby said.

“You keep quiet now.  You always talked too much.”

So the old feeling survived.

“Go on,” Robinson urged.

“I’d always been a hard worker,” Blackburn whined, “and he was a waster.  Naturally we didn’t get along.  I’d decided to make a new will, leaving my money to the Bedford Foundation, and I wrote him that, thinking it would bring him hot foot to make it up with me.  I’d been nervous about him before, because I didn’t know what might come into his head when he was on these wild parties.  So I’d spoken to Howells, thinking I’d trip him if he tried any funny business.  When he didn’t come that night I got scared.  He knew I wouldn’t make the new will until morning, and since I couldn’t see any man throwing all that money away, I figured he’d guessed he couldn’t turn me and wouldn’t waste any time talking.

“When you got a lot of money and a grandson who hates you, you have to think of such things.  Suppose, I thought, he should come out here drunk when I was sound asleep.  I knew he had a latch key, and he might sneak up to my room before I could even get to the telephone.  Or I was afraid he might hire somebody.  You can buy men for that sort of work in New York.  I tell you the more I thought of it the more I was sure he’d do something.  You’d understand if you lived in this lonely place with all that money and nobody you wanted to will it to.  I nearly sent for Howells right then.  But if nothing had happened I’d have looked a fool.”

“I wanted you to send for a man,” Katherine cried.

Bobby leaned against the wall, repeating to himself the words of Maria’s note which accused him of having made the very threat his grandfather had feared.

“So,” Blackburn rambled on, “I decided I wouldn’t sleep in my room that night, and I picked out the least likely place for anybody to find me.  I was more afraid of him than I was of the old room, but, as I’ve told you, the old room made me forget Master Robert.”

Robinson stepped to Bobby’s side.

“All along Howells was right.  Tell me what you did with that evidence.”

Bobby turned away.  Katherine tried to laugh.  Graham beckoned to Robinson.

“What’s the use of bothering with evidence against a suspected murderer when the murdered man stands talking to you?”

Robinson frowned helplessly.  Paredes sprang to his feet.