“Maria!” he cried.  “You were right, Hartley!”

Yet at first he could scarcely accept this pitiful creature as the brilliant and exotic dancer with whom he had dined the night of the first murder.  As he stared at her, her features twisted.  She burst into retching sobs.  She staggered toward Paredes.  As she went the snow melted from her hat and cloak.  She became a black figure again.  With an appearance of having been immersed in water she sank on the hearth, swaying back and forth, reaching blindly for Paredes’s hand.

“Do what you please with me, Carlos,” she whimpered with her slight accent from which all the music had fled.  “I couldn’t stand it another minute.  I couldn’t get to the station, and I—­I wanted to know which—­which—­”

Paredes watched her curiously.

“Get Jenkins,” he said softly to Rawlins.

He faced Maria again.

“I could have told you, I think, when you fought me away out there.  No one wants to arrest you.  Jenkins will verify my own knowledge.”

“This is dangerous,” the doctor rumbled.  “This woman shouldn’t wait here.  She should have dry clothing at once.”

Maria shrank from him.  For the first time her wet skirt exposed her feet, encased in torn stockings.  The dancer wore no shoes, and Bobby guessed why she had been so elusive, why she had left so few traces.

“I won’t go,” she cried, “until he tells me.”

Katherine got a cloak and threw it across the woman’s shoulders.  Maria looked up at her with a dumb gratitude.  Then Rawlins came back with Jenkins.  The butler was bent and haggard.  His surrender to fear was more pronounced than it had been at the grave or when they had last seen him in the kitchen.  He grasped a chair and, breathing heavily, looked from one to the other, moistening his lips.

Paredes faced the man, completely master of the situation.  Through the old butler, it became clear, he would make his revelation and announce that simple fact they all had missed.

“It was Mr. Silas, of course, who came back?”

“Oh my God!” the butler moaned, “What do you mean?”

“I know everything, Jenkins,” Paredes said evenly.

The butler collapsed against the chair.  Paredes grasped his arm.

“Pull yourself together, man.  They won’t want you as more than an accessory.”

Maria started to rise.  She shrank back again, shivering close to the fire.

“Is your master hiding,” Paredes asked, “or has he left the house?”

Jenkins’s answer came through trembling lips.

“He’s gone!  Mr. Silas is gone!  How did you find out?  My God!  How did you find out?”

“He said nothing to you?” Paredes asked.

Jenkins shook his head.

“Tell me how he was dressed.”

The old servant covered his face.

“Mr. Silas stumbled through the kitchen,” he answered hoarsely.  “I tried to stop him, but he pushed me away and ran out.”  His voice rose.  “I tell you he ran without a coat or a hat into the storm.”