“Oh, he was angry, sir, when he knew the truth and learned what a mistake he’d made.  Howells didn’t give me that report I showed you.  It was in his pocket with the other things.  We got it open without tearing the envelope and Mr. Silas read it.  He wouldn’t destroy anything.  He never dreamed of anybody’s suspecting Miss Katherine, so he told me to hide the things in her bureau.  I think he figured on using the evidence to put the blame on Mr. Robert in case it was the only way to save himself.”

“Why did you show the report to me?” Bobby asked.

“I—­I was afraid to take all that responsibility,” the butler quavered.  “I figured if you were partly to blame it might go easier with me.”

Paredes shrugged his shoulders.

“You were a good mate for Silas Blackburn,” he sneered.

“Even now I don’t see how that old scoundrel had the courage to show himself to-night,” Rawlins said.

“That’s the beautiful justice of the whole thing,” Paredes answered, “for there was nothing else whatever for him to do.  There never had been anything else for him to do since Miss Katherine had spoiled his scheme, since you all believed that it was he who had been murdered.  He had to hide the truth or face the electric chair.  If he disappeared he was infinitely worse off than though he had settled with his brother—­a man without a home, without a name, without a penny.”

Jenkins nodded.

“He had to come back,” he said slowly, “and he knew how scared you were of the old room.”

“The funeral and the snow,” Paredes said, “gave him his chance.  Jenkins will doubtless tell you how they uncovered the grave late this afternoon, took that poor devil’s body, and threw it in the lake, then fastened the coffin and covered it again.  Of course the snow effaced every one of their tracks.  He came in, naturally scared to death, and told us that story based on the legends of the Cedars and the doctor’s supernatural theories.  And you must admit that he might, as you call it, have got away with it.  He did create a mystification.  The body of the murdered man had disappeared.  There was no murdered Blackburn as far as you could tell.  Heaven knows how long you might have struggled with the case of Howells.”

He glanced up.

“Here is Miss Katherine.”

She stood at the head of the stairs.

“I think she’s all right,” she said to the doctor.  “She’s asleep.  She went to sleep crying.  May I come down?”

The doctor nodded.  She walked down, glancing from one to the other questioningly.

“Poor Maria!” Paredes mused.  “She’s the one I pity most.  She’s been at times, I think, what Rawlins suspected—­an insane woman, wandering and crying through the woods.  Assuredly she was out of her head to-night, when I found her finally at the grave.  I tried to tell her that her father was dead.  I begged her to come in.  I told her we were friends.  But