Bobby was a good deal touched.

“That’s kind of you—­more than I deserve, for I have resented you at times.”

Graham, it was clear, didn’t guess he referred to his friendship for Katherine, for he answered quickly: 

“I must have seemed a nuisance, but I was only trying to get you back on the straight path where you’ve always belonged.  I can’t believe you did this thing, even unconsciously, until I’m shown proof without a single flaw.  Until the autopsy the only thing we have to work on is that party last night.  I’ve telephoned to New York and put a trustworthy man on the heels of Maria and the stranger.  Meantime I think I’d better watch developments here.”

“Please,” Bobby agreed.  “Stay with me, Hartley, until this man takes some definite action.”

He picked at the fringe of the window curtain.  “If the autopsy shows that my grandfather was murdered,” he said, “either I killed him, or else some one has deliberately tried to throw suspicion on me, for with only a motive to go on this detective wouldn’t be so sure.  Why in the name of heaven should any one kill the old man, place all this money in my hands, and at the same time send me to the electric chair?  Don’t you see how absurd it is that Carlos, Maria, or any one else should have had a hand in it?  There was nothing for them to gain from his death.  I’ve thought and thought in such circles until I am almost convinced of the logic of my guilt.”

He drew the curtain farther back and gazed across the court at the room where his grandfather lay dead.  One of the two windows of the room was a little raised, but the blinds were closely drawn.

“I did hate him,” he mused.  “There’s that.  Ever since I can remember he did things to make me despise him.  Have—­have you seen him?”

Graham nodded.

“Howells took me in.  He looked perfectly normal—­not a mark.”

“I don’t want to see him,” Bobby said.

He drew back from the window, pointing.  The detective, Howells, had strolled into the court.  His hands hung at his sides.  They didn’t swing as he walked.  His lips were stretched in that thin, straight smile.  He paused by the fountain, glancing for a moment anxiously downward.  Then he came on and entered the house.

“He’ll be restless,” Graham said, “until the coroner comes, and proves or disproves his theory of murder.  If he questions you, you’d better say nothing for the present.  From his point of view what you remember of last night would be only damaging.”

“I want him to leave me alone,” Bobby said.  “If he doesn’t arrest me I won’t have him bullying me.”

Jenkins knocked and entered.  The old butler was as white-faced as Bobby, more tremulous.

“The policeman, sir!  He’s asking for you.”

“Tell him I don’t wish to see him.”

The detective, himself, stepped from the obscurity of the hall, smiling his queer smile.