Bobby experienced a swift impulse to strangle the brutal word in the detective’s throat.  But he stood still while the man went to the bureau, struck a match, and applied it to a candle.  The wick burned reluctantly.  It flickered in the wind that slipped past the curtain of the open window.

“Come here,” the detective commanded roughly.

Bobby dragged himself forward until he stood at the foot of the four-poster bed.  The detective lifted the candle and held it beneath the canopy.

“You look all you want now, Mr. Robert Blackburn,” he said grimly.

Bobby conquered the desire to close his eyes, to refuse to obey.  He stared at his grandfather, and a feeling of wonder grew upon him.  For Silas Blackburn rested peacefully in the great bed.  His eyes were closed.  The thick gray brows were no longer gathered in the frown too familiar to Bobby.  The face with its gray beard retained no fear, no record of a great shock.

Bobby glanced at the detective who bent over the bed watching him out of his narrow eyes.

“Why,” he asked simply, “do you say he was murdered?”

“He was murdered,” the detective answered.  “Murdered in cold blood, and, look you here, young fellow, I know who did it.  I’m going to strap that man in the electric chair.  He’s got just one chance—­if he talks out, if he makes a clean breast of it.”

Across the body he bent closer.  He held the candle so that its light searched Bobby’s face instead of the dead man’s, and the uncertain flame was like an ambush for his eyes.

In response to those intolerable words Bobby’s sick nerves stretched too tight.  No masquerade remained before this huntsman who had his victim trapped, and calmly studied his agony.  The horror of the accusation shot at him across the body of the man he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t murdered, robbed him of his last control.  He cried out hysterically: 

“Why don’t you do something?  For God’s sake, why don’t you arrest me?”

A chuckle came from the man in ambush behind the yellow flame.

“Listen to the boy!  What’s he talking about?  Grief for his grandfather.  That’s what it is—­grief.”

“Stop!” Bobby shouted.  “It’s what you’ve been accusing me with ever since you stopped me at the station.”  He indicated the silent form of the old man.  “You keep telling me I murdered him.  Why don’t you arrest me then?  Why don’t you lock me up?  Why don’t you put the case on a reasonable basis?”

He waited, trembling.  The flame continued to flicker, but the hand holding the candlestick failed to move, and Bobby knew that the eyes didn’t waver, either.  He forced his glance from the searching flame.  He managed to lower and steady his voice.

“You can’t.  That’s the trouble.  He wasn’t murdered.  The coroner will tell you so.  Anybody who looks at him will tell you so.  Since you haven’t the nerve to arrest me.  I’m going.  I’m glad to have had this out with you.  Understand.  I’m my own master.  I do what I please.  I go where I please.”