“Dozing here by the fire.  I am very tired after last night.”

“You don’t look particularly tired.”

“Custom, I’m ashamed to say, constructs a certain armour.  To-morrow, with a fresh mind, I hope to be able to dissect all I have seen and heard, all that has happened here to-day.”

“The thing that counts is what happened to me last night, Carlos,” Bobby said.  “It’s the only way you can help me.”

As Paredes strolled to the foot of the stairs Bobby waited for a defensive reply, for a sign, perhaps, that the Panamanian was offended and proposed to depart.  Paredes, however, went upstairs, yawning.  He called back: 

“I must make myself a trifle more presentable for dinner.”

Graham faced Bobby with the old question: 

“What can he want hanging around here unless it’s money?” And after a moment:  “He’s clever—­hard to sound.  I have to leave you, Bobby.  I must telephone—­the ugly formalities.”

“It’s good of you to take them off my mind,” Bobby answered.

He remained in his chair, gazing drowsily at the fire, trying, always trying to remember, yet finding no new light among the shadows of his memory.

Just before dinner Katherine joined him.  She wore a sombre gown that made her face seem too white, that heightened the groping curiosity of her eyes.

Without speaking she sat down beside him and stared, too, at the smouldering fire.  From her presence, from her tactful silence he drew comfort—­to an extent, rest.

“You make me ashamed,” he whispered once.  “I’ve been a beast, leaving you here alone these weeks.  You don’t understand quite, why that was.”  She wouldn’t let him go on.  She shook her head.  They remained silently by the fire until Graham and Paredes joined them.

When dinner was announced the detective came from the library, and, uninvited, sat at the table with them.  His report evidently still filled his mind, for he spoke only when it was unavoidable and then in monosyllables.  Paredes alone ate with a show of enjoyment, alone attempted to talk.  Eventually even he fell silent before the lack of response.

Afterward he arranged a small card table by the fire in the hall.  He found cards, and, with a package of cigarettes and a box of matches convenient to his hand, commenced to play solitaire.  The detective, Bobby gathered, had brought his report up to date, for he lounged near by, watching the Panamanian’s slender fingers as they handled the cards deftly.  Bobby, Graham, and Katherine were glad to withdraw beyond the range of those narrow, searching eyes.  They entered the library and closed the door.

Graham, expectant of a report from his man in New York as to the movements of Maria and the identity of the stranger, was restless.

“If we could only get one fact,” he said, “one reasonable clue that didn’t involve Bobby!  I’ve never felt so at sea.  I wonder if, in spite of Howells’s evidence, we’re not all a little afraid since this afternoon, of something such as Katherine felt last night—­something we can’t define.  Howells alone is satisfied.  We must believe in the hand of another man.  Doctor Groom talks about indefinable hands.”