“We are wasting time,” she said.  “You had better go.”

“I am sorry we disagree about Carlos,” he commenced.

She turned deliberately away from him.

“You must hurry,” she said.  “Hurry!”

He saw her enter the corridor to join Graham.  The obscurity of the narrow place seemed to hold for him a new menace.

He walked downstairs slowly.  While he telephoned, instructing a servant to tell the doctor to be dressed and ready in twenty minutes, he saw Paredes go to the closet and get his hat and coat.

“I shall keep you company,” the Panamanian announced.

Bobby was glad enough to have him.  He didn’t want to be alone.  He was aware by this time that no amount of thought would persuade useful memories to emerge from the black pit.  They walked to the stable, half gone to ruin like the rest of the estate.  Bobby started Graham’s car.  The servants’ quarters, he saw, were dark.  Then Jenkins and the two women hadn’t been aroused, were still ignorant of the new crime.  As they drove smoothly past the gloomy house they glimpsed through the court the dimly lit windows of the old room that persistently guarded its grim secret.  Bobby pictured the living as well as the dead there, and his mind revolted, and he shivered.  He opened the throttle wider.  The car sprang forward.  The divergent glare from the headlights forced back the reluctant thicket.  Paredes drawled unexpectedly: 

“There is nothing as lonely anywhere in the world.”

He stooped behind the windshield and lighted a cigarette.

“At least.  Bobby,” he said between puffs, “the Cedars has taken from you the fear of Howells.”

And after a time, staring at the glow of his cigarette, he went on softly: 

“Have you noticed anything significant about the discovery of each mystery at the Cedars?”

“Many things,” Bobby muttered.

“Think,” Paredes urged him.

Bobby answered angrily: 

“You’ve suggested that to me once to-day, Carlos.  You mean that each time I have been asleep or unconscious.”

“I mean something quite different,” Paredes said.

He hesitated.  When he continued, his drawl was more pronounced.

“Then you haven’t remarked that each time it has been Miss Katherine who has made the discovery, who has aroused the rest of the house?”

The car swerved sharply.  Bobby’s first impulse had been to take his hands from the wheel, to force Paredes to retract his sly insinuation.

“That’s the rottenest thing I’ve ever known you to do, Carlos.  Take it back.”

Paredes shrugged his shoulders.

“There is nothing to take back.  I accuse no one.  I merely call attention to a chain of exceptional coincidences.”

“You make me wonder,” Bobby said, “if Hartley isn’t justified in his dislike of you.  You’ll kill such a ridiculous suspicion.”

“Or?” Paredes drawled.  “Very well.  It seems my fate recently to offend those I like best.  I merely thought that any theory leading away from you would be welcome.”