“Any theory,” Bobby answered, “involving Katherine is unthinkable.”

Paredes smiled.

“I didn’t understand exactly how you felt.  I rather took it for granted that Graham—­Never mind.  I take it back.”

“Then drop it,” Bobby answered sullenly, sorry that there was nothing else he could say.

They continued in silence through the deserted forest whose aggressive loneliness made words seem trivial.  Bobby was asking himself again where he had stood last night when he had glimpsed for a moment the straining trees and the figure in a mask which he had called his conscience.  If he could only prove that figure substantial!  Then Graham would have some ground for his suspicion of Paredes and the dancer Maria.  He glanced at Paredes.  Could there have been a conspiracy against him in the New York cafe?  Did Paredes, in fact, have some devious purpose in remaining at the Cedars?

The automobile took a sharp curve in the road.  Bobby started, gazing ahead with an interest nearly hypnotic.  The headlights had caught in their glare the deserted farmhouse in which he had awakened just before Howells had told him of his grandfather’s death and practically placed him under arrest.  In the white light the frame of the house from which the paint had flaked, appeared ghastly, unreal, like a structure seen in a nightmare from which one recoils with morbid horror.  The light left the building.  As the car tore past, Bobby could barely make out the black mass in the midst of the thicket.

Paredes had observed it, too.

“I daresay,” he remarked casually, “the Cedars will become as deserted as that.  It is just that it should, for the entire neighbourhood impresses one as unfriendly to life, as striving through death to drive life out.”

“Have you ever seen that house before?” Bobby asked quickly.

“I have never seen it before.  I do not care ever to see it again.”

It was a relief when the forest thinned and fields stretched, flat and pleasant, like barriers against the stunted growth.  Bobby stopped the car in front of one of a group of houses at a crossroads.  He climbed the steps and rang.  Doctor Groom opened the door himself.  His gigantic, hairy figure was silhouetted against the light from within.

“What’s the matter now?” he demanded in his gruff voice.  “Fortunately I hadn’t gone to bed.  I was reading some books on psychic manifestations.  Who’s sick?  Or—­”

Bobby’s face must have told him a good deal, for he broke off.

“Get your things on,” Bobby said, “and I will tell you as we drive back, for you must come.  Howells has been killed precisely as my grandfather was.”

For a moment Doctor Groom’s bulky frame remained motionless in the doorway.  Instead of the surprise and horror Bobby had foreseen, the old man expressed only a mute wonder.  He got his hat and coat and entered the runabout, Paredes made room for him, sitting on the floor, his feet on the running board.