“It’s a matter of your life or death.”

But although Katherine decided him it wasn’t with that.  She came closer.  She looked straight at him, and her eyes were full of an affection that stirred him profoundly: 

“For my sake, Bobby—­”

He studied the dead ashes of the fire which a little while ago had played on Howells, vital and antagonistic, by the door of the private staircase.  The man had challenged him to do just the thing from which he shrank.  But Howells was no longer vital or antagonistic, and it occurred to him that a little of his shrinking arose from the thought of approaching and robbing the still thing upstairs, all that was left of the man who had not been afraid of the mystery of the locked room.

“For my sake,” Katherine repeated.

Bobby squared his shoulders.  He fought back his momentary cowardice.  The affection in Katherine’s eyes was stronger than that.

“All right,” he said.  “Howells never gave me a chance while he was alive.  He’ll have to now he’s dead.”

Katherine relaxed.  Graham’s face was quite white, but he gave his instructions in a cold, even tone: 

“We’ll go to the hall now.  Katherine will go on upstairs.  She mustn’t see you enter the room, but she will watch in the corridor while you are there to be sure you aren’t disturbed.  You and I will chat for awhile with the others, Bobby, then you will go up.  You understand?  Paredes mustn’t even guess what you are doing.  I’ll keep him and Groom downstairs.  If he spied, if he knew what you were at, he’d have a weapon in his hands I’d hate to think about.  He may be all right, but we can’t risk any more than we have to.  We must go on tiptoe.”

He opened the door.  Katherine gave Bobby’s hand a quick, encouraging pressure.

“Take the stuff to my room,” Graham whispered.  “The first chance, we’ll destroy it so that no trace will be left.”

They went to the hall.  Without speaking, Katherine climbed the stairs.  Graham drew a chair between Paredes and the doctor.  Bobby lounged against the mantel, trying to find in the Panamanian’s face some clue as to his real feelings.  But Paredes’s eyes were closed.  His hand drooped across the chair arm.  His slender, pointed fingers held, as if from mere habit, a lifeless cigarette.

“Asleep,” Graham whispered.

Without opening his eyes Paredes spoke:  “No; I feel curiously awake.”  He yawned.

Doctor Groom glanced at his watch.  “The powers of prosecution,” he grumbled, “ought to be here within the next fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Bobby glanced at Graham.  Then it wasn’t safe to delay too long.  More and more as he waited he shrank from the invasion of the room of death.  The prospect of reaching out and touching the still, cold thing on the bed revolted him.  Was there anything in that room capable of forbidding his intention?  Was there, in short, a surer, more malicious force for evil than his unconscious self, at work in the house?  He was about to make some formal comment to the others, to embark on his distasteful adventure, when Paredes, as if he had read Bobby’s mind, opened his eyes, languidly left his chair, and walked to the foot of the stairs.