Paredes resumed his walk.  He still had that air of expectancy.  He seemed to listen.  This feeling of imminence reached Bobby; increased his restlessness.  He thought he heard an automobile horn outside.  He sprang up, went to the door, opened it, and stood gazing through the damp and narrow court.  Yet, he confessed, he listened for a repetition of that unearthly crying through the thicket rather than for the approach of those who would try to condemn him for two murders.  Paredes was right.  The place was unhealthy.  Its dark walls seemed to draw closer.  They had a desolate and unfriendly secretiveness.  They might hide anything.

The whirring of a motor reached him.  Headlights flung gigantic, distorted shadows of trees across the walls of the old wing.  Bobby faced the others.

“They’re coming,” he said, and his voice was sufficiently apprehensive now.

Graham joined him at the door.  “Yes,” he said.  “There will be another inquisition.  You all know that Howells for some absurd reason suspected Bobby.  Bobby, it goes without saying, knows no more about the crimes than any of us.  I dare say you’ll keep that in mind if they try to confuse you.  After all, there’s very little any of us can tell them.”

“Except,” Paredes said with a yawn, “what went on upstairs when the woman cried and Howells’s body moved.  Of course I know nothing about that.”

Graham glanced at him sharply.

“I don’t know what you mean, but you have told us all that you are Bobby’s friend.”

“Quite so.  And I am not a spy.”

He moved his head in his grave and dignified bow.

The automobile stopped at the entrance to the court.  Three men stepped out and hurried up the path.  As they entered the hall Bobby recognized the sallow, wizened features of the coroner.  One of the others was short and thick set.  His round and florid face, one felt, should have expressed friendliness and good-humour rather than the intolerant anger that marked it now.  The third was a lank, bald-headed man, whose sharp face released more determination than intelligence.

“I am Robinson, the district attorney,” the stout one announced, “and this is Jack Rawlins, the best detective I’ve got now that Howells is gone.  Jack was a close friend of Howells, so he’ll make a good job of it, but I thought it was time I came myself to see what the devil’s going on in this house.”

The lank man nodded.

“You’re right, Mr. Robinson.  There’ll be no more nonsense about the case.  If Howells had made an arrest he might be alive this minute.”

Bobby’s heart sank.  These men would act from a primary instinct of revenge.  They wanted the man who had killed Silas Blackburn principally because it was certain he had also killed their friend.  Rawlins’s words, moreover, suggested that Howells must have telephoned a pretty clear outline of the case.  Robinson stared at them insolently.