“Poor devil!” he murmured.  “Howells wasn’t the man to get caught unawares.  It’s beyond me how any one could have come close enough to make that wound without putting him on his guard.”

“It’s beyond us, as it was beyond him,” Graham answered, “how any one got into the room at all.”

In response to Robinson’s questions he told in detail about the discovery of both murders.  Robinson pondered for some time.

“Then you and Mr. Blackburn were asleep,” he said.  “Miss Perrine aroused you.  This foreigner Paredes was awake and dressed and in the lower hall.”

“I think he was in the court as we went by the stair-well,” Graham corrected him.

“I shall want to talk to your foreigner,” Robinson said.  He shivered.  “This room is like a charnel house.  Why did Howells want to sleep here?”

“I don’t think he intended to sleep,” Graham said.  “From the start Howells was bound to solve the mystery of the entrance of the room.  He came here, hoping that the criminal would make just such an attempt as he did.  He was confident he could take care of himself, get his man, and clear up the last details of the case.”

Robinson looked straight at Bobby.

“Then Howells knew the criminal was in the house.”

“Howells, I daresay,” Graham said, “telephoned you something of his suspicions.”  Robinson nodded.

“He was on the wrong line,” Graham argued, “or he wouldn’t have been so easily overcome.  You can see for yourself.  Locked doors, a wound that suggests the assailant was close to him, yet he must have been awake and watchful; and if there had been a physical attack before the sharp instrument was driven into his brain he would have cried out, yet Miss Perrine was aroused by nothing of the sort, and the coroner, I daresay, will find no marks of a struggle about the body.”

The coroner who had been busy at the bed glanced up.

“No mark at all.  If Howells wasn’t asleep, his murderer must have been invisible as well as noiseless.”

Doctor Groom smiled.  The coroner glared at him.

“I suggest, Mr. District Attorney,” he squeaked, “that the ordinary layman wouldn’t know that this type of wound would cause immediate death.”

“Nor would any man,” the doctor answered angrily, “be able to make such a wound with his victim lying on his back.”

“On his back!” Robinson echoed.  “But he isn’t on his back.”

The doctor told of the amazing alteration in the positions of both victims.  Bobby regretted with all his heart that he had made the attempt to get the evidence.  Already complete frankness was impossible for him.  Already a feeling of guilt sprang from the necessity of withholding the first-hand testimony which he alone could give.

“And a woman cried!” Robinson said, bewildered.  “All this sounds like a ghost story.”

“You’ve more sense than I thought,” Doctor Groom said dryly.  “I never could get Howells to see it that way.”