The sun was up when they reached the Cedars.  Katherine had gone to her room.  The coroner had left.  Robinson and Graham had built a fresh fire in the hall.  They sat there, talking.

“Where you been?” Robinson demanded.  “We’d about decided the spooks had done for you.”

The detective outlined their failure.  The district attorney listened with a frown.  At the end he arose and, without saying anything, walked to the telephone.  When he returned he appeared better satisfied.

“Mr. Paredes,” he said, “will have to be a slick article to make a clean getaway.  And I’m bringing another man to keep reporters out.  They’ll know from Howells’s murder that Mr. Blackburn didn’t die a natural death.  If reporters get in don’t talk to them.  I don’t want that damned foreigner reading in the papers what’s going on here.  I’d give my job to have him in that chair for five minutes now.”

Graham cleared his throat.

“I scarcely know how to suggest this, since it is sufficiently clear, because of Howells’s suspicions, that you have Mr. Blackburn under close observation.  But he has a fair idea of Paredes’s habits, his haunts, and his friends in New York.  He might be able to learn things the police couldn’t.  I’ve one or two matters to take me to town.  I would make myself personally responsible for his return—­”

The district attorney interrupted.

“I see what you mean.  Wait a minute.”

He clasped his hands and rolled his fat thumbs one around the other.  The little eyes, surrounded by puffy flesh, became enigmatic.  All at once he glanced up with a genial smile.

“Why not?  I haven’t said anything about holding Mr. Blackburn as more than a witness.”

His tone chilled Bobby as thoroughly as a direct accusation would have done.

“And,” Robinson went on, “the sooner you go the better.  The sooner you get back the better.”

Graham was visibly puzzled by this prompt acquiescence.  He started for the stairs, but the district attorney waved him aside.

“Coats and hats are downstairs.  No need wasting time.”

Graham turned to Doctor Groom.

“You’ll tell Miss Perrine, Doctor?”

The doctor showed that he understood the warning Graham wished to convey.

The district attorney made a point of walking to the stable to see them off.  Graham gestured angrily as they drove away.

“It’s plain as the nose on your face.  I was too anxious to test their attitude toward you, Bobby.  He jumped at the chance to run us out of the house.  He’ll have several hours during which to turn the place upside down, to give Katherine the third degree.  And we can’t go back.  We’ll have to see it through.”

“Why should he give me a chance to slip away?” Bobby asked.

But before long he realized that Robinson was taking no chances.  At the junction of the road from Smithtown a car picked them up and clung to their heels all the way to the city.