Paredes turned away.  He took a cigarette from his pocket and lighted it.  His fingers were not steady.  For the first time, it became evident to Bobby, Paredes was afraid.  Rawlins came back from the telephone.  He took in the tableau.

“What’s the rumpus?”

“Run this man to Smithtown,” Robinson directed.  “Lock him up, and tell the judge, when he’s arraigned in the morning, that I want him held as a material witness.”

“He was at the hotel in Smithtown all right,” Rawlins said.

He tapped Paredes’s arm.

“You coming on this little joy ride like a lamb or a lion?  Say, you’ll find the jail about as comfortable as the New Hotel.”

Paredes smiled.  The evil and dangerous light died in his eyes.  He became all at once easy and impervious again.

“Like a lamb.  How else?”

“I’m sorry, Carlos,” Bobby muttered.  “If you’d only say something!  If you’d only explain your movements!  If you’d only really help!”

Again Paredes shrugged his shoulders.

“Handcuffs?” he asked Rawlins.

Rawlins ran his hands deftly over the Panamanian’s clothing.

“No armed neutrality for me,” he grinned.  “All right.  We’ll forget the bracelets since you haven’t a gun.”

Puffing at his cigarette, Paredes got his coat and hat and followed the detective from the house.

Robinson and Graham climbed the private staircase to commence another systematic search of the hall, to discover, if they could, the motive for Paredes’s stealthy presence there.  Bobby accepted greedily this opportunity to find Katherine, to learn from her, undisturbed, what had happened in the house that morning, the meaning, perhaps, of her despairing gesture.  When, in response to his knock, she opened her door and stepped into the corridor he guessed her despair had been an expression of the increased strain, of her helplessness in face of Robinson’s harsh determination.

“He questioned me for an hour,” she said, “principally about the heel mark in the court.  They cling to that, because I don’t think they’ve found anything new at the lake.”

“You don’t know anything about it, do you, Katherine?  You weren’t there?  You didn’t do that for me?”

“I wasn’t there, Bobby.  I honestly don’t know any more about it than you do.”

“Carlos was in the court,” he mused.  “Did you know they’d taken him?  We found him creeping down the private stairway.”

There was a hard quality about her gratitude.

“I am glad, Bobby.  The man makes me shudder, and all morning they seemed more interested in you than in him.  They’ve rummaged every room—­even mine.”

She laughed feverishly.

“That’s why I’ve been so upset.  They seemed—­” She broke off.  She picked at her handkerchief.  After a moment she looked him frankly in the eyes and continued:  “They seemed almost as doubtful of me as of you.”