As they continued Bobby responded to an excited premonition. He sensed the destination of the chase. He
could picture Paredes now in the loneliest portion of the woods, for the trail unquestionably pointed to the
path he had taken that afternoon toward the stagnant lake.
"Hartley!" he said. "Paredes left the house to go to the stagnant lake where I fancied I saw a woman in black.
Do you see? And he didn't hear the crying of a woman a little while ago, and when we told him he became
restless. He wandered about the hall talking of ghosts."
"A rendezvous!" Graham answered. "He may have been waiting for just that. The crying may have been a
signal. Perhaps you'll believe now, Bobby, that the man has had an underhanded purpose in staying here."
"I've made too many hasty judgments in my life, Hartley. I'll go slow on this. I'll wait until we see what we
find at the lake."
Rawlins snapped off his light. The little party paused at the black entrance of the path into the thicket.
"He's buried himself in the woods," Rawlins said.
They crowded instinctively closer in the sudden darkness. A brisk wind had sprung up. It rattled among the
trees, and set the dead leaves in gentle, rustling motion. It suggested to Bobby the picture which had been
forced into his brain the night of his grandfather's death. The moon now possessed less light, but it reminded
him again of a drowning face, and through the darkness he could fancy the trees straining in the wind like
puny men. Abruptly the thought of penetrating the forest became frightening. The silent loneliness of the
stagnant lake seemed as unfriendly and threatening as the melancholy of the old room.
"There are too many of us," Robinson was saying. "You'd better go on alone, Rawlins, and don't take any
chances. I've got to have this man. You understand? I think he knows things worth while."
The rising wind laughed at his whisper. The detective flashed his lamp once, shut it off again, and stepped into
the close embrace of the thicket.
Suddenly Bobby grasped Graham's arm. The little group became tense, breathless. For across the wind with a
diffused quality, a lack of direction, vibrated to them again the faint and mournful grief of a woman.THE ONE WHO CREPT IN THE PRIVATE STAIRCASE
The odd, mournful crying lost itself in the restless lament of the wind. The thicket from which it had seemed
to issue assumed in the pallid moonlight a new unfriendliness. Instinctively the six men moved closer
together. The coroner's thin tones expressed his alarm:
"What the devil was that? I don't really believe there could be a woman around here."
"A queer one!" the detective grunted.
The district attorney questioned Bobby and Graham.
"That's the voice you heard from the house?"
Graham nodded.
"Perhaps not so far away."
Doctor Groom, hitherto more captured than any of them by the imminence of a spiritual responsibility for the
mystery of the Cedars, was the first now to reach for a rational explanation of this new phase.
"We mustn't let our fancies run away with us. The coroner's right for once. No excuse for a woman hiding in
that thicket. A bird, maybe, or some animal--"
"Sounded more like a human being," Robinson objected.
The detective reasoned in a steady unmoved voice: "Only a mad woman would wander through the woods,
crying like that without a special purpose. This man Paredes has left the house and come through here. I'd
guess it was a signal."
"Graham and I had thought of that," Bobby said.
"Howells was a sharp one," Robinson mused, "but he must have gone wrong on this fellow. He 'phoned me
the man knew nothing. Spoke of him as a foreigner who lolled around smoking cigarettes and trying to make a
fool of him with a lot of talk about ghosts."
"Howells," Graham said, "misjudged the case from the start. He wasn't to blame, but his mistake cost him his
life."
Robinson didn't answer. Bobby saw that the man had discarded his intolerant temper. From that change he
drew a new hope. He accepted it as the beginning of fulfilment of his prophecy last night that an accident to
Howells and the entrance of a new man into the case would give him a fighting chance. It was clearly Paredes
at the moment who filled the district attorney's mind.
"Go after him," he said shortly to Rawlins. "If you can get away with it bring him back and whoever you find
with him."
Rawlins hesitated.