go up now."
In the upper hall he snatched the candle from the table.
"Which way?"
Katherine nodded to the old corridor and slipped to her room. Robinson stepped forward with the coroner at
his heels. Bobby, Graham, and the doctor followed. Inside the narrow, choking passage Bobby saw the district
attorney hesitate.
"What's the matter?" the doctor rumbled.
The district attorney went on without answering. He glanced at the broken lock.
"So you had to smash your way in?"
He walked to the bed and looked down at Howells.
"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.