For a long time the little group gathered in the snow-swept cemetery remained silent. The lamp, shaking in the district attorney's hand, illuminated each detail of the casket's interior linings. Bobby tried to realize that, except for these meaningless embellishments, the box was empty. That was what held them all—the void, the unoccupied silken couch in which they had seen Silas Blackburn's body imprisoned. Yet the screws which the detective had removed, and the mass of earth, packed down and covered with snow, must have made escape a dreadful impossibility even if the spark of life had reanimated its occupant. And that occupant stood there, trembling and haggard, sobbing from time to time in an utter abandonment to the terror of what he saw.

To Bobby in that moment the supernatural legend of the Cedars seemed more triumphantly fulfilled than it would have been through the immaterial return of his grandfather. For Silas Blackburn was a reincarnation more difficult to accept than any ghost. Had Paredes, who all along had offered them a spectacle of veiled activity and thought, grasped the truth? At first glance, indeed his gossip of oriental theories concerning the disintegration of matter, its passage through solid substances, its reassembly in far places, seemed thoroughly justified. Yet, granted that, who, in the semblance of Silas Blackburn, had they buried to vanish completely? Who, in the semblance of Silas Blackburn, had drowsed without food for three days in the house at Smithtown?

The old man stretched his shaking hands to Bobby and Katherine.

"Don't let them bury me again. They never buried me. I've not been dead! I tell you I've not been dead!" He mouthed horribly. "I'm alive! Can't you see I'm alive?"

He broke down and covered his face. Jenkins sank on the heap of earth.

"I saw you, Mr. Silas, in that box. And I saw you on the bed. Miss Katherine and I found you. We had to break the door. You looked so peaceful we thought you were asleep. But when we touched you you were cold."

"No, no, no," Blackburn grimaced. "I wasn't cold. I couldn't have been."

"There's no question," Bobby said hoarsely.

"No question," Robinson repeated.

Katherine shrank from her uncle as he had shrunk from her in the library the night of the murder.

"What do you make of it?" the district attorney asked Rawlins.

The detective, who had remained crouched at the side of the grave, arose, brushing the dirt from his hands, shaking his head.

"What is one to make of it, sir?"

Paredes spoke softly to Graham.

"The Cedars wants to be left alone to the dead. We would all be better away from it."

"You won't go yet awhile," Robinson said gruffly. "Don't forget you're still under bond."

The detail no longer seemed of importance to Bobby. The mystery, centreing in the empty grave, was apparently inexplicable. He experienced a great pity for his grandfather; and, recalling that strengthening moment with Katherine, he made up his mind that there was only one course for him. It might be dangerous in itself, yet, on the other hand, he couldn't go to Katherine while his share in the mystery of the Cedars remained so darkly shadowed. He had no right to withhold anything, and he wouldn't ask Graham's advice. He had stepped all at once into the mastery of his own destiny. He would tell Robinson, therefore, everything he knew, from the party with Maria and Paredes in New York, through his unconscious wanderings around the house on the night of the first murder, to the moment when Graham had stopped his somnambulistic excursion down the stairs.

Robinson turned his light away from the grave.

"There's nothing more to do here. Let us go back."

The little party straggled through the snow to the house. The hall fire smouldered as pleasantly as it had done before they had set forth, yet an interminable period seemed to have elapsed. Silas Blackburn went close to the fire. He sank in a chair, trembling.

"I'm so cold," he whined. "I've never been so cold. What is the matter with me? For God's sake tell me what is the matter! Katherine—if—if nothing happens, we'll close the Cedars. We'll go to the city where there are lots of lights."

"If you'd only listened to Bobby and me and gone long ago," she said.

Robinson stared at the fire.

"I'm about beaten," he muttered wearily.

Rawlins, with an air of stealth, walked upstairs. Graham, after a moment's hesitation, followed him. Bobby wondered why they went. He caught Robinson's eye. He indicated he would like to speak to him in the library. As he left the hall he saw Paredes, who had not removed his hat or coat, start for the front door.

"Where are you going?" he heard Robinson demand.

Paredes's reply came glibly.

"Only to walk up and down in the court. The house oppresses me more than ever to-night. I feel with Mr. Blackburn that it is no place to stay."

And while he talked with Robinson in the library Bobby caught at times the crunching of Paredes's feet in the court.

"Why does that court draw him?" Robinson asked. "Why does he keep repeating that it is full of ghosts? He can't be trying to scare us with that now."

But Bobby didn't answer.

"I've come to tell you the truth," he burst out, "everything I know. You may lock me up. Even that would be better than this uncertainty. I must have an answer, if it condemns me; and how could I have had anything to do with what has happened to-night?"

He withheld nothing. Robinson listened with an intent interest. At the end he said not unkindly:

"If the evidence and Howells's report hadn't disappeared I'd have arrested you and considered the case closed before this miracle was thrown at me. You've involved yourself so frankly that I don't believe you're lying about what went on in the old room when you entered to steal those exhibits. Can't say I blame you for trying that, either. You were in a pretty bad position—an unheard-of position. You still are, for that matter. But the case is put on such an extraordinary basis by what has happened to-night that I'd be a fool to lock you up on such a confession. I believe there's a good deal more in what has gone on in that room and in the return of your grandfather than you can account for."

"Thanks," Bobby said. "I hoped you'd take it this way, for, if you will let me help, I have a plan."

He turned restlessly to the door of the private staircase. In his memory Howells's bold figure was outlined there, but now the face with its slow smile seemed sympathetic rather than challenging.

"What's your plan?" Robinson asked.

Bobby forced himself to speak deliberately, steadily:

"To go for the night alone to the old room as Howells did."

Robinson whistled.

"Didn't believe you had that much nerve. Two men have tried that. What good would it do?"

"If the answer's anywhere," Bobby said, "it must be hidden in that room. Howells felt it. I was sure of it when I was prevented from taking the evidence. You've believed it, I think."

"There is something strange and unhealthy about the room," Robinson agreed. "Certainly the secret of the locked doors lies there. But we've had sufficient warning. I'm not ashamed to say I wouldn't take such a chance. I don't know that I ought to let you."

Bobby smiled.

"I've been enough of a coward," he said, "and, Robinson, I've got to know. I shan't go near the bed. I'll watch the bed from a corner. If the danger's at the bed, as we suspect, it probably won't be able to reach me, but just the same it may expose itself. And Rawlins or you can be outside the broken door in the corridor, waiting to enter at the first alarm."

"Howells had no chance to give an alarm," Robinson muttered. "We'll see later."

But Bobby understood that he would agree, and he forced his new courage to face the prospect.

"Maybe something will turn up," Robinson mused. "The case can't grow more mysterious indefinitely."

But his tone held no assurance. He seemed to foresee new and difficult complications.

When they returned to the hall Bobby shrank from the picture of his grandfather still crouched by the fire, his shoulders twitching, his fingers about the black briar pipe shaking. Groom alone had remained with him. Bobby opened the front door. There was no one in the court.

"Paredes," he said, closing the door, "has gone out of the court. Where's
Katherine, Doctor?"

"She went to the kitchen," the doctor rumbled. "I'm sure I don't know what for this time of night."

After a little Graham and Rawlins came down the stairs. Graham's face was scarred by fresh trouble. Rawlins drew the district attorney to one side.

"What have you two been doing up there?" Bobby asked Graham.

"Rawlins is hard-headed," Graham answered in a low, worried tone.

He wouldn't meet Bobby's eyes. He seemed to seek an escape.

"Where's Katherine?" he asked.

"Doctor Groom says she went to the back part of the house. Why won't you tell me what you were doing?"

"Only keeping Rawlins from trying to make more mischief," Graham answered.

He wouldn't explain.

"Aren't there enough riddles in this house?" Doctor Groom asked with frank disapproval.

Rawlins and Robinson joined them, sparing Graham a further defence. The district attorney had an air of fresh resolution. He was about to speak when the front door opened quietly, framing the blackness of the court. They started forward, seeing no one.

Silas Blackburn made a slow, shrinking movement, crying out:

"They've opened the door! Don't let them in. Don't let them come near me again."

Although they knew Paredes had been in the court the spell of the Cedars was so heavy upon them that for a moment they didn't know what to expect. They hesitated with a little of the abnormal apprehension Silas Blackburn exposed. Then Rawlins sprang forward, and Bobby called:

"Carlos!"

Paredes stepped from one side. He lingered against the black background of the doorway. It was plain enough something was wrong with him. In the first place, although he had opened the door, he had been unwilling to enter.

"Shut the door," Silas Blackburn moaned.

Paredes, with a quick gesture of surrender, stepped in and obeyed. His face was white. He had lost his immaculate appearance. His clothing showed stains of snow and mould. He held his left hand behind his back.

"What's the matter with you?" Robinson demanded.

The Panamanian's laugh lacked its usual indifference.

"When I said the Cedars was full of ghosts I should have heeded my own warning. I might better have stayed comfortably locked up in Smithtown."

Silas Blackburn spoke in a hoarse whisper:

"What did you see out there? Are they coming?"

"I saw very little," Paredes answered. "It was too dark."

"You saw something," Doctor Groom rumbled.

Paredes nodded. He looked at the floor.

"A—a woman in black."

"By the lake!" Bobby cried.

"Not as far as the lake. It was near the empty grave."

Silas Blackburn commenced to shake again. The doctor's little eyes were wider.

"It was a woman—a flesh-and-blood woman?" Robinson asked.

"If it was a ghost," Paredes answered, "it had the power of attack; but that, as you'll recall, is by no means unusual here. That's why I've come in rather against my will. It seems strange, but I, too, have been struck by a sharp and slender object, and I thought, perhaps, the doctor had better look at the result."

With a motion of repugnance he moved his left hand from behind his back and stretched it to the light. The coat below the elbow was torn. The slender hand was crimson. He tried to smile.

"Luckily it wasn't at the back of my head."

"Sit down," Doctor Groom said, waving Robinson and Rawlins away. "Let me see how badly he's hurt. There'll be plenty of time for questions afterward."

Paredes lay back in one of the chairs and extended his arm. He kept his eyes closed while the doctor stooped, examining the wound. All at once his nearly perpetual sleeplessness since coming to the Cedars had recorded itself in his face. His nerves at last confessed their vulnerability as he fumbled for a cigarette with his good hand, as he placed it awkwardly between his lips.

"Would you mind giving me a light, Bobby?"

Bobby struck a match and held it to the cigarette.

"Thanks," Paredes said. "Are you nearly through, doctor? I daresay it's nothing."

Doctor Groom glanced up.

"Nothing serious with a little luck. It's only torn through a muscle. It might have pierced the large vein."

His forehead beneath the shaggy black hair was deeply lined. He turned to
Robinson doubtfully.

"Maybe you'll tell us," Robinson said, "what made the wound."

"No use shirking facts," the doctor rumbled. "Mr. Paredes has been wounded just as he said, by something sharp and slender."

"You mean," Robinson said, "by an instrument that could have caused death in the case of Howells and—and—"

"I won't have you looking at me that way," Silas Blackburn whined.

"Yes," the doctor answered. "Before we go any farther I want to bind this arm. There must be an antiseptic in the house. Where is Katherine? See if you can find her, Bobby."

As Bobby started to cross the dining room he heard the slight scraping of the door leading to the kitchen. He knew there was someone in the room with him. He touched a cold hand.

"Bobby!" Katherine breathed in his ear.

He understood why the little light from the hall had failed to disclose her when she had come from the kitchen. She wore the black cloak. Against the darkness at the end of the room she had made no silhouette. When he put his arms around her and touched her cheek, he noticed that that, too, was cold; and the shoulders of the cloak were damp as if she had just come in from the falling snow.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

"Looking outside," she answered frankly. "I couldn't sit still. I wondered if the woman in black would be around the house to-night. Then I was afraid, so I came in."

Doctor Groom's voice reached them.

"Have you found her? Is she in the dining room?"

Without any thought of disloyalty Bobby recognized the menace of coincidence.

"Take your cloak off," he whispered. "Leave it here."

"Why?"

While he drew the cloak from her shoulders he raised his voice.

"Carlos has been hurt. The doctor asked me to find you."

His simple strategy was destroyed by the appearance of Rawlins. The detective came directly to them; nor was the coincidence lost on him, and it was his business to advertise rather than to conceal it. Without ceremony he took the cloak from Bobby. He draped it over his arm.

"The doctor," he said to Katherine, "wants a basin of warm water, some old linen, carbolic acid, if you have it."

She nodded and went back to the kitchen while Bobby returned with the detective to the hall. Paredes's eyes remained closed.

"Where did you get the cloak, Rawlins?" Robinson asked.

"The young lady," Rawlins answered with soft satisfaction, "just wore it in. At least it's still wet from the snow."

Paredes opened his eyes. He looked for a moment at the black cloak. He closed his eyes again.

"You could recognize the woman who attacked you?" Rawlins said.

Paredes shook his head.

"You've forgotten how dark it is. Please don't ask me even to swear that it was a woman."

"You're trying to say it wasn't flesh and blood," Blackburn quavered.

Paredes smiled weakly.

"I'm trying to say nothing at all."

"Tell us each detail of the attack," Robinson said.

But Katherine's footsteps reached them from the dining room and Paredes wouldn't answer. Under those conditions Robinson's failure to press the question was as disturbing as the detective's matter-of-fact capture of the cloak.

Paredes glanced at Katherine once. There was no softness in her attitude as she knelt beside his chair. Neither, Bobby felt, was there the slightest uneasiness. With a facile grace she helped the doctor bathe and bandage the slight wound.

"A silk handkerchief for a sling—" the doctor suggested.

"I won't have a sling," Paredes said. "I wouldn't know what to do without the use of both my hands."

"You ought to congratulate yourself that you still keep it," the doctor grumbled.

Bobby took the pan and the bottles from Katherine and rang for Jenkins. It was clear that Robinson had hoped the girl would go out with them herself and so give Paredes an opportunity to speak. This new development made him wonder about Graham's theories as to Paredes. If it was Maria who had struck the man there had either been a quarrel among thieves or else no criminal connection had ever existed between the two. Paredes, however, aping the gestures of an invalid, was less to Bobby's taste than his satanic appearance when he had come from the private staircase.

Rawlins still held the cloak. After Jenkins had removed the doctor's paraphernalia, everyone seemed to wait. It was Silas Blackburn who finally released the strain.

"Katy, where you been with that cloak? What's he doing with it?"

Without answering she took the cloak from Rawlins, and gave the detective and the district attorney the opportunity they craved. She walked up the stairs, turning at the landing. Her farewell seemed pointed at the Panamanian who looked languidly up at her.

"If I'm wanted I shall be in my room."

"Who would want you, Katherine?" Graham blurted out. But it was clear he had caught the coincidence, too, and the trouble he had confessed a little earlier was radically increased.

"That remains to be seen," Robinson sneered as soon as she had gone.
"Now, Mr. Paredes."

"I've really told you everything," he said. "I walked toward the graveyard. At a point very close to it I felt the presence of this creature in black. I spoke. I took my courage in my hands. I reached out. I touched nothing." He raised his injured hand. "I got this for my pains."

"What made you go to the graveyard?" Robinson asked suspiciously.

There was no mockery in the Panamanian's answer.

"I have told you the court for me has always been full of ghosts." He pointed to Silas Blackburn. "It frightened me that this man should come back through the court from his grave with all the evidence pointing to an astral magic. I wanted to retrace his journey. I thought at the grave, if I were alone, something might expose itself that had naturally remained hidden in the presence of so many materialistic human beings."

A smile spread over Rawlins's cold, unimaginative features.

"That sounds well, Mr. Paredes, and there is a lot about this case that looks like ghosts, but leave us a few flesh-and-blood clues. This woman in black is one of them, although she's been slippery as an eel. It looks to me as if you went to the grave to meet her alone exactly as you went to the deserted house to talk quietly with her night before last. Maybe she mistook you for one of us snooping in the dark, and let you have it."

"If that is so," Paredes said easily, "the nature of my wound would suggest that she is guilty of the crimes in the old room. Why not go out and arrest her then? She might explain everything except the return to life of Mr. Blackburn. I'm afraid that's rather beyond you in any case. But at least find her."

Robinson joined in Rawlins's laugh.

"Why go outside for that?"

Paredes started.

"You never mean—"

"You bet we do," Rawlins said. "If what I've doped out hadn't been so we'd have caught her long before. We're not blind, and we haven't missed the nerve with which she helped the doctor fix you up. We haven't caught her before because her headquarters have been right in this house all the time. You remember the other night, Mr. Robinson. You'd just questioned her in the court and had threatened to question him, too, when she came in here ahead of us and slipped out the back way. She must have told him to follow because they had to talk, undisturbed by us. They went by different roads to the deserted house where a light had been seen before. We happened to hit his trail first and followed it. I'll guarantee you didn't see her when you first came in."

Robinson shook his head.

"Mr. Graham kept me busy, and I rather waited for your report before pushing things. I didn't see her or question her until after Mr. Graham and Mr. Blackburn had started for New York."

"And she could have sneaked in the back way any time before that,"
Rawlins said.

"It's utter nonsense!" Graham cried.

Rawlins turned on him.

"See here, Mr. Graham, you've been trying to fight me off this way all afternoon. It won't do."

"Katy's a good girl," Silas Blackburn quavered.

With a growing discomfort Bobby realized that when the woman had cried near the graveyard he had reached out for Katherine and had failed to find her. Moreover, the night Graham and he had heard the crying in the old room she had stood alone in the corridor. It was easily conceivable that the turn of events after Robinson's arrival should have made it necessary for conspirators to consult free from any danger of disturbance. But Katherine, he told himself, was assuredly the victim of coincidence. He couldn't picture her entangled in any of Paredes's purposes. Her dislike of the man was complete and open. But he saw that Rawlins out of the mass of apparently inexplicable clues had extracted this material one and would follow it desperately no matter who was hurt; and Robinson was behind him. That accounted for their frequent excursions upstairs during the afternoon, for Rawlins's ascent as soon as they had returned from the grave. They had evidently found something to sharpen their suspicions, and Graham probably knew what it was.

Robinson took out his watch.

"We can't put this off too late," he mused.

The detective at his heels, he walked to the library. Bobby started after them. Graham caught him and they crossed the dining room together.

"What do they mean to do?" Bobby asked.

"I have been afraid of it since this afternoon," Graham answered. "I haven't cared to talk about it. I had hoped to hold them off. They intend to search Katherine's room. I think they believe she has something important hidden there. I've been wondering if they've got track of Howells's report which we told Jenkins to hide."

"Why," Bobby asked, "should that involve Katherine?"

"Howells may have written something damaging to her. He knew she was devoted to your interests."

Robinson called to them from the library.

"Won't you please come in, Mr. Blackburn?"

Bobby and Graham continued to the library. They found Rawlins gazing through the door of the private staircase.

"We could go up this way," he was saying, "and across the old room so that she needn't suspect."

"What is he talking about?" Bobby asked Robinson angrily.

"You wanted to help," Robinson answered, "so Rawlins and I are going to give you a chance. We are about to search your cousin's room. We hope to find there an explanation of a part of the mystery—the motive, at least, for Howells's death; perhaps your own exoneration. You'd do anything to have that, wouldn't you? You've said so."

"At her expense!" Bobby cried. "You've no right to go to her room. She's incapable of a share in such crimes. Do you seriously think she could plan an escape from the grave and bring back to life a man three days dead?"

"Give me a human being that caused death," Robinson answered, "and I'll tackle the ghosts later. You're wrong if you think I'm going to quit cold because your grandfather looks like a dead thing that moves about and talks. I shan't give up to that madness until I've done everything in my power. I would be a criminal myself if I failed to do as Rawlins wishes. If your cousin's skirts are clear no harm will be done. I'm acting on the assumption that your confession was honest. I want you to get Miss Perrine out of her room. I want you to see that she stays downstairs while we search."

"You've already searched her room."

"Not since Rawlins—"

Robinson caught himself.

"Never mind that. It is necessary it should be searched to-night. Even you'll acknowledge it's significant that all day when she has been downstairs her door has been locked."

"It's only significant," Bobby flashed, "in view of your treatment of her yesterday."

Robinson grinned.

"That will hardly go down. Rawlins has hesitated to break in. I've instructed him to do it now, if necessary. For the last time, will you bring your cousin down? Will ............