been to take his hands
from the wheel, to force Paredes to retract his sly insinuation.

"That's the rottenest thing I've ever known you to do, Carlos.
Take it back."

Paredes shrugged his shoulders.

"There is nothing to take back. I accuse no one. I merely call attention
to a chain of exceptional coincidences."

"You make me wonder," Bobby said, "if Hartley isn't justified in his
dislike of you. You'll kill such a ridiculous suspicion."

"Or?" Paredes drawled. "Very well. It seems my fate recently to offend
those I like best. I merely thought that any theory leading away from you
would be welcome."

"Any theory," Bobby answered, "involving Katherine is unthinkable."

Paredes smiled.

"I didn't understand exactly how you felt. I rather took it for granted
that Graham--Never mind. I take it back."

"Then drop it," Bobby answered sullenly, sorry that there was nothing
else he could say.

They continued in silence through the deserted forest whose aggressive
loneliness made words seem trivial. Bobby was asking himself again where
he had stood last night when he had glimpsed for a moment the straining
trees and the figure in a mask which he had called his conscience. If he
could only prove that figure substantial! Then Graham would have some
ground for his suspicion of Paredes and the dancer Maria. He glanced at
Paredes. Could there have been a conspiracy against him in the New York
cafe? Did Paredes, in fact, have some devious purpose in remaining at
the Cedars?

The automobile took a sharp curve in the road. Bobby started, gazing
ahead with an interest nearly hypnotic. The headlights had caught in
their glare the deserted farmhouse in which he had awakened just before
Howells had told him of his grandfather's death and practically placed
him under arrest. In the white light the frame of the house from which
the paint had flaked, appeared ghastly, unreal, like a structure seen in
a nightmare from which one recoils with morbid horror. The light left the
building. As the car tore past, Bobby could barely make out the black
mass in the midst of the thicket.

Paredes had observed it, too.

"I daresay," he remarked casually, "the Cedars will become as deserted as
that. It is just that it should, for the entire neighbourhood impresses
one as unfriendly to life, as striving through death to drive life out."

"Have you ever seen that house before?" Bobby asked quickly.

"I have never seen it before. I do not ca