He heard running steps upstairs. Katherine leaned over the banister. Her
quiet voice reassured him. "Is the doctor with you?"

He nodded. Paredes yawned and lighted a cigarette. He settled himself in
an easy chair. Bobby and Doctor Groom hurried up. Katherine led them down
the old corridor. Two chairs had been placed in the broken doorway.
Graham sat there. He arose and greeted the doctor.

"Nothing has happened since I left?" Bobby asked.

Graham shook his head.

"Katherine and I have watched every minute."

Doctor Groom walked to the bed and for a long time looked down at
Howells. Once he put out his hand, quickly withdrawing it.

"It's simply a repetition," he said at last, and his voice was softer
than its custom. "It may be a warning, for all we know, that no one may
sleep in this room without attracting death. Yet why should that be? I
miss this poor fellow's materialistic viewpoint. There's nothing I can do
for him, nothing I can say, except that death must have been
instantaneous. The police must seek again for a man to place in the
electric chair."

Graham touched his arm with an odd reluctance.

"Sitting here for so long I've been thinking. I have always been
materialistic, too. Tell me seriously, doctor, do you believe there is
any psychic force capable of killing two men in this incisive fashion?"

"No one," the doctor answered, "can say what psychic force is capable of
doing. Some scientists have started to explore, but it is still uncharted
country. From certain places--I daresay you've noticed it--one gets an
impression of peace and content; from others a depression, a sense of
suffering. I think we have all experienced psychic force to that extent.
Remember that this room has a history of intense and rebellious
suffering. Some of it I have seen with my own eyes. Your father's fight
for life, Katherine, was horrible for those of us who knew he had no
chance. As I watched beside him I used to wonder if such violent agony
could ever drift wholly into silence, and when we had to tell him finally
that the fight was lost, it was beyond bearing."

"If these men had been found dead without marks of violence," Graham
said, "I might consider such a possibility, irrational as it seems."

"Irrational," Doctor Groom answered, "must not be confused with
impossible. The marks of a physical violence, far from proving that the
attack was physical, strengthens the case of the supernatural. Certainly
you hav