instant death."

Paredes whispered to him. The doctor nodded reluctantly.

"What do you mean?" Blackburn cried. "You trying to tell me I can't stay
with you?"

He pointed to Paredes.

"That's what he said--that I might have to go back, but I never heard of
such a thing. I'm all right. My neck doesn't hurt. I'm alive. I tell you
I'm alive. I'll teach you--"

Rawlins returned from the telephone.

"His story's straight," he said in his crisp manner. "I've been talking
to Waters himself. Says Mr. Blackburn turned up about three-thirty,
looking queer and acting queer. Wouldn't shake hands, just as he says. He
went to the spare room and slept practically all the time until this
afternoon. No food. Waters couldn't rouse him. Mr. Blackburn wouldn't
answer at all or else seemed half asleep. He'd made up his mind to call
in a doctor this afternoon. Then Mr. Blackburn seemed all right again,
and started home."

Robinson gazed at the fire.

"What's to be done now, sir?" Rawlins asked.

"Find the answer if we can," Robinson said.

Paredes spoke as softly as he had done the other night while reciting his
sensitive reaction to the Cedars's gloomy atmosphere. Only now his voice
wasn't groping.

"Call me a dreamer if you want, Mr. District Attorney, but I have given
you the only answer. This man's soul has dwelt in two places."

Robinson grinned.

"I'm going slow on calling anybody names, but I haven't forgotten that
there's been another crime in this house. Howells was killed in that
room, too. I would like to believe he could return as Mr. Blackburn has."

Blackburn looked up.

"What's that? Who's Howells?"

And as Robinson told him of the second crime he sank back in his chair
again, whimpering from time to time. His fear was harder to watch.

"Might I suggest," Graham said, "that Howells isn't out of the case yet?
It would be worth looking into."

"By all means," Robinson agreed.

Rawlins coughed apologetically.

"I asked them about that at the office. Howells was taken to his home in
Boston to-day. The funeral's to be to-morrow."

"Then," Robinson said, "we're confined for the present to this end of the
case. The facts I have tell me that two murders have been committed in
this house. It is still my first duty to convict the guilty man."

Graham indicated the huddled, frightened figure in the chair.

"You are going against the evidence of your own eyes."

"I shall do what I can," Robinson said sternly