er," he said at last, "practically forced me away
from you last night. It's obvious, Bobby, you must have been drugged."

Bobby shook his head.

"I thought of that right away, but it won't do. If I had been drugged I
wouldn't have moved around, and I did come out somehow, I managed to
get to the empty house to sleep. It's more as if my mind had simply
closed, as if it had gone on working its own ends without my knowing
anything about it. And that's dreadful, because the detective has
practically accused me of murdering my grandfather. How was it done?
You see I know nothing. Tell me how--how he was killed. I can't believe
I--I'm such a beast. Tell me. If I was in the house, some detail might
start my memory."

So Katherine told her story while Bobby listened, shrinking from some
disclosure that would convict him. As she went on, however, his sense of
bewilderment increased, and when she had finished he burst out:

"But where is the proof of murder? Where is there even a suggestion? You
say the doors were locked and he doesn't show a mark."

"That's what we can't understand," Graham said. "There's no evidence we
know anything about that your grandfather's heart didn't simply give out,
but the detective is absolutely certain, and--there's no use mincing
matters, Bobby--he believes he has the proof to convict you. He won't
tell me what. He simply smiles and refuses to talk."

"The motive?" Bobby asked.

Graham looked at him curiously. Katherine turned away.

"Of course," Bobby cried with a sharpened discomfort. "I'd forgotten. The
money--the new will he had planned to make. The money's mine now, but if
he had lived until this morning it never would have been. I see."

"It is a powerful motive," Graham said, "for any one who doesn't
know you."

"But," Bobby answered, "Howells has got to prove first that my
grandfather was murdered. The autopsy?"

"Coroner's out of the county," Graham replied, "and Howells won't have an
assistant. Dr. Groom's waiting in the house. We're expecting the coroner
almost any time."

Bobby spoke rapidly.

"If he calls it murder, Hartley, there's one thing we've got to find out:
what my grandfather was afraid of. Tell me again, Katherine, everything
he said about me. I can't believe he could have been afraid of me."

"He called you," Katherine answered, "a waster. He said: 'God knows what
he'll do next.' He said he'd ordered you out last night and he hadn't
had a word from you, but