"If you'll do that, I will get the truth for you--the whole truth, how the room was entered, everything. I swear it, Robinson. Only a few hours. Let me carry out my plan. Let me offer myself to the dangers of the old room as Howells and my grandfather did. Your case is no good unless you can explain the miracle to-night. Give us this chance. Then in the morning, if nothing happens and you still think I'm guilty, lock me up, but for God's sake, Robinson, leave her out of it." Graham walked to the window and flung it open. A violent gust of wind swept in, carrying a multitude of icy flakes. "The storm is worse," he said. "No one is likely to try to escape from this house to-night." Bobby stretched out his hand. "You can't expose her to that." Rawlins hadn't forgotten the sense of fellowship sprung from the pursuit of Paredes through the forest. "He's right, Mr. Robinson. You could lock up a dozen people. You might send them to the chair without uncovering the real mystery of the Cedars. Maybe he might find something, and he'd be as safe in that room as in any jail I know of. I mean one of us would be in the library and the other in the corridor outside the broken door. How could he reasonably get out? If there was an attempt to repeat the trick we'd be ready. As for the girl, it's simple enough to safeguard against her getting away before morning. As Mr. Graham says, no one's likely to run far in this storm, anyway." Robinson considered. "I don't want to be hard," he said finally, "and I don't want to miss any chance of cleaning up where poor Howells failed." He glanced at the extraordinary array of evidence. The good nature which, one felt, should always have been in his face, shone at last. "I don't believe you're guilty. As far as you're concerned it's likely enough a put-up job. I don't know about the girl. Go ahead, anyway, and tell us, if you can, how the locked room was entered. Explain the mystery of that old man who looks as if he were dead, but who moves around and talks with us." "The answer, if it's anywhere," Bobby said, "is in the old room." Robinson nodded. "Under the conditions it seems worth while. Go on then and clear your cousin and yourself if you can. You have until daylight to-morrow." Bobby's gratitude was sufficiently eloquent in his eyes, but he said nothing. He hurried from the room to find Katherine. As soon as he had stepped in the corridor he saw her figure against the wall. "Katherine!" he breathed. "I've heard everything," she said. He led her to the main hall where the greedy ears in her bedroom couldn't overhear them. "Then you suspected what they were about?" he asked her. "Uncle Silas," she answered, "seemed just as he had been when I went upstairs, so I wondered, and I remembered I had left my door unlocked." "Then you knew those things were there?" Her face was white. She trembled. Her words came jerkily: