"I can tell what spoiled the séance," I told him after a moment. "Gird, sitting opposite, saw that it was you, not Susan, who had changed. You had to kill him to keep him from telling, there and then." "Yes," agreed Zoberg. "After that, you were arrested, and, later, threatened. I was in an awkward position. Susan must believe herself, not you, guilty. That is why I have championed you throughout. I went then to look for you." "And attacked me," I added. "The beast-self was ascendant. I cannot always control it completely." He sighed. "When Susan disappeared, I went to look for her on the second evening. When I came into this wood, the change took place, half automatically. Associations, I suppose. Constable, your brother happened upon me in an evil hour." "Yep," said O'Bryant gruffly. "And that is the end," Zoberg said. "The end of the story and, I suppose, the end of me." "You bet it is," the constable assured him. "You came with the judge to finish your rotten work. But we're finishing it for you." "One moment," interjected Judge Pursuivant, and his fire-lit face betrayed a perplexed frown. "The story fails to explain one important thing." "Does it so?" prompted Zoberg, inclining toward him with a show of negligent grace. "If you were able to free yourself and kill Mr. Gird----" "By heaven, that's right!" I broke in. "You were chained, Zoberg, to Susan and to your chair. I'd go bail for the strength and tightness of those handcuffs." He grinned at each of us in turn and held out his hands with their manacles. "Is it not obvious?" he inquired. We looked at him, a trifle blankly I suppose, for he chuckled once again. "Another employment of the ectoplasm, that useful substance of change," he said gently. "At will my arms and legs assume thickness, and hold the rings of the confining irons wide. Then, when I wish, they grow slender again, and----" He gave his hands a sudden flirt, and the bracelets fell from them on the instant. He pivoted and ran like a deer. "Shoot!" cried the judge, and O'Bryant whipped the big gun from his holster. Zoberg was almost within a vine-laced clump of bushes when O'Bryant fired. I heard a shrill scream, and saw Zoberg falter and drop to his hands and knees. We were all starting forward. I paused a moment to put Susan behind me, and in that moment O'Bryant and Pursuivant sprang ahead and came up on either side of Zoberg. He was still alive, for he writhed up to a kneeling position and made a frantic clutch at the judge's coat. O'Bryant, so close that he barely raised his hand and arm, fired a second time. Zoberg spun around somehow on his knees, stiffened and screamed. Perhaps I should say that he howled. In his voice was the inarticulate agony of a beast wounded to death. Then he collapsed. Both men stooped above him, cautious but thorough in their examination. Finally Judge Pursuivant straightened up and faced toward us.