"And if it does come to an arrest, Bobby, you're not to say a word to anybody without my advice. You ought
to get to bed now. You must have rest, and Katherine, too. Don't listen to-night, Katherine, for messages from
across the court."
"I'll try," she said, "but, Hartley, I wish that man wasn't there. I wish no one was in that room."
She took Bobby's hand.
"Good-night, Bobby, and don't give up hope. We'll do something. Somehow we'll pull you through."
Bobby waited, hoping that Graham would offer to share his room with him. For, as he had said earlier, the
prospect of going to sleep, of losing control of his thoughts and actions, appalled him. Yet such an offer, he
realized, must impress Graham as delicate, as an indication that he really doubted Bobby's innocence, as a sort
of spying. He wasn't surprised, therefore, when Graham only said:
"I'll be in the next room, Bobby. If you're restless or need me you've only to knock on the wall."
Bobby didn't leave the library with them. The warmth with which Katherine had just filled him faded as he
watched her go out side by side with Graham. Her hand was on Graham's arm. There was, he fancied, in her
eyes an emotion deeper than gratitude or friendship. He sighed as the door closed behind them. He was
himself largely to blame for that situation. His very revolt against its imminence had hastened its shaping.
He walked anxiously to the table. He had remembered the medicine Doctor Groom had prepared for him that
afternoon to make him sleep. He hadn't taken it then. If it remained where he had left it, which was likely
enough in the disordered state of the household, he would drink it now. Reinforced by his complete weariness,
it ought to send him into a sleep profound enough to drown any possible abnormal impulses of
unconsciousness.
The glass was there. He drained it, and stood for a time looking at the pinkish sediment in the bottom. That
was all right for to-night, but afterward--he couldn't shrink perpetually from sleep. He shrugged his shoulders,
remembering it would make little difference what he did in his sleep when they had him behind prison bars.
Perhaps this would be his last night of freedom.
He found Paredes still in the hall. The Panamanian, with languid gestures, continued to play his solitaire. His
box of cigarettes was much reduced.
"I thought you were tired, Carlos."
Paredes glanced up. His eyes were neither weary nor alert. As usual his expression disclosed nothing of his
thoughts, yet he must have read in Bobby's tone a reproach at this indifference.
"The game intrigues me," he murmured, "and you know," he added dreamily. "I sometimes think better while
I amuse myself."
Bobby nodded good-night and went on up to his room. Even while he undressed the effects of the doctor's
narcotic were perceptible. His eyes had grown heavy, his brain a trifle numb.
Almost apathetically he assured himself that he couldn't accomplish these mad actions in his sleep.
"Yet last night--" he murmured. "That finishes me in the eyes of the law. The doctor will testify to aphasia.