"What are you going to do?" Paredes wanted to know.
"Find out who is in that house."
For Bobby had experienced a quick hope. If there was a man or a woman secreted in the building the truth as
to his own remarkable presence there last night might not be so far to seek after all. There was, moreover,
something lawless about this light escaping from the place at such an hour. A little while ago, when Paredes
and he had driven past, the house had been black. They had remarked its lonely, abandoned appearance. It had
led Paredes to speak of the neighbourhood as the domain of death. Yet the strange, pallid quality of the light
itself made him pause by the broken fence. It did come from the lower part of the front of the house, yet, so
faint was it, it failed to outline the aperture through which it escaped. The doctor and Paredes joined him.
"When I was here," he said, "all the shutters were closed. This glow is too white, too diffused. We must see."
As he started forward Paredes grasped his arm.
"There are too many of us. We would make a noise. Suppose I creep up and investigate."
"There is one way in--at the back," Bobby told the doctor. "Let us go there. We'll have whoever's inside
trapped. Meantime, Carlos, if he wishes, will steal up to the front; he'll find out where the light comes from.
He'll look in if he can."
"That's the best plan," Paredes agreed.
But they had scarcely turned the corner of the house, beyond reach of the glow, when Paredes rejoined them.
His feet were no longer careful in the underbrush. He came up running. For the first time in their acquaintance
Bobby detected a lessening of the man's suave, unemotional habit.
"The light!" the Panamanian gasped. "It's gone! Before I could get close it faded out."
Bobby called to the doctor and ran toward the door at the rear. It was unhinged and half open as it had been
when he had awakened to his painful and inexplicable predicament. He went through, fumbling in his pocket
for matches. The damp chill of the hall nauseated him as it had done before, seemed to place about his throat
an intangible band that made breathing difficult. Before he could get his match safe out the doctor had struck a
wax vesta. Its strong flame played across the dingy, streaked walls.
"There's a flashlight, Carlos," Bobby said, "in the door flap of the automobile."
Paredes started across the yard with a haste, it seemed to Bobby, almost eager.
Striking matches as they went, the doctor and Bobby hurried to the front of the house. The rooms appeared
undisturbed in their decay. The shutters were closed. The front door was barred. The broken walls from which
the plaster hung in shreds leered at them.
Suddenly Bobby turned, grasping the doctor's arm.
"Did you hear anything?"
The doctor shook his head