"What was it? Where did you think it came from?" Bobby demanded. "It was like someone mourning for this—this poor devil."
Graham couldn't disguise his effort to elude the sombre spell of the room, to drive from his brain the illusion of that unearthly moaning.
"It must have come from outside the house," he answered "There's no use giving way to fancies where there's a possible explanation. It must have come from outside—from some woman in great agony of mind."
Bobby recalled his perception of a woman moving with a curious absence of sound about the edges of the stagnant lake. He spoke of it to Graham.
"I couldn't be sure it was a woman, but there's no house within two miles. What would a woman be doing wandering around the Cedars?"
"At any rate, there are three women in the house," Graham said, "Katherine and the two servants, Ella and Jane. The maids are badly frightened. It may have come from the servants' quarters. It must have been one of them."
But Bobby saw that Graham didn't believe either of the maids had released that poignant suffering.
"It didn't sound like a living voice," he said simply.
"Then how are we to take it?" Graham persisted angrily. "I shall question
Katherine and the two maids."
He took up the candle with a stubborn effort to recapture his old forcefulness, but as they left the room the shadows thronged thickly after them in ominous pursuit; and it wasn't necessary to question Katherine. She stood in the corridor, her lips parted, her face white and shocked.