"I am a prisoner."
The doctor gaped.
"You mean you—"
"Young Blackburn caught him," Robinson explained. "He was in a position to finish him just as he did Howells."
"Except that I had no hatpin," Paredes yawned.
The doctor's uneasy glance sought the opening in the wall.
"I thought you had examined all these walls," he grumbled. "How did you miss this?"
Robinson ran his fingers through his hair.
"That's what I've been asking myself," he said. "I went over that panelling a dozen times myself."
Bobby and Katherine went closer. Bobby had been from the first puzzled by Paredes's easy manner. He had a quick hope. He saw the man watch with an amused tolerance while the district attorney bent over, examining the face of the panel.