HOWELLS DELIVERS HIMSELF TO THE ABANDONED ROOM
For a long time no one spoke. The body of Silas Blackburn had been alone
in a locked room, yet before their eyes it lay, turned on its side, as if
to inform them of the fashion of this murder. The tiny hole at the base
of the brain, the blood-stain on the pillow, which the head had
concealed, offered their mute and ghastly testimony.
Doctor Groom was the first to relax. He raised his great, hairy hand to
the bed-post and grasped it. His rumbling voice lacked its usual
authority. It vibrated with a childish wonder:
"I'm reminded that it isn't the first time there's been blood from a
man's head on that pillow."
Katherine nodded.
"What do you mean?" the detective snarled. "There's only one answer to
this. There must have been a mechanical post-mortem reaction."
For a moment Doctor Groom's laugh filled the old room. It ceased
abruptly. He shook his head.
"Don't be a fool, Mr. Policeman. At the most conservative estimate this
man has been dead more than thirteen hours. Even a few instants after
death the human body is incapable of any such reaction."
"What then?" the detective asked. "Some one of us, or one of the
servants, must have overcome the locks again and deliberately disturbed
the body. That must be so, but I don't get the motive."
"It isn't so," Doctor Groom answered bluntly.
Already the detective had to a large extent controlled his bewilderment.
"I'd like your theory then," he said dryly. "You and Mr. Paredes have
both been gossiping about the supernatural. When you first came you
hinted dark things. You said he'd probably died what the world would call
a natural death."
"I meant," the doctor answered, "only that Mr. Blackburn's heart might
have failed under the impulse of a sudden fright in this room. I also
said, you remember, that the room was nasty and unhealthy. Plenty of
people have remarked it before me."
Graham touched the detective's arm.
"A little while ago you admitted yourself that the room was
uncomfortable."
Doctor Groom smiled. The detective faced him with a fierce belligerency.
"You'll agree he was murdered."
"Certainly, if you wish to call it that. But I ask for the sharp
instrument that caused death. I want to know how, while Blackburn lay on
his back, it was inserted through the bed, the springs, the mattress,
and the pillow."
"What are you driving at?"
Doctor Groom pointed to the dead man.
"I merely repeat that it isn't the first time that pillow's been stained
from unusual wounds in the head. Being, as you call it, a trifle
superstitious, I merely ask if the coincidence is significant."
Katherine cried out. Bobby, in spite of his knowledge that sooner or
later he would be arrested for his grandfather's murder, stepped
forward, nodding.
"I know what you mean, doctor."
"Anybody," the doctor said, "who's ever heard of this house knows what I
mean. We needn't talk of that."
The detective, however, was insistent. Paredes in his unemotional way
expressed an equal curiosity. Bobby and Katherine had been frightened as
children by the stories clustering about the old wing. They nodded from
time to time while the doctor held them in the desolate room with the
dead man, speaking of the other deaths it had sheltered.
Silas Blackburn's great grandfather, he told the detective, had been
carried to that bed from a Revolutionary skirmish with a bullet at the
base of his brain. For many hours he had raved deliriously, fighting
unsuccessfully against the final silence.
"It has been a legend in the family, as these young people will tell you,
that Blackburns die hard, and there are those who believe that people who
die hard leave something behind them--something that clings to the
physical surroundings of their suffering. If it was only that one case!
But it goes on and on. Silas Blackburn's father, for instance, killed
himself here. He had lost his money in silly speculations. He stood where
you stand, detective, and blew his brains out. He fell over and lay where
his son lies, his head on that pillow. Silas Blackburn was a money
grubber. He started with nothing but this property, and he made a
fortune, but even he had enough imagination to lock this room up after
one more death of that kind. It was this girl's father. You were too
young, Katherine, to remember it, but I took care of him. I saw it. He
was carried here after he had been struck at the back of the head in a
polo match. He died, too, fighting hard. God! How the man suffered. He
loosened his bandages toward the end. When I got here the pillow was
redder than it is to-day. It strikes me as curious that the first time
the room has been slept in since then it should harbour a death behind
locked doors--from a wound in the head."
Paredes's fingers were restless, as if he missed his customary cigarette.
The detective strolled to the window.
"Very interesting," he said. "Extremely interesting for old women and
young children. You may classify yourself, doctor."
"Thanks," the doctor rumbled. "I'll wait until you've told me how these
doors were entered, how that wound was made, how this body turned on its
side in an empty room."
The detective glanced at Bobby. His voice lacked confidence.
"I'll do my best. I'll even try to tell you why the murderer came back
this afternoon to disturb his victim."
Bobby went, curiously convinced that the doctor had had the better of
the argument.
For a moment Katherine, Graham, Paredes, and he were alone in the
main hall.
"God knows what it was," Graham said, "but it may mean something to you,
Bobby. Tell us carefully, Katherine, about the sounds that came to you
across the court."
"It was just what I heard last night when he died," she answered. "It was
like something falling softly, then a long-drawn sigh. I tried to pay no
attention. I fought it. I didn't call at first. But I couldn't keep
quiet. I knew we had to go to that room. It never occurred to me that the
detective or the coroner might be there moving around."
"You were alone up here?" Graham said.
"I think so."
"No," Bobby said. "I was in my room."
"What were you doing?" Graham asked.
"I was asleep. Katherine's call woke me up."
"Asleep!" Paredes echoed. "And she didn't call at once--"
He broke off. Bobby grasped his arm.
"What are you trying to do?"
"I'm sorry," Paredes said. "Now, really, you mustn't think of that. I
shouldn't have spoken. I'm more inclined to agree with the doctor's
theory, impossible as it seems."
"Yesterday," Katherine said, "I would have thought it impossible. After
last night and just now I'm not so sure. I--I wish the doctor were right.
It would clear you, Bobby."
He smiled.
"Do you think any jury would listen to such a theory?"
Katherine put her finger to her lips. Howells and the doctor came
from the corridor of the old wing. At the head of the stairs the
detective turned.
"You will find it very warm and comfortable by the fire in the lower
hall, Mr. Blackburn."
He waited until Katherine had slipped to her room until Graham, Paredes,
the doctor, and Bobby were on the stairs. Then he walked slowly into the
new corridor.
Bobby knew what he was after. The detective had made no effort to
disguise his intention. He wanted Bobby out of the way while he searched
his room again, this time for a sharp, slender instrument capable of
penetrating between the bones at the base of a man's brain.
Paredes lighted a cigarette and warmed his back at the fire. The doctor
settled himself in his chair. He paid no attention to the others. He
wouldn't answer Paredes's slow remarks.
"Interesting, doctor! I am a little psychic. Always in this house I have
responded to strange, unfriendly influences. Always, as now, the approach
of night depresses me."
Bobby couldn't sit still. He nodded at Graham, arose, got his coat and
hat, and stepped into the court. The dusk was already thick there.
Dampness and melancholy seemed to exude from the walls of the old house.
He paused and gazed at one of the foot-prints in the soft earth by the
fountain. Shreds of plaster adhered to the edges, testimony that the
detective had made his cast from this print. He tried to realize that
that mute, familiar impression had the power to send him to his
execution. Graham, who had come silently from the house, startled him.
"What are you looking at?"
"No use, Hartley. I was on the library lounge. I heard every word
Howells said."
"Perhaps it's just as well," Graham said. "You know what you face. But I
hate to see you suffer. We've got to find a way around that evidence."
Bobby pointed to the windows of the room of death.
"There's no way around except the doctor's theory."
He laughed shortly.
"Much as I've feared that room, I'm afraid the psychic explanation won't
hold water. Paredes put his finger on it. I would have had time to get
back to my room before Katherine called--"
"Stop, Bobby!"
"Hartley! I'm afraid to go to sleep. It's dreadful not to know whether
you are active in your sleep, whether you are evil and ingenious to the
point of the miraculous in your sleep. I'm so tired, Hartley."
"Why should you have gone to that room this afternoon?" Graham asked.
"You must get this idea out of your head. You must have sleep, and,
perhaps, when you're thoroughly rested, you will remember."
"I'm not so sure," Bobby said, "that I want to remember."
He pointed to the footprint.
"There's no question. I was here last night."
"Unless," Graham said, "your handkerchief and your shoes were stolen."
"Nonsense!" Bobby cried. "The only motive would be to commit a murder in
order to kill me by sending me to the chair. And who would know his way
around that dark house like me? Who would have found out so easily that
my grandfather had changed his room?"
"It's logical," Graham admitted slowly, "but we can't give in. By the
way, has Paredes ever borrowed any large sums?"
Bobby hesitated. After all, Paredes and he had been good friends.
"A little here and there," he answered reluctantly.
"Has he ever paid you back?"
"I don't recall," Bobby answered, flushing. "You know I've never been
exactly calculating about money. Whenever he wanted it I was always glad
to help Carlos out. Why do you ask?"
"If any one," Graham answered, "looked on you as a certain source of
money, there would be a motive in conserving that source, in increasing
it. Probably lots of people knew Mr. Blackburn was out of patience with
you; would make a new will to-day."
"Do you think," Bobby asked, "that Carlos is clever enough to have got
through those doors? And what about this afternoon--that ghastly
disturbing of the body?"
He smiled wanly.
"It looks like me or the ghosts of my ancestors."
"If Paredes," Graham insisted, "tries to borrow any money from you now,
tell me about it. Another thing, Bobby. We can't afford to keep your
experiences of last night a secret any longer."
He stepped to the door and asked Doctor Groom to come out.
"He won't be likely to pass your confidences on to Howells," he said.
"Those men are natural antagonists."
After a moment the doctor appeared, a slouch hat drawn low over his
shaggy forehead.
"What you want?" he grumbled. "This court's a first-class place to catch
cold. Dampest hole in the neighbourhood. Often wondered why."
"I want to ask you," Graham began, "something about the effects of such
drugs as could be given in wine. Tell him, will you, Bobby, what happened
last night?"
Bobby vanquished the discomfort with which the gruff, opinionated
physician had always filled him. He recited the story of last night's
dinner, of his experience in the cafe, of his few blurred impressions of
the swaying vehicle and the woods.
"Hartley thinks something may have been put in my wine."
"What for?" the doctor asked. "What had these people to gain by drugging
you? Suppose for some far-fetched reason they wanted to have Silas
Blackburn put out of the way. They couldn't make you do it by drugging
you. At any rate, they couldn't have had a hand in this afternoon. Mind,
I'm not saying you had a thing to do with it yourself, but I don't
believe you were drugged. Any drug likely to be used in wine would
probably have sent you into a deep sleep. And your symptoms on waking up
are scarcely sharp enough. Sorry, boy. Sounds more like aphasia. The path
you've been treading sometimes leads to that black country, and it's
there that hates sharpen unknown. I remember a case where a tramp
returned and killed a farmer who had refused him food. Retained no
recollection of the crime--hours dropped out of his life. They executed
him while he still tried to remember."
"I read something about the case," Bobby muttered.
"Been better if you hadn't," the doctor grumbled. "Suggestions work in a
man's brain without his knowing it."
He thought for a moment, his heavy, black brows coming closer together.
He glanced at the windows of the old room. His sunken, infused eyes
nearly closed.
"I know how you feel, and that's a little punishment maybe you deserve.
I'll say this for your comfort. You probably followed the plan that had
been impressed on your brain by Mr. Graham. You came here, no doubt, and
stood around. With an automatic appreciation of your condition you may
have taken that old precaution of convivial men returning home, and
removed your shoes. Then your automatic judgment may have warned you that
you weren't fit to go in at all, and you probably wandered off to the
empty house."
"Then," Bobby asked, "you don't think I did it?"
"God knows who did it. God knows what did it. The longer I live the surer
I become that we scientists can't probe everything. Whenever I go near
Silas Blackburn's body I receive a very powerful impression that his
death in that room from such a wound goes deeper than ordinary murder,
deeper than a case of recurrent aphasia."
His eyes widened. He turned with Graham and Bobby at the sound of an
automobile coming through the woods.
"Probably the coroner at last," he said.
The automobile, a small runabout, drew up at the entrance to the court. A
little wizened man, with yellowish skin stretched across high cheek
bones, stepped out and walked up the path.
"Well!" he said shrilly. "What you doing, Doctor Groom?"
"Waiting to witness another reason why coroners should be abolished," the
doctor rumbled. "This is the dead man's grandson, Coroner; and Mr.
Graham, a friend of the family's."
Bobby accepted the coroner's hand with distaste.
"Howells," the coroner said in his squeaky voice, "seems to think it's a
queer case. Inconvenient, I call it. Wish people wouldn't die queerly
whenever I go on a little holiday. I had got five ducks, gentlemen, when
they came to me with that damned telegram. Bad business mine, 'cause
people will die when you least expect them to. Let's go see what Howells
has got on his mind. Bright sleuth, Howells! Ought to be in New York."
He started up the path, side by side with Doctor Groom.
"Are you coming?" Graham asked Bobby. Bobby shook his head. "I don't want
to. I'd rather stay outside. You'd better be there, Hartley."
Graham followed the others while Bobby wandered from the court and
started down a path that entered the woods from the rear of the house.
Immediately the forest closed greedily about him. Here and there, where
the trees were particularly stunted, branches cut against a pallid,
greenish glow in the west--the last light.
Bobby wanted, if he could, to find that portion of the woods where he had
stood last night, fancying the trees straining in the wind like puny men,
visualizing a dim figure in a black mask which he had called his
conscience.
The forest was all of a pattern--ugly, unfriendly, melancholy. He went
on, however, hoping to glimpse that particular picture he remembered. He
left the path, walking at haphazard among the undergrowth. Ahead he saw a
placid, flat, and faintly luminous stretch. He pushed through the bushes
and paused on the shore of a lake, small and stagnant. Dead, stripped
trunks of trees protruded from the water. At the end a bird arose with a
sudden flapping of wings; it cried angrily as it soared above the trees
and disappeared to the south.
The morbid loneliness of the place touched Bobby's spirit with chill
hands. As a child he had never cared to play about the stagnant lake,
nor, he recalled, had the boys of the village fished or bathed there.
Certainly he hadn't glimpsed it last night. He was about to walk away
when a movement on the farther bank held him, made him gaze with eager
eyes across the sleepy water.
He thought there was something black in the black shadows of the
trees--a thing that stirred through the heavy dusk without sound. He
received, moreover, an impression of anger and haste as distinct as the
bird had projected. But he could see nothing clearly in this bad light.
He couldn't be sure that there was any one over there.
He started around the end of the lake, and for a moment he thought that
the shape of a woman, clothed in black, detached itself from the
shadow. The image dissolved. He wondered if it had been more
substantial than fancy.
"Who is that?" he called.
The woods muffled his voice. There was no answer. Nor was there, he
noticed, any crackling of twigs or rustling of dead leaves. If there
had been a woman there she had fled noiselessly, yet, as he went on
around the lake, his own progress was distinctly audible through the
decay of autumn.
It was too dark on the other side to detect any traces of a recent human
presence in the thicket. He couldn't quiet, however, the feeling that he
had had a glimpse of a woman clothed in black who had studied him
secretly across the stagnant stretch of the lake.
On the other hand, there was no logic in a woman's presence here at such
an hour, no logic in a stranger's running away from him. While he
pondered the night invaded the forest completely, making it impossible
for him to search farther. It had grown so dark, indeed, that he found
his way out with difficulty. The branches caught at his clothing. The
underbrush tangled itself about his feet. It was as if the thicket were
trying to hold him away from the house.
As he entered the court he noticed a discoloured glow diffusing itself
through the curtains of the room of death.
He opened the front door. Paredes and Graham alone sat by the fire.
"Then they're not through yet," Bobby said.
Graham arose. He commenced to pace the length of the hall.
"They've had Katherine in that room. One would think she'd been through
enough. Now they've sent for the servants."
Paredes laughed lightly.
"After this," he said, "I'm afraid, Bobby, you'll need the powers of the
police to keep servants in your house."
Muttering, frightened voices came from the dining-room. Jenkins entered,
and, shaking his head, went up the stairs. The two women who followed
him, were in tears. They paused, as if seeking an excuse to linger on
the lower floor, to postpone as long as possible their entrance of the
room of death.
Ella, a pretty girl, whose dark hair and eyes suggested a normal
vivacity, spoke to Bobby.
"It's outrageous, Mr. Robert. He found out all we knew this morning.
What's he after now? You might think we'd murdered Mr. Blackburn."
Jane was older. An ugly scar crossed her cheek. It was red and like an
open wound as she demanded that Bobby put a stop to these inquisitions.
"I can do nothing," he said. "Go on up and answer or they can make
trouble for you."
Muttering again to each other, they followed Jenkins, and in the lower
hall the three men waited.
Jenkins came down first. His face was white. It twitched.
"The body!" he mouthed. "It's moved! I saw it before."
He stretched out his hands to Bobby.
"That's why they wanted us, to find out where we were this afternoon, and
everything we've done, as if we might have gone there, and disturbed--"
Angry voices in the upper hall interrupted him. The two women ran down,
as white as Jenkins. At an impatient nod from Bobby the three servants
went on to the kitchen. Howells, the coroner, and Doctor Groom descended.
"What ails you, Doctor?" the coroner was squeaking. "I agree it's an
unpleasant room. Lots of old rooms are. I follow you when you say no
post-mortem contraction would have caused such an alteration in the
position of the body. There's no question about the rest of it. The man
was clearly murdered with a sharp tool of some sort, and the murderer was
in the room again this afternoon, and disturbed the corpse. Howells says
he knows who. It's up to him to find out how. He says he has plenty of
evidence and that the guilty person's in this house, so I'm not fretting
myself. I'm cross with you, Howells, for breaking up my holiday. One of
my assistants would have done as well."
Howells apparently paid no attention to the coroner. His narrow eyes
followed the doctor with a growing curiosity. His level smile seemed
to have drawn his lips into a line, inflexible, a little cruel. The
doctor grunted:
"Instead of abolishing coroners we ought to double their salaries."
The coroner made a long squeak as an indication of mirth.
"You think unfriendly spooks did it. I've always believed you were an old
fogy. Hanged if that doesn't sound modern."
The doctor ran his fingers through his thick, untidy hair.
"I merely ask for the implement that caused death. I only ask to know how
it was inserted through the bed while Blackburn lay on his back. And if
you've time you might tell me how the murderer entered the room last
night and to-day."
The coroner repeated his squeak. He glanced at the little group by the
fire.
"Out in the kitchen, upstairs, or right here under our noses is almost
certainly the person who could tell us. Interesting case, Howells!"
Howells, who still watched the doctor, answered dryly:
"Unusually interesting."
The coroner struggled into his coat.
"Permits are all available," he squeaked. "Have your undertakers out when
you like."
Graham answered him brusquely.
"Everything's arranged. I've only to telephone."
The coroner nodded at Doctor Groom. His voice pointed its humour with a
thinner tone.
"If I were you, Howells, I'd take this hairy old theorist up as a
suspicious character."
The doctor made a movement in his direction while Howells continued to
stare. The doctor checked himself. He went to the closet and got his
hat and coat.
"Want me to drop you, old sawbones?" the coroner asked.
Savagely the doctor shook his head.
"My buggy's in the stable."
The coroner's squeak was thinner, more irritating than ever.
"Then don't let the spooks get you, driving through the woods. Old folks
say there are a-plenty there."
Bobby arose. He couldn't face the prospect of the man's squeaking again.
"We find nothing to laugh at in this situation," he said. "You're
quite through?"
The coroner's eyes blazed.
"I'm through, if that's the way you feel. Goodnight." He added with a
sharp maliciousness: "I leave my sympathy for whoever Howells has his
eagle eye on."
Howells, when the doctor and the coroner had gone, excused himself with a
humility that mocked the others:
"With your permission I shall write in the library until dinner."
He bowed and left.
"He wants to work on his report," Graham suggested.
"An exceptional man!" Paredes murmured.
"Has he questioned you?" Graham asked.
"I'd scarcely call it that," Paredes replied. "We've both questioned, and
we've both been clams. I fancy he doesn't think much of me since I
believe in ghosts, yet the doctor seems to interest him."
"Where were you?" Graham asked, "when Miss Perrine's scream called us?"
Paredes stifled a yawn.
"Dozing here by the fire. I am very tired after last night."
"You don't look particularly tired."
"Custom, I'm ashamed to say, constructs a certain armour. To-morrow, with
a fresh mind, I hope to be able to dissect all I have seen and heard, all
that has happened here to-day."
"The thing that counts is what happened to me last night, Carlos," Bobby
said. "It's the only way you can help me."
As Paredes strolled to the foot of the stairs Bobby waited for a
defensive reply, for a sign, perhaps, that the Panamanian was offended
and proposed to depart. Paredes, however, went upstairs, yawning. He
called back:
"I must make myself a trifle more presentable for dinner."
Graham faced Bobby with the old question:
"What can he want hanging around here unless it's money?" And after a
moment: "He's clever--hard to sound. I have to leave you, Bobby. I must
telephone--the ugly formalities."
"It's good of you to take them off my mind," Bobby answered.
He remained in his chair, gazing drowsily at the fire, trying,
always trying to remember, yet finding no new light among the
shadows of his memory.
Just before dinner Katherine joined him. She wore a sombre gown that
made her face seem too white, that heightened the groping curiosity
of her eyes.
Without speaking she sat down beside him and stared, too, at the
smouldering fire. From her presence, from her tactful silence he drew
comfort--to an extent, rest.
"You make me ashamed," he whispered once. "I've been a beast, leaving you
here alone these weeks. You don't understand quite, why that was." She
wouldn't let him go on. She shook her head. They remained silently by the
fire until Graham and Paredes joined them.
When dinner was announced the detective came from the library, and,
uninvited, sat at the table with them. His report evidently still
filled his mind, for he spoke only when it was unavoidable and then
in monosyllables. Paredes alone ate with a show of enjoyment, alone
attempted to talk. Eventually even he fell silent before the lack
of response.
Afterward he arranged a small card table by the fire in the hall. He
found cards, and, with a package of cigarettes and a box of matches
convenient to his hand, commenced to play solitaire. The detective, Bobby
gathered, had brought his report up to date, for he lounged near by,
watching the Panamanian's slender fingers as they handled the cards
deftly. Bobby, Graham, and Katherine were glad to withdraw beyond the
range of those narrow, searching eyes. They entered the library and
closed the door.
Graham, expectant of a report from his man in New York as to the
movements of Maria and the identity of the stranger, was restless.
"If we could only get one fact," he said, "one reasonable clue that
didn't involve Bobby! I've never felt so at sea. I wonder if, in spite of
Howells's evidence, we're not all a little afraid since this afternoon,
of something such as Katherine felt last night--something we can't
define. Howells alone is satisfied. We must believe in the hand of
another man. Doctor Groom talks about indefinable hands."
"Uncle Silas was so afraid last night!" Katherine whispered.
"That," Bobby cried, "is the fact we must have."
He paused.
"What's that?" he asked sharply.
They sat for some time, listening to the sound of wheels on the gravel,
to the banging of the front door, and, later, to the pacing of men in the
room of death overhead. They tried again to thread the mazes of this
problem whose only conceivable exit led to Bobby's guilt. The movements
upstairs persisted. At last they became measured and dragging, like the
footsteps of men who carried some heavy burden.
They looked at each other then. Katherine hid her eyes.
"It's like a tomb here," Bobby said.
He arranged kindling in the fireplace and touched a match to it. It
hadn't occurred to him to ring for Jenkins. None of them wished to be
disturbed. Eventually it was the detective who intruded. He strolled in,
glanced at them curiously for a moment, then walked to the door of the
enclosed staircase. He grasped the knob.
"To-night," he announced, "I am trying a small experiment on the
chance of clearing up the last details of the mystery. Since it
depends on the courage of whoever murdered Mr. Blackburn I've small
hope of its success."
He indicated the ceiling. "You've heard, I daresay, what's been going on
up there. Mr. Blackburn's body has been removed to his own room. The room
where he was killed is empty. I mean to go up and enter and lock the
doors as he did last night. I shall leave the window up as it was last
night. I shall blow out the candle as he did."
He lowered his voice. He looked directly at Bobby. His words carried a
definite challenge.
"I shall lie on the bed and await the murderer under the precise
conditions Mr. Blackburn did."
"What do you expect to gain by that?" Graham asked.
"Probably nothing," Howells answered, "because, as I have said, success
depends upon the courage of a man who kills in the dark while his victim
sleeps. I simply give him the chance to attack me as he did Mr.
Blackburn. Of course he realizes it would be a good deal to his advantage
to have me out of the way. I ask him to come, therefore, as stealthily as
he did last night. I beg him to match his skill with mine. I want him to
play his miracle with the window or one of the locks. But I'll wager he
hasn't the nerve, although I don't see why he should hesitate. He's a
doomed man. I shall make my arrest in the morning. I shall publish all my
evidence."
Bobby wouldn't meet the narrow, menacing eyes, for he knew that Howells
challenged him to a duel of slyness with the whole truth at stake. The
detective's manner increased the hatred which had blazed in Bobby's mind
when he had stood in the bedroom over his grandfather's body. For a
moment he wished with all his heart that he might accept the challenge.
He did the best he could.
"I gather," he said, "that you haven't unearthed the motive for
disturbing the body. And have you found the sharp instrument that
caused death?"
The detective answered tolerantly:
"I have found a number of sharp instruments. None of them, however, seems
quite slender or round enough. I'll get all that out of my man when I
lock him up. I'll get it to-night if he dares come."
"Why," Graham said, "do you announce your plans so accurately to us?"
The detective's level smile widened.
"You shouldn't ask that, Mr. Graham. I've caused the servants to know my
plans. Mr. Paredes knows them. I wish every one in the house to know
them. That is in order that the murderer, who is in the house, may come
if he wishes."
Katherine arose abruptly.
"When you come down to it," she said, "you are accusing one of us. It's
brutal, unfair--absurd."
"I am a detective, Miss," Howells answered. "I have my own methods."
Bobby stared at the slight protuberance in the breast pocket of the
detective's coat. The cast of his footprint must be secreted there, and
almost certainly the handkerchief which had been found beneath the bed.
He shrank from his own thoughts.
If he had consciously committed this murder he could understand a desire
to get that evidence.
Katherine had gone closer to the detective.
"In any case," she urged him, "I wish you wouldn't try to spend the night
in that room. It isn't pleasant. After what the doctor has said,
it--well, it isn't safe."
Howells burst out laughing.
"Never fear, Miss. I'm content to give Doctor Groom's spirits as much
chance to take a fall out of me as anybody. I'll be going up now." He
bowed. "Good-night to you all, and pleasant dreams."
He opened the door and slipped into the darkness of the private
staircase. They heard him, after he had closed the door, climbing upward.
Katherine shivered.
"He has plenty of courage, Hartley! If nothing happens to him to-night
he'll finish Bobby in the morning. That mustn't happen. He mustn't go to
jail. You understand. Things would never be the same for him again."
Graham spread his hands.
"What am I to do? I might go to New York and get after these
people myself."
"Don't leave the Cedars," Bobby begged, "until he does arrest me.
There'll be plenty of time for the New York end then. I've no faith in
it. Watch Carlos if you want, but most important of all, find
out--somehow you've got to find out--what my grandfather was afraid of."
Graham nodded.
"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. According to him I am two
men--two men!"
He yawned, recalling snatches of books he had read and one or two
scientific reports of such cases. He climbed into bed and blew out his
candle. His drowsiness thickened. In his dulled mind one recollection
remained--the picture of Howells coldly challenging him with his level
smile to make a secret entrance of the old bedroom in a murderous effort
to escape the penalty of the earlier crime. And Howells had been right.
His death would give Bobby a chance. The destruction of the evidence, the
bringing into the case of a broader-minded man, a man without a carefully
constructed theory--all that would help Bobby, might save him. Howells,
moreover, had indicated that he had so far withheld his evidence. But
that was probably a bait.
In his drowsy way Bobby hated more powerfully than before this detective
who, with a serene malevolence, made him writhe in his net. Thought
ceased. He drifted into a trance-like sleep. He swung in the black pit
again, fighting out against crushing odds. The darkness thundered as
though informing him that graver forces than any he had ever imagined
had definitely grasped him. Then he understood. He was in a black cell,
and the thundering was the steady advance of men along an iron floor to
take him--
"Bobby! Bobby!"
He flung out his hands. He sat upright, opening his eyes. The blackness
assumed the familiar, yielding quality of the night. The thunder, the
footfalls, became a hurried knocking at his door.
"Bobby! You're there--" It was Katherine. Her tone made the night as
frightening as the blackness of the pit.
"What's the matter?"
"You're there. I didn't know. Get up. Hartley's putting some clothes on.
Hurry! The house is so dark--so strange."
"Tell me what's happened."
She didn't answer at first. He struck a match, lighted his candle, threw
on a dressing gown, and stepped to the door. Katherine shrank against
the wall, hiding her eyes from the light of his candle. He thought it
odd she should wear the dress in which she had appeared at dinner. But
it seemed indifferently fastened, and her hair was in disorder. Graham
stepped from his room.
"What is it?" Bobby demanded.
"You wouldn't wake up, Bobby. You were so hard to wake." The idea seemed
to fill her mind. She repeated it several times.
"It's nothing," Graham said. "Go back to your room, Katherine. She's
fanciful--"
She lowered her hands. Her eyes were full of terror. "No. We have to go
to that room as I went last night, as we went to-day."
Graham tried to quiet her. "We'll go to satisfy you."
Her voice hardened. "I know. I was asleep. It woke me up, stealing in
across the court again."
Bobby grasped her arm. "You came out and aroused up at once?"
She shook her head. "I--I couldn't find my dressing gown. This dress was
by the bed. I put it on, but I couldn't seem to fasten it."
Bobby stepped back, remembering his last thought before drifting into the
trance-like sleep. She seemed to know what was in his mind.
"But when I knocked you were sleeping so soundly."
"Too soundly, perhaps."
"Come. We're growing imaginative," Graham said. "Howells would take care
of himself. He'll probably give us the deuce for disturbing him, but to
satisfy you, Katherine, we'll wake him up."
"If you can," she whispered.
They entered the main hall. Light came through the stair well from the
lower floor. Graham walked to the rail and glanced down. Bobby followed
him. On the table by the fireplace the cards were arranged in neat
piles. A strong draft blew cigarette smoke up to them.
"Paredes," Graham said, amazed, "is still downstairs. The front door's
open. He's probably in the court."
"It must be very late," Bobby said.
Katherine shivered.
"Half-past two. I looked at my watch. The same time as last night."
With a gesture of resolution she led the way into the corridor. Bobby
shrank from the damp and musty atmosphere of the narrow passage.
"Why do you come, Katherine?" he asked.
"I have to know, as I had to know last night."
Graham raised his hand and knocked at the door which again was locked on
the inside. The echoes chattered back at them. Graham knocked again. With
a passionate revolt Katherine raised her hands, too, and pounded at the
panels. Suddenly she gave up. She let her hands fall listlessly.
"It's no use."
"Howells! Howells!" Graham called. "Why don't you answer?"
"When he boasted to-night," Katherine whispered, "the murderer
heard him."
"Suppose he's gone down to the library?" Graham said.
Bobby gave Katherine the candle.
"No. He'd have stayed. We've got to break in here. We've got to
find out."
Graham placed his powerful shoulder against the door. The lock strained.
Bobby added his weight. With a splintering of wood the door flew open,
precipitating them across the threshold. Through the darkness Graham
sprang for the opposite door.
"It's locked," he called, "and the key's on this side."
Bobby took the candle from Katherine and forced himself to approach the
bed. The flame flickered a little in the breeze which stole past the
curtain of the open window. It shook across the body of Howells, fully
clothed with his head on the stained pillow. His face, intricately lined,
was as peaceful as Silas Blackburn's had been. Its level smile persisted.
Bobby caught his breath.
"Howells--"
He set the candle on the bureau.
"It's no use. We must look at the back of his head."
"The back of his head!" Katherine echoed.
"It's illegal," Graham said.
"Look!" Bobby cried. "We've got to look!"
Graham tiptoed forward. He stretched out his hand. With a motion of
abhorrence he drew it back. Bobby watched him hypnotically, thinking:
"I wanted this. I hated him. I thought of it just before I went to
sleep."
Graham reached out again. This time he touched Howells's head. It rolled
over on the pillow.
"Good God!" he said.
They stared at the red hole, near the base of the brain, at a fresh
crimson splotch, straying beyond the edges of the darker one they had
seen that afternoon.
Graham turned away, his hand still outstretched, as if it had touched
some poisonous thing and might retain a contamination.
"He was prepared against it," he whispered, "expected it, yet it got
him."
He glanced rapidly around the room whose shadows seemed crowding about
the candle to stifle it.
"Unless we're all mad," he cried, "the murderer must be hidden in this
room now. Don't you see? He's got to be, or Groom's right, and we're
fighting the dead. Go out, Katherine. Stand by that broken door, Bobby.
I'm going to look."