A STRANGE LIGHT APPEARS AT THE DESERTED HOUSE
Graham's intention, logical as it was, impressed Bobby as quite futile.
Silas Blackburn had died in this ancient, melancholy room behind locked
doors. This afternoon, with a repetition of the sounds that had probably
accompanied his death, they had been drawn to find that, behind locked
doors again, the position of the body had changed incredibly, as if to
expose to them the tiny fatal wound at the base of the brain. Now for the
third time those stealthy movements had aroused Katherine, and they had
found, once more behind locked doors, the determined and malicious
detective, murdered precisely as old Blackburn had been.
Of course Graham was logical. By every rational argument the murderer
must still be in the room. Yet Bobby foresaw that, as always, no one
would be found, that nothing would be unearthed to explain the succession
of tragic mysteries. While Graham commenced his search, indeed, he
continued to stare at the little round hole in Howells's head, at the
fresh, irregular stain on the pillow, and he became absorbed in his own
predicament. Again and again he asked himself if he could be responsible
for these murders which had been committed with an inhuman ingenuity. He
knew only that he had wandered, unconscious, in the vicinity of the
Cedars last night; that he had been asleep when his grandfather's body
had altered its position; that he had gone to sleep a little while ago
too profoundly, brooding over Howells's challenge to the murderer to
invade the room of death and kill him if he could. Howells had been
confident that he could handle a man and so solve the riddle of how the
room had been entered. Certainly Howells's challenge had been accepted,
and Bobby knew that he had fallen into that deep sleep hating the
detective, telling himself that the man's death might save him from
arrest, from conviction, from an intolerable walk to a little room with a
single chair.
"Recurrent aphasia." The doctor's expression came back to him. In such a
state a man could overcome locked doors, could accomplish apparent
miracles and retain no recollection. And Bobby had hated and feared
Howells more than he had his grandfather.
Dully he saw Katherine go out at Graham's direction. As one in a dream he
moved toward the door they had had to break down on entering.
"Stand close to it," Graham said. "We'll cover everything."
"You'll find no one," Bobby answered with a perfect assurance.
He saw Graham take the candle and explore the large closets. He watched
him examine the spaces behind the window curtains. He could smile a
little as Graham stooped, peering beneath the bed, as he moved each piece
of furniture large enough to secrete a man.
"You see, Hartley, it's no use."
Graham's lack of success, however, stimulated his anger.
"Then," he said, "there must be some hiding place in the walls. Such
devices are common in houses as old as this."
Bobby indicated the silent form of the detective.
"He believed I killed my grandfather. The only reason he didn't arrest me
was his failure to find out how the room had been entered and left. Don't
you suppose he looked for a hiding place or a secret entrance the first
thing? It's obvious."
But Graham's savage determination increased. He sounded each panel. None
gave the slightest revealing response. He got a tape from Katherine and
measured the dimensions of the room, the private hall, and the corridor.
At last he turned to Bobby, his anger dead, his face white and tired.
"Everything checks," he admitted. "There's no secret room, no way in or
out. Logically Groom's right. We're fighting the dead who resent the
intrusion of your grandfather and Howells."
He laughed mirthlessly.
"After all, we can't surrender to that. There must be another answer."
"From the first Howells was satisfied with me," Bobby said.
Graham flung up his hands.
"Then tell me how you got in without disturbing those locks. I grant you,
Bobby, you had sufficient motive for both murders, but I don't believe
you have two personalities, one decent and lovable, the other cruel and
cunning to the point of magic. I don't believe if a man had two such
personalities the actions of one would be totally closed to the memory of
the other."
Bobby smiled wanly.
"It isn't pleasant to confess it, Hartley, but I have read of such
cases."
"Fiction!"
"Scientific fact."
"I wish to the devil I had shared your room with you to-night," Graham
muttered. "I might have furnished you an alibi for this affair at least."
"Either that," Bobby answered frankly, "or you might have followed me and
learned the whole secret. Honestly, isn't that what you were thinking of,
Hartley? And I did go to sleep, telling myself it would help me if
something of the sort happened to Howells. Now I'm not so sure that it
will. I--I suppose you've got to notify the police."
Graham held up his hand.
"What's that? In the corridor!"
There were quiet footsteps in the corridor. Bobby turned quickly,
Paredes strolled slowly through the passage, a cigarette held in his
slender, listless fingers. Bobby stared at him, remembering his surprise
a few minutes ago that the Panamanian should have sat up so late, should
have been, probably, in the court when they had followed Katherine to the
discovery of this new crime.
Paredes paused in the doorway. He took in the tragic picture framed by
the sinister room without displaying the slightest interest. He continued
to hold his cigarette until it expired. Then he crossed the threshold.
Graham and Bobby watched the expressionless face. Gracefully Paredes
raised his finger and pointed to the bed. When he spoke his voice was low
and pleasant:
"Appalling! I feared something of the kind when I heard you come to
this room."
He glanced at the broken door.
"The same unbelievable circumstance," he drawled. "I see you had to
break in."
The colour flashed back to Graham's face.
"You have taken plenty of time to solve your misgivings."
"It hasn't been so long. I fancied everything was all right, and I was
immersed in my solitaire. Then I heard a stirring upstairs. As I've told
you, the house frightens me. It is not natural or healthy. So I came up
to investigate this stirring, and there was Miss Katherine in the hall.
She told me."
Graham faced him with undisguised enmity.
"Immersed in your solitaire! We were attracted by a light in the lower
hall at such an hour. We looked down. You were not there. The front door
was open."
Paredes glanced at his cold cigarette. He yawned.
"When Howells died precisely as Mr. Blackburn did," Graham hurried on,
"you alone were awake about the house. Weren't you at that moment in
the court?"
Paredes laughed tolerantly.
"It is clear, in spite of my apologies, that we are not friends, Graham;
but, may I ask, are you accusing me of this strange--accident?"
"I should like to know what you were doing in the court."
"Perhaps," Paredes answered, "I was attracted there by the sounds that
aroused Miss Katherine."
Graham shook his head.
"From her description I doubt if those sounds would have been audible in
the hall."
"No matter," Paredes said. "I merely suggest that it's a case for Groom.
His hint of a spiritual enmity may be saner than you think."
Katherine appeared in the doorway. She had evidently overheard Paredes's
comment, for she nodded. The determination in her eyes suggested that she
had struggled with the situation during these last moments and had
reached a definite conclusions That quality was in her voice.
"At least, Hartley," she said, "you must send for Doctor Groom before
you notify the police."
Graham waved his hand.
"Why?" he asked. "The man is dead."
With a movement, hidden from Paredes, she indicated Bobby.
"Last time there was a good deal of delay before the doctor came. If we
get him right away he may be able to do something for this poor fellow.
At least his advice would be useful."
Bobby realized that she was fighting for time for him. Any delay would be
useful that would give them a chance to plan before the police with
unimaginative efficiency should invade the house and limit their
opportunities. Graham showed that he caught her point.
"Maybe it's better," he said. "Then, Bobby, telephone Groom to be ready
for you, and take my runabout. It's in the stable. You'll get him here
much faster than he could come in his carriage."
"While I'm gone," Bobby asked, "what will you do?"
"Watch this room," Graham jerked out. "See that no one enters or leaves
it, or touches the body. I'll hope for some clue."
"You've plenty of courage," Paredes drawled. "I shouldn't care to watch
alone in this room."
He followed Katherine into the corridor. Bobby looked at Graham.
"You'll take no chances, Hartley?"
Graham's smile wasn't pleasant.
"According to you and the dead detective there's no risk while you're out
of the house. Still, I shall be nervous, but don't worry."
Bobby joined the others before they had reached the hall.
"Of course Hartley found nothing," Katherine said to him.
"Nothing," Paredes answered, "except a very bad temper."
Katherine's distaste for the man was no longer veiled.
"You don't like Mr. Graham," she said, "but he is our friend, and he is
in this house to help us."
Paredes bowed.
"I regret that the amusement Mr. Graham causes me sometimes finds
expression. He is so earnest, so materialistic in his relation to the
world. That is why he will see nothing psychic in the situation."
Paredes's easy contempt was like a tonic for Katherine. Her fear seemed
to drop from her. She turned purposefully to Bobby, ignoring the
Panamanian.
"I shall watch with Hartley," she said.
He was ashamed that jealousy should creep into such a moment, but her
resolve recalled his amorous discontent. The prospect of Graham and her,
watching alone, drawn to each other by their fright and uncertainty, by
their surroundings, by the hour, became unbearable. It placed him, to an
extent, on Paredes's side. It urged him, when Paredes had gone on
downstairs, to spring almost eagerly to his defence.
"As Hartley says," Katherine began, "he makes you think of a snake. He
must see we dislike and resent him."
"You and Hartley, perhaps," Bobby said. "Carlos says he is here to help
me. I've no reason to disbelieve him."
A little colour came into Katherine's face. She half stretched out her
hand as if in an appeal. But the colour faded and her hand dropped.
"We are wasting time," she said. "You had better go."
"I am sorry we disagree about Carlos," he commenced.
She turned deliberately away from him.
"You must hurry," she said. "Hurry!"
He saw her enter the corridor to join Graham. The obscurity of the narrow
place seemed to hold for him a new menace.
He walked downstairs slowly. While he telephoned, instructing a servant
to tell the doctor to be dressed and ready in twenty minutes, he saw
Paredes go to the closet and get his hat and coat.
"I shall keep you company," the Panamanian announced.
Bobby was glad enough to have him. He didn't want to be alone. He was
aware by this time that no amount of thought would persuade useful
memories to emerge from the black pit. They walked to the stable, half
gone to ruin like the rest of the estate. Bobby started Graham's car. The
servants' quarters, he saw, were dark. Then Jenkins and the two women
hadn't been aroused, were still ignorant of the new crime. As they drove
smoothly past the gloomy house they glimpsed through the court the dimly
lit windows of the old room that persistently guarded its grim secret.
Bobby pictured the living as well as the dead there, and his mind
revolted, and he shivered. He opened the throttle wider. The car sprang
forward. The divergent glare from the headlights forced back the
reluctant thicket. Paredes drawled unexpectedly:
"There is nothing as lonely anywhere in the world."
He stooped behind the windshield and lighted a cigarette.
"At least. Bobby," he said between puffs, "the Cedars has taken from you
the fear of Howells."
And after a time, staring at the glow of his cigarette, he went on
softly:
"Have you noticed anything significant about the discovery of each
mystery at the Cedars?"
"Many things," Bobby muttered.
"Think," Paredes urged him.
Bobby answered angrily:
"You've suggested that to me once to-day, Carlos. You mean that each time
I have been asleep or unconscious."
"I mean something quite different," Paredes said.
He hesitated. When he continued, his drawl was more pronounced.
"Then you haven't remarked that each time it has been Miss Katherine who
has made the discovery, who has aroused the rest of the house?"
The car swerved sharply. Bobby's first impulse had been to take his hands
from the wheel, to force Paredes to retract his sly insinuation.
"That's the rottenest thing I've ever known you to do, Carlos.
Take it back."
Paredes shrugged his shoulders.
"There is nothing to take back. I accuse no one. I merely call attention
to a chain of exceptional coincidences."
"You make me wonder," Bobby said, "if Hartley isn't justified in his
dislike of you. You'll kill such a ridiculous suspicion."
"Or?" Paredes drawled. "Very well. It seems my fate recently to offend
those I like best. I merely thought that any theory leading away from you
would be welcome."
"Any theory," Bobby answered, "involving Katherine is unthinkable."
Paredes smiled.
"I didn't understand exactly how you felt. I rather took it for granted
that Graham--Never mind. I take it back."
"Then drop it," Bobby answered sullenly, sorry that there was nothing
else he could say.
They continued in silence through the deserted forest whose aggressive
loneliness made words seem trivial. Bobby was asking himself again where
he had stood last night when he had glimpsed for a moment the straining
trees and the figure in a mask which he had called his conscience. If he
could only prove that figure substantial! Then Graham would have some
ground for his suspicion of Paredes and the dancer Maria. He glanced at
Paredes. Could there have been a conspiracy against him in the New York
cafe? Did Paredes, in fact, have some devious purpose in remaining at
the Cedars?
The automobile took a sharp curve in the road. Bobby started, gazing
ahead with an interest nearly hypnotic. The headlights had caught in
their glare the deserted farmhouse in which he had awakened just before
Howells had told him of his grandfather's death and practically placed
him under arrest. In the white light the frame of the house from which
the paint had flaked, appeared ghastly, unreal, like a structure seen in
a nightmare from which one recoils with morbid horror. The light left the
building. As the car tore past, Bobby could barely make out the black
mass in the midst of the thicket.
Paredes had observed it, too.
"I daresay," he remarked casually, "the Cedars will become as deserted as
that. It is just that it should, for the entire neighbourhood impresses
one as unfriendly to life, as striving through death to drive life out."
"Have you ever seen that house before?" Bobby asked quickly.
"I have never seen it before. I do not care ever to see it again."
It was a relief when the forest thinned and fields stretched, flat and
pleasant, like barriers against the stunted growth. Bobby stopped the car
in front of one of a group of houses at a crossroads. He climbed the
steps and rang. Doctor Groom opened the door himself. His gigantic, hairy
figure was silhouetted against the light from within.
"What's the matter now?" he demanded in his gruff voice. "Fortunately I
hadn't gone to bed. I was reading some books on psychic manifestations.
Who's sick? Or--"
Bobby's face must have told him a good deal, for he broke off.
"Get your things on," Bobby said, "and I will tell you as we drive
back, for you must come. Howells has been killed precisely as my
grandfather was."
For a moment Doctor Groom's bulky frame remained motionless in the
doorway. Instead of the surprise and horror Bobby had foreseen, the old
man expressed only a mute wonder. He got his hat and coat and entered the
runabout, Paredes made room for him, sitting on the floor, his feet on
the running board.
Bobby had told all he knew before they had reached the forest. The doctor
grunted then:
"The wound at the back of the head was the same as in your
grandfather's case?"
"Exactly."
"Then what good am I? Why am I routed out?"
"A formality," Bobby answered. "Katherine thought if we got you quickly
you might do something. Anyway, she wanted your advice."
The woods closed about them. Again the lights seemed to push back a
palpable barrier.
"I can't work miracles," the doctor was murmuring. "I can't bring men
back to life. Such a wound leaves no ground for hope. You'd better have
sent for the police at once. Hello!"
He strained forward, peering around the windshield.
"Funny!" Paredes called.
Bobby's eyes were on the road.
"What do you see?"
"The house, Bobby!" Paredes cried.
"No one, to my certain knowledge," the doctor said, "has lived in that
house for ten years. You say it was empty and falling to pieces when you
woke up there this morning."
Bobby knew what they meant then, and he reduced the speed of the car and
looked ahead to the right. A pallid glow sifted through the trees from
the direction of the deserted house.
Bobby guided the car to the side of the road, stopped it, and shut off
the engine. At first no one moved. The three men stared as if in the
presence of an unaccountable phenomenon. Even when Bobby had
extinguished the headlights the glow failed to brighten. Its pallid
quality persisted. It seemed to radiate from a point close to the ground.
"It comes from the front of the house," Bobby murmured.
He stepped from the automobile.
"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.
"Or feel anything?"
"No."
"I thought," Bobby said excitedly, "that there was some one in the
hall. I--I simply got that impression, for I saw nothing myself. My
back was turned."
Paredes strolled silently in.
"It may have been Mr. Paredes," the doctor said.
But Bobby wasn't convinced.
"Did you see or hear anything coming through the hall, Carlos?"
"No," Paredes said.
He had brought the light. With its help they explored the tiny cellar and
the upper floor. There was no sign of a recent occupancy. Everything was
as Bobby had found it on awakening. A vagrant wind sighed about the
place. They looked at each other with startled eyes. They filed out with
an incongruous stealth.
"Then there are ghosts here, too!" Paredes whispered.
"Who knows?" Doctor Groom mused. "It is as puzzling as anything that has
happened at the Cedars unless the light we saw was some phosphorescent
effect of decaying wood or vegetation."
"Then why should it go out all at once?" Bobby asked. "Is there any
connection between this light and what has happened at the Cedars?"
"The house at least," Paredes put in, "is connected with what has
happened at the Cedars through your experience here."
At Doctor Groom's suggestion they sat in the automobile for some time,
watching the house for a repetition of the pallid light. After several
minutes, when it failed to come, Bobby set his gears.
"Graham and Katherine will be worried."
They drove quickly away from the black, uncommunicative mass of the
abandoned building. The woods were lonelier than before. They impressed
Bobby as guarding something.
He drove straight to the stable. As they walked into the court they saw
the uncertain candlelight diffused from the room of death. In the hall
Bobby responded to a quick alarm. The Cedars was too quiet. What had
happened since he and Paredes had left?
"Katherine! Hartley!" he called.
He heard running steps upstairs. Katherine leaned over the banister. Her
quiet voice reassured him. "Is the doctor with you?"
He nodded. Paredes yawned and lighted a cigarette. He settled himself in
an easy chair. Bobby and Doctor Groom hurried up. Katherine led them down
the old corridor. Two chairs had been placed in the broken doorway.
Graham sat there. He arose and greeted the doctor.
"Nothing has happened since I left?" Bobby asked.
Graham shook his head.
"Katherine and I have watched every minute."
Doctor Groom walked to the bed and for a long time looked down at
Howells. Once he put out his hand, quickly withdrawing it.
"It's simply a repetition," he said at last, and his voice was softer
than its custom. "It may be a warning, for all we know, that no one may
sleep in this room without attracting death. Yet why should that be? I
miss this poor fellow's materialistic viewpoint. There's nothing I can do
for him, nothing I can say, except that death must have been
instantaneous. The police must seek again for a man to place in the
electric chair."
Graham touched his arm with an odd reluctance.
"Sitting here for so long I've been thinking. I have always been
materialistic, too. Tell me seriously, doctor, do you believe there is
any psychic force capable of killing two men in this incisive fashion?"
"No one," the doctor answered, "can say what psychic force is capable of
doing. Some scientists have started to explore, but it is still uncharted
country. From certain places--I daresay you've noticed it--one gets an
impression of peace and content; from others a depression, a sense of
suffering. I think we have all experienced psychic force to that extent.
Remember that this room has a history of intense and rebellious
suffering. Some of it I have seen with my own eyes. Your father's fight
for life, Katherine, was horrible for those of us who knew he had no
chance. As I watched beside him I used to wonder if such violent agony
could ever drift wholly into silence, and when we had to tell him finally
that the fight was lost, it was beyond bearing."
"If these men had been found dead without marks of violence," Graham
said, "I might consider such a possibility, irrational as it seems."
"Irrational," Doctor Groom answered, "must not be confused with
impossible. The marks of a physical violence, far from proving that the
attack was physical, strengthens the case of the supernatural. Certainly
you have heard and read of pictures being dashed from walls by invisible
hands, of objects moved about empty rooms, of cases where human beings
have been attacked by inanimate things--heavy things--hurtling through
the air. Some scientists recognize such irrational possibilities.
Policemen don't."
"Very well," Graham said stubbornly. "I'll follow you that far, but you
must show me in this room the sharp object with which these men were
attacked, no matter what the force behind it."
The doctor spread his hands. His infused eyes nearly closed.
"That I can't do. At any rate, Robert, this isn't wholly tragic to you. I
don't see how any one could accuse you of aphasia to-night."
"You've not forgotten," Bobby said slowly, "that you spoke of a
recurrent aphasia."
"That's the trouble," Graham put in under his breath. "He has no more
alibi now than he had when his grandfather was murdered."
Bobby told of his heavy sleep, of the delay in Katherine's arousing him.
The doctor's gruff voice was disapproving.
"You shouldn't have drunk that medicine. It had stood too long. It would
only have approximated its intended effect."
"You mean," Bobby asked, "that I wasn't sleeping as soundly as I
thought?"
"Probably not, but you're by no means a satisfactory victim. Men do
unaccountable things in a somnambulistic state, but asleep they haven't
wings any more than they have awake. You've got to show us how you
entered this room without disturbing the locks. Now, Mr. Graham, we must
comply with the law. Call in the police."
"There's nothing else to do," Bobby agreed.
So they went along the dingy corridor and downstairs. From the depths of
the easy chair in which Paredes lounged smoke curled with a lazy
indifference. The Panamanian didn't move.
While Graham and the doctor walked to the back of the hall to telephone,
Katherine, an anxious figure, a secretive one, beckoned Bobby to the
library. He went with her, wondering what she could want.
It was quite dark in the library. As Bobby fumbled with the lamp and
prepared to strike a match he was aware of the girl's provocatively near
presence. He resisted a warm impulse to reach out and touch her hand. He
desired to tell her all that was in his heart of the division that had
increased between them the last few months. Yet to follow that impulse
would, he realized, place a portion of his burden on her shoulders; would
also, in a sense, be disloyal to Graham, for he no longer questioned that
the two had reached a definite sentimental understanding. So he sighed
and struck the match. Even before the lamp was lighted Katherine was
speaking with a feverish haste:
"Before the police come--you've a chance, Bobby--the last chance. You
must do before the police arrive whatever is to be done."
He replaced the shade and glanced at her, astonished by her intensity, by
the forceful gesture with which she grasped his arm. For the first time
since Silas Blackburn's murder all of her vitality had come back to her.
"What do you mean?"
She pointed to the door of the private staircase.
"Just what Howells told you before he went up there to his death."
Bobby understood. He reacted excitedly to her attitude of conspirator.
"He said," she went on, "that the criminal had nothing to lose. That it
would be to his advantage to have him out of the way, to destroy that
evidence."
"I thought of it," Bobby answered, "just before I went to sleep."
"Don't you see?" she said. "If you had killed him you would have taken
the cast and the handkerchief and destroyed them? Hartley has told me
everything, and I could see his coat for myself. The cast and the
handkerchief are still in Howells's pocket."
"Why should I have killed him if not to destroy those?" Bobby took her up
with a quick hope.
"You didn't," she cried. "Nothing would ever make me believe
that you killed him, but you will be charged with it unless the
evidence--disappears. You'll have no defence."
Bobby drew back a little.
"You want me to go there--and--and take from his pocket those things?"
She nodded.
"You remember he suggested that he hadn't sent his report. That may be
there, too."
Bobby shook his head. "He must have said that as a bait."
"At the worst," she urged, "a report without evidence could only turn
suspicion against you. It wouldn't convict you as those other things may.
You must get them. You must destroy them."
Graham slipped quietly in and closed the door.
"The district attorney is coming himself with another detective," he
said. "I can guess what Katherine has been talking about. She's right.
I'm a lawyer, an I know the penalty of tampering with evidence. But I
don't believe you're a murderer, and I tell you as long as that evidence
exists they can convict you. They can send you to the chair. They may
arrest you and try you anyway on his report, but I don't believe they can
convict you on it alone. You're justified in protecting yourself, Bobby,
in the only way you can. No one will see you go in the room. We'll
arrange it so that no one can testify against you."
Bobby felt himself at a cross roads. During the commission of those
crimes he had been unconscious. If he had, in fact, had anything to do
with them, his personality, his real self, had known nothing, had done no
wrong. His body had merely reacted to hideous promptings whose source
lurked at the bottom of the black pit. To tamper with evidence would be a
conscious crime. All the more, because of his doubt of himself, he shrank
from that. Katherine saw his hesitation.
"It's a matter of your life or death."
But although Katherine decided him it wasn't with that. She came closer.
She looked straight at him, and her eyes were full of an affection that
stirred him profoundly:
"For my sake, Bobby--"
He studied the dead ashes of the fire which a little while ago had
played on Howells, vital and antagonistic, by the door of the private
staircase. The man had challenged him to do just the thing from which he
shrank. But Howells was no longer vital or antagonistic, and it occurred
to him that a little of his shrinking arose from the thought of
approaching and robbing the still thing upstairs, all that was left of
the man who had not been afraid of the mystery of the locked room.
"For my sake," Katherine repeated.
Bobby squared his shoulders. He fought back his momentary cowardice. The
affection in Katherine's eyes was stronger than that.
"All right," he said. "Howells never gave me a chance while he was alive.
He'll have to now he's dead."
Katherine relaxed. Graham's face was quite white, but he gave his
instructions in a cold, even tone:
"We'll go to the hall now. Katherine will go on upstairs. She mustn't see
you enter the room, but she will watch in the corridor while you are
there to be sure you aren't disturbed. You and I will chat for awhile
with the others, Bobby, then you will go up. You understand? Paredes
mustn't even guess what you are doing. I'll keep him and Groom
downstairs. If he spied, if he knew what you were at, he'd have a weapon
in his hands I'd hate to think about. He may be all right, but we can't
risk any more than we have to. We must go on tiptoe."
He opened the door. Katherine gave Bobby's hand a quick,
encouraging pressure.
"Take the stuff to my room," Graham whispered. "The first chance, we'll
destroy it so that no trace will be left."
They went to the hall. Without speaking, Katherine climbed the stairs.
Graham drew a chair between Paredes and the doctor. Bobby lounged against
the mantel, trying to find in the Panamanian's face some clue as to his
real feelings. But Paredes's eyes were closed. His hand drooped across
the chair arm. His slender, pointed fingers held, as if from mere habit,
a lifeless cigarette.
"Asleep," Graham whispered.
Without opening his eyes Paredes spoke: "No; I feel curiously awake."
He yawned.
Doctor Groom glanced at his watch. "The powers of prosecution," he
grumbled, "ought to be here within the next fifteen or twenty minutes."
Bobby glanced at Graham. Then it wasn't safe to delay too long. More and
more as he waited he shrank from the invasion of the room of death. The
prospect of reaching out and touching the still, cold thing on the bed
revolted him. Was there anything in that room capable of forbidding his
intention? Was there, in short, a surer, more malicious force for evil
than his unconscious self, at work in the house? He was about to make
some formal comment to the others, to embark on his distasteful
adventure, when Paredes, as if he had read Bobby's mind, opened his
eyes, languidly left his chair, and walked to the foot of the stairs.
"Where you going?" Graham asked sharply.
Paredes waved his hand indifferently and walked on up. There was
something of stealth in his failure to reply, in his cat-like tread on
the stairs. Graham and Bobby stared after him, unable to meet this new
situation audibly because of Groom. Yet five minutes had gone. There was
no time to be lost. Paredes mustn't rob Bobby of his chance. With a sort
of desperation he started for the stairs. Graham held out his hand as if
to restrain him, then nodded. Bobby had his foot on the first step when
Katherine's cry reached them, shaping the moment to their use. For there
was no fright in her cry. It was, rather, angry. And Bobby and Graham ran
up while Doctor Groom remained in his chair, an expression of blank
amazement on his face.
A candle burned on the table in the upper hall. Katherine and Paredes
stood near the entrance of the old corridor. Paredes, as usual, was quite
unruffled. Katherine's attitude was defensive. She seemed to hold the
corridor against him. The anger of her cry was active in her eyes.
Paredes laughed lightly.
"Sorry to have given the household one more shock. Fortunately no
harm done."
"What is it, Katherine?" Graham demanded.
"I don't know," she answered. "He startled me. He entered the corridor."
Paredes nodded.
"Quite right. She was there. I was on my way to my room. If your house
had electricity, Bobby, this incident would have been avoided. I saw
something dark in the corridor."
"You may not know," Graham said, "that ever since we found Howells, one
of us has tried, more or less, to keep the entrance of that room under
observation."
"Yet you were all downstairs a little while ago," Paredes yawned. "It's
too bad. I might have taken my turn then. At any rate, since I was
excluded from your confidence, I overcame my natural fear, and, for
Bobby's sake, slipped in, and, I am afraid, startled Miss Katherine."
"Yes," she said.
His explanation was reasonable. There was nothing more to be said, but
Bobby's doubt of his friend, sown by Graham and stimulated by the
incidents of the last hour, was materially strengthened. He felt a
sharp fear of Paredes. Such reserve, such concealment of emotion, was
scarcely human.
"If," Graham was saying, "you really want to help Bobby, there is
something you can do. Will you come downstairs with me for a moment? I'd
like to suggest one or two things before the police arrive."
Without hesitation Paredes followed Graham down the stairs.
Katherine turned immediately to Bobby, her eyes eager, full of the tense
determination that had dictated her plan in the library.
"Now, Bobby!" she whispered. "And there's no time to waste. They may be
here any minute. I won't see you go, but I'll be back at once to guard
you against Paredes if he slips up again."
She walked across the hall and disappeared in the newer corridor. Without
witness he faced the old corridor, and with the attempt directly ahead
his repugnance achieved a new power. The black entrance with its scarcely
dared memories reminded him that what he was about to do was directed
against more than human law, was an outrage against the dead man. He had
to remind himself of the steely purpose with which Howells had marked him
as the murderer; and the man's power persisted after death. In such a
contest he was justified.
He took the candle from the table. Through the stair-well the murmur of
Graham's voice, occasionally interrupted by Groom's heavy tones or the
languid accents of Paredes, drifted encouragingly. Trying to crush his
premonitions, Bobby entered the corridor. Instead of illuminating the
narrow passage the candle seemed half smothered by its blackness. For the
first time in his memory Bobby faced the entrance of the sinister room
alone. He pushed open the broken door. He paused on the threshold. It
impressed him as not unnatural that he should experience such misgivings.
They sprang not alone from the fact that within twenty-four hours two men
had died unaccountably within these faded walls. Nor did the evidence
pointing to his own unconscious guilt wholly account for them. At the
bottom of everything was the fact that from his earliest childhood he had
looked upon the room as consecrated to death; had consequently feared it;
had, he recalled, always hurried past the disused corridor leading in its
direction.
Through its wide spaces the light of the candle scarcely penetrated. No
more than an indefinite radiance thrust back the obscurity and outlined
the bed. He could barely see the stark, black form outstretched there.
The dim, vast room, as he advanced, imposed upon him a sense of
isolation. Katherine in the upper hall, the others downstairs, whose
voices no longer reached him, seemed all at once far away. He stood in a
place lonelier and more remote than the piece of woods where he had
momentarily opened his eyes last night; and, instead of the straining
trees and the figure in the black mask which he had called his
conscience, he had for motion and companionship only the swaying of the
curtains in the breeze from the open window and the dark, prostrate thing
whose face as he went closer was like a white mask--a mask with a fixed
and malevolent sneer.
The wind caught the flame of the candle, making it flicker. Tenuous
shadows commenced to dance across the walls. He paused with a tightening
throat, for the form on the bed seemed moving, too, with sly and scarcely
perceptible gestures. Then he understood. It was the effect of the
shaking candle, and he forced himself to go on, but a sense of a multiple
companionship accompanied him--a sense of a shapeless, soundless
companionship that projected an idea of a steady regard. There swept
through his mind a procession of figures in quaint dress and with faces
not unlike his own, remembered from portraits and family legends, men and
women to whom this room had been familiar, within whose limits they had
suffered, cried out a too-powerful agony, and died. It seemed to him that
he waited for voices to guide him, to urge him on as Katherine had urged
him, or to drive him back, because he was an intruder in a company whose
habit was strange and terrifying.
He forced his glance from the shadows which seemed more active along the
walls. He raised his candle and stared at the dead man. The cast was
undoubtedly there. The coat, stretched tightly across the breast,
outlined it. He stood at the side of the bed. He had only to bend and
place his hand in the pocket which the cast filled awkwardly. The wind
alone, he saw, wasn't responsible for the shaking of the candle. His hand
shook as the shadows shook, as the thing on the bed shook. The sense of
loneliness grew upon him until it became complete, appalling. For the
first time he understood that loneliness can possess a ponderable
quality. It was, he felt, potent and active in the room--a thing he
couldn't understand, or challenge, or overcome.
His hand tightened. He thought of Katherine guarding the corridor; of
Paredes and Doctor Groom, held downstairs by Graham; of the county
authorities hurrying to seize this evidence that would convict him; and
he realized that his duty and his excuse were clear. He understood that
just now he had been captured by a force undefinable in terms of the
world he knew. For a moment he eluded the stealthy fleshless hands of its
impalpable skirmishers. He reached impulsively out to the dead man. He
was about to place his fingers in the pocket, which, after all was said
and done, held his life.
In the light of the candle the face seemed alive and more menacing than
it had ever done in life. About the straight smile was a wider, more
triumphant quality.
The candle flickered sharply. It expired. The conquering blackness took
his breath.
He told himself it was the draft from the window which was strong, but
the companionship of the night was closer and more numerous. The darkness
wreathed itself into mocking and tortuous bodies whose faces were hidden.
In an agony of revolt against these incorporeal, these fanciful horrors,
he reached in the pocket.
He sprang back with a choked, inaudible cry, for the dead thing beneath
his hand was stirring. The dead, cold thing with a languid and impossible
rebuke, moved beneath his touch. And the pocket he had felt was empty.
The coat, a moment ago bulging and awkward, was flat. There sprang to
his mind the mad thought that the detective, malevolent in life, had long
after death snatched from his hand the evidence, carefully gathered, on
which everything for him depended.