BOBBY'S VIGIL IN THE ABANDONED ROOM
For a long time the little group gathered in the snow-swept cemetery
remained silent. The lamp, shaking in the district attorney's hand,
illuminated each detail of the casket's interior linings. Bobby tried to
realize that, except for these meaningless embellishments, the box was
empty. That was what held them all--the void, the unoccupied silken couch
in which they had seen Silas Blackburn's body imprisoned. Yet the screws
which the detective had removed, and the mass of earth, packed down and
covered with snow, must have made escape a dreadful impossibility even if
the spark of life had reanimated its occupant. And that occupant stood
there, trembling and haggard, sobbing from time to time in an utter
abandonment to the terror of what he saw.
To Bobby in that moment the supernatural legend of the Cedars seemed more
triumphantly fulfilled than it would have been through the immaterial
return of his grandfather. For Silas Blackburn was a reincarnation more
difficult to accept than any ghost. Had Paredes, who all along had
offered them a spectacle of veiled activity and thought, grasped the
truth? At first glance, indeed his gossip of oriental theories concerning
the disintegration of matter, its passage through solid substances, its
reassembly in far places, seemed thoroughly justified. Yet, granted that,
who, in the semblance of Silas Blackburn, had they buried to vanish
completely? Who, in the semblance of Silas Blackburn, had drowsed without
food for three days in the house at Smithtown?
The old man stretched his shaking hands to Bobby and Katherine.
"Don't let them bury me again. They never buried me. I've not been dead!
I tell you I've not been dead!" He mouthed horribly. "I'm alive! Can't
you see I'm alive?"
He broke down and covered his face. Jenkins sank on the heap of earth.
"I saw you, Mr. Silas, in that box. And I saw you on the bed. Miss
Katherine and I found you. We had to break the door. You looked so
peaceful we thought you were asleep. But when we touched you you
were cold."
"No, no, no," Blackburn grimaced. "I wasn't cold. I couldn't have been."
"There's no question," Bobby said hoarsely.
"No question," Robinson repeated.
Katherine shrank from her uncle as he had shrunk from her in the library
the night of the murder.
"What do you make of it?" the district attorney asked Rawlins.
The detective, who had remained crouched at the side of the grave, arose,
brushing the dirt from his hands, shaking his head.
"What is one to make of it, sir?"
Paredes spoke softly to Graham.
"The Cedars wants to be left alone to the dead. We would all be better
away from it."
"You won't go yet awhile," Robinson said gruffly. "Don't forget you're
still under bond."
The detail no longer seemed of importance to Bobby. The mystery,
centreing in the empty grave, was apparently inexplicable. He experienced
a great pity for his grandfather; and, recalling that strengthening
moment with Katherine, he made up his mind that there was only one course
for him. It might be dangerous in itself, yet, on the other hand, he
couldn't go to Katherine while his share in the mystery of the Cedars
remained so darkly shadowed. He had no right to withhold anything, and he
wouldn't ask Graham's advice. He had stepped all at once into the mastery
of his own destiny. He would tell Robinson, therefore, everything he
knew, from the party with Maria and Paredes in New York, through his
unconscious wanderings around the house on the night of the first murder,
to the moment when Graham had stopped his somnambulistic excursion down
the stairs.
Robinson turned his light away from the grave.
"There's nothing more to do here. Let us go back."
The little party straggled through the snow to the house. The hall fire
smouldered as pleasantly as it had done before they had set forth, yet an
interminable period seemed to have elapsed. Silas Blackburn went close to
the fire. He sank in a chair, trembling.
"I'm so cold," he whined. "I've never been so cold. What is the matter
with me? For God's sake tell me what is the matter! Katherine--if--if
nothing happens, we'll close the Cedars. We'll go to the city where there
are lots of lights."
"If you'd only listened to Bobby and me and gone long ago," she said.
Robinson stared at the fire.
"I'm about beaten," he muttered wearily.
Rawlins, with an air of stealth, walked upstairs. Graham, after a
moment's hesitation, followed him. Bobby wondered why they went. He
caught Robinson's eye. He indicated he would like to speak to him in the
library. As he left the hall he saw Paredes, who had not removed his hat
or coat, start for the front door.
"Where are you going?" he heard Robinson demand.
Paredes's reply came glibly.
"Only to walk up and down in the court. The house oppresses me more than
ever to-night. I feel with Mr. Blackburn that it is no place to stay."
And while he talked with Robinson in the library Bobby caught at times
the crunching of Paredes's feet in the court.
"Why does that court draw him?" Robinson asked. "Why does he keep
repeating that it is full of ghosts? He can't be trying to scare us with
that now."
But Bobby didn't answer.
"I've come to tell you the truth," he burst out, "everything I know. You
may lock me up. Even that would be better than this uncertainty. I must
have an answer, if it condemns me; and how could I have had anything to
do with what has happened to-night?"
He withheld nothing. Robinson listened with an intent interest. At the
end he said not unkindly:
"If the evidence and Howells's report hadn't disappeared I'd have
arrested you and considered the case closed before this miracle was
thrown at me. You've involved yourself so frankly that I don't believe
you're lying about what went on in the old room when you entered to steal
those exhibits. Can't say I blame you for trying that, either. You were
in a pretty bad position--an unheard-of position. You still are, for that
matter. But the case is put on such an extraordinary basis by what has
happened to-night that I'd be a fool to lock you up on such a confession.
I believe there's a good deal more in what has gone on in that room and
in the return of your grandfather than you can account for."
"Thanks," Bobby said. "I hoped you'd take it this way, for, if you will
let me help, I have a plan."
He turned restlessly to the door of the private staircase. In his memory
Howells's bold figure was outlined there, but now the face with its slow
smile seemed sympathetic rather than challenging.
"What's your plan?" Robinson asked.
Bobby forced himself to speak deliberately, steadily:
"To go for the night alone to the old room as Howells did."
Robinson whistled.
"Didn't believe you had that much nerve. Two men have tried that. What
good would it do?"
"If the answer's anywhere," Bobby said, "it must be hidden in that room.
Howells felt it. I was sure of it when I was prevented from taking the
evidence. You've believed it, I think."
"There is something strange and unhealthy about the room," Robinson
agreed. "Certainly the secret of the locked doors lies there. But we've
had sufficient warning. I'm not ashamed to say I wouldn't take such a
chance. I don't know that I ought to let you."
Bobby smiled.
"I've been enough of a coward," he said, "and, Robinson, I've got to
know. I shan't go near the bed. I'll watch the bed from a corner. If
the danger's at the bed, as we suspect, it probably won't be able to
reach me, but just the same it may expose itself. And Rawlins or you
can be outside the broken door in the corridor, waiting to enter at
the first alarm."
"Howells had no chance to give an alarm," Robinson muttered. "We'll
see later."
But Bobby understood that he would agree, and he forced his new courage
to face the prospect.
"Maybe something will turn up," Robinson mused. "The case can't grow more
mysterious indefinitely."
But his tone held no assurance. He seemed to foresee new and difficult
complications.
When they returned to the hall Bobby shrank from the picture of his
grandfather still crouched by the fire, his shoulders twitching, his
fingers about the black briar pipe shaking. Groom alone had remained with
him. Bobby opened the front door. There was no one in the court.
"Paredes," he said, closing the door, "has gone out of the court. Where's
Katherine, Doctor?"
"She went to the kitchen," the doctor rumbled. "I'm sure I don't know
what for this time of night."
After a little Graham and Rawlins came down the stairs. Graham's face was
scarred by fresh trouble. Rawlins drew the district attorney to one side.
"What have you two been doing up there?" Bobby asked Graham.
"Rawlins is hard-headed," Graham answered in a low, worried tone.
He wouldn't meet Bobby's eyes. He seemed to seek an escape.
"Where's Katherine?" he asked.
"Doctor Groom says she went to the back part of the house. Why won't you
tell me what you were doing?"
"Only keeping Rawlins from trying to make more mischief," Graham
answered.
He wouldn't explain.
"Aren't there enough riddles in this house?" Doctor Groom asked with
frank disapproval.
Rawlins and Robinson joined them, sparing Graham a further defence. The
district attorney had an air of fresh resolution. He was about to speak
when the front door opened quietly, framing the blackness of the court.
They started forward, seeing no one.
Silas Blackburn made a slow, shrinking movement, crying out:
"They've opened the door! Don't let them in. Don't let them come near
me again."
Although they knew Paredes had been in the court the spell of the Cedars
was so heavy upon them that for a moment they didn't know what to expect.
They hesitated with a little of the abnormal apprehension Silas Blackburn
exposed. Then Rawlins sprang forward, and Bobby called:
"Carlos!"
Paredes stepped from one side. He lingered against the black
background of the doorway. It was plain enough something was wrong
with him. In the first place, although he had opened the door, he had
been unwilling to enter.
"Shut the door," Silas Blackburn moaned.
Paredes, with a quick gesture of surrender, stepped in and obeyed. His
face was white. He had lost his immaculate appearance. His clothing
showed stains of snow and mould. He held his left hand behind his back.
"What's the matter with you?" Robinson demanded.
The Panamanian's laugh lacked its usual indifference.
"When I said the Cedars was full of ghosts I should have heeded my own
warning. I might better have stayed comfortably locked up in Smithtown."
Silas Blackburn spoke in a hoarse whisper:
"What did you see out there? Are they coming?"
"I saw very little," Paredes answered. "It was too dark."
"You saw something," Doctor Groom rumbled.
Paredes nodded. He looked at the floor.
"A--a woman in black."
"By the lake!" Bobby cried.
"Not as far as the lake. It was near the empty grave."
Silas Blackburn commenced to shake again. The doctor's little eyes
were wider.
"It was a woman--a flesh-and-blood woman?" Robinson asked.
"If it was a ghost," Paredes answered, "it had the power of attack; but
that, as you'll recall, is by no means unusual here. That's why I've come
in rather against my will. It seems strange, but I, too, have been
struck by a sharp and slender object, and I thought, perhaps, the doctor
had better look at the result."
With a motion of repugnance he moved his left hand from behind his back
and stretched it to the light. The coat below the elbow was torn. The
slender hand was crimson. He tried to smile.
"Luckily it wasn't at the back of my head."
"Sit down," Doctor Groom said, waving Robinson and Rawlins away. "Let me
see how badly he's hurt. There'll be plenty of time for questions
afterward."
Paredes lay back in one of the chairs and extended his arm. He kept his
eyes closed while the doctor stooped, examining the wound. All at once
his nearly perpetual sleeplessness since coming to the Cedars had
recorded itself in his face. His nerves at last confessed their
vulnerability as he fumbled for a cigarette with his good hand, as he
placed it awkwardly between his lips.
"Would you mind giving me a light, Bobby?"
Bobby struck a match and held it to the cigarette.
"Thanks," Paredes said. "Are you nearly through, doctor? I daresay
it's nothing."
Doctor Groom glanced up.
"Nothing serious with a little luck. It's only torn through a muscle. It
might have pierced the large vein."
His forehead beneath the shaggy black hair was deeply lined. He turned to
Robinson doubtfully.
"Maybe you'll tell us," Robinson said, "what made the wound."
"No use shirking facts," the doctor rumbled. "Mr. Paredes has been
wounded just as he said, by something sharp and slender."
"You mean," Robinson said, "by an instrument that could have caused death
in the case of Howells and--and--"
"I won't have you looking at me that way," Silas Blackburn whined.
"Yes," the doctor answered. "Before we go any farther I want to bind this
arm. There must be an antiseptic in the house. Where is Katherine? See if
you can find her, Bobby."
As Bobby started to cross the dining room he heard the slight scraping of
the door leading to the kitchen. He knew there was someone in the room
with him. He touched a cold hand.
"Bobby!" Katherine breathed in his ear.
He understood why the little light from the hall had failed to disclose
her when she had come from the kitchen. She wore the black cloak. Against
the darkness at the end of the room she had made no silhouette. When he
put his arms around her and touched her cheek, he noticed that that, too,
was cold; and the shoulders of the cloak were damp as if she had just
come in from the falling snow.
"Where have you been?" he asked.
"Looking outside," she answered frankly. "I couldn't sit still. I
wondered if the woman in black would be around the house to-night. Then
I was afraid, so I came in."
Doctor Groom's voice reached them.
"Have you found her? Is she in the dining room?"
Without any thought of disloyalty Bobby recognized the menace of
coincidence.
"Take your cloak off," he whispered. "Leave it here."
"Why?"
While he drew the cloak from her shoulders he raised his voice.
"Carlos has been hurt. The doctor asked me to find you."
His simple strategy was destroyed by the appearance of Rawlins. The
detective came directly to them; nor was the coincidence lost on him, and
it was his business to advertise rather than to conceal it. Without
ceremony he took the cloak from Bobby. He draped it over his arm.
"The doctor," he said to Katherine, "wants a basin of warm water, some
old linen, carbolic acid, if you have it."
She nodded and went back to the kitchen while Bobby returned with the
detective to the hall. Paredes's eyes remained closed.
"Where did you get the cloak, Rawlins?" Robinson asked.
"The young lady," Rawlins answered with soft satisfaction, "just wore it
in. At least it's still wet from the snow."
Paredes opened his eyes. He looked for a moment at the black cloak. He
closed his eyes again.
"You could recognize the woman who attacked you?" Rawlins said.
Paredes shook his head.
"You've forgotten how dark it is. Please don't ask me even to swear that
it was a woman."
"You're trying to say it wasn't flesh and blood," Blackburn quavered.
Paredes smiled weakly.
"I'm trying to say nothing at all."
"Tell us each detail of the attack," Robinson said.
But Katherine's footsteps reached them from the dining room and Paredes
wouldn't answer. Under those conditions Robinson's failure to press the
question was as disturbing as the detective's matter-of-fact capture of
the cloak.
Paredes glanced at Katherine once. There was no softness in her attitude
as she knelt beside his chair. Neither, Bobby felt, was there the
slightest uneasiness. With a facile grace she helped the doctor bathe and
bandage the slight wound.
"A silk handkerchief for a sling--" the doctor suggested.
"I won't have a sling," Paredes said. "I wouldn't know what to do without
the use of both my hands."
"You ought to congratulate yourself that you still keep it," the
doctor grumbled.
Bobby took the pan and the bottles from Katherine and rang for Jenkins.
It was clear that Robinson had hoped the girl would go out with them
herself and so give Paredes an opportunity to speak. This new development
made him wonder about Graham's theories as to Paredes. If it was Maria
who had struck the man there had either been a quarrel among thieves or
else no criminal connection had ever existed between the two. Paredes,
however, aping the gestures of an invalid, was less to Bobby's taste than
his satanic appearance when he had come from the private staircase.
Rawlins still held the cloak. After Jenkins had removed the doctor's
paraphernalia, everyone seemed to wait. It was Silas Blackburn who
finally released the strain.
"Katy, where you been with that cloak? What's he doing with it?"
Without answering she took the cloak from Rawlins, and gave the detective
and the district attorney the opportunity they craved. She walked up the
stairs, turning at the landing. Her farewell seemed pointed at the
Panamanian who looked languidly up at her.
"If I'm wanted I shall be in my room."
"Who would want you, Katherine?" Graham blurted out. But it was clear he
had caught the coincidence, too, and the trouble he had confessed a
little earlier was radically increased.
"That remains to be seen," Robinson sneered as soon as she had gone.
"Now, Mr. Paredes."
"I've really told you everything," he said. "I walked toward the
graveyard. At a point very close to it I felt the presence of this
creature in black. I spoke. I took my courage in my hands. I reached
out. I touched nothing." He raised his injured hand. "I got this for
my pains."
"What made you go to the graveyard?" Robinson asked suspiciously.
There was no mockery in the Panamanian's answer.
"I have told you the court for me has always been full of ghosts." He
pointed to Silas Blackburn. "It frightened me that this man should come
back through the court from his grave with all the evidence pointing to
an astral magic. I wanted to retrace his journey. I thought at the grave,
if I were alone, something might expose itself that had naturally
remained hidden in the presence of so many materialistic human beings."
A smile spread over Rawlins's cold, unimaginative features.
"That sounds well, Mr. Paredes, and there is a lot about this case that
looks like ghosts, but leave us a few flesh-and-blood clues. This woman
in black is one of them, although she's been slippery as an eel. It looks
to me as if you went to the grave to meet her alone exactly as you went
to the deserted house to talk quietly with her night before last. Maybe
she mistook you for one of us snooping in the dark, and let you have it."
"If that is so," Paredes said easily, "the nature of my wound would
suggest that she is guilty of the crimes in the old room. Why not go out
and arrest her then? She might explain everything except the return to
life of Mr. Blackburn. I'm afraid that's rather beyond you in any case.
But at least find her."
Robinson joined in Rawlins's laugh.
"Why go outside for that?"
Paredes started.
"You never mean--"
"You bet we do," Rawlins said. "If what I've doped out hadn't been so
we'd have caught her long before. We're not blind, and we haven't missed
the nerve with which she helped the doctor fix you up. We haven't caught
her before because her headquarters have been right in this house all the
time. You remember the other night, Mr. Robinson. You'd just questioned
her in the court and had threatened to question him, too, when she came
in here ahead of us and slipped out the back way. She must have told him
to follow because they had to talk, undisturbed by us. They went by
different roads to the deserted house where a light had been seen before.
We happened to hit his trail first and followed it. I'll guarantee you
didn't see her when you first came in."
Robinson shook his head.
"Mr. Graham kept me busy, and I rather waited for your report before
pushing things. I didn't see her or question her until after Mr. Graham
and Mr. Blackburn had started for New York."
"And she could have sneaked in the back way any time before that,"
Rawlins said.
"It's utter nonsense!" Graham cried.
Rawlins turned on him.
"See here, Mr. Graham, you've been trying to fight me off this way all
afternoon. It won't do."
"Katy's a good girl," Silas Blackburn quavered.
With a growing discomfort Bobby realized that when the woman had cried
near the graveyard he had reached out for Katherine and had failed to
find her. Moreover, the night Graham and he had heard the crying in the
old room she had stood alone in the corridor. It was easily conceivable
that the turn of events after Robinson's arrival should have made it
necessary for conspirators to consult free from any danger of
disturbance. But Katherine, he told himself, was assuredly the victim of
coincidence. He couldn't picture her entangled in any of Paredes's
purposes. Her dislike of the man was complete and open. But he saw that
Rawlins out of the mass of apparently inexplicable clues had extracted
this material one and would follow it desperately no matter who was hurt;
and Robinson was behind him. That accounted for their frequent excursions
upstairs during the afternoon, for Rawlins's ascent as soon as they had
returned from the grave. They had evidently found something to sharpen
their suspicions, and Graham probably knew what it was.
Robinson took out his watch.
"We can't put this off too late," he mused.
The detective at his heels, he walked to the library. Bobby started
after them. Graham caught him and they crossed the dining room together.
"What do they mean to do?" Bobby asked.
"I have been afraid of it since this afternoon," Graham answered. "I
haven't cared to talk about it. I had hoped to hold them off. They intend
to search Katherine's room. I think they believe she has something
important hidden there. I've been wondering if they've got track of
Howells's report which we told Jenkins to hide."
"Why," Bobby asked, "should that involve Katherine?"
"Howells may have written something damaging to her. He knew she was
devoted to your interests."
Robinson called to them from the library.
"Won't you please come in, Mr. Blackburn?"
Bobby and Graham continued to the library. They found Rawlins gazing
through the door of the private staircase.
"We could go up this way," he was saying, "and across the old room so
that she needn't suspect."
"What is he talking about?" Bobby asked Robinson angrily.
"You wanted to help," Robinson answered, "so Rawlins and I are going to
give you a chance. We are about to search your cousin's room. We hope to
find there an explanation of a part of the mystery--the motive, at least,
for Howells's death; perhaps your own exoneration. You'd do anything to
have that, wouldn't you? You've said so."
"At her expense!" Bobby cried. "You've no right to go to her room.
She's incapable of a share in such crimes. Do you seriously think she
could plan an escape from the grave and bring back to life a man three
days dead?"
"Give me a human being that caused death," Robinson answered, "and I'll
tackle the ghosts later. You're wrong if you think I'm going to quit cold
because your grandfather looks like a dead thing that moves about and
talks. I shan't give up to that madness until I've done everything in my
power. I would be a criminal myself if I failed to do as Rawlins wishes.
If your cousin's skirts are clear no harm will be done. I'm acting on the
assumption that your confession was honest. I want you to get Miss
Perrine out of her room. I want you to see that she stays downstairs
while we search."
"You've already searched her room."
"Not since Rawlins--"
Robinson caught himself.
"Never mind that. It is necessary it should be searched to-night. Even
you'll acknowledge it's significant that all day when she has been
downstairs her door has been locked."
"It's only significant," Bobby flashed, "in view of your treatment of her
yesterday."
Robinson grinned.
"That will hardly go down. Rawlins has hesitated to break in. I've
instructed him to do it now, if necessary. For the last time, will you
bring your cousin down? Will you go through and unlock the door leading
from the old bedroom to the private hall so we can get up?"
"No," Bobby cried, "I wouldn't do it if I believed you were right. And I
know you're wrong."
"Prove that we're wrong. Clear your cousin by helping us,"
Robinson urged.
"Since you're so determined," Graham said quietly, "I'll do it."
"Hartley! What are you thinking of?"
"Of showing them how wrong they are," Graham said. "I'll tell her
Doctor Groom wishes to speak to her about Mr. Blackburn. I'll warn him
to keep her downstairs for a quarter of an hour. That should give you
plenty of time."
Robinson nodded.
"She'll never forgive you," Bobby said. "It's spying."
He wondered that Graham should choose such a course so soon after it had
become clear that Katherine had never really loved him.
"It's the best way to satisfy them," Graham said. "I have, perhaps, more
faith than you in Katherine."
He left them to carry out Robinson's instructions. They waited at the
entrance of the private staircase.
"I may witness this outrage?" Bobby asked.
"I'd rather you didn't speak of it in such harsh terms," Robinson
smiled.
Bobby didn't know what to expect. The whole thing might be a trick of
Paredes, in line with his hints the night of Howells's death, to involve
Katharine. The quiet confidence of the two officials was disturbing. What
had Rawlins seen?
After a long time Graham descended the private staircase, carrying a
lighted candle. He beckoned and they followed him back through the
private hall into the wide and mournful bedroom. It encouraged Bobby to
see the district attorney and the detective hurry across it. After all,
they were really without confidence of solving its ghostly riddle. What
they were about to do, he argued, was a last chance. They would find
nothing. They would acknowledge themselves beaten.
When they entered the farther wing he noticed that Katherine's door
stood wide.
"You see," he said.
"When I called her," Graham explained, "she thought something had
happened to her grandfather. She ran out."
"And forgot all about the door," Robinson grinned. "That's lucky.
Now, Rawlins."
Bobby couldn't bring himself to cross the threshold, but from the
corridor he could see the interior of the room and all that went on there
during the next few moments. A candle burned on the bureau, exposing the
feminine neatness and delicacy of the furnishings. The presence of the
three men was a desecration; what they were about to do, an unforgivable
act of vandalism.
Rawlins went to a work table while Robinson rummaged in the closet.
Graham, meantime, bent against the footboard of the bed, watching with
anxious eyes. Bobby's anger was increased by this picture. He resisted an
impulse to run to the stairs and call Katherine up. That would simply
increase Robinson's suspicions. There was nothing she could do, nothing
he could do.
Rawlins had clearly been unsuccessful at the work table. He glided to the
bureau. One after the other he opened the drawers, fumbling within,
lifting the contents out, replacing them with a rough haste while Bobby's
futile rage increased.
Suddenly he saw Graham's attitude alter. Rawlins's back stiffened. He
pulled the bottom drawer altogether from the bureau and thrust it to one
side. He gazed in the opening.
"Come here, Mr. Robinson," he said softly.
Robinson left the closet and stooped beside the detective. He exclaimed.
Graham went closer looking over their backs.
"You'd better see, Bobby," he said without turning.
"Yes," Robinson said. "Let me show you how wrong you were, Mr. Blackburn.
Let me ask if you knew you were wrong."
Bobby entered with a quicker pulse. He, too, stooped and looked in the
opening. Abruptly everything altered for him. He wondered that his
physical surroundings should remain the same, that the eager faces beside
him should retain their familiar lines.
Against the back-board of the bureau, where it would fit neatly when the
drawer was in place, lay a plaster cast of a footmark. Near by was a
rumpled handkerchief that Bobby recognized as his own, and the envelope,
containing Howells's report which they had told Jenkins to hide.
"Well?" Robinson grinned.
"I swear I didn't know they were there," Bobby answered. "You'll never
make me believe that Katherine knows it."
"I've guessed," Rawlins said, "that the stuff was hidden here ever since
this afternoon when I saw a small bundle sneaked in."
"Who brought it?" Bobby took him up.
Robinson's grin expanded.
"Leave us one or two surprises to spring in court."
"Then," Bobby said, "my cousin wasn't in the room when this evidence was
brought here."
"I'll admit that," Rawlins answered, "but she wasn't far away, and she
got here before I could investigate, and she's kept the door locked ever
since until just now."
He lifted the exhibits out. The shape of the cast, the monogram on the
handkerchief cried out their testimony.
Robinson grasped Howells's report and glanced over the fine handwriting.
After a time he looked up.
"There's the case against you, Mr. Blackburn, and at the least your
cousin's an accessory. But why the devil did you come to me and make a
clean breast of it?"
"Because," Bobby cried, "I didn't know anything about these things being
here. Can't you see that?"
"That's the trouble," Robinson answered uncertainly, "I think I do see
it."
"Besides," Graham said, "you're still without the instrument that
caused death."
"I expect to land it in this room," Rawlins answered grimly.
He replaced the drawer and continued to fumble among the clothing it
contained. All at once he called out and raised his hand. On the
forefinger a tiny red stain showed.
"How did you do that?" Robinson asked.
"Something pricked me," the detective answered. "Maybe it was only a pin,
but it might have been--"
Excitedly he resumed his search. He took the clothing from the drawer and
threw it to one side. Nothing remained in the drawer.
"I guess it must have been a pin," Robinson said, disappointed.
But Rawlins took up each article of clothing and examined it minutely.
His face brightened.
"Here's something stiff. By gad, I believe I've got it!"
Concealed in a woollen sack, with the slender shaft thrust through and
through the folds, was a peculiarly long, stout, and sharp hat pin.
Rawlins drew it out. He held it up triumphantly.
"Now maybe we're not getting somewheres! That's the boy that did the
trick in both cases, and it's what scratched Mr. Paredes. Maybe you
noticed how quickly she came upstairs to hide this when she got in."
"Good work, Rawlins," Robinson said.
He glanced at Bobby and Graham.
"Have either of you seen this deadly thing before?"
Bobby wouldn't answer, but after a moment's hesitation Graham spoke:
"There's no point in lying, Bobby. Katherine knows nothing of this. I
disagree with Rawlins. If she had been working with Paredes, which is
unthinkable, she'd never have made such a mistake. She wouldn't have
struck him. I have seen her wear such a pin."
"If she didn't cut him with it," Rawlins reasoned, "who else could
have got it out of here and put it back to-night when she kept her
door locked?"
"There's no getting around it," Robinson said. "Take charge of these
things, Rawlins. Put them in a safe place."
"What are you going to do?" Bobby asked.
"I'm afraid there's only one thing to do," Robinson answered. "I'll have
to arrest you both. One of you used this pin in the old room. It doesn't
make much difference which one. You've been working together, and we'll
find out about Paredes later."
"You're making a terrible mistake," Bobby muttered. "You don't know
Katherine or you couldn't suspect her of any share in such crimes. Give
me until morning to prove how wrong you are."
"What would be the use?" Robinson asked.
"If you'll do that, I will get the truth for you--the whole truth, how
the room was entered, everything. I swear it, Robinson. Only a few hours.
Let me carry out my plan. Let me offer myself to the dangers of the old
room as Howells and my grandfather did. Your case is no good unless you
can explain the miracle to-night. Give us this chance. Then in the
morning, if nothing happens and you still think I'm guilty, lock me up,
but for God's sake, Robinson, leave her out of it."
Graham walked to the window and flung it open. A violent gust of wind
swept in, carrying a multitude of icy flakes.
"The storm is worse," he said. "No one is likely to try to escape from
this house to-night."
Bobby stretched out his hand.
"You can't expose her to that."
Rawlins hadn't forgotten the sense of fellowship sprung from the pursuit
of Paredes through the forest.
"He's right, Mr. Robinson. You could lock up a dozen people. You might
send them to the chair without uncovering the real mystery of the Cedars.
Maybe he might find something, and he'd be as safe in that room as in any
jail I know of. I mean one of us would be in the library and the other in
the corridor outside the broken door. How could he reasonably get out? If
there was an attempt to repeat the trick we'd be ready. As for the girl,
it's simple enough to safeguard against her getting away before morning.
As Mr. Graham says, no one's likely to run far in this storm, anyway."
Robinson considered.
"I don't want to be hard," he said finally, "and I don't want to miss any
chance of cleaning up where poor Howells failed."
He glanced at the extraordinary array of evidence. The good nature which,
one felt, should always have been in his face, shone at last.
"I don't believe you're guilty. As far as you're concerned it's likely
enough a put-up job. I don't know about the girl. Go ahead, anyway, and
tell us, if you can, how the locked room was entered. Explain the mystery
of that old man who looks as if he were dead, but who moves around and
talks with us."
"The answer, if it's anywhere," Bobby said, "is in the old room."
Robinson nodded.
"Under the conditions it seems worth while. Go on then and clear your
cousin and yourself if you can. You have until daylight to-morrow."
Bobby's gratitude was sufficiently eloquent in his eyes, but he said
nothing. He hurried from the room to find Katherine. As soon as he had
stepped in the corridor he saw her figure against the wall.
"Katherine!" he breathed.
"I've heard everything," she said.
He led her to the main hall where the greedy ears in her bedroom couldn't
overhear them.
"Then you suspected what they were about?" he asked her.
"Uncle Silas," she answered, "seemed just as he had been when I went
upstairs, so I wondered, and I remembered I had left my door unlocked."
"Then you knew those things were there?"
Her face was white. She trembled. Her words came jerkily:
"Of course I didn't. I only kept my door locked because they had
searched so thoroughly before. It was an humiliation I couldn't bear to
face again."
"You don't know," he asked, "who took that stuff from Howells; who hid it
in your bureau?"
The trembling of her slender body became more pronounced. She spoke
through chattering teeth:
"Bobby! Why do you ask such things? You believe I am guilty as you
thought I was the woman in black. You think now, because those things
were in my bureau--"
"Stop, Katherine! You won't answer me?"
"No," she said, backing away from him. "But you are going to answer me.
We have come to that point already. Just an hour or two of trust, and
then this! It's the Cedars forcing us apart as it did when we had our
quarrel. Only this time it is definite. Do you think I'm guilty of these
atrocious crimes, or don't you? Everything for us depends on your answer,
and I'll know whether you are telling me the truth."
"Then," he said, "why should I answer?"
And he took her in his arms and held her close.
She didn't cry, but for a moment she ceased trembling, and her teeth no
longer chattered.
"My dear," he said, "even if you had hidden that evidence I'd have known
it was to protect me."
Then she cried a little, and for a moment, even in the unmerciful grasp
of their trouble, they were nearly happy. The footsteps of the others in
the corridor recalled them. Katherine leaned against the table, drying
her eyes. Graham, Robinson, and Rawlins walked into the hall.
"Hello!" Robinson said, "I suppose that isn't an unfair advantage, Mr.
Blackburn. Still, I'd rather she hadn't been told."
"He's told me nothing," Katherine answered. "I came back to the corridor;
I heard everything you said."
"Maybe it's as well," Robinson reflected. "It certainly is if what you
heard has shown you the wisdom of giving up the whole thing."
She stared at him without replying.
"Come now," he wheedled. "You might tell us at least why you stole and
secreted the evidence."
"I'll answer nothing."
"That's wiser, Katherine," Graham put in.
She turned on him with a complete and unexpected fury. The colour rushed
back to her face. Her eyes blazed. Bobby had never guessed her capable
of such anger. His wonder grew that her outburst should be directed
against Graham.
"Keep quiet!" she cried hysterically. "Don't speak to me again. I hate
you! Do you understand?"
Graham drew back.
"Why, Katherine--"
"Don't," she said. "Don't call me that."
The officers glanced at Graham with frank bewilderment. Rawlins's
materialistic mind didn't hesitate to express its first thought:
"Must say, I always thought you were sweet on the lady."
"Hartley!" Bobby said. "You have been fair to us?"
"I don't know why she attacks me," Graham muttered.
His face recorded a genuine pain. His words, Bobby felt, overcame a
barrier of emotion.
They heard Paredes and Doctor Groom on the stairs.
"What's this?" the doctor rumbled as he came up.
"I--I'm sorry I forgot myself," Katherine said through her chattering
teeth. She turned to Robinson. "I am going to my room. You needn't be
afraid. I shan't leave it until you come to take me."
"Truly I hope it won't be necessary," the district attorney answered.
She hurried away. Rawlins grinned at Paredes.
"I'm wondering what the devil you know."
Robinson made no secret of what had happened. In reply to the questions
of Paredes and the doctor he told of the discovery of the evidence and of
the stout hat-pin that had, unquestionably, caused death. The man made it
clear enough, however, that he didn't care to have Paredes know of
Bobby's plan to spend the night in the old room, and Rawlins, Bobby, and
Graham indicated that they understood.
"It's quite absurd that any one should think Katherine guilty," the
doctor said to Robinson. "This evidence and its presence in her room are
details that don't approach the heart of the mystery. That's to be found
only in the old room, and I don't think any one wants to tempt it again.
In fact, I'm not sure one can learn the truth there and live. You know
what happened to Howells when he tried. Silas Blackburn went there, and
none of us can understand the change that's taken place. I have been
watching him closely. So has Mr. Paredes. We have seen him become grayer.
We have seen his eyes alter. He sits shaking in his chair. Since we came
back from the grave the man--if we can call him a man--seems to
have--shrunk."
"Yes," Paredes said. "Perhaps we shouldn't have left him alone. Let us go
back. Let us see if he is all right."
Rawlins laughed skeptically.
"You're not afraid he'll melt away!"
"I'm not so sure he won't," Paredes answered.
They followed him downstairs. Because of the position of Blackburn's
chair they could be sure of nothing until they had reached the lower
floor and approached the fireplace. Then they saw. It was as if Paredes's
far-fetched fear had been realized. Blackburn was not in his chair, nor
was he to be found in the hall. Even then, with the exception of Paredes,
they wouldn't take the thing seriously. Since the old man wasn't in the
hall; since he couldn't have gone upstairs, unobserved by them, he must
be either in the library, the dining room, or the rear part of the house.
There was no one in the library or the dining room; and Jenkins, who sat
in the kitchen, still shaken by the discovery at the grave, said he
hadn't moved for the last half hour, was entirely sure no one had come
through from the front part of the house.
They returned to the hall and stood in a half circle about the empty
chair, where a little while ago Silas Blackburn had cowered, mouthing
snatches of his fear--"I'm not dead! I tell you I'm not dead! They can't
make me go back--"
The echoes of that fear still shocked their ears.
There was a hypnotic power about the vacancy as there had been about the
emptiness in the burial ground. Paredes spoke gropingly.
"What would we find," he whispered, "if we went to the cemetery and
looked again in the coffin?"
"Why should he have come back at all?" Groom mused.
Robinson opened the front door.
"You know he might have gone this way."
But already the snow had obliterated the signs of their own passage in
and out. It showed no fresh marks.
"Silas Blackburn has not gone that way in the body," Doctor Groom
rumbled.
The storm was more violent. It discouraged the idea of examining the
graveyard again before morning.
Robinson glanced at his watch. He led Bobby and the detective to
the library.
"Then try your scheme if you want," he said, "but understand I assume no
responsibility. Honestly, I doubt if it amounts to anything. You'll shout
out if you are attacked, or the moment you suspect any real cause for
fear. Rawlins will be in the corridor, and I'll be in the library or
wandering about the house--always within call. Rawlins will guard the
broken door, but be sure and lock the other one."
The two officers went upstairs with Bobby. Graham followed.
"You understand," Robinson said. "I'd rather Paredes and the doctor
didn't suspect what you are going to do. Change your mind before it's too
late, if you want."
Bobby walked on without replying.
"You can't dissuade him," Graham said, "because of what will happen
to-morrow unless the truth is discovered to-night."
In the upper hall they found Katherine waiting. Her endeavours were
hard to face.
"You shan't go there for me, Bobby," she said.
"Isn't it clear I must go in my own service?" he said, trying to smile.
He wouldn't speak to her again. He wouldn't look at her. Her anxiety and
the affection in her eyes weakened him, and he needed all his strength,
for at the entrance of the dark, narrow corridor the fear met him.
Rawlins brought a candle and guided him down the corridor. Graham came,
too. The detective locked the door leading to the private hall and
slipped the key in his pocket.
"Nobody will get through there any more than they will through the other
door which I'll watch."
With Graham's help he made a quick inspection of the room, searching the
closets and glancing beneath the bed and behind the furniture.
"There's no one," he said, preparing to depart. "I tell you there's no
chance of a physical attack."
His unimaginative mind cried out.
"I tell you you'll find nothing, learn nothing, for there's nothing here
to find, nothing to learn."
"Just the same," Graham urged, "you'll call out, won't you, Bobby, at
the first sign of anything out of the way? For God's sake take no
foolish chances."
"I don't want the light," Bobby forced himself to say. "My grandfather
and Howells both put their candles out. I want everything as it was when
they were attacked."
Rawlins nodded and, followed by Graham, carried the candle from the room
and closed the broken door.
The sudden solitude and the darkness crushed Bobby, taking his breath.
Yellow flames, the response of his eyes to the disappearance of the
candle, tore across the blackness, confusing him. He felt his way to the
wall near the open window. He sat down there, facing the bed.
At first he couldn't see the bed. He saw only the projections of his
fancy, stimulated by Silas Blackburn's story, against the black screen
of the night. He understood at last what the old man had meant. The
darkness did appear to possess a physical resistance, and as the minutes
lengthened it seemed to encase all the suffering the room had ever
harboured. But he wouldn't close his eyes as his grandfather had done.
It was a defence to keep them on the spot where the bed stood while his
mind, in spite of his will, pictured, lying there, still forms with
bandaged heads. He wouldn't close his eyes even when those fancied
shapes commenced to struggle in grotesque and impotent motion, like ants
whose hill has been demolished. Nor could he drive from his ears the
echoes of delirium that seemed to have lingered in the old room. He
continued to watch the darkness until the outlines of the room and of
its furniture dimly detached themselves from the black pall. The snow
apparently caught what feeble light the moon forced through, reflecting
it with a disconsolate inefficiency. He could see after a time the
pallid frames of the windows, the pillow on the bed, and the wall above
it. He fancied the dark stain, the depression in the mattress where the
two bodies had rested. Those physical objects forced on him the
probability of his guilt. Then he recalled that both men, dead for many
hours, had moved apparently of their own volition; and his grandfather
had come back from the grave and then had disappeared, leaving no trace;
and he comforted himself with the thought that the explanation, if it
came at all, must arise from a force outside himself, whether of the
living or the dead.
Because of that very assurance his fear of the room was incited. Could
any subtle change overcome him here as it evidently had the others? Could
there be repeated in his case a return and a disappearance like his
grandfather's? There was, as Rawlins had said, no way in or out for an
attack. Therefore the danger must emerge from the dead, and he was
helpless before their incomprehensible campaign.
The whole illogical, abominable course of events warned him to bring his
vigil to an end before it should be too late; urged him to escape from
the restless revolt of the dead who had dwelt in this room. And he wanted
to respond. He wanted to go to the corridor and confess to Rawlins and
Robinson that he was beaten. Yet he had begged so hard for this chance!
That course, moreover, meant the arrest of Katherine and himself in the
morning. For a few hours he could suffer here for her sake. Daylight, if
he could persist until then, would bring release, and surely it couldn't
be long now.
He shrank back. Steadily it had grown colder in the old room. He
shivered. He drew his coat closer about him. What temerity to invade the
domain of death, as Paredes had called it, to seek the secrets of
unquiet souls!
He ceased shivering. He waited, tensely quiet. Without calculation he
realized that the moment for which he had hoped was at hand. The old room
was about to disclose its secret, but would it permit him to depart with
his knowledge? He forgot to call. He waited, helpless and terrified,
against the wall. He heard a moaning cry, faint and distant--the voice
they had heard in the forest and at the grave. But it was more than that
that held him. He knew now what Katherine had heard across the court,
heralding each tragedy and mystery. He caught a formless stirring. Yet on
the bed there was no one. Fortunately he had not gone there.
He tried to call out, realizing that the danger could find him if it
chose, but his throat was tight and it permitted no response.
His glance hadn't wavered from the wall above the stained pillow. There
was movement there. Then he saw. A hand protruded from the blackness of
the panelling where they had sounded and measured without success. In the
ashen, unnatural light from the snow the long fingers of the hand were
like the feelers of a gigantic reptile. They wavered feebly, and he
became convinced that the hand was immaterial, that it was unattached to
any body. If that was so it couldn't be the hand of Katherine. At least
he had proved that Robinson and Rawlins had been wrong about her. That
sense of victory stripped him of his paralyzing fear. It loosed the tight
band about his throat. He called. He could prove the immaterial nature of
the repulsive hand wavering from the wall.
Crying out, he sprang to his feet. He flung himself across the bed. With
both of his own hands he grasped the slender, inquisitive fingers which
wavered above the stained pillow, and once more his throat tightened. He
couldn't cry out again.