"I don't believe it, Bobby. I'll never believe it no matter what happens."
"It's sweet of you, Katherine," he said huskily. "That helps when you don't know what to believe yourself."
"Don't talk that way. Such a crime would never have entered your head under any conditions. Only, Bobby, it ought never to have happened. You ought never to have been in this position. Why have you been friendly with people like—like that Spaniard? What can he want, forcing himself here? At any rate, you'll never lead that sort of life again?"
Her fingers sought his. He clasped them firmly.
"If I get past this," he said, "I'll always look you straight in the eye, Katherine. It was mad—silly. You don't quite understand—"
He broke off, glancing at the door through which Graham had disappeared.
"Then remember," she said softly, "I don't believe it."
She released his hand, sighing.
"That's all I can say, all I can do now. You're ill, Bobby. Go in. Rest for awhile. When you've had sleep you may remember something."
He shook his head. He walked slowly with her to the house.
As he climbed the stairs he heard Paredes telephoning. He couldn't understand the man's insistence on remaining where clearly he was an intruder.
He entered his bedroom which he had occupied only once or twice during the last few months. The place seemed unfamiliar. As he bathed and dressed his sense of strangeness grew, and he understood why. The last time he had been here he had stood in no personal danger. There had been no black parenthesis in his life during the stretch of which he might have committed an unspeakable crime. For he couldn't believe as firmly as Katherine did. Since he couldn't remember, he might have done anything.
"Come!" he called in response to a stealthy rapping at the door.
Stealth, it occurred to him, had, since last night, become a stern condition of his life.
Graham entered and noiselessly closed the door.
"I had a chance to slip in," he explained. "Paredes is wandering about the place. I'd give a lot to know what he's after at the Cedars. Katherine is in her room, trying to rest after last night, I fancy."
"And," Bobby asked, "the detective—Howells?"
"If he's back from the station," Graham answered, "he's keeping low. I wonder if it was he or Paredes who followed you through the woods?"
"Why should Carlos have followed me?" Bobby asked. "I've been thinking it over, Hartley. It isn't a bad scheme having him here, since you think he hasn't told all he knows."
"I don't say that," Graham answered. "I don't know what to think about Paredes. I've come to talk about just that. I'm a lawyer, and I've had some criminal practice. Since this detective will be satisfied with you for a victim, I'm going to take your case, if you'll have me. I'll be your detective as well as your lawyer."
Bobby was a good deal touched.
"That's kind of you—more than I deserve, for I have resented you at times."
Graham, it was clear, didn't guess he referred to his friendship forKatherine, for he answered quickly:
"I must have seemed a nuisance, but I was only trying to get you back on the straight path where you've always belonged. I can't believe you did this thing, even unconsciously, until I'm shown proof without a single flaw. Until the autopsy the only thing we have to work on is that party last night. I've telephoned to New York and put a trustworthy man on the heels of Maria and the stranger. Meantime I think I'd better watch developments here."
"Please," Bobby agreed. "Stay with me, Hartley, until this man takes some definite action."
He picked at the fringe of the window curtain. "If the autopsy shows that my grandfather was murdered," he said, "either I killed him, or else some one has deliberately tried to throw suspicion on me, for with only a motive to go on this detective wouldn't be so sure. Why in the name of heaven should any one kill the old man, place all this money in my hands, and at the same time send me to the electric chair? Don't you see how absurd it is that Carlos, Maria, or any one else should have had a hand in it? There was nothing for them to gain from his death. I've thought and thought in such circles until I am almost convinced of the logic of my guilt."
He drew the curtain farther back and gazed across the court at the room where his grandfather lay dead. One of the two windows of the room was a little raised, but the blinds were closely drawn.
"I did hate him," he mused. "There's that. Ever since I can remember he did things to make me despise him. Have—have you seen him?"
Graham nodded.
"Howells took me in. He looked perfectly normal—not a mark."
"I don't want to see him," Bobby said.
He drew back from the window, pointing. The detective, Howells, had strolled into the court. His hands hung at his sides. They didn't swing as he walked. His lips were stretched in that thin, straight smile. He paused by the fountain, glancing for a moment anxiously downward. Then he came on and entered the house.
"He'll be restless," Graham said, "until the coroner comes, and proves or disproves his theory of murder. If he questions you, you'd better say nothing for the present. From his point of view what you remember of last night would be only damaging."
"I want him to leave me alone," Bobby said. "If he doesn't arrest me I won't have him bullying me."
Jenkins knocked and entered. The old butler was as white-faced as Bobby, more tremulous.
"The policeman, sir! He's asking for you."
"Tell him I don't wish to see him."
The detective, himself, stepped from the obscurity of the hall, smiling his queer smile.
"Ah! You are here, Mr. Blackburn! I'd like a word with you."
He turned to Graham and Jenkins.
"Alone, if you please."
Bobby mutely agreed, and Graham and the butler went out. The detective closed the door and leaned against it, studying Bobby with his narrow eyes.
"I don't suppose," he began, "that there's any use asking you about your movements last night?"
"None," Bobby answered jerkily, "unless you arrest me and take me before those who ask questions with authority."
The detective's smile widened.
"No matter. I didn't come to argue with you about that. I was curious to know if you'd tried to see your grandfather's body."
Bobby shook his head.
"I took it for granted the room was locked."
"Yes," the detective answered, "but some people, it seems, have skilful ways of overcoming locks."
He moved to one side, placing his hand on the door knob.
"I've come to open doors for you, to give you the opportunity an affectionate grandson must crave."
Bobby hesitated, fighting back his feeling of repulsion, his first instinct to refuse. The detective might take it as an evidence against him. On the other hand, if he went, the man would unquestionably try to tear from a meeting between the living and the dead some valuable confirmation of his theory.
"Well?" the detective said. "What's the matter? Thought the least I could do was to give you a chance. Wouldn't do it for everybody. Then everybody hasn't your affectionate nature."
Bobby advanced.
"For God's sake, stop mocking me. I'll go, since you wish."
The detective opened the door and stood aside to let Bobby pass.
"Daresay you know the room—the way to it?"
Bobby didn't answer. He went along the corridor and into the main hall where Katherine had met Silas Blackburn last night. He fought back his aversion and entered the corridor of the old wing. He heard the detective behind him. He was aware of the man's narrow eyes watching him with a malicious assurance.
Bobby, with a feeling of discomfort, sprung in part from the gloomy passageway, paused before the door his grandfather had had the unaccountable whim of entering last night. The detective took a key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock.
"Had some trouble repairing the lock this morning," he said. "That fellow, Jenkins, entered with a heavy hand—a good deal heavier than whoever was here before him."
He opened the door.
"Queerest case I've ever seen," he mumbled. "Step in, Mr. Blackburn."
Because of the drawn blinds the room was nearly as dark as the corridor. Bobby entered slowly, his nerves taut. Against the farther wall the bed was like an enormous shadow, without form.
"Stay where you are," the detective warned, "until I give you more light. You know, I wouldn't want you to touch anything, because the room is exactly as it was when he was murdered!"
Bobby experienced a swift impulse to strangle the brutal word in the detective's throat. But he stood still while the man went to the bureau, struck a match, and applied it to a candle. The wick burned reluctantly. It flickered in the wind that slipped past the curtain of the open window.
"Come here," the detective commanded roughly.
Bobby dragged himself forward until he stood at the foot of the four-poster bed. The detective lifted the candle and held it beneath the canopy.
"You look all you want now, Mr. Robert Blackburn," he said grimly.
Bobby conquered the desire to close his eyes, to refuse to obey. He stared at his grandfather, and a feeling of wonder grew upon him. For Silas Blackburn rested peacefully in the great bed. His eyes were closed. The thick gray brows were no longer gathered in the frown too familiar to Bobby. The face with its gray beard retained no fear, no record of a great shock.
Bobby glanced at the detective who bent over the bed watching him out of his narrow eyes.
"Why," he asked simply, "do you say he was murdered?"
"He was murdered," the detective answered. "Murdered in cold blood, and, look you here, young fellow, I know who did it. I'm going to strap that man in the electric chair. He's got just one chance—if he talks out, if he makes a clean breast of it."
Across the body he bent closer. He held the candle so that its light searched Bobby's face instead of the dead man's, and the uncertain flame was like an ambush for his eyes.
In response to those intolerable words Bobby's sick nerves stretched too tight. No masquerade remained before this huntsman who had his victim trapped, and calmly studied his agony. The horror of the accusation shot at him across the body of the man he couldn't be sure he hadn't murdered, robbed him of his last control. He cried out hysterically:
"Why don't you do something? For God's sake, why don't you arrest me?"
A chuckle came from the man in ambush behind the yellow flame.
"Listen to the boy! What's he talking about? Grief for his grandfather.That's what it is—grief."
"Stop!" Bobby shouted. "It's what you've been accusing me with ever since you stopped me at the station." He indicated the silent form of the old man. "You keep telling me I murdered him. Why don't you arrest me then? Why don't you lock me up? Why don't you put the case on a reasonable basis?"
He waited, trembling. The flame continued to flicker, but the hand holding the candlestick failed to move, and Bobby knew that the eyes didn't waver, either. He forced his glance from the searching flame. He managed to lower and steady his voice.
"You can't. That's the trouble. He wasn't murdered. The coroner will tell you so. Anybody who looks at him will tell you so. Since you haven't the nerve to arrest me. I'm going. I'm glad to have had this out with you. Understand. I'm my own master. I do what I please. I go where I please."
At last the candle moved to one side. The detective straightened and walked to Bobby. The multitude of small lines in his face twitched. His voice was too cold for the fury of his words.
"That's just what I want you to do, damn you—anything you please. I'm accusing nobody, but I'm getting somebody. I've got somebody right now for this old man's murder. My man's going to writhe and burn in the chair, confession or no confession. Now get out of this room since you're so anxious, and don't come near it again."
Bobby went. At the end of the corridor he heard the closing of the door, the scraping of the key. He was afraid the detective might follow him to his room to heckle him further. To avoid that he hurried to the lower floor. He wanted to be alone. He must have time to accustom himself to this degrading fate which loomed in the too-close future. Unless they could demolish the detective's theory he, Bobby Blackburn, would go to the death house.
A fire blazed in the big hall fireplace. Paredes stood with his back to it, smoking and warming his hands. A man sat in the shadow of a deep leather chair, his rough, unpolished boots stretched toward the flaming logs. As he came down the stairs Bobby heard the heavy, rumbling voice of the man in the chair:
"Certainly it's a queer case, but not the way Howells means. I daresay the old fool died what the world will call a natural death. If you smoke so much you will, too, before long."
Bobby tried to slip past, but Paredes saw him.
"Feeling better, Bobby?"
The boots were drawn in. From the depths of the chair arose a figure nearly gigantic in the firelight. The man's face, at first glance, appeared to be covered with hair. Black and curling, it straggled over his forehead. It circled his mouth, and fell in an unkempt beard down his waistcoat. The huge man must have been as old as Silas Blackburn, but he showed no touch of gray. His only concession to age was the sunken and bloodshot appearance of his eyes.
Bobby and Katherine had always been afraid of this great, grim country practitioner who had attended their childish illnesses. That sense of an overpowering and incomprehensible personality had lingered. Even through his graver fear Bobby felt a sharp discomfort as he surrendered his hand to the other's absorbing grasp.
"I'm afraid you came too late this time, Doctor Groom."
The doctor looked him up and down.
"Not for you, I guess," he grumbled. "Don't you know you're sick, boy?"
Bobby shook his head.
"I'm very tired. That's all. I'm on my way to the library to try to rest."
He freed his hand. The big man nodded approvingly.
"I'll send you a dose," he promised, "and don't you worry about your grandfather's having been murdered by any man. I've seen the body. Stuff and nonsense! Detective's an ass. Waiting for coroner, although I know he's one, too."
"I pray," Bobby answered listlessly, "that you're right."
"If there's any little thing I can do," Paredes offered formally.
"No, no. Thanks," Bobby answered.
He went on to the library. He glanced with an unpleasant shrinking from the door of the enclosed staircase leading to the private hall just outside the room in which his grandfather lay dead. There was no fire here, but he wrapped himself in a rug and lay on the broad, high-backed lounge which was drawn close to the fireplace, facing it. His complete weariness conquered his premonitions, his feeling of helplessness. The entrance of Jenkins barely aroused him.
"Where are you, Mr. Robert?"
"Here," Bobby answered sleepily.
The butler walked to the lounge and looked over the back.
"To be sure, sir. I didn't see you here."
He held out a glass.
"Doctor Groom said you were to drink this. It would make you sleep, sir."
Bobby closed his eyes again.
"Put it on the table where I can reach it when I want it."
"Yes, sir. Mr. Robert! The policeman? Did he say anything, if I might make so bold as to ask?"
"Go away," Bobby groaned. "Leave me in peace."
And peace for a little time came to him. It was the sound of voices in the room that aroused him. He lay for a time, scarcely knowing where he was, but little by little the sickening truth came back, and he realized that it was Graham and the detective, Howells, who talked close to the window, and Graham had already fulfilled his promise.
Bobby didn't want to eavesdrop, but it was patent he would embarrass Graham by disclosing himself now, and it was likely Graham would be glad of a witness to anything the detective might say.
It was still light. A ray from the low sun entered the window and rested on the door of the enclosed staircase.
Graham's anxious demand was the first thing Bobby heard distinctly—the thing that warned him to remain secreted.
"I think now with the coroner on his way it's time you defined your suspicions a trifle more clearly. I am a lawyer. In a sense I represent young Mr. Blackburn. Please tell me why you are so sure his grandfather was murdered."
"All right," the detective's level voice came back. "Half an hour ago I would have said no again, but now I've got the evidence I wanted. I appreciate, Mr. Graham, that you're a friend of that young rascal, and what I have to say isn't pleasant for a friend to hear. But first you want to know why I'm so sure the case is murder, in spite of the doctor who made his diagnosis without really looking."
"Go on," Graham said softly.
Bobby waited—his nerves as tense as they had grown in the presence of the dead man.
"Two days ago," the detective went on quietly, "old Mr. Blackburn came to the court house in Smithtown and asked for the best detective the district attorney could put his hand on. I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but I've got away with one or two pretty fair jobs. I've had good offers from private firms in New York. So they turned him over to me. It was easy to see the old man was scared, just as his niece says he was last night. The funny part was he wouldn't say definitely what he was afraid of. I thought he might be shielding somebody until he was a little surer of his ground. He told me he was afraid of being murdered, and he wanted a good man he could call on to come out here to the Cedars if things got too hot for him. I can hear his voice now as distinctly as if he was standing where you are.
"'My heart's all right,' he said. 'It won't stop awhile yet unless it's made to. So if I'm found cold some fine morning you can be sure I was put out of the way.'
"I tried to pump him, naturally, but he wouldn't say another word except that he'd send for me if there was time. He didn't want any fuss made, and he gave me a handsome present to keep my mouth shut and not to bother him with any more questions. I figured—you can't blame me, Mr. Graham—that the old boy was a little cracked. So I took his money and let it go at that. I didn't think much more about it until they told me early this morning he lay dead here under peculiar circumstances."
"Odd!" Graham commented. "It does make it more like murder, Howells. But he doesn't look like a murdered man."
"When you know as much about crime as I do, Mr. Graham, you'll realize that murders which are a long time planning are likely to take on one of two appearances—suicide or natural death."
"All right," Graham said. "For the purpose of argument let us agree it's murder. Even so, why do you suspect young Blackburn?"
"Without a scrap of evidence it's plain as the nose on your face," the detective answered. "If old Blackburn had lived until this morning our young man would have been a pauper. As it is, he's a millionaire, but I don't think he'll enjoy his money. The two had been at sword's points for a long time. Robert hated the old man—never made any bones about it. You couldn't ask for a more damaging motive."
"You can't convict a man on motive," Graham said shortly. "You spoke of evidence."
"More," the detective replied, "than any jury in the land would ask."
Bobby held his breath, shrinking from this information, which, however, he realized it was better he should know.
"When I got here," the detective said, "I decided on the theory of murder to make a careful search as soon as day broke. I didn't have to wait for day, though, to find one crying piece of evidence. For a long time I was alone in the room with the body. Queer feeling about that room, Mr. Graham. Don't know how to describe it except to say it's uncomfortable. Too old, maybe. Maybe it was just being there alone with the dead man before the dawn, although I thought I was hardened to that sort of thing. Anyway, I didn't like it. To keep my spirits up, as well as to save time, I commenced searching the place with a candle. Nothing about the bed. Nothing in the closets or the bureau."
He grinned sheepishly.
"You know I kind of was afraid to open the closet doors. Then I got on my knees and looked under the bed. The light was bad and I didn't see anything at first. After a minute, close against the wall, I noticed something white. I reached in and pulled it out. It was a handkerchief, and it had a monogram, Mr. Graham—R. B. in purple and green."
He paused. Graham exclaimed sharply. Bobby felt the net tighten. If that evidence was conclusive to the others, how much more so was it for him! He recalled how, after awaking in the empty house, he had searched unsuccessfully in all his pockets for his handkerchief, intending to brush the dirt from his shoes.
"I went to his room," the detective hurried on, "and found a lot of his clothes and his stationery and his toilet articles marked with the same cipher. I knew my man had made a big mistake—the sort of mistake every criminal makes no matter how clever he is—and I had him. But that isn't, by any means, all. Don't look so distressed, Mr. Graham. There isn't the slightest chance for him. You see I repaired the lock, and, as soon as it was day, closed the room and went outside to look for signs. Since nightfall no one had come legitimately through the court except Doctor Groom and myself. Our footprints were all right—making a straight line along the path to the front door. In the soft earth by the fountain I found another and a smaller print, made by a very neat shoe, sir, and I said to myself: 'There is almost certainly the footprint of the murderer.'
"There were plenty of others coming across the grass. He'd evidently avoided the path. And there was one directly under the open window where the body lies. It's still there. Perhaps you can see it. No matter. That's the last one I found. The prints ceased there. There wasn't a one going back, and I was fair up a stump. Then I saw a little undefined sign of pressure on the grass, and I got an idea. 'Suppose,' I says, 'my man took his shoes off and went around in his stockinged feet!' I couldn't understand, though, why he hadn't thought of that before. I went back to Robert Blackburn's room and got one of his shoes, and ran into a snag again. The sole of the shoe was a trifle larger than the footprints. Every one of his shoes I tried was the same way. I argued that the handkerchief was enough, but I wanted this other evidence. I simply had to clear up these queer footprints.
"I figured, since the murder had been made to look so much like a natural death, that he'd come out here some time to-day, expecting to carry it off. I wanted to go to the station, anyway, to find out if he'd been seen coming through last night or early this morning. While I was talking to the station agent I had my one piece of luck. I couldn't believe my eyes. Mr. Robert walks up from the woods. He'd been hiding around the neighbourhood all the time. Probably had missed his handkerchief and decided he'd better not take any chances. Yet it must have seemed a pretty sure thing that the station wouldn't be watched, and it's those nervy things, doing the obvious, that skilful criminals get away with all the time. I needed only one look at him, and I had the answer to the mystery of the footprints. I gave him plenty of time to come here and change his clothes, then I manoeuvered him out of his room and went there and found the pumps he'd worn last night and to-day. You see, they'd be a little smaller than his ordinary shoes. Not only did they fit the footprints exactly, but they were stained with soil exactly like that in the court. There you are, sir. I've made a plaster cast of one of the prints. I've got it here in my pocket where I intend to keep it until I clear the whole case up and turn in my report."
Graham's tone was shocked and discouraged.
"What more do you want? Why haven't you arrested him?"
In this room the detective's satisfied chuckle was an offence.
"No good detective would ask that, Mr. Graham. I want my report clean. The coroner will tell us how the old man was killed. I want to tell how young Blackburn got into that room. One of the windows was raised a trifle, but that's no use. I've figured on the outside of the wing until I'm dizzy. There's no way up for a normal man. An orangoutang would make hard work of it. His latch key would have let him into the house, and it would have been simple enough for him to find out that the old man had changed his room. I've got to find out how he got past those doors, locked on the inside."
He chuckled again.
"Almost like a sleep-walker's work."
Bobby shivered. Was that where the evidence pointed? Already the net was too finely woven. The detective continued earnestly:
"I'm figuring on some scheme to make him show me the way. I've a sort of plan for to-night, but it's only a chance."
"What?" Graham asked.
"Oh, no, sir," Howells laughed. "You'll learn about that when the time comes."
"I don't understand you," Graham said. "You're sure of your man but you keep no close watch on him. Do you know where he is now?"
"Haven't the slightest idea, Mr. Graham."
"What's to prevent his running away?"
"I'm offering him every opportunity. He wouldn't get far, and I've a feeling that if he confessed by running he'd break down and give up the whole thing. You've no idea how it frets me, Mr. Graham. I've got my man practically in the chair, but from a professional point of view it isn't a pretty piece of work until I find out how he got in and out of that room. The thing seems impossible, and yet here we are, knowing that he did it. Well, maybe I'll find out to-night. Hello!"
The door opened. Bobby from his hiding place could see Paredes on the threshold, yawning and holding a cigarette in his fingers.
"Here you are," he said drowsily. "I've just been in the court. It made me seek company. That court's too damp, Mr. Detective."
His laugh was lackadaisical.
"When the sun leaves it, the court seems full of, unfriendly things—what the ignorant would call, ghosts. I'm Spanish and I know."
The detective grunted.
"Funny!" Paredes went on. "Observation doesn't seem to interest you. I'd rather fancied it might."
He yawned again and put his cigarette to his lips. Puffing placidly, he turned and left.
"What do you suppose he means by that?" the detective said to Graham.
Without waiting for an answer he followed Paredes from the room. Graham went after him. Bobby threw back the rug and arose. For a moment he was as curious as the others as to Paredes's intention. He slipped across the dining room. The hall was deserted. The front door stood open. From the court came Paredes's voice, even, languid, wholly without expression:
"Mean to tell me you don't react to the proximity of unaccountable forces here, Mr. Howells?"
The detective's laugh was disagreeable.
"You trying to make a fool of me? That isn't healthy."
As Bobby hurried across the hall and up the stairs he heardParedes answer:
"You should speak to Doctor Groom. He says this place is too crowded by the unpleasant past—"
Bobby climbed out of hearing. He entered his bedroom and locked the door. He resented Paredes's words and attitude which he defined as studied to draw humour out of a tragic and desperate situation. He thought of them in no other way. His tired mind dismissed them. He threw himself on the bed, muttering:
"If I run away I'm done for. If I stay I'm done for."
He took a fierce twisted joy in one phase of the situation.
"If I was there last night," he thought, "Howells will never find out how I got into the room, because, no matter what trap he sets, I can't tell him."
His leaden weariness closed his eyes. For a few minutes he slept again.
Once more it was a voice that awakened him—this time a woman's, raised in a scream. He sprang up, flung open the door, and stumbled into the corridor. Katherine stood there, holding her dressing gown about her with trembling hands. The face she turned to Bobby was white and panic-stricken. She beckoned, and he followed her to the main hall. The others came tearing up the stairs—Graham, Paredes, the detective, and the black and gigantic doctor.
In answer to their quick questions she whispered breathlessly:
"I heard. It was just like last night. It came across the court and stole in at my window."
She shook. She stretched out her hands in a terrified appeal.
"Somebody—something moved in that room where he—he's dead."
"Nonsense," the detective said. "Both doors are locked, and I have the keys in my pocket."
Paredes fumbled with a cigarette.
"You're forgetting what I said about my sensitive apprehension of strange things—"
The detective interrupted him loudly, confidently:
"I tell you the room is empty except for the murdered man—unless someone's broken down a door."
Katherine cried out:
"No. I heard that same stirring. Something moved in there."
The detective turned brusquely and entered the old corridor.
"We'll see."
The others followed. Katherine was close to Bobby. He touched her hand.
"He's right, Katherine. No one's there. No one could have been there. You mustn't give way like this. I'm depending on you—on your faith."
She pressed his hand, but her assurance didn't diminish.
The key scraped in the lock. They crowded through the doorway after the detective. He struck a match and lighted the candle. He held it over the bed. He sprang back with a sharp cry, unlike his level quality, his confident conceit. He pointed. They all approximated his helpless gesture, his blank amazement. For on the bed had occurred an abominable change.
The body of Silas Blackburn no longer lay peacefully on its back. It had been turned on its side, and remained in a stark and awkward attitude. For the first time the back of the head was disclosed.
Their glances focussed there—on the tiny round hole at the base of the brain, on the pillow where the head had rested and which they saw now was stained with an ugly and irregular splotch of blood.
Bobby saw the candle quiver at last in the detective's hand. The man strode to the door leading to the private hall and examined the lock.
"Both doors," he said, "were locked. There was no way in—"
He turned to the others, spreading his hands in justification. The candle, which he seemed to have forgotten, cast gross, moving shadows over his face and over the face of the dead man.
"At least you'll all grant me now that he was murdered."
They continued to stare at the body of Silas Blackburn. Cold for many hours, it was as if he had made this atrocious revealing movement to assure them that he had, indeed, been murdered; to expose to their startled eyes the sly and deadly method.
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 wordHowells 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."