Graham glanced at Bobby.
"When," he asked, "did you see her last?"
"It was before luncheon yesterday."
"Did she leave no instructions? Didn't she say when she would be back?"
The girl nodded.
"That's what worries me, for she said she would be back after the performance last night."
"She left no instructions?" Graham repeated.
"Only that if any one called or telephoned I was to make no appointments. What am I to do? Perhaps I shouldn't be talking to you. She would never forgive me for an indiscretion."
"For the present I advise you to do nothing," Graham said. "You can safely leave all that to her managers. I am going to see them now. I will tell them what you have said."
The girl's eyes moistened.
"Thank you, sir. I have been at my wits' end."
Apparently she withheld nothing. She played no part to confuse the dancer's friends.
On the way to the managers' office, with the trailing car behind them,Graham reasoned excitedly:
"For the first time we seem to be actually on the track. Here's a tangible clue that may lead to the heart of the case. Maria pulled the wool over the maid's eyes, too. She didn't want her to know her plans, but her instructions show that she had no intention of returning last night. She probably made a bee line for the Cedars. It was probably she that you saw at the lake, probably she who cried last night. If only she hadn't written that note! I can't get the meaning of it. It's up to her managers now. If they haven't heard from her it's a safe guess she's playing a deep game, connected with the crying, and the light at the deserted house, and the disappearance of Paredes before dawn. You must realize the connection between that and your condition the other evening after you had left them."
Bobby nodded. He began to hope that at the managers' office they would receive no explanation of Maria's absence destructive to Graham's theory. Early as it was they found a bald-headed man in his shirt sleeves pacing with an air of panic a blantantly furnished office.
"Well!" he burst out as they entered. "My secretary tells me you've come about this temperamental Carmen of mine. Tell me where she is. Quick!"
Graham smiled at Bobby. The manager ran his fingers across his bald and shining forehead.
"It's no laughing matter."
"Then she has definitely disappeared?" Graham said.
"Disappeared! Why did I come down at this ungodly hour except on the chance of getting some word? She didn't even telephone last night. I had to show myself in front of the curtain and give them a spiel about a sudden indisposition. And believe me, gentlemen, audiences ain't what they used to be. Did these ginks sit back and take the show for what it was worth? Not by a darn sight. Flocked to the box office and howled for their money back. If she doesn't appear to-night I might as well close the house. I'll be ruined."
"Unless," Graham suggested, "you get your press agent to make capital out of her absence. The papers would publish her picture and thousands of people would look her up for you."
The manager ceased his perplexed massage of his forehead. He shook hands genially.
"I'd thought of that with some frills. 'Has beautiful dancer met foul play? Millions in jewels on her person when last seen.' Old stuff, but they rise to it."
"That will help," Graham said to Bobby when they were in the car again. "The reporters will find Maria quicker than any detective I can put my hand on. My man evidently fell down because she had gone before I got him on the case." At his office they learned that was the fact. The private detective had been able to get no slightest clue as to Maria's whereabouts. Moreover, Bobby's description of the stranger who had entered the cafe with her merely suggested a type familiar to the Tenderloin. For purposes of identification it was worthless. Always followed by the car from Smithtown, they went to the hotel where Paredes had lived, to a number of his haunts. Bobby talked with men who knew him, but he learned nothing. Paredes's friends had had no word since the man's departure for the Cedars the day before. So they turned their backs on the city, elated by the significance of Maria's absence, yet worried by the search and the watchful car which never lost sight of them. When they were in the country Graham sighed his relief. "You haven't been stopped. Therefore, nothing was found at your apartment, but if that wasn't planted why should Maria have sent an incriminating note there?" "Unless," Bobby answered, "she told the truth. Unless she was sincere when she mailed it. Unless she learned something important between the time she wrote it and her disappearance from her home."
"Frankly, Bobby," Graham said, "the note and the circumstances under which it came to you are as damaging as the footprints and the handkerchief, but it doesn't tell us how any human being could have entered that room to commit the murders and disturb the bodies. At least we've got one physical fact, and I'm going to work on that."
"If it is Maria prowling around the Cedars," Bobby said, "she's amazingly slippery, and with Paredes gone what are you going to do with your physical fact? And how does it explain the friendly influence that wiped out my footprints? Is it a friendly or an evil influence that snatched away the evidence and that keeps it secreted?"
"We'll see," Graham said. "I'm going after a flesh-and-blood criminal who isn't you. I'm going to try to find out what your grandfather was afraid of the night of his murder."
After a time he glanced up.
"You've known Paredes for a long time, Bobby, but I don't think you've ever told me how you met him."
"A couple of years ago I should think," Bobby answered. "Somebody brought him to the club. I've forgotten who. Carlos was working for a big Panama importing firm. He was trying to interest this chap in the New York end. I saw him off and on after that and got to like him for his quiet manner and a queer, dry wit he had in those days. Two or three months ago he—he seemed to fit into my humour, and we became pretty chummy as you know. Even after last night I hate to believe he's my enemy."
"He's your enemy," Graham answered, "and last night's the weak joint in his armour. I wonder if Robinson didn't scare him away by threatening to question him. Paredes isn't connected with that company now, is he? I gather he has no regular position."
"No. He's picked up one or two temporary things with the fruit companies. More than his running away, the thing that worries me about Carlos is his ridiculous suspicion of Katherine."
He told Graham in detail of that conversation. Graham frowned. He opened the throttle wider. Their anxiety increased to know what had happened at the Cedars since their departure. The outposts of the forest imposed silence, closed eagerly about them, seemed to welcome them to its dead loneliness. There was a man on guard at the gate. They hurried past. The house showed no sign of life, but when they entered the court Bobby saw Katherine at her window, doubtless attracted by the sounds of their arrival. Her face brightened, but she raised her arms in a gesture suggestive of despair.
"Does she mean the evidence has been found?" Bobby asked.
Graham made no attempt to conceal his real interest, the impulse at the back of all his efforts in Bobby's behalf.
"More likely Robinson has worried the life out of her since we've been gone. I oughtn't to have left her. I set the trap myself."
When they were in the house their halting curiosity was lost in a vast surprise. The hall was empty but they heard voices in the library. They hurried across the dining room, pausing in the doorway, staring with unbelieving eyes at the accustomed picture they had least expected to see.
Paredes lounged on the divan, smoking with easy indifference. His clothing and his shoes were spotless. He had shaved, and his beard had been freshly trimmed. Rawlins and the district attorney stood in front of the fireplace, studying him with perplexed eyes. The persistence of their regard even after Bobby's entrance suggested to him that the evidence remained secreted, that the officers, under the circumstances, were scarcely interested in his return. He was swept himself into an explosive amazement:
"Carlos! What the deuce are you doing here?"
The Panamanian expelled a cloud of smoke. He smiled.
"Resting after a fatiguing walk."
In his unexpected presence Bobby fancied a demolition of the hope Graham and he had brought back from the city. He couldn't imagine guilt lurking behind that serene manner.
"Where did you come from? What were you up to last night?"
There was no accounting for Paredes's daring, he told himself, no accounting for his easy gesture now as he drew again at his cigarette and tossed it in the fireplace.
"These gentlemen," he said, "have been asking just that question. I'm honoured. I had no idea my movements were of such interest. I've told them that I took a stroll. The night was over. There was no point in going to bed, and all day I had been without exercise."
"Yet," Graham said harshly, "you have had practically no sleep since you came here."
Paredes nodded.
"Very distressing, isn't it?"
"Maybe," Rawlins sneered, "you'll tell us why you went on tiptoe, and I suppose you didn't hear a woman crying in the woods?"
"That's just it," Paredes answered. "I did hear something like that, and it occurred to me to follow such a curious sound. So I went on tiptoe, as you call it."
"Why," Robinson exclaimed angrily, "you walked in the lake to hide your tracks!"
Paredes smiled.
"It was very dark. That was chance. Quite silly of me. My feet got wet."
"I gather," Rawlins said, "it was chance that took you to the deserted house."
Paredes shook his head.
"Don't you think I was as much puzzled as the rest by that strange, disappearing light? It was as good a place to walk as any."
"Where have you been since?" Graham asked.
"When I had got there I was tired," Paredes answered. "Since it wasn't far to the station I thought I'd go on into Smithtown and have a bath and rest. But I assure you I've trudged back from the station just now."
Suddenly he repeated the apparently absurd formula he had used with Howells.
"You know the court seems full of unfriendly things—what the ignorant would call ghosts. I'm Spanish and I know." After a moment he added: "The woods, too. I shouldn't care to wander through them too much after dark."
Robinson stared, but Rawlins brushed the question aside.
"What hotel did you go to in Smithtown?"
"It's called the 'New.' Nothing could be farther from the fact."
"Shall I see if that's straight, sir?"
The district attorney agreed, and Rawlins left the room. Paredes laughed.
"How interesting! I'm under suspicion. It would be something, wouldn't it, to commit crimes with the devilish ingenuity of these? No, no, Mr. District Attorney, look to the ghosts. They alone are sufficiently clever. But I might say, since you take this attitude, that I don't care to answer any more questions until you discover something that might give you the right to ask them."
He lay back on the divan, languidly lighting another cigarette. Graham beckoned Robinson. Bobby followed them out, suspecting Graham's purpose, unwilling that action should be taken too hastily against the Panamanian; for even now guilty knowledge seemed incompatible with Paredes's polished reserve. When he joined the others, indeed, Graham with an aggressive air was demanding the district attorney's intentions.
"If he could elude you so easily last night, it's common sense to put him where you can find him in case of need. He's given you excuse enough."
"The man's got me guessing," Robinson mused, "but there are other elements."
"What's happened since we left?" Graham asked quickly. "Have you got any trace of Howells's evidence?"
Robinson smiled enigmatically, but his failure was apparent.
"I'm like Howells," he said. "I'd risk nearly anything myself to learn how the room was entered, how the crimes were committed, how those poor devils were made to alter their positions."
"So," Bobby said, "you had my rooms in New York searched. You had me followed to-day. It's ridiculous."
Robinson ignored him. He stepped to the front door, opened it, and looked around the court.
"What did the sphinx mean about ghosts in the court?"
They walked out, gazing helplessly at the trampled grass about the fountain, at the melancholy walls, at the partly opened window of the room of mystery.
"He knows something," Robinson mused. "Maybe you're right, Mr. Graham, but I wonder if I oughtn't to go farther and take you all."
Graham smiled uncomfortably, but Bobby knew why the official failed to follow that radical course. Like Howells, he hesitated to remove from the Cedars the person most likely to solve its mystery. As long as a chance remained that Howells had been right about Bobby he would give Silas Blackburn's grandson his head, merely making sure, as he had done this morning, that there should be no escape. He glanced up.
"I wonder if our foreigner's laughing at me now."
Graham made a movement toward the door.
"We might," he said significantly, "find that out without disturbing him."
Robinson nodded and led the way silently back to the house. Such a method was repugnant to Bobby, and he followed at a distance. Then he saw from the movements of the two men ahead that the library had again offered the unexpected, and he entered. Paredes was no longer in the room. Bobby was about to speak, but Robinson shook his head angrily, raising his hand in a gesture of warning. All three strained forward, listening, and Bobby caught the sound that had arrested the others—a stealthy scraping that would have been inaudible except through such a brooding silence as pervaded the old house.
Bobby's interest quickened at this confirmation of Graham's theory. There was a projection of cold fear, moreover, in its sly allusion. It gave to his memory of Paredes, with his tall, graceful figure, his lack of emotion, his inscrutable eyes, and his pointed beard, a suggestion nearly satanic. For the stealthy scraping had come from behind the closed door of the private staircase. Howells had gone up that staircase. None of them could forget for a moment that it led to the private hall outside the room in which the murders had been committed.
It occurred to Bobby that the triumph Graham's face expressed was out of keeping with the man. It disturbed him nearly as thoroughly as Paredes's stealthy presence in that place.
"We've got him," Graham whispered.
Robinson's bulky figure moved cautiously toward the door. He grasped the knob, swung the door open, and stepped back, smiling his satisfaction.
Half way down the staircase Paredes leaned against the wall, one foot raised and outstretched, as though an infinitely quiet descent had been interrupted. The exposure had been too quick for his habit. His face failed to hide its discomfiture. His laugh rang false.
"Hello!"
"I'm afraid we've caught you, Paredes," Graham said, and the triumph blazed now in his voice.
What Paredes did then was more startling, more out of key than any of his recent actions. He came precipitately down. His eyes were dangerous. As Bobby watched the face whose quiet had at last been tempestuously destroyed, he felt that the man was capable of anything under sufficient provocation.
"Got me for what?" he snarled.
"Tell us why you were sneaking up there. In connection with your little excursion before dawn it suggests a guilty knowledge."
Paredes straightened. He shrugged his shoulders. With an admirable effort of the will he smoothed the rage from his face, but for Bobby the satanic suggestion lingered.
"Why do you suppose I'm here?" he said in a restrained voice that scarcely rose above a whisper. "To help Bobby. I was simply looking around for Bobby's sake."
That angered Bobby. He wanted to cry out against the supposed friend who had at last shown his teeth.
"That," Graham laughed, "is why you sneaked, why you didn't make any noise, why you lost your temper when we caught you at it? What about it, Mr. District Attorney?"
Robinson stepped forward.
"Nothing else to do, Mr. Graham. He's too slippery. I'll put him in a safe place."
"You mean," Paredes cried, "that you'll arrest me?"
"You've guessed it. I'll lock you up as a material witness."
Paredes swung on Bobby.
"You'll permit this, Bobby? You'll forget that I am a guest in your house?"
Bobby flushed.
"Why have you stayed? What were you doing up there? Answer those questions. Tell me what you want."
Paredes turned away. He took a cigarette from his pocket and lighted it.His fingers were not steady. For the first time, it became evident toBobby, Paredes was afraid. Rawlins came back from the telephone. He tookin the tableau.
"What's the rumpus?"
"Run this man to Smithtown," Robinson directed. "Lock him up, and tell the judge, when he's arraigned in the morning, that I want him held as a material witness."
"He was at the hotel in Smithtown all right," Rawlins said.
He tapped Paredes's arm.
"You coming on this little joy ride like a lamb or a lion? Say, you'll find the jail about as comfortable as the New Hotel."
Paredes smiled. The evil and dangerous light died in his eyes. He became all at once easy and impervious again.
"Like a lamb. How else?"
"I'm sorry, Carlos," Bobby muttered. "If you'd only say something! If you'd only explain your movements! If you'd only really help!"
Again Paredes shrugged his shoulders.
"Handcuffs?" he asked Rawlins.
Rawlins ran his hands deftly over the Panamanian's clothing.
"No armed neutrality for me," he grinned. "All right. We'll forget the bracelets since you haven't a gun."
Puffing at his cigarette, Paredes got his coat and hat and followed the detective from the house.
Robinson and Graham climbed the private staircase to commence another systematic search of the hall, to discover, if they could, the motive for Paredes's stealthy presence there. Bobby accepted greedily this opportunity to find Katherine, to learn from her, undisturbed, what had happened in the house that morning, the meaning, perhaps, of her despairing gesture. When, in response to his knock, she opened her door and stepped into the corridor he guessed her despair had been an expression of the increased strain, of her helplessness in face of Robinson's harsh determination.
"He questioned me for an hour," she said, "principally about the heel mark in the court. They cling to that, because I don't think they've found anything new at the lake."
"You don't know anything about it, do you, Katherine? You weren't there?You didn't do that for me?"
"I wasn't there, Bobby. I honestly don't know any more about it than you do."
"Carlos was in the court," he mused. "Did you know they'd taken him? We found him creeping down the private stairway."
There was a hard quality about her gratitude.
"I am glad, Bobby. The man makes me shudder, and all morning they seemed more interested in you than in him. They've rummaged every room—even mine."
She laughed feverishly.
"That's why I've been so upset. They seemed—" She broke off. She picked at her handkerchief. After a moment she looked him frankly in the eyes and continued: "They seemed almost as doubtful of me as of you."
He recalled Paredes's suspicion of the girl.
"It's nonsense, Katherine. And I'm to blame for that, too."
She put her finger to her lips. Her smile was wistful.
"Hush! You mustn't blame yourself. You mustn't think of that."
Again her solicitude, their isolation in a darkened place, tempted him, aroused impulses nearly irresistible. Her slender figure, the pretty face, grown familiar and more desirable through all these years, swept him to a harsher revolt than he had conquered in the library. In the face of Graham, in spite of his own intolerable position he knew he couldn't fight that truth eternally. She must have noticed his struggle without grasping its cause, for she touched his hand, and the wistfulness of her expression increased.
"I wish you wouldn't think of me, Bobby. It's you we must all think of."
He accepted with a cold dismay the sisterly anxiety of her attitude. It made his renunciation easier. He walked away.
"Why do you go?" she called after him.
He gestured vaguely, without turning.
He didn't see her again until dinner time. She was as silent then as she had been the night before when Howells had sat with them, his moroseness veiling a sharp interest in the plan that was to lead to his death. Robinson's mood was very different. He talked a great deal, making no effort to hide his irritation. His failure to find any clue in the private staircase after Paredes's arrest had clearly stimulated his interest in Bobby. The sharp little eyes, surrounded by puffy flesh, held a threat for him. Bobby was glad when the meal ended.
Howells's body was taken away that night. It was a relief for all of them to know that the old room was empty again.
"I daresay you won't sleep there," Graham said to Robinson.
Robinson glanced at Bobby.
"Not as things stand," he answered. "The library lounge is plenty good enough for me tonight."
Graham went upstairs with Bobby. There was no question about his purpose. He wouldn't repeat last night's mistake.
"At least," he said, when the door was closed behind them, "I can see if you do get up and wander about in your sleep. I'd bet a good deal that you won't."
"If I did it would be an indication?"
"Granted it's your custom, what is there to tempt you to-night?"
Bobby answered, half jesting:
"You've not forgotten Robinson on the library sofa. The man isn't exactly working for me. Tonight he seems almost as unfriendly as Howells was."
He yawned.
"I ought to sleep now if ever. I've seldom been so tired. Two such nights!"
He hesitated.
"But I am glad you're here, Hartley. I can go to sleep with a more comfortable feeling."
"Don't worry," Graham said. "You'll sleep quietly enough, and we'll all be better for a good rest."
For only a little while they talked of the mystery. While Graham regretted his failure to find any trace of Maria, their voices dwindled sleepily. Bobby recalled his last thought before losing himself last night. He tried to force from his mind now the threat in Robinson's eyes. He told himself again and again that the man wasn't actually unfriendly. Then the blackness encircled him. He slept.
Almost at once, it seemed to him, he was fighting away, demanding drowsily:
"What's the matter? Leave me alone."
He heard Graham's voice, unnaturally subdued and anxious.
"What are you doing, Bobby?"
Then Bobby knew he was no longer in his bed, that he stood instead in a cold place; and the meaning of his position came with a rush of sick terror.
"Get hold of yourself," Graham said. "Come back."
Bobby opened his eyes. He was in the upper hall at the head of the stairs. Unconsciously he had been about to creep quietly down, perhaps to the library. Graham had awakened him. It seemed to offer the answer to everything. It seemed to give outline to a monstrous familiar that drowned his real self in the black pit while it conducted his body to the commission of unspeakable crimes.
He lurched into the bedroom and sat shivering on the bed. Graham entered and quietly closed the door.
"What time is it?" Bobby asked hoarsely.
"Half-past two. I don't think Robinson was aroused."
The damp moon gave an ominous unreality to the room.
"What did I do?" Bobby whispered.
"Got softly out of bed and went to the hall. It was uncanny. You were like an automaton. I didn't wake you at once. You see, I—I thought you might go to the old room."
Bobby shook again. He drew a blanket about his shoulders.
"And you believed I'd show the way in and out, but the room was empty, soI was going downstairs—"
He shuddered.
"Good God! Then it's all true. I did it for the money. I put Howells out to protect myself. I was going after Robinson. It's true. Hartley! Tell me. Do you think it's true?"
Graham turned away.
"Don't ask me to say anything to help you just now," he answered huskily, "for after this I don't dare, Bobby. I don't dare."
Bobby returned to his bed. He lay there still shivering, beneath the heavy blankets. "I don't dare!" He echoed Graham's words. "There's nothing else any one can say. I must decide what to do. I must think it over."
But, as always, thought brought no release. It merely insisted that the case against him was proved. At last he had been seen slipping unconsciously from his room—and at the same hour. All that remained was to learn how he had accomplished the apparent miracles. Then no excuse would remain for not going to Robinson and confessing. The woman at the lake and in the courtyard, the movement of the body and the vanishing of the evidence under his hand, Paredes's odd behaviour, all became in his mind puzzling details that failed to obscure the chief fact. After this something must be done about Paredes's detention.
He hadn't dreamed that his weariness could placate even momentarily such reflections, but at last he slept again. He was aroused by the tramping of men around the house, and strange, harsh voices. He raised himself on his elbow and glanced from the window. It had long been daylight. Two burly fellows in overalls, carrying pick and spade across their shoulders, pushed through the underbrush at the edge of the clearing. He turned. Graham, fully dressed, stood at the side of the bed.
"Those men?" Bobby asked wearily.
"The grave diggers," Graham answered. "They are going to work in the old cemetery to prepare a place for Silas Blackburn with his fathers. That's why I've come to wake you up. The minister's telephoned Katherine. He will be here before noon. Do you know it's after ten o'clock?"
For some time Bobby stared through the window at the desolate, ragged landscape. It was abnormally cold even for the late fall. Dull clouds obscured the sun and furnished an illusion of crowding earthward.
"A funereal day."
The words slipped into his mind. He repeated them.
"When your grandfather's buried," Graham answered softly, "we'll all feel happier."
"Why?" Bobby asked. "It won't lessen the fact of his murder."
"Time," Graham said, "lessens such facts—even for the police."
Bobby glanced at him, flushing.
"You mean you've decided to stand by me after what happened last night?"
Graham smiled.
"I've thought it all over. I slept like a top last night. I heard nothing. I saw nothing."
"Ought I to want you to stand by me?" Bobby said. "Oughtn't I to make a clean breast of it? At least I must do something about Paredes."
Graham frowned.
"It's hard to believe he had any connection with your sleep-walking last night, yet it's as clear as ever that Maria and he are up to some game in which you figure."
"He shouldn't be in jail," Bobby persisted.
"Get up," Graham advised. "Bathe, and have some breakfast, then we can decide. There's no use talking of the other thing. I've forgotten it. As far as possible you must."
Bobby sprang upright.
"How can I forget it? If it was hard to face sleep before, what do you think it is now? Have I any right—"
"Don't," Graham said. "I'll be with you again to-night. If I were satisfied beyond the shadow of a doubt I'd advise you to confess, but I can't be until I know what Maria and Paredes are doing."
When Bobby had bathed and dressed he found, in spite of his mental turmoil, that his sleep had done him good. While he breakfasted Graham urged him to eat, tried to drive from his brain the morbid aftermath of last night's revealing moment.
"The manager took my advice, but Maria's still missing. Her pictures are in most of the papers. There have been reporters here this morning, about the murders."
He strolled over and handed Bobby a number of newspapers.
"Where's Robinson?" Bobby asked.
"I saw him in the court a while ago. I daresay he's wandering around—perhaps watching the men at the grave."
"He learned nothing new last night?"
"I was with him at breakfast. I gather not."
Bobby looked up.
"Isn't that an automobile coming through the woods?" he asked.
"Maybe Rawlins back from Smithtown, or the minister."
The car stopped at the entrance of the court. They heard the remote tinkling of the front door bell. Jenkins passed through. The cold air invading the hall and the dining room told them he had opened the door. His sharp exclamation recalled Howells's report which, at their direction, he had failed to mail. Had his exclamation been drawn by an accuser? Bobby started to rise. Graham moved toward the door. Then Jenkins entered and stood to one side. Bobby shared his astonishment, for Paredes walked in, unbuttoning his overcoat, the former easy-mannered, uncommunicative foreigner. He appeared, moreover, to have slept pleasantly. His eyes showed no weariness, his clothing no disarrangement. He spoke at once, quite as if nothing disagreeable had shadowed his departure.
"Good morning. If I had dreamed of this change in the weather I would have brought a heavier overcoat. I've nearly frozen driving from Smithtown."
Before either man could grope for a suitable greeting he faced Bobby. He felt in his pockets with whimsical discouragement.
"Fact is, Bobby, I left New York too suddenly. I hadn't noticed until a little while ago. You see I spent a good deal in Smithtown yesterday."
Bobby spoke with an obvious confusion:
"What do you mean, Carlos? I thought you were—"
Graham interrupted with a flat demand for an explanation.
"How did you get away?"
Paredes waved his hand.
"Later, Mr. Graham. There is a hack driver outside who is even more suspicious than you. He wants to be paid. I asked Rawlins to drive me back, but he rushed from the courthouse, probably to telephone his rotund superior. Fact is, this fellow wants five dollars—an outrageous rate. I've told him so—but it doesn't do any good. So will you lend me Bobby—"
Bobby handed him a banknote. He didn't miss Graham's meaning glance.Paredes gave the money to the butler.
"Pay him, will you, Jenkins? Thanks."
He surveyed the remains of Bobby's breakfast. He sat down.
"May I? My breakfast was early, and prison food, when you're not in the habit—"
Bobby tried to account for Paredes's friendly manner. That he should have come back at all was sufficiently strange, but it was harder to understand why he should express no resentment for his treatment yesterday, why he should fail to refer to Bobby's questions at the moment of his arrest, or to the openly expressed enmity of Graham. Only one theory promised to fit at all. It was necessary for the Panamanian to return to the Cedars. His purpose, whatever it was, compelled him to remain for the present in the mournful, tragic house. Therefore, he would crush his justifiable anger. He would make it practically impossible for Bobby to refuse his hospitality. And he had asked for money—only a trifling sum, yet Graham would grasp at the fact to support his earlier suspicion.
Paredes's arrival possessed one virtue: It diverted Bobby's thoughts temporarily from his own dilemma, from his inability to chart a course.
Graham, on the other hand, was ill at ease. Beyond a doubt he was disarmed by Paredes's good humour. For him yesterday's incident was not so lightly to be passed over. Eventually his curiosity conquered. The words came, nevertheless, with some difficulty:
"We scarcely expected you back."
His laugh was short and embarrassed.
"We took it for granted you would find it necessary to stay in Smithtown for a while."
Paredes sipped the coffee which Jenkins had poured.
"Splendid coffee! You should have tasted what I had this morning. Simple enough, Mr. Graham. I telephoned as soon as Rawlins got me to the Bastille. I communicated with the lawyer who represents the company for which I once worked. He's a prominent and brilliant man. He planned it with some local fellow. When I was arraigned at the opening of court this morning the judge could hold me only as a material witness. He fixed a pretty stiff bail, but the local lawyer was there with a bondsman, and I came back. My clothes are here. You don't mind, Bobby?"
That moment in the hall when Graham had awakened him urged Bobby to reply with a genuine warmth:
"I don't mind. I'm glad you're out of it. I'm sorry you went as you did. I was tired, at my wits' end. Your presence in the private staircase was the last straw. You will forgive us, Carlos?"
Paredes smiled. He put down his coffee cup and lighted a cigarette. He smoked with a vast contentment.
"That's better. Nothing to forgive, Bobby. Let us call it a misunderstanding."
Graham moved closer.
"Perhaps you'll tell us now what you were doing in the private staircase."
Paredes blew a wreath of smoke. His eyes still smiled, but his voice was harder:
"Bygones are bygones. Isn't that so, Bobby?"
"Since you wish it," Bobby said.
But more important than the knowledge Graham desired, loomed the old question. What was the man's game? What held him here?
Robinson entered. The flesh around his eyes was puffier than it had been yesterday. Worry had increased the incongruous discontent of his round face. Clearly he had slept little.
"I saw you arrive," he said. "Rawlins warned me. But I must say I didn't think you'd use your freedom to come to us."
Paredes laughed.
"Since the law won't hold me at your convenience in Smithtown I keep myself at your service here—if Bobby permits it. Could you ask more?"
Bobby shrank from the man with whom he had idled away so much time and money. That fleeting, satanic impression of yesterday came back, sharper, more alarming. Paredes's clear challenge to the district attorney was the measure of his strength. His mind was subtler than theirs. His reserve and easy daring mastered them all; and always, as now, he laughed at the futility of their efforts to sound his purposes, to limit his freedom of action. Bobby didn't care to meet the uncommunicative eyes whose depths he had never been able to explore. Was there a special power there that could control the destinies of other people, that might make men walk unconsciously to accomplish the ends of an unscrupulous brain?
The district attorney appeared as much at sea as the others.
"Thanks," he said dryly to Paredes.
And glancing at Bobby, he asked with a hollow scorn:
"You've no objection to the gentleman visiting you for the present?"
"If he wishes," Bobby answered, a trifle amused at Robinson's obvious fancy of a collusion between Paredes and himself.
Robinson jerked his head toward the window.
"I've been watching the preparations out there. I guess when he's laid away you'll be thinking about having the will read."
"No hurry," Bobby answered with a quick intake of breath.
"I suppose not," Robinson sneered, "since everybody knows well enough what's in it."
Bobby arose. Robinson still sneered.
"You'll be at the grave—as chief mourner?"
Bobby walked from the room. He hadn't cared to reply. He feared, as it was, that he had let slip his increased self-doubt. He put on his coat and hat and left the house. The raw cold, the year's first omen of winter, made his blood run quicker, forced into his mind a cleansing stimulation. But almost immediately even that prophylactic was denied him. With his direction a matter of indifference, chance led him into the thicket at the side of the house. He had walked some distance. The underbrush had long interposed a veil between him and the Cedars above whose roofs smoke wreathed in the still air like fantastic figures weaving a shroud to lower over the time-stained, melancholy walls. For once he was grateful to the forest because it had forbidden him to glance perpetually back at that dismal and pensive picture. Then he became aware of twigs hastily lopped off, of bushes bent and torn, of the uncovering, through these careless means, of an old path. Simultaneously there reached his ears the scraping of metal implements in the soft soil, the dull thud of earth falling regularly. He paused, listening. The labour of the men was given an uncouth rhythm by their grunting expulsions of breath. Otherwise the nature of their industry and its surroundings had imposed upon them a silence, in itself beast-like and unnatural.
At last a harsh voice came to Bobby. Its brevity pointed the previous dumbness of the speaker:
"Deep enough!"
And Bobby turned and hurried back along the roughly restored path, as if fleeing from an immaterial thing suddenly quickened with the power of accusation.
He could picture the fresh oblong excavation in the soil of the family burial ground. He could see where the men had had to tear bushes from among the graves in order to insert their tools. There was an ironical justice in the condition of the old cemetery. It had received no interment since the death of Katherine's father. Like everything about the Cedars, Silas Blackburn had delivered it to the swift, obliterating fingers of time. If the old man in his selfishness had paused to gaze beyond the inevitable fact of death, Bobby reflected, he would have guarded with a more precious interest the drapings of his final sleep.
This necessary task on which Bobby had stumbled had made the thicket less congenial than the house. As he walked back he forecasted with a keen apprehension his approaching ordeal. It would, doubtless, be more difficult to endure than Howells's experiment over Silas Blackburn's body in the old room. Could he witness the definite imprisonment of his grandfather in a narrow box; could he watch the covering earth fall noisily in that bleak place of silence without displaying for Robinson the guilt that impressed him more and more?
A strange man appeared, walking from the direction of the house. His black clothing, relieved only by narrow edges of white cuffs between the sleeves and the heavy mourning gloves, fitted with solemn harmony into the landscape and Bobby's mood. Such a figure was appropriate to the Cedars. Bobby stepped to one side, placing a screen of dead foliage between himself and the man whose profession it was to mourn. He emerged from the forest and saw again the leisurely weaving of the smoke shroud above the house. Then his eyes were drawn by the restless movements of a pair of horses, standing in the shafts of a black wagon at the court entrance, and his ordeal became like a vast morass which offers no likely path yet whose crossing is the price of salvation.
He was glad to see Graham leave the court and hurry toward him.
"I was coming to hunt you up, Bobby. The minister's arrived. So hasDoctor Groom. Everything's about ready."
"Doctor Groom?"
"Yes. He used to see a good deal of your grandfather. It's natural enough he should be here."
Bobby agreed indifferently. They walked slowly back to the house. Graham made it plain that his mind was far from the sad business ahead.
"What do you think of Paredes coming back as if nothing were wrong?" he asked. "He ignores what happened yesterday. He settles himself in the Cedars again."
"I don't know what to think of it," Bobby answered. "This morning Carlos gave me the creeps."
Graham glanced at him curiously. He spoke with pronounced deliberation, startling Bobby; for this friend expressed practically the thought that Paredes's arrival had driven into his own mind.
"Gave me the creeps, too. Makes me surer than ever that he has an abominably deep purpose in using his wits to hang on here. He suggests resources as hard to understand as anything that has happened in the old room. You'll confess, Bobby, he's had a good deal of influence over you—an influence for evil?"
"I've liked to go around with him, if that's what you mean."
"Isn't he the cause of the last two or three months nonsense inNew York?"
"I won't blame Carlos for that," Bobby muttered.
"He influenced you against your better judgment," Graham persisted, "to refuse to leave with me the night of your grandfather's death."
"Maria did her share," Bobby said.
He broke off, looking at Graham.
"What are you driving at?"
"I've been asking myself since he came back," Graham answered, "if there's any queer power behind his quiet manner. Maybe heispsychic. Maybe he can do things we don't understand. I've wondered if he had, without your knowing it, acquired sufficient influence to direct your body when your mind no longer controlled it. It's a nasty thought, but I've heard of such things."
"You mean Carlos may have made me go to the hall last night, perhaps sent me to the old room those other times?"
Now that another had expressed the idea Bobby fought it with all his might.
"No. I won't believe it. I've been weak, Hartley, but not that weak. AndI tell you I did feel Howells's body move under my hand."
"Don't misunderstand me," Graham said gently. "I must consider every possibility. You were excited and imaginative when you went to the old room to take the evidence. It was a shock to have your candle go out. Your own hand, reaching out to Howells, might have moved spasmodically. I mean, you may have been responsible for the thing without realizing it."
"And the disappearance of the evidence?" Bobby defended himself.
"If it had been stolen earlier the coat pocket might have retained its bulging shape. We know now that Paredes is capable of sneaking around the house."
"No, no," Bobby said hotly. "You're trying to take away my one hope. But I was there, and you weren't. I know with my own senses what happened, and you don't. Paredes has no such influence over me. I won't think of it."
"If it's so far-fetched," Graham asked quietly, "why do you revolt from the idea?"
Bobby turned on him.
"And why do you fill my mind with such thoughts? If you think I'm guilty say so. Go tell Robinson so."
He glanced away while the angry colour left his face. He was a little dazed by the realization that he had spoken to Graham as he might have done to an enemy, as he had spoken to Howells in the old bedroom. He felt the touch of Graham's hand on his shoulder.
"I'm only working in your service," Graham said kindly. "I'm sorry if I've troubled you by seeking physical facts in order to escape the ghosts. For Groom has brought the ghosts back with him. Don't make any mistake about that. You want the truth, don't you?"
"Yes," Bobby said, "even if it does for me. But I want it quickly. I can't go on this way indefinitely."
Yet that flash of temper had given him courage to face the ordeal. A lingering resentment at Graham's suggestion lessened the difficulty of his position. Entering the court, he scarcely glanced at the black wagon.
There were more dark-clothed men in the hall. Rawlins had returned. From the rug in front of the fireplace he surveyed the group with a bland curiosity. Robinson sat near by, glowering at Paredes. The Panamanian had changed his clothing. He, too, was sombrely dressed, and, instead of the vivid necktie he had worn from the courthouse, a jet-black scarf was perfectly arranged beneath his collar. He lounged opposite the district attorney, his eyes studying the fire. His fingers on the chair arm were restless.
Doctor Groom stood at the foot of the stairs, talking with the clergyman, a stout and unctuous figure. Bobby noticed that the great stolid form of the doctor was ill at ease. From his thickly bearded face his reddish eyes gleamed forth with a fresh instability.
The clergyman shook hands with Bobby. "We need not delay. Your cousin is upstairs." He included the company in his circling turn of the head.
"Any one who cares to go—"
Bobby forced himself to walk up the staircase, facing the first phase of his ordeal. He saw that the district attorney realized that, too, for he sprang from his chair, and, followed by Rawlins, started upward. The entire company crowded the stairs. At the top Bobby found Paredes at his side.
"Carlos! Why do you come?"
"I would like to be of some comfort," Paredes answered gravely.
His fingers on the banister made that restless, groping movement.
Graham summoned Katherine. One of the black-clothed men opened the door of Silas Blackburn's room. He stepped aside, beckoning. He had an air of a showman craving approbation for the surprise he has arranged.
Bobby went in with the others. Automatically through the dim light he catalogued remembered objects, all intimate to his grandfather, each oddly entangled in his mind with his dislike of the old man. The iron bed; the chest of drawers, scratched and with broken handles; the closed colonial desk; the miserly rag carpet—all seemed mutely asking, as Bobby did, why their owner had deserted them the other night and delivered himself to the ghostly mystery of the old bedroom.
Reluctantly Bobby's glance went to the centre of the floor where the casket rested on trestles. From the chest of drawers two candles, the only light, played wanly over the still figure and the ashen face. So for the second time the living met the dead, and the law watched hopefully.
Robinson stood opposite, but he didn't look at Silas Blackburn who could no longer accuse. He stared instead at Bobby, and Bobby kept repeating to himself:
"I didn't do this thing. I didn't do this thing."
And he searched the face of the dead man for a confirmation. A chill thought, not without excuse under the circumstances and in this vague light, raced along his nerves. Silas Blackburn had moved once since his death. If the power to move and speak should miraculously return to him now! In this house there appeared to be no impossibilities. The cold control of death had been twice broken.
Katherine's entrance swung his thoughts and released him for a moment from Robinson's watchfulness. He found he could turn from the wrinkled face that had fascinated him, that had seemed to question him with a calm and complete knowledge, to the lovely one that was active with a little smile of encouragement. He was grateful for that. It taught him that in the heavy presence of death and from the harsh trappings of mourning the magnetism of youth is unconquerable. So in affection he found an antidote for fear. Even Graham's quick movement to her side couldn't make her presence less helpful to Bobby. He looked at his grandfather again. He glanced at Robinson. As in a dream he heard, the clergyman say:
"The service will be read at the grave."
Almost indifferently he saw the dark-clothed men sidle forward, lift a grotesquely shaped plate of metal from the floor, and fit it in place, hiding from his eyes the closed eyes of the dead man. He nodded and stepped to the hall when Robinson tapped his arm and whispered:
"Make way, Mr. Blackburn."
He watched the sombre men carry their heavy burden across the hall, down the stairs, and into the dull autumn air. He followed at the side of Katherine across the clearing and into the overgrown path. He was aware of the others drifting behind. Katherine slipped her hand in his.
"It is dreadful we shouldn't feel more sorrow, more regret," she said. "Perhaps we never understood him. That is dreadful, too; for no one understood him. We are the only mourners."
Bobby, as they threaded the path behind the stumbling bearers, found a grim justice in that also. Because of his selfishness Silas Blackburn had lived alone. Because of it he must go to his long rest with no other mourners than these, and their eyes were dry.
Bobby clung to Katherine's hand.
"If I could only know!" he whispered.
She pressed his hand. She did not reply.
Ahead the forest was scarred by a yellow wound. The bearers set their burden down beside it, glancing at each other with relief. Across the heap of earth Bobby saw the waiting excavation. In his ears vibrated the memory of the harsh voice:
"It's deep enough!"
Another voice droned. It was soft and unctuous. It seemed to take a pleasure in the terrible words it loosed to stray eternally through the decaying forest.
Bobby glanced at bent stones, strangled by the underbrush; at other slabs, cracked and brown, which lay prone, half covered by creeping vines. The tones of the clergyman were no longer revolting in his ears. He scarcely heard them. He imagined a fantasy. He pictured the inhabitants of these forgotten, narrow houses straying to the great dwelling where they had lived, punishing this one, bringing him to suffer with them the degradation of their neglect. So Robinson became less important in his mind. Through such fancies the ordeal was made bearable.
A wind sprang up, rattling through the trees and disturbing the vines on the fallen stones. Later, he thought, it would snow, and he shivered for those left helpless to sleep in the sad forest.
The dark-clothed men strained at ropes now. They glanced at Katherine and Bobby as at those most to be impressed by their skill. They lowered Silas Blackburn's grimly shaped casing into the sorrel pit. It passed from Bobby's sight. The two roughly dressed labourers came from the thicket where they had hidden, and with their spades approached the grave. The sound from whose imminence Bobby had shrunk rattled in his ears. The yellow earth cut across the stormy twilight of the cemetery and scattered in the trench. After a time the response lost its metallic petulance.
Katherine pulled at Bobby's hand. He started and glanced up. One of the black-clothed men was speaking to him with a professional gentleness:
"You needn't wait, Mr. Blackburn. Everything is finished."
He saw now that Robinson stood across the grave still staring at him. The professional mourner smiled sympathetically and moved away. Katherine, Robinson, the two grave diggers, and Bobby alone were left of the little company; and Bobby, staring back at the district attorney, took a sombre pride in facing it out until even the men with the spades had gone. The ordeal, he reflected, had lost its poignancy. His mind was intent on the empty trappings he had witnessed. He wondered if there was, after all, no justice against his grandfather in this unkempt burial. The place might have something to tell him. If it could only make him believe that beyond the inevitable fact nothing mattered. If he were sure of that it would offer a way out at the worst; perhaps the happiest exit for Katherine's sake.
Then Doctor Groom returned. His huge hairy figure dominated the cemetery. His infused eyes, beneath the thick black brows, were far-seeing. They seemed to penetrate Bobby's thought. Then they glanced at the excavation, appearing to intimate that Silas Blackburn's earthy blanket could hide nothing from the closed eyes it sheltered. At his age he faced the near approach of that inevitable fact, and he didn't hesitate to look beyond. Bobby knew what Graham had meant when he had said that Groom had brought the ghosts back with him. It was as if the cemetery had recalled the old doctor to answer his presumptuous question.
"There's no use your staying here."
The resonance of the deep voice jarred through the woods. The broad shoulders twitched. One of the hairy hands made a half circle.
"I hope you'll clean this up, my boy. You ought to replace the stones and trim the graves. You couldn't blame them, could you, if these old people were restless and tried to go abroad?"
For Bobby, in spite of himself, the man on whose last shelter the earth continued to fall became once more a potent thing, able to appraise the penalty of his own carelessness.
"Come," Katherine whispered.
But Bobby lingered, oddly fascinated, supporting the ordeal to its final moment. The blows of the backs of the spades on the completed mound beat into his brain the end. The workmen wandered off through the woods. From a distance the harsh voice of one of them came back:
"I don't want to dig again in such a place. People don't seem dead there."
Robinson tried to laugh.
"That man's wise," he said to the doctor. "If Paredes spoke of this cemetery as being full of ghosts I could understand him."
The doctor's deep bass answered thoughtfully:
"Paredes is probably right. The man has a special sense, but I have felt it myself. The Cedars and the forest are full of things that seem to whisper, things that one never sees. Such things might have an excuse for evil."
"Let's get out of it," Robinson said gruffly.
Katherine withdrew her hand. Bobby reached for it again, but she seemed not to notice. She walked ahead of him along the path, her shoulders a trifle bent. Bobby caught up with her.
"Katherine!" he said.
"Don't talk to me, Bobby."
He looked closer. He saw that she was crying at last. Tears stained her cheeks. Her lips were strange to him in the distortion of a grief that seeks to control itself. He slackened his pace and let her walk ahead. He followed with a sort of awe that there should have been grief for Silas Blackburn after all. He blamed himself because his own eyes were not moist.
Back of him he heard the murmuring conversation of the doctor and the district attorney. Strangely it made him sorry that Robinson should have been more impressed than Howells by the doctor's beliefs.
They stepped into the clearing. The wind had dissipated the smoke shroud. It was no longer low over the roofs. Against the forest and the darker clouds the house had a stark appearance. It was like a frame from which the flesh has fallen.
The black wagon had gone. The Cedars was left alone to the solution of its mystery.
Paredes, Graham, and Rawlins waited for them in the hall. There was nothing to say. Paredes placed with a delicate accuracy fresh logs upon the fire. He arose, flecking the wood dust from his hands.
"How cold it will be here," he mused, "how impossible of entrance when the house is left as empty as the woods to those who only go unseen!"
Bobby saw Katherine's shoulders shake. She had dried her eyes, but in her face was expressed an aversion for solitude, a desire for any company, even that of the man she disliked and feared.
Robinson took Rawlins to the library for another futile consultation, Bobby guessed. Katherine sat on the arm of a chair, thrusting one foot toward the fresh blaze.
"It will snow," she said. "It is very early for that."
No one answered. The strain tightened. The flames leapt, throwing evanescent pulsations of brilliancy about the dusky hall. They welcomed Jenkins's announcement that luncheon was ready, but they scarcely disturbed the hurriedly prepared dishes, and afterward they gathered again in the hall, silent and depressed, appalled by the long, dreary afternoon, which, however, possessed the single virtue of dividing them from another night.
For long periods the district attorney and the detective were closeted in the library. Now and then they passed upstairs, and they could be heard moving about, but no one, save Graham, seemed to care. Already the officers had had every opportunity to search the house. The old room no longer held an inhabitant to set its fatal machinery in motion. Yet Bobby realized in a dull way that at any moment the two men might come down to him, saying:
"We have found something. You are guilty."
The heavy atmosphere of the house crushed such forecasts, made them seem a little trivial. Bobby fancied it gathering density to cradle new mysteries. The long minutes loitered. Doctor Groom made a movement to go.
"Why should I stay?" he grumbled. "What is there to keep me?"
Yet he sat back in his chair again and appeared to have forgotten his intention.
Graham wandered off. Bobby thought he had joined Rawlins and Robinson in the library.
The only daylight entered the hall through narrow slits of windows on either side of the front door. Bobby, watching these, was, even with the problems night brought to him now, glad when they grew paler.
Paredes, who had been smoking cigarette after cigarette, arose and brought his card table. Drawing it close to him, he arranged the cards in neat piles. The uncertain firelight made it barely possible to identify their numbers. Doctor Groom gestured his disgust. Katherine stooped forward, placing her hands on the table.
"Is it kind," she asked, "so soon after he has left his house?"
Paredes started.
"Wait!" he said softly.
Puzzled, she glanced at him.
"Stay just as you are," he directed. "There has been so much death in this house—who knows?"
Languidly he placed his fingers on the edge of the table opposite hers.
"What are you doing?" Dr. Groom asked hoarsely.
"Wait!" Paredes said again.
Then Bobby, scarcely aware of what was going on, saw the cards glide softly across the face of the table and flutter to the floor. The table had lifted slowly toward the Panamanian. It stood now on two legs.
"What is it?" Katherine said. "It's moving. I can feel it move beneath my fingers."
Her words recalled to Bobby unavoidably his experience in the old room.
"Don't do that!" the doctor cried.
Paredes smiled.
"If," he answered, "the source of these crimes is, as you think, spiritual, why not ask the spirits for a solution? You see how quickly the table responds. It is as I thought. There is something in this hall. Haven't you a feeling that the dead are in this dark hall with us? They may wish to speak. See!"
The table settled softly down without any noise. It commenced to rise again. Katherine lifted her hands with a visible effort, as if the table had tried to hold them against her will. She covered her face and sat trembling.
"I won't! I—"
Paredes shrugged his shoulders, appealing to the doctor. The huge, shaggy head shook determinedly.
"I'm not so sure I don't agree with you. I'm not so sure the dead aren't in this hall. That is why I'll have nothing to do with such dangerous play. It has shown us, at least, that you are psychic, Mr. Paredes."
"I have a gift," Paredes murmured. "It would be useful to speak with them. They see so much more than we do."
He lifted his hands. He waved them dejectedly. He stooped and commenced picking up the cards. The doctor arose.
"I shall go now." He sighed. "I don't know why I have stayed."
Bobby got his coat and hat.
"I'll walk to the stable with you."
He was glad to escape from the dismal hall in which the firelight grew more eccentric. The court was colder and damper, and even beyond the chill was more penetrating than it had been at the grave that noon. Uneven flakes of snow sifted from the swollen sky, heralds of a white invasion.
"No more sleep-walking?" the doctor asked when he had taken the blanket from his horse and climbed into the buggy.
Bobby leaned against the wall of the stable and told how Graham had brought him back the previous night from the stairhead, to which he had gone with a purpose he didn't dare sound. The doctor shook his head.
"You shouldn't tell me that. You shouldn't tell any one. You place yourself too much in my hands, as you are already in Graham's hands. Maybe that is all right. But the district attorney? You're sure he knows nothing of this habit which seems to have commenced the night of the first murder?"
"No, and I think Paredes alone of those who know about that first night would be likely to tell him."
"See that he doesn't," the doctor said shortly. "I've been watching Robinson. If he doesn't make an arrest pretty soon with something back of it he'll lose his mind. He mightn't stop to ask, as I do, as Howells did, about the locked doors and the nature of the wounds."
"How shall I find the courage to sleep to-night?" Bobby asked.