The Abandoned Room/Chapter 9

OR  a long time the little group gathered in the snow-swept cemetery remained silent. The lamp, shaking in the district attorney's hand, illuminated each detail of the casket's interior linings. Bobby tried to realize that, except for these meaningless embellishments, the box was empty. That was what held them all—the void, the unoccupied silken couch in which they had seen Silas Blackburn's body imprisoned. Yet the screws which the detective had removed, and the mass of earth, packed down and covered with snow, must have made escape a dreadful impossibility even if the spark of life had reanimated its occupant. And that occupant stood there, trembling and haggard, sobbing from time to time in an utter abandonment to the terror of what he saw.

To Bobby in that moment the supernatural legend of the Cedars seemed more triumphantly fulfilled than it would have been through the immaterial return of his grandfather. For Silas Blackburn was a reincarnation more difficult to accept than any ghost. Had Paredes, who all along had offered them a spectacle of veiled activity and thought, grasped the truth? At first glance, indeed his gossip of oriental theories concerning the disintegration of matter, its passage through solid substances, its reassembly in far places, seemed thoroughly justified. Yet, granted that, who, in the semblance of Silas Blackburn, had they buried to vanish completely? Who, in the semblance of Silas Blackburn, had drowsed without food for three days in the house at Smithtown?

The old man stretched his shaking hands to Bobby and Katherine.

"Don't let them bury me again. They never buried me. I've not been dead! I tell you I've not been dead!" He mouthed horribly. "I'm alive! Can't you see I'm alive?"

He broke down and covered his face. Jenkins sank on the heap of earth.

"I saw you, Mr. Silas, in that box. And I saw you on the bed. Miss Katherine and I found you. We had to break the door. You looked so peaceful we thought you were asleep. But when we touched you you were cold."

"No, no, no," Blackburn grimaced. "I wasn't cold. I couldn't have been."

"There's no question," Bobby said hoarsely.

"No question," Robinson repeated.

Katherine shrank from her uncle as he had shrunk from her in the library the night of the murder.

"What do you make of it?" the district attorney asked Rawlins.

The detective, who had remained crouched at the side of the grave, arose, brushing the dirt from his hands, shaking his head.

"What is one to make of it, sir?"

Paredes spoke softly to Graham.

"The Cedars wants to be left alone to the dead. We would all be better away from it."

"You won't go yet awhile," Robinson said gruffly. "Don't forget you're still under bond."

The detail no longer seemed of importance to Bobby. The mystery, centring in the empty grave, was apparently inexplicable. He experienced a great pity for his grandfather; and, recalling that strengthening moment with Katherine, he made up his mind that there was only one course for him. It might be dangerous in itself, yet, on the other hand, he couldn't go to Katherine while his share in the mystery of the Cedars remained so darkly shadowed. He had no right to withhold anything, and he wouldn't ask Graham's advice. He had stepped all at once into the mastery of his own destiny. He would tell Robinson, therefore, everything he knew, from the party with Maria and Paredes in New York, through his unconscious wanderings around the house on the night of the first murder, to the moment when Graham had stopped his somnambulistic excursion down the stairs.

Robinson turned his light away from the grave.

"There's nothing more to do here. Let us go back."

The little party straggled through the snow to the house. The hall fire smouldered as pleasantly as it had done before they had set forth, yet an interminable period seemed to have elapsed. Silas Blackburn went close to the fire. He sank in a chair, trembling.

"I'm so cold," he whined. "I've never been so cold. What is the matter with me? For God's sake tell me what is the matter! Katherine—if—if nothing happens, we'll close the Cedars. We'll go to the city where there are lots of lights."

"If you'd only listened to Bobby and me and gone long ago," she said.

Robinson stared at the fire.

"I'm about beaten," he muttered wearily.

Rawlins, with an air of stealth, walked upstairs. Graham, after a moment's hesitation, followed him. Bobby wondered why they went. He caught Robinson's eye. He indicated he would like to speak to him in the library. As he left the hall he saw Paredes, who had not removed his hat or coat, start for the front door.

"Where are you going?" he heard Robinson demand.

Paredes's reply came glibly.

"Only to walk up and down in the court. The house oppresses me more than ever to-night. I feel with Mr. Blackburn that it is no place to stay."

And while he talked with Robinson in the library Bobby caught at times the crunching of Paredes's feet in the court.

"Why does that court draw him?" Robinson asked. "Why does he keep repeating that it is full of ghosts? He can't be trying to scare us with that now."

But Bobby didn't answer.

"I've come to tell you the truth," he burst out, "everything I know. You may lock me up. Even that would be better than this uncertainty. I must have an answer, if it condemns me; and how could I have had anything to do with what has happened to-night?"

He withheld nothing. Robinson listened with an intent interest. At the end he said not unkindly:

"If the evidence and Howells's report hadn't disappeared I'd have arrested you and considered the case closed before this miracle was thrown at me. You've involved yourself so frankly that I don't believe you're lying about what went on in the old room when you entered to steal those exhibits. Can't say I blame you for trying that, either. You were in a pretty bad position—an unheard-of position. You still are, for that matter. But the case is put on such an extraordinary basis by what has happened to-night that I'd be a fool to lock you up on such a confession. I believe there's a good deal more in what has gone on in that room and in the return of your grandfather than you can account for."

"Thanks," Bobby said. "I hoped you'd take it this way, for, if you will let me help, I have a plan."

He turned restlessly to the door of the private staircase. In his memory Howells's bold figure was outlined there, but now the face with its slow smile seemed sympathetic rather than challenging.

"What's your plan?" Robinson asked.

Bobby forced himself to speak deliberately, steadily:

"To go for the night alone to the old room as Howells did."

Robinson whistled.

"Didn't believe you had that much nerve. Two men have tried that. What good would it do?"

"If the answer's anywhere," Bobby said, "it must be hidden in that room. Howells felt it. I was sure of it when I was prevented from taking the evidence. You've believed it, I think."

"There is something strange and unhealthy about the room," Robinson agreed. "Certainly the secret of the locked doors lies there. But we've had sufficient warning. I'm not ashamed to say I wouldn't take such a chance. I don't know that I ought to let you."

Bobby smiled.

"I've been enough of a coward," he said, "and, Robinson, I've got to know. I shan't go near the bed. I'll watch the bed from a corner. If the danger's at the bed, as we suspect, it probably won't be able to reach me, but just the same it may expose itself. And Rawlins or you can be outside the broken door in the corridor, waiting to enter at the first alarm."

"Howells had no chance to give an alarm," Robinson muttered. "We'll see later."

But Bobby understood that he would agree, and he forced his new courage to face the prospect.

"Maybe something will turn up," Robinson mused. "The case can't grow more mysterious indefinitely."

But his tone held no assurance. He seemed to foresee new and difficult complications.

When they returned to the hall Bobby shrank from the picture of his grandfather still crouched by the fire, his shoulders twitching, his fingers about the black briar pipe shaking. Groom alone had remained with him. Bobby opened the front door. There was no one in the court.

"Paredes," he said, closing the door, "has gone out of the court. Where's Katherine, Doctor?"

"She went to the kitchen," the doctor rumbled. "I'm sure I don't know what for this time of night."

After a little Graham and Rawlins came down the stairs. Graham's face was scarred by fresh trouble. Rawlins drew the district attorney to one side.

"What have you two been doing up there?" Bobby asked Graham.

"Rawlins is hard-headed," Graham answered in a low, worried tone.

He wouldn't meet Bobby's eyes. He seemed to seek an escape.

"Where's Katherine?" he asked.

"Doctor Groom says she went to the back part of the house. Why won't you tell me what you were doing?"

"Only keeping Rawlins from trying to make more mischief," Graham answered.

He wouldn't explain.

"Aren't there enough riddles in this house?" Doctor Groom asked with frank disapproval.

Rawlins and Robinson joined them, sparing Graham a further defence. The district attorney had an air of fresh resolution. He was about to speak when the front door opened quietly, framing the blackness of the court. They started forward, seeing no one.

Silas Blackburn made a slow, shrinking movement, crying out:

"They've opened the door! Don't let them in. Don't let them come near me again."

Although they knew Paredes had been in the court the spell of the Cedars was so heavy upon them that for a moment they didn't know what to expect. They hesitated with a little of the abnormal apprehension Silas Blackburn exposed. Then Rawlins sprang forward, and Bobby called:

"Carlos!"

Paredes stepped from one side. He lingered against the black background of the doorway. It was plain enough something was wrong with him. In the first place, although he had opened the door, he had been unwilling to enter.

"Shut the door," Silas Blackburn moaned.

Paredes, with a quick gesture of surrender, stepped in and obeyed. His face was white. He had lost his immaculate appearance. His clothing showed stains of snow and mould. He held his left hand behind his back.

"What's the matter with you?" Robinson demanded.

The Panamanian's laugh lacked its usual indifference.

"When I said the Cedars was full of ghosts I should have heeded my own warning. I might better have stayed comfortably locked up in Smithtown."

Silas Blackburn spoke in a hoarse whisper:

"What did you see out there? Are they coming?"

"I saw very little," Paredes answered. "It was too dark."

"You saw something," Doctor Groom rumbled.

Paredes nodded. He looked at the floor.

"A—a woman in black."

"By the lake!" Bobby cried.

"Not as far as the lake. It was near the empty grave."

Silas Blackburn commenced to shake again. The doctor's little eyes were wider.

"It was a woman—a flesh-and-blood woman?" Robinson asked.

"If it was a ghost," Paredes answered, "it had the power of attack; but that, as you'll recall, is by no means unusual here. That's why I've come in rather against my will. It seems strange, but I, too, have been struck by a sharp and slender object, and I thought, perhaps, the doctor had better look at the result."

With a motion of repugnance he moved his left hand from behind his back and stretched it to the light. The coat below the elbow was torn. The slender hand was crimson. He tried to smile.

"Luckily it wasn't at the back of my head."

"Sit down," Doctor Groom said, waving Robinson and Rawlins away. "Let me see how badly he's hurt. There'll be plenty of time for questions afterward."

Paredes lay back in one of the chairs and extended his arm. He kept his eyes closed while the doctor stooped, examining the wound. All at once his nearly perpetual sleeplessness since coming to the Cedars had recorded itself in his face. His nerves at last confessed their vulnerability as he fumbled for a cigarette with his good hand, as he placed it awkwardly between his lips.

"Would you mind giving me a light, Bobby?"

Bobby struck a match and held it to the cigarette.

"Thanks," Paredes said. "Are you nearly through, doctor? I daresay it's nothing."

Doctor Groom glanced up.

"Nothing serious with a little luck. It's only torn through a muscle. It might have pierced the large vein."

His forehead beneath the shaggy black hair was deeply lined. He turned to Robinson doubtfully.

"Maybe you'll tell us," Robinson said, "what made the wound."

"No use shirking facts," the doctor rumbled. "Mr. Paredes has been wounded just as he said, by something sharp and slender."

"You mean," Robinson said, "by an instrument that could have caused death in the case of Howells and—and"

"I won't have you looking at me that way," Silas Blackburn whined.

"Yes," the doctor answered. "Before we go any farther I want to bind this arm. There must be an antiseptic in the house. Where is Katherine? See if you can find her, Bobby."

As Bobby started to cross the dining room he heard the slight scraping of the door leading to the kitchen. He knew there was someone in the room with him. He touched a cold hand.

"Bobby!" Katherine breathed in his ear.

He understood why the little light from the hall had failed to disclose her when she had come from the kitchen. She wore the black cloak. Against the darkness at the end of the room she had made no silhouette. When he put his arms around her and touched her cheek, he noticed that that, too, was cold; and the shoulders of the cloak were damp as if she had just come in from the falling snow.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

"Looking outside," she answered frankly. "I couldn't sit still. I wondered if the woman in black would be around the house to-night. Then I was afraid, so I came in."

Doctor Groom's voice reached them.

"Have you found her? Is she in the dining room?"

Without any thought of disloyalty Bobby recognized the menace of coincidence.

"Take your cloak off," he whispered. "Leave it here."

"Why?"

While he drew the cloak from her shoulders he raised his voice.

"Carlos has been hurt. The doctor asked me to find you."

His simple strategy was destroyed by the appearance of Rawlins. The detective came directly to them; nor was the coincidence lost on him, and it was his business to advertise rather than to conceal it. Without ceremony he took the cloak from Bobby. He draped it over his arm.

"The doctor," he said to Katherine, "wants a basin of warm water, some old linen, carbolic acid, if you have it."

She nodded and went back to the kitchen while Bobby returned with the detective to the hall. Paredes's eyes remained closed.

"Where did you get the cloak, Rawlins?" Robinson asked.

"The young lady," Rawlins answered with soft satisfaction, "just wore it in. At least it's still wet from the snow."

Paredes opened his eyes. He looked for a moment at the black cloak. He closed his eyes again.

"You could recognize the woman who attacked you?" Rawlins said.

Paredes shook his head.

"You've forgotten how dark it is. Please don't ask me even to swear that it was a woman."

"You're trying to say it wasn't flesh and blood," Blackburn quavered.

Paredes smiled weakly.

"I'm trying to say nothing at all."

"Tell us each detail of the attack," Robinson said.

But Katherine's footsteps reached them from the dining room and Paredes wouldn't answer. Under those conditions Robinson's failure to press the question was as disturbing as the detective's matter-of-fact capture of the cloak.

Paredes glanced at Katherine once. There was no softness in her attitude as she knelt beside his chair. Neither, Bobby felt, was there the slightest uneasiness. With a facile grace she helped the doctor bathe and bandage the slight wound.

"A silk handkerchief for a sling" the doctor suggested.

"I won't have a sling," Paredes said. "I wouldn't know what to do without the use of both my hands."

"You ought to congratulate yourself that you still keep it," the doctor grumbled.

Bobby took the pan and the bottles from Katherine and rang for Jenkins. It was clear that Robinson had hoped the girl would go out with them herself and so give Paredes an opportunity to speak. This new development made him wonder about Graham's theories as to Paredes. If it was Maria who had struck the man there had either been a quarrel among thieves or else no criminal connection had ever existed between the two. Paredes, however, aping the gestures of an invalid, was less to Bobby's taste than his satanic appearance when he had come from the private staircase.

Rawlins still held the cloak. After Jenkins had removed the doctor's paraphernalia, everyone seemed to wait. It was Silas Blackburn who finally released the strain.

"Katy, where you been with that cloak? What's he doing with it?"

Without answering she took the cloak from Rawlins, and gave the detective and the district attorney the opportunity they craved. She walked up the stairs, turning at the landing. Her farewell seemed pointed at the Panamanian who looked languidly up at her.

"If I'm wanted I shall be in my room."

"Who would want you, Katherine?" Graham blurted out. But it was clear he had caught the coincidence, too, and the trouble he had confessed a little earlier was radically increased.

"That remains to be seen," Robinson sneered as soon as she had gone. "Now, Mr. Paredes."

"I've really told you everything," he said. "I walked toward the graveyard. At a point very close to it I felt the presence of this creature in black. I spoke. I took my courage in my hands. I reached out. I touched nothing." He raised his injured hand. "I got this for my pains."

"What made you go to the graveyard?" Robinson asked suspiciously.

There was no mockery in the Panamanian's answer.

"I have told you the court for me has always been full of ghosts." He pointed to Silas Blackburn. "It frightened me that this man should come back through the court from his grave with all the evidence pointing to an astral magic. I wanted to retrace his journey. I thought at the grave, if I were alone, something might expose itself that had naturally remained hidden in the presence of so many materialistic human beings."

A smile spread over Rawlins's cold, unimaginative features.

"That sounds well, Mr. Paredes, and there is a lot about this case that looks like ghosts, but leave us a few flesh-and-blood clues. This woman in black is one of them, although she's been slippery as an eel. It looks to me as if you went to the grave to meet her alone exactly as you went to the deserted house to talk quietly with her night before last. Maybe she mistook you for one of us snooping in the dark, and let you have it."

"If that is so," Paredes said easily, "the nature of my wound would suggest that she is guilty of the crimes in the old room. Why not go out and arrest her then? She might explain everything except the return to life of Mr. Blackburn. I'm afraid that's rather beyond you in any case. But at least find her."

Robinson joined in Rawlins's laugh.

"Why go outside for that?"

Paredes started.

"You never mean"

"You bet we do," Rawlins said. "If what I've doped out hadn't been so we'd have caught her long before. We're not blind, and we haven't missed the nerve with which she helped the doctor fix you up. We haven't caught her before because her headquarters have been right in this house all the time. You remember the other night, Mr. Robinson. You'd just questioned her in the court and had threatened to question him, too, when she came in here ahead of us and slipped out the back way. She must have told him to follow because they had to talk, undisturbed by us. They went by different roads to the deserted house where a light had been seen before. We happened to hit his trail first and followed it. I'll guarantee you didn't see her when you first came in."

Robinson shook his head.

"Mr. Graham kept me busy, and I rather waited for your report before pushing things. I didn't see her or question her until after Mr. Graham and Mr. Blackburn had started for New York."

"And she could have sneaked in the back way any time before that," Rawlins said.

"It's utter nonsense!" Graham cried.

Rawlins turned on him.

"See here, Mr. Graham, you've been trying to fight me off this way all afternoon. It won't do."

"Katy's a good girl," Silas Blackburn quavered.

With a growing discomfort Bobby realized that when the woman had cried near the graveyard he had reached out for Katherine and had failed to find her. Moreover, the night Graham and he had heard the crying in the old room she had stood alone in the corridor. It was easily conceivable that the turn of events after Robinson's arrival should have made it necessary for conspirators to consult free from any danger of disturbance. But Katherine, he told himself, was assuredly the victim of coincidence. He couldn't picture her entangled in any of Paredes's purposes. Her dislike of the man was complete and open. But he saw that Rawlins out of the mass of apparently inexplicable clues had extracted this material one and would follow it desperately no matter who was hurt; and Robinson was behind him. That accounted for their frequent excursions upstairs during the afternoon, for Rawlins's ascent as soon as they had returned from the grave. They had evidently found something to sharpen their suspicions, and Graham probably knew what it was.

Robinson took out his watch.

"We can't put this off too late," he mused.

The detective at his heels, he walked to the library. Bobby started after them. Graham caught him and they crossed the dining room together.

"What do they mean to do?" Bobby asked.

"I have been afraid of it since this afternoon," Graham answered. "I haven't cared to talk about it. I had hoped to hold them off. They intend to search Katherine's room. I think they believe she has something important hidden there. I've been wondering if they've got track of Howells's report which we told Jenkins to hide."

"Why," Bobby asked, "should that involve Katherine?"

"Howells may have written something damaging to her. He knew she was devoted to your interests."

Robinson called to them from the library.

"Won't you please come in, Mr. Blackburn?"

Bobby and Graham continued to the library. They found Rawlins gazing through the door of the private staircase.

"We could go up this way," he was saying, "and across the old room so that she needn't suspect."

"What is he talking about?" Bobby asked Robinson angrily.

"You wanted to help," Robinson answered, "so Rawlins and I are going to give you a chance. We are about to search your cousin's room. We hope to find there an explanation of a part of the mystery—the motive, at least, for Howells's death; perhaps your own exoneration. You'd do anything to have that, wouldn't you? You've said so."

"At her expense!" Bobby cried. "You've no right to go to her room. She's incapable of a share in such crimes. Do you seriously think she could plan an escape from the grave and bring back to life a man three days dead?"

"Give me a human being that caused death," Robinson answered, "and I'll tackle the ghosts later. You're wrong if you think I'm going to quit cold because your grandfather looks like a dead thing that moves about and talks. I shan't give up to that madness until I've done everything in my power. I would be a criminal myself if I failed to do as Rawlins wishes. If your cousin's skirts are clear no harm will be done. I'm acting on the assumption that your confession was honest. I want you to get Miss Perrine out of her room. I want you to see that she stays downstairs while we search."

"You've already searched her room."

"Not since Rawlins"

Robinson caught himself.

"Never mind that. It is necessary it should be searched to-night. Even you'll acknowledge it's significant that all day when she has been downstairs her door has been locked."

"It's only significant," Bobby flashed, "in view of your treatment of her yesterday."

Robinson grinned.

"That will hardly go down. Rawlins has hesitated to break in. I've instructed him to do it now, if necessary. For the last time, will you bring your cousin down? Will you go through and unlock the door leading from the old bedroom to the private hall so we can get up?"

"No," Bobby cried, "I wouldn't do it if I believed you were right. And I know you're wrong."

"Prove that we're wrong. Clear your cousin by helping us," Robinson urged.

"Since you're so determined," Graham said quietly, "I'll do it."

"Hartley! What are you thinking of?"

"Of showing them how wrong they are," Graham said. "I'll tell her Doctor Groom wishes to speak to her about Mr. Blackburn. I'll warn him to keep her downstairs for a quarter of an hour. That should give you plenty of time."

Robinson nodded.

"She'll never forgive you," Bobby said. "It's spying."

He wondered that Graham should choose such a course so soon after it had become clear that Katherine had never really loved him.

"It's the best way to satisfy them," Graham said. "I have, perhaps, more faith than you in Katherine."

He left them to carry out Robinson's instructions. They waited at the entrance of the private staircase.

"I may witness this outrage?" Bobby asked.

"I'd rather you didn't speak of it in such harsh terms," Robinson smiled.

Bobby didn't know what to expect. The whole thing might be a trick of Paredes, in line with his hints the night of Howells's death, to involve Katharine. The quiet confidence of the two officials was disturbing. What had Rawlins seen?

After a long time Graham descended the private staircase, carrying a lighted candle. He beckoned and they followed him back through the private hall into the wide and mournful bedroom. It encouraged Bobby to see the district attorney and the detective hurry across it. After all, they were really without confidence of solving its ghostly riddle. What they were about to do, he argued, was a last chance. They would find nothing. They would acknowledge themselves beaten.

When they entered the farther wing he noticed that Katherine's door stood wide.

"You see," he said.

"When I called her," Graham explained, "she thought something had happened to her grandfather. She ran out."

"And forgot all about the door," Robinson grinned. "That's lucky. Now, Rawlins."

Bobby couldn't bring himself to cross the threshold, but from the corridor he could see the interior of the room and all that went on there during the next few moments. A candle burned on the bureau, exposing the feminine neatness and delicacy of the furnishings. The presence of the three men was a desecration; what they were about to do, an unforgivable act of vandalism.

Rawlins went to a work table while Robinson rummaged in the closet. Graham, meantime, bent against the footboard of the bed, watching with anxious eyes. Bobby's anger was increased by this picture. He resisted an impulse to run to the stairs and call Katherine up. That would simply increase Robinson's suspicions. There was nothing she could do, nothing he could do.

Rawlins had clearly been unsuccessful at the work table. He glided to the bureau. One after the other he opened the drawers, fumbling within, lifting the contents out, replacing them with a rough haste while Bobby's futile rage increased.

Suddenly he saw Graham's attitude alter. Rawlins's back stiffened. He pulled the bottom drawer altogether from the bureau and thrust it to one side. He gazed in the opening.

"Come here, Mr. Robinson," he said softly.

Robinson left the closet and stooped beside the detective. He exclaimed. Graham went closer looking over their backs.

"You'd better see, Bobby," he said without turning.

"Yes," Robinson said. "Let me show you how wrong you were, Mr. Blackburn. Let me ask if you knew you were wrong."

Bobby entered with a quicker pulse. He, too, stooped and looked in the opening. Abruptly everything altered for him. He wondered that his physical surroundings should remain the same, that the eager faces beside him should retain their familiar lines.

Against the back-board of the bureau, where it would fit neatly when the drawer was in place, lay a plaster cast of a footmark. Near by was a rumpled handkerchief that Bobby recognized as his own, and the envelope, containing Howells's report which they had told Jenkins to hide.

"Well?" Robinson grinned.

"I swear I didn't know they were there," Bobby answered. "You'll never make me believe that Katherine knows it."

"I've guessed," Rawlins said, "that the stuff was hidden here ever since this afternoon when I saw a small bundle sneaked in."

"Who brought it?" Bobby took him up.

Robinson's grin expanded.

"Leave us one or two surprises to spring in court."

"Then," Bobby said, "my cousin wasn't in the room when this evidence was brought here."

"I'll admit that," Rawlins answered, "but she wasn't far away, and she got here before I could investigate, and she's kept the door locked ever since until just now."

He lifted the exhibits out. The shape of the cast, the monogram on the handkerchief cried out their testimony.

Robinson grasped Howells's report and glanced over the fine handwriting. After a time he looked up.

"There's the case against you, Mr. Blackburn, and at the least your cousin's an accessory. But why the devil did you come to me and make a clean breast of it?"

"Because," Bobby cried, "I didn't know anything about these things being here. Can't you see that?"

"That's the trouble," Robinson answered uncertainly, "I think I do see it."

"Besides," Graham said, "you're still without the instrument that caused death."

"I expect to land it in this room," Rawlins answered grimly.

He replaced the drawer and continued to fumble among the clothing it contained. All at once he called out and raised his hand. On the forefinger a tiny red stain showed.

"How did you do that?" Robinson asked.

"Something pricked me," the detective answered. "Maybe it was only a pin, but it might have been"

Excitedly he resumed his search. He took the clothing from the drawer and threw it to one side. Nothing remained in the drawer.

"I guess it must have been a pin," Robinson said, disappointed.

But Rawlins took up each article of clothing and examined it minutely. His face brightened.

"Here's something stiff. By gad, I believe I've got it!"

Concealed in a woollen sack, with the slender shaft thrust through and through the folds, was a peculiarly long, stout, and sharp hat pin. Rawlins drew it out. He held it up triumphantly.

"Now maybe we're not getting somewheres! That's the boy that did the trick in both cases, and it's what scratched Mr. Paredes. Maybe you noticed how quickly she came upstairs to hide this when she got in."

"Good work, Rawlins," Robinson said.

He glanced at Bobby and Graham.

"Have either of you seen this deadly thing before?"

Bobby wouldn't answer, but after a moment's hesitation Graham spoke:

"There's no point in lying, Bobby. Katherine knows nothing of this. I disagree with Rawlins. If she had been working with Paredes, which is unthinkable, she'd never have made such a mistake. She wouldn't have struck him. I have seen her wear such a pin."

"If she didn't cut him with it," Rawlins reasoned, "who else could have got it out of here and put it back to-night when she kept her door locked?"

"There's no getting around it," Robinson said. "Take charge of these things, Rawlins. Put them in a safe place."

"What are you going to do?" Bobby asked.

"I'm afraid there's only one thing to do," Robinson answered. "I'll have to arrest you both. One of you used this pin in the old room. It doesn't make much difference which one. You've been working together, and we'll find out about Paredes later."

"You're making a terrible mistake," Bobby muttered. "You don't know Katherine or you couldn't suspect her of any share in such crimes. Give me until morning to prove how wrong you are."

"What would be the use?" Robinson asked.

"If you'll do that, I will get the truth for you—the whole truth, how the room was entered, everything. I swear it, Robinson. Only a few hours. Let me carry out my plan. Let me offer myself to the dangers of the old room as Howells and my grandfather did. Your case is no good unless you can explain the miracle to-night. Give us this chance. Then in the morning, if nothing happens and you still think I'm guilty, lock me up, but for God's sake, Robinson, leave her out of it."

Graham walked to the window and flung it open. A violent gust of wind swept in, carrying a multitude of icy flakes.

"The storm is worse," he said. "No one is likely to try to escape from this house to-night."

Bobby stretched out his hand.

"You can't expose her to that."

Rawlins hadn't forgotten the sense of fellowship sprung from the pursuit of Paredes through the forest.

"He's right, Mr. Robinson. You could lock up a dozen people. You might send them to the chair without uncovering the real mystery of the Cedars. Maybe he might find something, and he'd be as safe in that room as in any jail I know of. I mean one of us would be in the library and the other in the corridor outside the broken door. How could he reasonably get out? If there was an attempt to repeat the trick we'd be ready. As for the girl, it's simple enough to safeguard against her getting away before morning. As Mr. Graham says, no one's likely to run far in this storm, anyway."

Robinson considered.

"I don't want to be hard," he said finally, "and I don't want to miss any chance of cleaning up where poor Howells failed."

He glanced at the extraordinary array of evidence. The good nature which, one felt, should always have been in his face, shone at last.

"I don't believe you're guilty. As far as you're concerned it's likely enough a put-up job. I don't know about the girl. Go ahead, anyway, and tell us, if you can, how the locked room was entered. Explain the mystery of that old man who looks as if he were dead, but who moves around and talks with us."

"The answer, if it's anywhere," Bobby said, "is in the old room."

Robinson nodded.

"Under the conditions it seems worth while. Go on then and clear your cousin and yourself if you can. You have until daylight to-morrow."

Bobby's gratitude was sufficiently eloquent in his eyes, but he said nothing. He hurried from the room to find Katherine. As soon as he had stepped in the corridor he saw her figure against the wall.

"Katherine!" he breathed.

"I've heard everything," she said.

He led her to the main hall where the greedy ears in her bedroom couldn't overhear them.

"Then you suspected what they were about?" he asked her.

"Uncle Silas," she answered, "seemed just as he had been when I went upstairs, so I wondered, and I remembered I had left my door unlocked."

"Then you knew those things were there?"

Her face was white. She trembled. Her words came jerkily:

"Of course I didn't. I only kept my door locked because they had searched so thoroughly before. It was an humiliation I couldn't bear to face again."

"You don't know," he asked, "who took that stuff from Howells; who hid it in your bureau?"

The trembling of her slender body became more pronounced. She spoke through chattering teeth:

"Bobby! Why do you ask such things? You believe I am guilty as you thought I was the woman in black. You think now, because those things were in my bureau"

"Stop, Katherine! You won't answer me?"

"No," she said, backing away from him. "But you are going to answer me. We have come to that point already. Just an hour or two of trust, and then this! It's the Cedars forcing us apart as it did when we had our quarrel. Only this time it is definite. Do you think I'm guilty of these atrocious crimes, or don't you? Everything for us depends on your answer, and I'll know whether you are telling me the truth."

"Then," he said, "why should I answer?"

And he took her in his arms and held her close.

She didn't cry, but for a moment she ceased trembling, and her teeth no longer chattered.

"My dear," he said, "even if you had hidden that evidence I'd have known it was to protect me."

Then she cried a little, and for a moment, even in the unmerciful grasp of their trouble, they were nearly happy. The footsteps of the others in the corridor recalled them. Katherine leaned against the table, drying her eyes. Graham, Robinson, and Rawlins walked into the hall.

"Hello!" Robinson said, "I suppose that isn't an unfair advantage, Mr. Blackburn. Still, I'd rather she hadn't been told."

"He's told me nothing," Katherine answered. "I came back to the corridor; I heard everything you said."

"Maybe it's as well," Robinson reflected. "It certainly is if what you heard has shown you the wisdom of giving up the whole thing."

She stared at him without replying.

"Come now," he wheedled. "You might tell us at least why you stole and secreted the evidence."

"I'll answer nothing."

"That's wiser, Katherine," Graham put in.

She turned on him with a complete and unexpected fury. The colour rushed back to her face. Her eyes blazed. Bobby had never guessed her capable of such anger. His wonder grew that her outburst should be directed against Graham.

"Keep quiet!" she cried hysterically. "Don't speak to me again. I hate you! Do you understand?"

Graham drew back.

"Why, Katherine"

"Don't," she said. "Don't call me that."

The officers glanced at Graham with frank bewilderment. Rawlins's materialistic mind didn't hesitate to express its first thought:

"Must say, I always thought you were sweet on the lady."

"Hartley!" Bobby said. "You have been fair to us?"

"I don't know why she attacks me," Graham muttered.

His face recorded a genuine pain. His words, Bobby felt, overcame a barrier of emotion.

They heard Paredes and Doctor Groom on the stairs.

"What's this?" the doctor rumbled as he came up.

"I—I'm sorry I forgot myself," Katherine said through her chattering teeth. She turned to Robinson. "I am going to my room. You needn't be afraid. I shan't leave it until you come to take me."

"Truly I hope it won't be necessary," the district attorney answered.

She hurried away. Rawlins grinned at Paredes.

"I'm wondering what the devil you know."

Robinson made no secret of what had happened. In reply to the questions of Paredes and the doctor he told of the discovery of the evidence and of the stout hat-pin that had, unquestionably, caused death. The man made it clear enough, however, that he didn't care to have Paredes know of Bobby's plan to spend the night in the old room, and Rawlins, Bobby, and Graham indicated that they understood.

"It's quite absurd that any one should think Katherine guilty," the doctor said to Robinson. "This evidence and its presence in her room are details that don't approach the heart of the mystery. That's to be found only in the old room, and I don't think any one wants to tempt it again. In fact, I'm not sure one can learn the truth there and live. You know what happened to Howells when he tried. Silas Blackburn went there, and none of us can understand the change that's taken place. I have been watching him closely. So has Mr. Paredes. We have seen him become grayer. We have seen his eyes alter. He sits shaking in his chair. Since we came back from the grave the man—if we can call him a man—seems to have—shrunk."

"Yes," Paredes said. "Perhaps we shouldn't have left him alone. Let us go back. Let us see if he is all right."

Rawlins laughed skeptically.

"You're not afraid he'll melt away!"

"I'm not so sure he won't," Paredes answered.

They followed him downstairs. Because of the position of Blackburn's chair they could be sure of nothing until they had reached the lower floor and approached the fireplace. Then they saw. It was as if Paredes's far-fetched fear had been realized. Blackburn was not in his chair, nor was he to be found in the hall. Even then, with the exception of Paredes, they wouldn't take the thing seriously. Since the old man wasn't in the hall; since he couldn't have gone upstairs, unobserved by them, he must be either in the library, the dining room, or the rear part of the house. There was no one in the library or the dining room; and Jenkins, who sat in the kitchen, still shaken by the discovery at the grave, said he hadn't moved for the last half hour, was entirely sure no one had come through from the front part of the house.

They returned to the hall and stood in a half circle about the empty chair, where a little while ago Silas Blackburn had cowered, mouthing snatches of his fear—"I'm not dead! I tell you I'm not dead! They can't make me go back"

The echoes of that fear still shocked their ears.

There was a hypnotic power about the vacancy as there had been about the emptiness in the burial ground. Paredes spoke gropingly.

"What would we find," he whispered, "if we went to the cemetery and looked again in the coffin?"

"Why should he have come back at all?" Groom mused.

Robinson opened the front door.

"You know he might have gone this way."

But already the snow had obliterated the signs of their own passage in and out. It showed no fresh marks.

"Silas Blackburn has not gone that way in the body," Doctor Groom rumbled.

The storm was more violent. It discouraged the idea of examining the graveyard again before morning.

Robinson glanced at his watch. He led Bobby and the detective to the library.

"Then try your scheme if you want," he said, "but understand I assume no responsibility. Honestly, I doubt if it amounts to anything. You'll shout out if you are attacked, or the moment you suspect any real cause for fear. Rawlins will be in the corridor, and I'll be in the library or wandering about the house—always within call. Rawlins will guard the broken door, but be sure and lock the other one."

The two officers went upstairs with Bobby. Graham followed.

"You understand," Robinson said. "I'd rather Paredes and the doctor didn't suspect what you are going to do. Change your mind before it's too late, if you want."

Bobby walked on without replying.

"You can't dissuade him," Graham said, "because of what will happen to-morrow unless the truth is discovered to-night."

In the upper hall they found Katherine waiting. Her endeavours were hard to face.

"You shan't go there for me, Bobby," she said.

"Isn't it clear I must go in my own service?" he said, trying to smile.

He wouldn't speak to her again. He wouldn't look at her. Her anxiety and the affection in her eyes weakened him, and he needed all his strength, for at the entrance of the dark, narrow corridor the fear met him.

Rawlins brought a candle and guided him down the corridor. Graham came, too. The detective locked the door leading to the private hall and slipped the key in his pocket.

"Nobody will get through there any more than they will through the other door which I'll watch."

With Graham's help he made a quick inspection of the room, searching the closets and glancing beneath the bed and behind the furniture.

"There's no one," he said, preparing to depart. "I tell you there's no chance of a physical attack."

His unimaginative mind cried out.

"I tell you you'll find nothing, learn nothing, for there's nothing here to find, nothing to learn."

"Just the same," Graham urged, "you'll call out, won't you, Bobby, at the first sign of anything out of the way? For God's sake take no foolish chances."

"I don't want the light," Bobby forced himself to say. "My grandfather and Howells both put their candles out. I want everything as it was when they were attacked."

Rawlins nodded and, followed by Graham, carried the candle from the room and closed the broken door.

The sudden solitude and the darkness crushed Bobby, taking his breath. Yellow flames, the response of his eyes to the disappearance of the candle, tore across the blackness, confusing him. He felt his way to the wall near the open window. He sat down there, facing the bed.

At first he couldn't see the bed. He saw only the projections of his fancy, stimulated by Silas Blackburn's story, against the black screen of the night. He understood at last what the old man had meant. The darkness did appear to possess a physical resistance, and as the minutes lengthened it seemed to encase all the suffering the room had ever harboured. But he wouldn't close his eyes as his grandfather had done. It was a defence to keep them on the spot where the bed stood while his mind, in spite of his will, pictured, lying there, still forms with bandaged heads. He wouldn't close his eyes even when those fancied shapes commenced to struggle in grotesque and impotent motion, like ants whose hill has been demolished. Nor could he drive from his ears the echoes of delirium that seemed to have lingered in the old room. He continued to watch the darkness until the outlines of the room and of its furniture dimly detached themselves from the black pall. The snow apparently caught what feeble light the moon forced through, reflecting it with a disconsolate inefficiency. He could see after a time the pallid frames of the windows, the pillow on the bed, and the wall above it. He fancied the dark stain, the depression in the mattress where the two bodies had rested. Those physical objects forced on him the probability of his guilt. Then he recalled that both men, dead for many hours, had moved apparently of their own volition; and his grandfather had come back from the grave and then had disappeared, leaving no trace; and he comforted himself with the thought that the explanation, if it came at all, must arise from a force outside himself, whether of the living or the dead.

Because of that very assurance his fear of the room was incited. Could any subtle change overcome him here as it evidently had the others? Could there be repeated in his case a return and a disappearance like his grandfather's? There was, as Rawlins had said, no way in or out for an attack. Therefore the danger must emerge from the dead, and he was helpless before their incomprehensible campaign.

The whole illogical, abominable course of events warned him to bring his vigil to an end before it should be too late; urged him to escape from the restless revolt of the dead who had dwelt in this room. And he wanted to respond. He wanted to go to the corridor and confess to Rawlins and Robinson that he was beaten. Yet he had begged so hard for this chance! That course, moreover, meant the arrest of Katherine and himself in the morning. For a few hours he could suffer here for her sake. Daylight, if he could persist until then, would bring release, and surely it couldn't be long now.

He shrank back. Steadily it had grown colder in the old room. He shivered. He drew his coat closer about him. What temerity to invade the domain of death, as Paredes had called it, to seek the secrets of unquiet souls!

He ceased shivering. He waited, tensely quiet. Without calculation he realized that the moment for which he had hoped was at hand. The old room was about to disclose its secret, but would it permit him to depart with his knowledge? He forgot to call. He waited, helpless and terrified, against the wall. He heard a moaning cry, faint and distant—the voice they had heard in the forest and at the grave. But it was more than that that held him. He knew now what Katherine had heard across the court, heralding each tragedy and mystery. He caught a formless stirring. Yet on the bed there was no one. Fortunately he had not gone there.

He tried to call out, realizing that the danger could find him if it chose, but his throat was tight and it permitted no response.

His glance hadn't wavered from the wall above the stained pillow. There was movement there. Then he saw. A hand protruded from the blackness of the panelling where they had sounded and measured without success. In the ashen, unnatural light from the snow the long fingers of the hand were like the feelers of a gigantic reptile. They wavered feebly, and he became convinced that the hand was immaterial, that it was unattached to any body. If that was so it couldn't be the hand of Katherine. At least he had proved that Robinson and Rawlins had been wrong about her. That sense of victory stripped him of his paralyzing fear. It loosed the tight band about his throat. He called. He could prove the immaterial nature of the repulsive hand wavering from the wall.

Crying out, he sprang to his feet. He flung himself across the bed. With both of his own hands he grasped the slender, inquisitive fingers which wavered above the stained pillow, and once more his throat tightened. He couldn't cry out again.