CHAPTER IV
A STRANGE LIGHT APPEARS AT THE DESERTED HOUSE
Graham's intention, logical as it was, impressed Bobby as quite futile.Silas Blackburn had died in this ancient, melancholy room behind lockeddoors. This afternoon, with a repetition of the sounds that had probablyaccompanied his death, they had been drawn to find that, behind lockeddoors again, the position of the body had changed incredibly, as if toexpose to them the tiny fatal wound at the base of the brain. Now for thethird time those stealthy movements had aroused Katherine, and they hadfound, once more behind locked doors, the determined and maliciousdetective, murdered precisely as old Blackburn had been.
Of course Graham was logical. By every rational argument the murderermust still be in the room. Yet Bobby foresaw that, as always, no onewould be found, that nothing would be unearthed to explain the successionof tragic mysteries. While Graham commenced his search, indeed, hecontinued to stare at the little round hole in Howells's head, at thefresh, irregular stain on the pillow, and he became absorbed in his ownpredicament. Again and again he asked himself if he could be responsiblefor these murders which had been committed with an inhuman ingenuity. Heknew only that he had wandered, unconscious, in the vicinity of theCedars last night; that he had been asleep when his grandfather's bodyhad altered its position; that he had gone to sleep a little while agotoo profoundly, brooding over Howells's challenge to the murderer toinvade the room of death and kill him if he could. Howells had beenconfident that he could handle a man and so solve the riddle of how theroom had been entered. Certainly Howells's challenge had been accepted,and Bobby knew that he had fallen into that deep sleep hating thedetective, telling himself that the man's death might save him fromarrest, from conviction, from an intolerable walk to a little room with asingle chair.
"Recurrent aphasia." The doctor's expression came back to him. In such astate a man could overcome locked doors, could accomplish apparentmiracles and retain no recollection. And Bobby had hated and fearedHowells more than he had his grandfather.
Dully he saw Katherine go out at Graham's direction. As one in a dream hemoved toward the door they had had to break down on entering.
"Stand close to it," Graham said. "We'll cover everything."
"You'll find no one," Bobby answered with a perfect assurance.
He saw Graham take the candle and explore the large closets. He watchedhim examine the spaces behind the window curtains. He could smile alittle as Graham stooped, peering beneath the bed, as he moved each pieceof furniture large enough to secrete a man.
"You see, Hartley, it's no use."
Graham's lack of success, however, stimulated his anger.
"Then," he said, "there must be some hiding place in the walls. Suchdevices are common in houses as old as this."
Bobby indicated the silent form of the detective.
"He believed I killed my grandfather. The only reason he didn't arrest mewas his failure to find out how the room had been entered and left. Don'tyou suppose he looked for a hiding place or a secret entrance the firstthing? It's obvious."
But Graham's savage determination increased. He sounded each panel. Nonegave the slightest revealing response. He got a tape from Katherine andmeasured the dimensions of the room, the private hall, and the corridor.At last he turned to Bobby, his anger dead, his face white and tired.
"Everything checks," he admitted. "There's no secret room, no way in orout. Logically Groom's right. We're fighting the dead who resent theintrusion of your grandfather and Howells."
He laughed mirthlessly.
"After all, we can't surrender to that. There must be another answer."
"From the first Howells was satisfied with me," Bobby said.
Graham flung up his hands.
"Then tell me how you got in without disturbing those locks. I grant you,Bobby, you had sufficient motive for both murders, but I don't believeyou have two personalities, one decent and lovable, the other cruel andcunning to the point of magic. I don't believe if a man had two suchpersonalities the actions of one would be totally closed to the memory ofthe other."
Bobby smiled wanly.
"It isn't pleasant to confess it, Hartley, but I have read of suchcases."
"Fiction!"
"Scientific fact."
"I wish to the devil I had shared your room with you to-night," Grahammuttered. "I might have furnished you an alibi for this affair at least."
"Either that," Bobby answered frankly, "or you might have followed me andlearned the whole secret. Honestly, isn't that what you were thinking of,Hartley? And I did go to sleep, telling myself it would help me ifsomething of the sort happened to Howells. Now I'm not so sure that itwill. I--I suppose you've got to notify the police."
Graham held up his hand.
"What's that? In the corridor!"
There were quiet footsteps in the corridor. Bobby turned quickly,Paredes strolled slowly through the passage, a cigarette held in hisslender, listless fingers. Bobby stared at him, remembering his surprisea few minutes ago that the Panamanian should have sat up so late, shouldhave been, probably, in the court when they had followed Katherine to thediscovery of this new crime.
Paredes paused in the doorway. He took in the tragic picture framed bythe sinister room without displaying the slightest interest. He continuedto hold his cigarette until it expired. Then he crossed the threshold.Graham and Bobby watched the expressionless face. Gracefully Paredesraised his finger and pointed to the bed. When he spoke his voice was lowand pleasant:
"Appalling! I feared something of the kind when I heard you come tothis room."
He glanced at the broken door.
"The same unbelievable circumstance," he drawled. "I see you had tobreak in."
The colour flashed back to Graham's face.
"You have taken plenty of time to solve your misgivings."
"It hasn't been so long. I fancied everything was all right, and I wasimmersed in my solitaire. Then I heard a stirring upstairs. As I've toldyou, the house frightens me. It is not natural or healthy. So I came upto investigate this stirring, and there was Miss Katherine in the hall.She told me."
Graham faced him with undisguised enmity.
"Immersed in your solitaire! We were attracted by a light in the lowerhall at such an hour. We looked down. You were not there. The front doorwas open."
Paredes glanced at his cold cigarette. He yawned.
"When Howells died precisely as Mr. Blackburn did," Graham hurried on,"you alone were awake about the house. Weren't you at that moment inthe court?"
Paredes laughed tolerantly.
"It is clear, in spite of my apologies, that we are not friends, Graham;but, may I ask, are you accusing me of this strange--accident?"
"I should like to know what you were doing in the court."
"Perhaps," Paredes answered, "I was attracted there by the sounds thataroused Miss Katherine."
Graham shook his head.
"From her description I doubt if those sounds would have been audible inthe hall."
"No matter," Paredes said. "I merely suggest that it's a case for Groom.His hint of a spiritual enmity may be saner than you think."
Katherine appeared in the doorway. She had evidently overheard Paredes'scomment, for she nodded. The determination in her eyes suggested that shehad struggled with the situation during these last moments and hadreached a definite conclusions That quality was in her voice.
"At least, Hartley," she said, "you must send for Doctor Groom beforeyou notify the police."
Graham waved his hand.
"Why?" he asked. "The man is dead."
With a movement, hidden from Paredes, she indicated Bobby.
"Last time there was a good deal of delay before the doctor came. If weget him right away he may be able to do something for this poor fellow.At least his advice would be useful."
Bobby realized that she was fighting for time for him. Any delay would beuseful that would give them a chance to plan before the police
withunimaginative efficiency should invade the house and limit theiropportunities. Graham showed that he caught her point.
"Maybe it's better," he said. "Then, Bobby, telephone Groom to be readyfor you, and take my runabout. It's in the stable. You'll get him heremuch faster than he could come in his carriage."
"While I'm gone," Bobby asked, "what will you do?"
"Watch this room," Graham jerked out. "See that no one enters or leavesit, or touches the body. I'll hope for some clue."
"You've plenty of courage," Paredes drawled. "I shouldn't care to watchalone in this room."
He followed Katherine into the corridor. Bobby looked at Graham.
"You'll take no chances, Hartley?"
Graham's smile wasn't pleasant.
"According to you and the dead detective there's no risk while you're outof the house. Still, I shall be nervous, but don't worry."
Bobby joined the others before they had reached the hall.
"Of course Hartley found nothing," Katherine said to him.
"Nothing," Paredes answered, "except a very bad temper."
Katherine's distaste for the man was no longer veiled.
"You don't like Mr. Graham," she said, "but he is our friend, and he isin this house to help us."
Paredes bowed.
"I regret that the amusement Mr. Graham causes me sometimes findsexpression. He is so earnest, so materialistic in his relation to theworld. That is why he will see nothing psychic in the situation."
Paredes's easy contempt was like a tonic for Katherine. Her fear seemedto drop from her. She turned purposefully to Bobby, ignoring thePanamanian.
"I shall watch with Hartley," she said.
He was ashamed that jealousy should creep into such a moment, but herresolve recalled his amorous discontent. The prospect of Graham and her,watching alone, drawn to each other by their fright and uncertainty, bytheir surroundings, by the hour, became unbearable. It placed him, to anextent, on Paredes's side. It urged him, when Paredes had gone ondownstairs, to spring almost eagerly to his defence.
"As Hartley says," Katherine began, "he makes you think of a snake. Hemust see we dislike and resent him."
"You and Hartley, perhaps," Bobby said. "Carlos says he is here to helpme. I've no reason to disbelieve him."
A little colour came into Katherine's face. She half stretched out herhand as if in an appeal. But the colour faded and her hand dropped.
"We are wasting time," she said. "You had better go."
"I am sorry we disagree about Carlos," he commenced.
She turned deliberately away from him.
"You must hurry," she said. "Hurry!"
He saw her enter the corridor to join Graham. The obscurity of the narrowplace seemed to hold for him a new menace.
He walked downstairs slowly. While he telephoned, instructing a servantto tell the doctor to be dressed and ready in twenty minutes, he sawParedes go to the closet and get his hat and coat.
"I shall keep you company," the Panamanian announced.
Bobby was glad enough to have him. He didn't want to be alone. He wasaware by this time that no amount of thought would persuade usefulmemories to emerge from the black pit. They walked to the stable, halfgone to ruin like the rest of the estate. Bobby started Graham's car. Theservants' quarters, he saw, were dark. Then Jenkins and the two womenhadn't been aroused, were still ignorant of the new crime. As they drovesmoothly past the gloomy house they glimpsed through the court the dimlylit windows of the old room that persistently guarded its grim secret.Bobby pictured the living as well as the dead there, and his mindrevolted, and he shivered. He opened the throttle wider. The car sprangforward. The divergent glare from the headlights forced back thereluctant thicket. Paredes drawled unexpectedly:
"There is nothing as lonely anywhere in the world."
He stooped behind the windshield and lighted a cigarette.
"At least. Bobby," he said between puffs, "the Cedars has taken from youthe fear of Howells."
And after a time, staring at the glow of his cigarette, he went onsoftly:
"Have you noticed anything significant about the discovery of eachmystery at the Cedars?"
"Many things," Bobby muttered.
"Think," Paredes urged him.
Bobby answered angrily:
"You've suggested that to me once to-day, Carlos. You mean that each timeI have been asleep or unconscious."
"I mean something quite different," Paredes said.
He hesitated. When he continued, his drawl was more pronounced.
"Then you haven't remarked that each time it has been Miss Katherine whohas made the discovery, who has aroused the rest of the house?"
The car swerved sharply. Bobby's first impulse had been to take his handsfrom the wheel, to force Paredes to retract his sly insinuation.
"That's the rottenest thing I've ever known you to do, Carlos.Take it back."
Paredes shrugged his shoulders.
"There is nothing to take back. I accuse no one. I merely call attentionto a chain of exceptional coincidences."
"You make me wonder," Bobby said, "if Hartley isn't justified in hisdislike of you. You'll kill such a ridiculous suspicion."
"Or?" Paredes drawled. "Very well. It seems my fate recently to offendthose I like best. I merely thought that any theory leading away from youwould be welcome."
"Any theory," Bobby answered, "involving Katherine is unthinkable."
Paredes smiled.
"I didn't understand exactly how you felt. I rather took it for grantedthat Graham--Never mind. I take it back."
"Then drop it," Bobby answered sullenly, sorry that there was nothingelse he could say.
They continued in silence through the deserted forest whose aggressiveloneliness made words seem trivial. Bobby was asking himself again wherehe had stood last night when he had glimpsed for a moment the strainingtrees and the figure in a mask which he had called his conscience. If hecould only prove that figure substantial! Then Graham would have someground for his suspicion of Paredes and the dancer Maria. He glanced atParedes. Could there have been a conspiracy against him in the New Yorkcafe? Did Paredes, in fact, have some devious purpose in remaining atthe Cedars?
The automobile took a sharp curve in the road. Bobby started, gazingahead with an interest nearly hypnotic. The headlights had caught intheir glare the deserted farmhouse in which he had awakened just beforeHowells had told him of his grandfather's death and practically placedhim under arrest. In the white light the frame of the house from whichthe paint had flaked, appeared ghastly, unreal, like a structure seen ina nightmare from which one recoils with morbid horror. The light left thebuilding. As the car tore past, Bobby could barely make out the blackmass in the midst of the thicket.
Paredes had observed it, too.
"I daresay," he remarked casually, "the Cedars will become as deserted asthat. It is just that it should, for the entire neighbourhood impressesone as unfriendly to life, as striving through death to drive life out."
"Have you ever seen that house before?" Bobby asked quickly.
"I have never seen it before. I do not care ever to see it again."
It was a relief when the forest thinned and fields stretched, flat andpleasant, like barriers against the stunted growth. Bobby stopped the carin front of one of a group of houses at a crossroads. He climbed thesteps and rang. Doctor Groom opened the door himself. His gigantic, hairyfigure was silhouetted against the light from within.
"What's the matter now?" he demanded in his gruff voice. "Fortunately Ihadn't gone to bed. I was reading some books on psychic manifestations.Who's sick? Or--"
Bobby's face must have told him a good deal, for he broke off.
"Get your things on," Bobby said, "and I will tell you as we driveback, for you must come. Howells has been killed precisely as mygrandfather was."
For a moment Doctor Groom's bulky frame remained motionless in thedoorway. Instead of the surprise and horror Bobby had foreseen, the oldman e
xpressed only a mute wonder. He got his hat and coat and entered therunabout, Paredes made room for him, sitting on the floor, his feet onthe running board.
Bobby had told all he knew before they had reached the forest. The doctorgrunted then:
"The wound at the back of the head was the same as in yourgrandfather's case?"
"Exactly."
"Then what good am I? Why am I routed out?"
"A formality," Bobby answered. "Katherine thought if we got you quicklyyou might do something. Anyway, she wanted your advice."
The woods closed about them. Again the lights seemed to push back apalpable barrier.
"I can't work miracles," the doctor was murmuring. "I can't bring menback to life. Such a wound leaves no ground for hope. You'd better havesent for the police at once. Hello!"
He strained forward, peering around the windshield.
"Funny!" Paredes called.
Bobby's eyes were on the road.
"What do you see?"
"The house, Bobby!" Paredes cried.
"No one, to my certain knowledge," the doctor said, "has lived in thathouse for ten years. You say it was empty and falling to pieces when youwoke up there this morning."
Bobby knew what they meant then, and he reduced the speed of the car andlooked ahead to the right. A pallid glow sifted through the trees fromthe direction of the deserted house.
Bobby guided the car to the side of the road, stopped it, and shut offthe engine. At first no one moved. The three men stared as if in thepresence of an unaccountable phenomenon. Even when Bobby hadextinguished the headlights the glow failed to brighten. Its pallidquality persisted. It seemed to radiate from a point close to the ground.
"It comes from the front of the house," Bobby murmured.
He stepped from the automobile.
"What are you going to do?" Paredes wanted to know.
"Find out who is in that house."
For Bobby had experienced a quick hope. If there was a man or a womansecreted in the building the truth as to his own remarkable presencethere last night might not be so far to seek after all. There was,moreover, something lawless about this light escaping from the place atsuch an hour. A little while ago, when Paredes and he had driven past,the house had been black. They had remarked its lonely, abandonedappearance. It had led Paredes to speak of the neighbourhood as thedomain of death. Yet the strange, pallid quality of the light itself madehim pause by the broken fence. It did come from the lower part of thefront of the house, yet, so faint was it, it failed to outline theaperture through which it escaped. The doctor and Paredes joined him.
"When I was here," he said, "all the shutters were closed. This glow istoo white, too diffused. We must see."
As he started forward Paredes grasped his arm.
"There are too many of us. We would make a noise. Suppose I creep up andinvestigate."
"There is one way in--at the back," Bobby told the doctor. "Let us gothere. We'll have whoever's inside trapped. Meantime, Carlos, if hewishes, will steal up to the front; he'll find out where the light comesfrom. He'll look in if he can."
"That's the best plan," Paredes agreed.
But they had scarcely turned the corner of the house, beyond reach of theglow, when Paredes rejoined them. His feet were no longer careful in theunderbrush. He came up running. For the first time in their acquaintanceBobby detected a lessening of the man's suave, unemotional habit.
"The light!" the Panamanian gasped. "It's gone! Before I could get closeit faded out."
Bobby called to the doctor and ran toward the door at the rear. It wasunhinged and half open as it had been when he had awakened to his painfuland inexplicable predicament. He went through, fumbling in his pocket formatches. The damp chill of the hall nauseated him as it had done before,seemed to place about his throat an intangible band that made breathingdifficult. Before he could get his match safe out the doctor had struck awax vesta. Its strong flame played across the dingy, streaked walls.
"There's a flashlight, Carlos," Bobby said, "in the door flap of theautomobile."
Paredes started across the yard with a haste, it seemed to Bobby,almost eager.
Striking matches as they went, the doctor and Bobby hurried to the frontof the house. The rooms appeared undisturbed in their decay. The shutterswere closed. The front door was barred. The broken walls from which theplaster hung in shreds leered at them.
Suddenly Bobby turned, grasping the doctor's arm.
"Did you hear anything?"
The doctor shook his head.
"Or feel anything?"
"No."
"I thought," Bobby said excitedly, "that there was some one in thehall. I--I simply got that impression, for I saw nothing myself. Myback was turned."
Paredes strolled silently in.
"It may have been Mr. Paredes," the doctor said.
But Bobby wasn't convinced.
"Did you see or hear anything coming through the hall, Carlos?"
"No," Paredes said.
He had brought the light. With its help they explored the tiny cellar andthe upper floor. There was no sign of a recent occupancy. Everything wasas Bobby had found it on awakening. A vagrant wind sighed about theplace. They looked at each other with startled eyes. They filed out withan incongruous stealth.
"Then there are ghosts here, too!" Paredes whispered.
"Who knows?" Doctor Groom mused. "It is as puzzling as anything that hashappened at the Cedars unless the light we saw was some phosphorescenteffect of decaying wood or vegetation."
"Then why should it go out all at once?" Bobby asked. "Is there anyconnection between this light and what has happened at the Cedars?"
"The house at least," Paredes put in, "is connected with what hashappened at the Cedars through your experience here."
At Doctor Groom's suggestion they sat in the automobile for some time,watching the house for a repetition of the pallid light. After severalminutes, when it failed to come, Bobby set his gears.
"Graham and Katherine will be worried."
They drove quickly away from the black, uncommunicative mass of theabandoned building. The woods were lonelier than before. They impressedBobby as guarding something.
He drove straight to the stable. As they walked into the court they sawthe uncertain candlelight diffused from the room of death. In the hallBobby responded to a quick alarm. The Cedars was too quiet. What hadhappened since he and Paredes had left?
"Katherine! Hartley!" he called.
He heard running steps upstairs. Katherine leaned over the banister. Herquiet voice reassured him. "Is the doctor with you?"
He nodded. Paredes yawned and lighted a cigarette. He settled himself inan easy chair. Bobby and Doctor Groom hurried up. Katherine led them downthe old corridor. Two chairs had been placed in the broken doorway.Graham sat there. He arose and greeted the doctor.
"Nothing has happened since I left?" Bobby asked.
Graham shook his head.
"Katherine and I have watched every minute."
Doctor Groom walked to the bed and for a long time looked down atHowells. Once he put out his hand, quickly withdrawing it.
"It's simply a repetition," he said at last, and his voice was softerthan its custom. "It may be a warning, for all we know, that no one maysleep in this room without attracting death. Yet why should that be? Imiss this poor fellow's materialistic viewpoint. There's nothing I can dofor him, nothing I can say, except that death must have beeninstantaneous. The police must seek again for a man to place in theelectric chair."
Graham touched his arm with an odd reluctance.
"Sitting here for so long I've been thinking. I have always beenmaterialistic, too. Tell me seriously, doctor, do you believe there isany psychic force capable of killing two men in this incisive fashion?"
"No one," the doctor answered, "can say what psychic force is capable ofdoing. Some scientists have started to explore, but it is still unchartedcountry. From certain places--I daresay you've noticed it--on
e gets animpression of peace and content; from others a depression, a sense ofsuffering. I think we have all experienced psychic force to that extent.Remember that this room has a history of intense and rebellioussuffering. Some of it I have seen with my own eyes. Your father's fightfor life, Katherine, was horrible for those of us who knew he had nochance. As I watched beside him I used to wonder if such violent agonycould ever drift wholly into silence, and when we had to tell him finallythat the fight was lost, it was beyond bearing."
"If these men had been found dead without marks of violence," Grahamsaid, "I might consider such a possibility, irrational as it seems."
"Irrational," Doctor Groom answered, "must not be confused withimpossible. The marks of a physical violence, far from proving that theattack was physical, strengthens the case of the supernatural. Certainlyyou have heard and read of pictures being dashed from walls by invisiblehands, of objects moved about empty rooms, of cases where human beingshave been attacked by inanimate things--heavy things--hurtling throughthe air. Some scientists recognize such irrational possibilities.Policemen don't."
"Very well," Graham said stubbornly. "I'll follow you that far, but youmust show me in this room the sharp object with which these men wereattacked, no matter what the force behind it."
The doctor spread his hands. His infused eyes nearly closed.
"That I can't do. At any rate, Robert, this isn't wholly tragic to you. Idon't see how any one could accuse you of aphasia to-night."
"You've not forgotten," Bobby said slowly, "that you spoke of arecurrent aphasia."
"That's the trouble," Graham put in under his breath. "He has no morealibi now than he had when his grandfather was murdered."
Bobby told of his heavy sleep, of the delay in Katherine's arousing him.
The doctor's gruff voice was disapproving.
"You shouldn't have drunk that medicine. It had stood too long. It wouldonly have approximated its intended effect."
"You mean," Bobby asked, "that I wasn't sleeping as soundly as Ithought?"
"Probably not, but you're by no means a satisfactory victim. Men dounaccountable things in a somnambulistic state, but asleep they haven'twings any more than they have awake. You've got to show us how youentered this room without disturbing the locks. Now, Mr. Graham, we mustcomply with the law. Call in the police."
"There's nothing else to do," Bobby agreed.
So they went along the dingy corridor and downstairs. From the depths ofthe easy chair in which Paredes lounged smoke curled with a lazyindifference. The Panamanian didn't move.
While Graham and the doctor walked to the back of the hall to telephone,Katherine, an anxious figure, a secretive one, beckoned Bobby to thelibrary. He went with her, wondering what she could want.
It was quite dark in the library. As Bobby fumbled with the lamp andprepared to strike a match he was aware of the girl's provocatively nearpresence. He resisted a warm impulse to reach out and touch her hand. Hedesired to tell her all that was in his heart of the division that hadincreased between them the last few months. Yet to follow that impulsewould, he realized, place a portion of his burden on her shoulders; wouldalso, in a sense, be disloyal to Graham, for he no longer questioned thatthe two had reached a definite sentimental understanding. So he sighedand struck the match. Even before the lamp was lighted Katherine wasspeaking with a feverish haste:
"Before the police come--you've a chance, Bobby--the last chance. Youmust do before the police arrive whatever is to be done."
He replaced the shade and glanced at her, astonished by her intensity, bythe forceful gesture with which she grasped his arm. For the first timesince Silas Blackburn's murder all of her vitality had come back to her.
"What do you mean?"
She pointed to the door of the private staircase.
"Just what Howells told you before he went up there to his death."
Bobby understood. He reacted excitedly to her attitude of conspirator.
"He said," she went on, "that the criminal had nothing to lose. That itwould be to his advantage to have him out of the way, to destroy thatevidence."
"I thought of it," Bobby answered, "just before I went to sleep."
"Don't you see?" she said. "If you had killed him you would have takenthe cast and the handkerchief and destroyed them? Hartley has told meeverything, and I could see his coat for myself. The cast and thehandkerchief are still in Howells's pocket."
"Why should I have killed him if not to destroy those?" Bobby took her upwith a quick hope.
"You didn't," she cried. "Nothing would ever make me believethat you killed him, but you will be charged with it unless theevidence--disappears. You'll have no defence."
Bobby drew back a little.
"You want me to go there--and--and take from his pocket those things?"
She nodded.
"You remember he suggested that he hadn't sent his report. That may bethere, too."
Bobby shook his head. "He must have said that as a bait."
"At the worst," she urged, "a report without evidence could only turnsuspicion against you. It wouldn't convict you as those other things may.You must get them. You must destroy them."
Graham slipped quietly in and closed the door.
"The district attorney is coming himself with another detective," hesaid. "I can guess what Katherine has been talking about. She's right.I'm a lawyer, an I know the penalty of tampering with evidence. But Idon't believe you're a murderer, and I tell you as long as that evidenceexists they can convict you. They can send you to the chair. They mayarrest you and try you anyway on his report, but I don't believe they canconvict you on it alone. You're justified in protecting yourself, Bobby,in the only way you can. No one will see you go in the room. We'llarrange it so that no one can testify against you."
Bobby felt himself at a cross roads. During the commission of thosecrimes he had been unconscious. If he had, in fact, had anything to dowith them, his personality, his real self, had known nothing, had done nowrong. His body had merely reacted to hideous promptings whose sourcelurked at the bottom of the black pit. To tamper with evidence would be aconscious crime. All the more, because of his doubt of himself, he shrankfrom that. Katherine saw his hesitation.
"It's a matter of your life or death."
But although Katherine decided him it wasn't with that. She came closer.She looked straight at him, and her eyes were full of an affection thatstirred him profoundly:
"For my sake, Bobby--"
He studied the dead ashes of the fire which a little while ago hadplayed on Howells, vital and antagonistic, by the door of the privatestaircase. The man had challenged him to do just the thing from which heshrank. But Howells was no longer vital or antagonistic, and it occurredto him that a little of his shrinking arose from the thought ofapproaching and robbing the still thing upstairs, all that was left ofthe man who had not been afraid of the mystery of the locked room.
"For my sake," Katherine repeated.
Bobby squared his shoulders. He fought back his momentary cowardice. Theaffection in Katherine's eyes was stronger than that.
"All right," he said. "Howells never gave me a chance while he was alive.He'll have to now he's dead."
Katherine relaxed. Graham's face was quite white, but he gave hisinstructions in a cold, even tone:
"We'll go to the hall now. Katherine will go on upstairs. She mustn't seeyou enter the room, but she will watch in the corridor while you arethere to be sure you aren't disturbed. You and I will chat for awhilewith the others, Bobby, then you will go up. You understand? Paredesmustn't even guess what you are doing. I'll keep him and Groomdownstairs. If he spied, if he knew what you were at, he'd have a weaponin his hands I'd hate to think about. He may be all right, but we can'trisk any more than we have to. We must go on tiptoe."
He opened the door. Katherine gave Bobby's hand a quick,encouraging pressure.
"Take the stuff to my room," Graham whispered. "The first chance, we'lldestroy it so that no tr
ace will be left."
They went to the hall. Without speaking, Katherine climbed the stairs.Graham drew a chair between Paredes and the doctor. Bobby lounged againstthe mantel, trying to find in the Panamanian's face some clue as to hisreal feelings. But Paredes's eyes were closed. His hand drooped acrossthe chair arm. His slender, pointed fingers held, as if from mere habit,a lifeless cigarette.
"Asleep," Graham whispered.
Without opening his eyes Paredes spoke: "No; I feel curiously awake."He yawned.
Doctor Groom glanced at his watch. "The powers of prosecution," hegrumbled, "ought to be here within the next fifteen or twenty minutes."
Bobby glanced at Graham. Then it wasn't safe to delay too long. More andmore as he waited he shrank from the invasion of the room of death. Theprospect of reaching out and touching the still, cold thing on the bedrevolted him. Was there anything in that room capable of forbidding hisintention? Was there, in short, a surer, more malicious force for evilthan his unconscious self, at work in the house? He was about to makesome formal comment to the others, to embark on his distastefuladventure, when Paredes, as if he had read Bobby's mind, opened hiseyes, languidly left his chair, and walked to the foot of the stairs.
"Where you going?" Graham asked sharply.
Paredes waved his hand indifferently and walked on up. There wassomething of stealth in his failure to reply, in his cat-like tread onthe stairs. Graham and Bobby stared after him, unable to meet this newsituation audibly because of Groom. Yet five minutes had gone. There wasno time to be lost. Paredes mustn't rob Bobby of his chance. With a sortof desperation he started for the stairs. Graham held out his hand as ifto restrain him, then nodded. Bobby had his foot on the first step whenKatherine's cry reached them, shaping the moment to their use. For therewas no fright in her cry. It was, rather, angry. And Bobby and Graham ranup while Doctor Groom remained in his chair, an expression of blankamazement on his face.
A candle burned on the table in the upper hall. Katherine and Paredesstood near the entrance of the old corridor. Paredes, as usual, was quiteunruffled. Katherine's attitude was defensive. She seemed to hold thecorridor against him. The anger of her cry was active in her eyes.Paredes laughed lightly.
"Sorry to have given the household one more shock. Fortunately noharm done."
"What is it, Katherine?" Graham demanded.
"I don't know," she answered. "He startled me. He entered the corridor."
Paredes nodded.
"Quite right. She was there. I was on my way to my room. If your househad electricity, Bobby, this incident would have been avoided. I sawsomething dark in the corridor."
"You may not know," Graham said, "that ever since we found Howells, oneof us has tried, more or less, to keep the entrance of that room underobservation."
"Yet you were all downstairs a little while ago," Paredes yawned. "It'stoo bad. I might have taken my turn then. At any rate, since I wasexcluded from your confidence, I overcame my natural fear, and, forBobby's sake, slipped in, and, I am afraid, startled Miss Katherine."
"Yes," she said.
His explanation was reasonable. There was nothing more to be said, butBobby's doubt of his friend, sown by Graham and stimulated by theincidents of the last hour, was materially strengthened. He felt asharp fear of Paredes. Such reserve, such concealment of emotion, wasscarcely human.
"If," Graham was saying, "you really want to help Bobby, there issomething you can do. Will you come downstairs with me for a moment? I'dlike to suggest one or two things before the police arrive."
Without hesitation Paredes followed Graham down the stairs.
Katherine turned immediately to Bobby, her eyes eager, full of the tensedetermination that had dictated her plan in the library.
"Now, Bobby!" she whispered. "And there's no time to waste. They may behere any minute. I won't see you go, but I'll be back at once to guardyou against Paredes if he slips up again."
She walked across the hall and disappeared in the newer corridor. Withoutwitness he faced the old corridor, and with the attempt directly aheadhis repugnance achieved a new power. The black entrance with its scarcelydared memories reminded him that what he was about to do was directedagainst more than human law, was an outrage against the dead man. He hadto remind himself of the steely purpose with which Howells had marked himas the murderer; and the man's power persisted after death. In such acontest he was justified.
He took the candle from the table. Through the stair-well the murmur ofGraham's voice, occasionally interrupted by Groom's heavy tones or thelanguid accents of Paredes, drifted encouragingly. Trying to crush hispremonitions, Bobby entered the corridor. Instead of illuminating thenarrow passage the candle seemed half smothered by its blackness. For thefirst time in his memory Bobby faced the entrance of the sinister roomalone. He pushed open the broken door. He paused on the threshold. Itimpressed him as not unnatural that he should experience such misgivings.They sprang not alone from the fact that within twenty-four hours two menhad died unaccountably within these faded walls. Nor did the evidencepointing to his own unconscious guilt wholly account for them. At thebottom of everything was the fact that from his earliest childhood he hadlooked upon the room as consecrated to death; had consequently feared it;had, he recalled, always hurried past the disused corridor leading in itsdirection.
Through its wide spaces the light of the candle scarcely penetrated. Nomore than an indefinite radiance thrust back the obscurity and outlinedthe bed. He could barely see the stark, black form outstretched there.
The dim, vast room, as he advanced, imposed upon him a sense ofisolation. Katherine in the upper hall, the others downstairs, whosevoices no longer reached him, seemed all at once far away. He stood in aplace lonelier and more remote than the piece of woods where he hadmomentarily opened his eyes last night; and, instead of the strainingtrees and the figure in the black mask which he had called hisconscience, he had for motion and companionship only the swaying of thecurtains in the breeze from the open window and the dark, prostrate thingwhose face as he went closer was like a white mask--a mask with a fixedand malevolent sneer.
The wind caught the flame of the candle, making it flicker. Tenuousshadows commenced to dance across the walls. He paused with a tighteningthroat, for the form on the bed seemed moving, too, with sly and scarcelyperceptible gestures. Then he understood. It was the effect of theshaking candle, and he forced himself to go on, but a sense of a multiplecompanionship accompanied him--a sense of a shapeless, soundlesscompanionship that projected an idea of a steady regard. There sweptthrough his mind a procession of figures in quaint dress and with facesnot unlike his own, remembered from portraits and family legends, men andwomen to whom this room had been familiar, within whose limits they hadsuffered, cried out a too-powerful agony, and died. It seemed to him thathe waited for voices to guide him, to urge him on as Katherine had urgedhim, or to drive him back, because he was an intruder in a company whosehabit was strange and terrifying.
He forced his glance from the shadows which seemed more active along thewalls. He raised his candle and stared at the dead man. The cast wasundoubtedly there. The coat, stretched tightly across the breast,outlined it. He stood at the side of the bed. He had only to bend andplace his hand in the pocket which the cast filled awkwardly. The windalone, he saw, wasn't responsible for the shaking of the candle. His handshook as the shadows shook, as the thing on the bed shook. The sense ofloneliness grew upon him until it became complete, appalling. For thefirst time he understood that loneliness can possess a ponderablequality. It was, he felt, potent and active in the room--a thing hecouldn't understand, or challenge, or overcome.
His hand tightened. He thought of Katherine guarding the corridor; ofParedes and Doctor Groom, held downstairs by Graham; of the countyauthorities hurrying to seize this evidence that would convict him; andhe realized that his duty and his excuse were clear. He understood thatjust now he had been captured by a force undefinable in terms of theworld he knew. For a moment he eluded
the stealthy fleshless hands of itsimpalpable skirmishers. He reached impulsively out to the dead man. Hewas about to place his fingers in the pocket, which, after all was saidand done, held his life.
In the light of the candle the face seemed alive and more menacing thanit had ever done in life. About the straight smile was a wider, moretriumphant quality.
The candle flickered sharply. It expired. The conquering blackness tookhis breath.
He told himself it was the draft from the window which was strong, butthe companionship of the night was closer and more numerous. The darknesswreathed itself into mocking and tortuous bodies whose faces were hidden.
In an agony of revolt against these incorporeal, these fanciful horrors,he reached in the pocket.
He sprang back with a choked, inaudible cry, for the dead thing beneathhis hand was stirring. The dead, cold thing with a languid and impossiblerebuke, moved beneath his touch. And the pocket he had felt was empty.The coat, a moment ago bulging and awkward, was flat. There sprang tohis mind the mad thought that the detective, malevolent in life, had longafter death snatched from his hand the evidence, carefully gathered, onwhich everything for him depended.