The Abandoned Room Part 21

"Now who?" the old man whined. "I wish you wouldn't look at me so. It makes me feel queer. You're all crazy."

"It's probably Doctor Groom," Bobby said, and stepped to the door, opening it.

It was Groom. The huge man walked in, struggling out of his coat. At first the others screened Silas Blackburn from him, but he acknowledged their strained att.i.tudes, the excitement that still animated Paredes's face.

"What's the matter with you?" he asked. "Found something, Mr. District Attorney?"

Robinson moved to one side, jerking his thumb at Silas Blackburn. The coat and hat slipped from Doctor Groom's hand. His mouth opened. His great body crept slowly back until the shoulders rested against the wall. He placed the palms of his hands against the wall as if to push it away in order to a.s.sure further retreat. Always the little, infused eyes remained fixed on the man who had been his friend. Such terror was chiefly arresting because of the great figure conquered by it.

Blackburn thrust his pipe in his mouth. He laughed shakily.

"That fellow Groom will have a stroke."

The Doctor's greeting had the difficult quality of a masculine sob.

"Silas Blackburn!"

"Who do you think?" the other whined. "You going to try to frighten me out of my skin, too? These people are trying to say I've been lying dead in the old room. Hoped you'd have enough sense to set them right and tell me what it's all about."

The doctor straightened.

"You did lie dead in the old room."

His harsh, amazed tones held an unqualified conviction.

"I saw you there. I helped the coroner make the examination. You had been dead for many hours. And I saw you bolted in your coffin. I saw you buried in the graveyard you'd let go to pieces."

The others had, as far as possible, recovered from the first shock, had done their best to fathom the mystery, but Groom's fear increased. His reddish eyes grew always more alarmed. Silas Blackburn turned with a quick, frightened gesture, facing the fire. Paredes drew a deep breath.

"Now you'll see," he said.

Doctor Groom shrank against the wall again. After a moment, with the motions of one drawn by an outside will, he approached the figure at the fireplace. Then Bobby saw, and he heard Katherine's choked scream. For now that his grandfather's back was turned there was plainly visible on the white of the collar, near the base of the brain, a scarlet stain. And the hair above it was matted.

"That's what I meant," Paredes whispered.

Graham moved back.

"Good G.o.d!"

Robinson stared. The fear had found him, too.

Doctor Groom touched Blackburn's shoulder tentatively.

"What's the matter with the back of your neck?"

Blackburn drew fearfully away. He raised his hand and fumbled at the top of his collar. He held his fingers to the firelight.

"Why," he said blankly, "I been bleeding back there."

To an extent the doctor controlled himself.

"Sit down here, Silas Blackburn," he said. "I want to get the lamplight on your head."

"I ain't badly hurt?" Blackburn whined.

"I don't know," the doctor answered. "Heaven knows."

Blackburn sat down. The light shone full on the stained collar and the dark patch of hair at the base of the brain. Doctor Groom examined the wound minutely. He straightened. He spoke unsteadily: "It is a healed wound. It was made by something sharp."

Robinson thrust his hands in his pockets.

"You're getting beyond my depths, Doctor. Bring him up to the old bedroom. I want him to see that pillow."

But Blackburn cowered in his chair.

"I won't go to that room again. They don't want me there. I'll have work started in the cemetery to-morrow."

"Mr. Blackburn," Robinson said, "the man we buried in the cemetery to-day, the man these members of your family identify as yourself, died of just such a wound as the doctor says has healed in your head."

Blackburn cowered farther in his chair.

"You're making fun of me," he whimpered. "You're trying to scare an old man."

"No," Robinson said. "How was that wound made?"

The crouched figure wagged its head from side to side.

"I don't know. Nothing's touched me there. I remember I had a headache when I woke up. Why doesn't Groom tell me why I slept so long?"

"I only know," Groom rumbled, "that the wound I examined upstairs must have caused instant death."

Paredes whispered to him. The doctor nodded reluctantly.

"What do you mean?" Blackburn cried. "You trying to tell me I can't stay with you?"

He pointed to Paredes.

"That's what he said--that I might have to go back, but I never heard of such a thing. I'm all right. My neck doesn't hurt. I'm alive. I tell you I'm alive. I'll teach you--"

Rawlins returned from the telephone.

"His story's straight," he said in his crisp manner. "I've been talking to Waters himself. Says Mr. Blackburn turned up about three-thirty, looking queer and acting queer. Wouldn't shake hands, just as he says. He went to the spare room and slept practically all the time until this afternoon. No food. Waters couldn't rouse him. Mr. Blackburn wouldn't answer at all or else seemed half asleep. He'd made up his mind to call in a doctor this afternoon. Then Mr. Blackburn seemed all right again, and started home."

Robinson gazed at the fire.

"What's to be done now, sir?" Rawlins asked.

"Find the answer if we can," Robinson said.

Paredes spoke as softly as he had done the other night while reciting his sensitive reaction to the Cedars's gloomy atmosphere. Only now his voice wasn't groping.

"Call me a dreamer if you want, Mr. District Attorney, but I have given you the only answer. This man's soul has dwelt in two places."

Robinson grinned.

"I'm going slow on calling anybody names, but I haven't forgotten that there's been another crime in this house. Howells was killed in that room, too. I would like to believe he could return as Mr. Blackburn has."

Blackburn looked up.

"What's that? Who's Howells?"

And as Robinson told him of the second crime he sank back in his chair again, whimpering from time to time. His fear was harder to watch.

"Might I suggest," Graham said, "that Howells isn't out of the case yet? It would be worth looking into."

"By all means," Robinson agreed.

Rawlins coughed apologetically.

"I asked them about that at the office. Howells was taken to his home in Boston to-day. The funeral's to be to-morrow."

"Then," Robinson said, "we're confined for the present to this end of the case. The facts I have tell me that two murders have been committed in this house. It is still my first duty to convict the guilty man."

Graham indicated the huddled, frightened figure in the chair.

"You are going against the evidence of your own eyes."

"I shall do what I can," Robinson said sternly. "We buried one of those men this noon. His grandson, his niece, and those who saw him frequently, swear it was this living being who has such a wound as the one that caused the death of that man. There is only one thing to do--see who we buried."

"The permits?" Graham suggested.

"I shall telephone the judge," Robinson answered, "and he can send them out, but I shan't wait for hours doing nothing. I am going to the grave at once."

"A waste of time," Paredes murmured.

"I don't understand," Silas Blackburn whined, "You say the doors were locked. Then how could anybody have got in that room to be murdered? How did I get out?"

Robinson turned on Paredes angrily.

"I'm not through with you yet. Before I am I'll get what I want from you."

He stormed away to the telephone. No one spoke. The doctor's rumpled head was still bent over the back of Silas Blackburn's chair. The infused eyes didn't waver from the crimson stain and the healed wound, and Blackburn remained huddled among the cushions, his shoulders twitching. Paredes commenced gathering up his cards. Katherine watched him out of expressionless eyes. Graham walked to her side. Rawlins, as always phlegmatic, remained motionless, waiting for his superior.

Bobby threw off his recent numbness. He realized the disturbing parallel in the actions of his grandfather and himself. He had come to the Cedars unconsciously, perhaps directed by an evil, external influence, on the night of the first murder. Now, it appeared, the man he was accused of killing had also wandered under an unknown impulse that night. Was the same subtle control responsible in both cases? Was there at the Cedars a force that defied physical laws, moving its inhabitants like puppets for special aims of its own? Yet, he recalled, there was something here friendly to him. After the movement of Howells's body and the disappearance of the evidence, the return of Silas Blackburn stripped Robinson's threats of power and seemed to place the solution beyond the district attorney's trivial reach.

The silence and the delay increased their weight upon the little group. Silas Blackburn, huddled in his chair, was grayer, more haggard than he had been at first. He appeared attentive to an expected summons. He seemed fighting the idea of going back.

The proximity of Graham to Katherine quieted the turmoil of Bobby's thoughts. If he could only have foreseen this return he would have listened to the whispered encouragement of the forest.

Robinson reappeared. Anxiety had replaced the anger in the round face which, one felt, should always have been no more than good-natured.

"Jenkins will have to help," he said.

Silas Blackburn arose unsteadily.

"I'm coming with you. You're not going to leave me here. I won't stay here alone."

"He should come by all means," Paredes said, "in case anything should happen--"

The old man put his hands to his ears.

"You keep quiet. I'm not going back, I tell you."

Bobby didn't want to hear any more. He went to the kitchen and called Jenkins. He let the butler go to the hall ahead of him in order that he might not have to witness this new greeting. But Jenkins's cry came back to him, and when he reached the hall he saw that the man's terror had not diminished.

They went through the court and around the house to the stable where they found spades and shovels. Their grim purpose holding them silent, they crossed the clearing and entered the pathway that had been freshly blazed that day for the pa.s.sage of the men in black.

The snow was quite deep. It still drifted down. It filled the woods with a wan, unnatural radiance. Without really illuminating the sooty ma.s.ses of the trees it made the night white.

Silas Blackburn stumbled in the van with Paredes and Robinson. The doctor and Rawlins followed. Graham was with Katherine behind them. Bobby walked last, fighting an instinct to linger, to avoid whatever they might find beneath the white blanket of the little, intimate burial ground.

Groom turned and spoke to Graham. Katherine waited for Bobby, and the white night closed swiftly about them, whispering until the shuffling of the others became inaudible.

Was she glad of this solitude? Had she sought it? Her extraordinary request in that earlier solitude came to him, and he spoke of it while he tried to control his emotions, while he sought to mould the next few minutes reasonably and justly.

"Why did you tell me to make no attempt to find the guilty person?"

"Because," she answered, "you were too sure it was yourself. Why, Bobby, did you think I was the--the woman in black? That has hurt me."

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said, "but there is something I must tell you now that may hurt you a little."

And he explained how Graham had awakened him at the head of the stairs.

"You're right," he said. "I was sure then it was myself, in spite of Howells's movement. It followed so neatly on the handkerchief and the footmarks. But now he has come back, and it changes everything. So I can tell you."

He couldn't be sure whether it was the cold, white loneliness through which they paced, or what he had just said that made her tremble.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have told you that."

"I am glad," she answered. "You must never close your confidence to me again. Why have you done it these last few months? I want to know."

Calculation died.

"Then you shall know."

Through the white night his hands reached for her, found her, drew her close. The moment was too masterful for him to mould. He became, instead, plastic in its white and stealthy grasp.

"I couldn't stay," he said, "and see you give yourself to Hartley."