The Abandoned Room Part 15

"It was before luncheon yesterday."

"Did she leave no instructions? Didn't she say when she would be back?"

The girl nodded.

"That's what worries me, for she said she would be back after the performance last night."

"She left no instructions?" Graham repeated.

"Only that if any one called or telephoned I was to make no appointments. What am I to do? Perhaps I shouldn't be talking to you. She would never forgive me for an indiscretion."

"For the present I advise you to do nothing," Graham said. "You can safely leave all that to her managers. I am going to see them now. I will tell them what you have said."

The girl's eyes moistened.

"Thank you, sir. I have been at my wits' end."

Apparently she withheld nothing. She played no part to confuse the dancer's friends.

On the way to the managers' office, with the trailing car behind them, Graham reasoned excitedly: "For the first time we seem to be actually on the track. Here's a tangible clue that may lead to the heart of the case. Maria pulled the wool over the maid's eyes, too. She didn't want her to know her plans, but her instructions show that she had no intention of returning last night. She probably made a bee line for the Cedars. It was probably she that you saw at the lake, probably she who cried last night. If only she hadn't written that note! I can't get the meaning of it. It's up to her managers now. If they haven't heard from her it's a safe guess she's playing a deep game, connected with the crying, and the light at the deserted house, and the disappearance of Paredes before dawn. You must realize the connection between that and your condition the other evening after you had left them."

Bobby nodded. He began to hope that at the managers' office they would receive no explanation of Maria's absence destructive to Graham's theory. Early as it was they found a bald-headed man in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves pacing with an air of panic a blantantly furnished office.

"Well!" he burst out as they entered. "My secretary tells me you've come about this temperamental Carmen of mine. Tell me where she is. Quick!"

Graham smiled at Bobby. The manager ran his fingers across his bald and s.h.i.+ning forehead.

"It's no laughing matter."

"Then she has definitely disappeared?" Graham said.

"Disappeared! Why did I come down at this unG.o.dly hour except on the chance of getting some word? She didn't even telephone last night. I had to show myself in front of the curtain and give them a spiel about a sudden indisposition. And believe me, gentlemen, audiences ain't what they used to be. Did these ginks sit back and take the show for what it was worth? Not by a darn sight. Flocked to the box office and howled for their money back. If she doesn't appear to-night I might as well close the house. I'll be ruined."

"Unless," Graham suggested, "you get your press agent to make capital out of her absence. The papers would publish her picture and thousands of people would look her up for you."

The manager ceased his perplexed ma.s.sage of his forehead. He shook hands genially.

"I'd thought of that with some frills. 'Has beautiful dancer met foul play? Millions in jewels on her person when last seen.' Old stuff, but they rise to it."

"That will help," Graham said to Bobby when they were in the car again. "The reporters will find Maria quicker than any detective I can put my hand on. My man evidently fell down because she had gone before I got him on the case." At his office they learned that was the fact. The private detective had been able to get no slightest clue as to Maria's whereabouts. Moreover, Bobby's description of the stranger who had entered the cafe with her merely suggested a type familiar to the Tenderloin. For purposes of identification it was worthless. Always followed by the car from Smithtown, they went to the hotel where Paredes had lived, to a number of his haunts. Bobby talked with men who knew him, but he learned nothing. Paredes's friends had had no word since the man's departure for the Cedars the day before. So they turned their backs on the city, elated by the significance of Maria's absence, yet worried by the search and the watchful car which never lost sight of them. When they were in the country Graham sighed his relief. "You haven't been stopped. Therefore, nothing was found at your apartment, but if that wasn't planted why should Maria have sent an incriminating note there?" "Unless," Bobby answered, "she told the truth. Unless she was sincere when she mailed it. Unless she learned something important between the time she wrote it and her disappearance from her home."

"Frankly, Bobby," Graham said, "the note and the circ.u.mstances under which it came to you are as damaging as the footprints and the handkerchief, but it doesn't tell us how any human being could have entered that room to commit the murders and disturb the bodies. At least we've got one physical fact, and I'm going to work on that."

"If it is Maria prowling around the Cedars," Bobby said, "she's amazingly slippery, and with Paredes gone what are you going to do with your physical fact? And how does it explain the friendly influence that wiped out my footprints? Is it a friendly or an evil influence that s.n.a.t.c.hed away the evidence and that keeps it secreted?"

"We'll see," Graham said. "I'm going after a flesh-and-blood criminal who isn't you. I'm going to try to find out what your grandfather was afraid of the night of his murder."

After a time he glanced up.

"You've known Paredes for a long time, Bobby, but I don't think you've ever told me how you met him."

"A couple of years ago I should think," Bobby answered. "Somebody brought him to the club. I've forgotten who. Carlos was working for a big Panama importing firm. He was trying to interest this chap in the New York end. I saw him off and on after that and got to like him for his quiet manner and a queer, dry wit he had in those days. Two or three months ago he--he seemed to fit into my humour, and we became pretty chummy as you know. Even after last night I hate to believe he's my enemy."

"He's your enemy," Graham answered, "and last night's the weak joint in his armour. I wonder if Robinson didn't scare him away by threatening to question him. Paredes isn't connected with that company now, is he? I gather he has no regular position."

"No. He's picked up one or two temporary things with the fruit companies. More than his running away, the thing that worries me about Carlos is his ridiculous suspicion of Katherine."

He told Graham in detail of that conversation. Graham frowned. He opened the throttle wider. Their anxiety increased to know what had happened at the Cedars since their departure. The outposts of the forest imposed silence, closed eagerly about them, seemed to welcome them to its dead loneliness. There was a man on guard at the gate. They hurried past. The house showed no sign of life, but when they entered the court Bobby saw Katherine at her window, doubtless attracted by the sounds of their arrival. Her face brightened, but she raised her arms in a gesture suggestive of despair.

"Does she mean the evidence has been found?" Bobby asked.

Graham made no attempt to conceal his real interest, the impulse at the back of all his efforts in Bobby's behalf.

"More likely Robinson has worried the life out of her since we've been gone. I oughtn't to have left her. I set the trap myself."

When they were in the house their halting curiosity was lost in a vast surprise. The hall was empty but they heard voices in the library. They hurried across the dining room, pausing in the doorway, staring with unbelieving eyes at the accustomed picture they had least expected to see.

Paredes lounged on the divan, smoking with easy indifference. His clothing and his shoes were spotless. He had shaved, and his beard had been freshly trimmed. Rawlins and the district attorney stood in front of the fireplace, studying him with perplexed eyes. The persistence of their regard even after Bobby's entrance suggested to him that the evidence remained secreted, that the officers, under the circ.u.mstances, were scarcely interested in his return. He was swept himself into an explosive amazement: "Carlos! What the deuce are you doing here?"

The Panamanian expelled a cloud of smoke. He smiled.

"Resting after a fatiguing walk."

In his unexpected presence Bobby fancied a demolition of the hope Graham and he had brought back from the city. He couldn't imagine guilt lurking behind that serene manner.

"Where did you come from? What were you up to last night?"

There was no accounting for Paredes's daring, he told himself, no accounting for his easy gesture now as he drew again at his cigarette and tossed it in the fireplace.

"These gentlemen," he said, "have been asking just that question. I'm honoured. I had no idea my movements were of such interest. I've told them that I took a stroll. The night was over. There was no point in going to bed, and all day I had been without exercise."

"Yet," Graham said harshly, "you have had practically no sleep since you came here."

Paredes nodded.

"Very distressing, isn't it?"

"Maybe," Rawlins sneered, "you'll tell us why you went on tiptoe, and I suppose you didn't hear a woman crying in the woods?"

"That's just it," Paredes answered. "I did hear something like that, and it occurred to me to follow such a curious sound. So I went on tiptoe, as you call it."

"Why," Robinson exclaimed angrily, "you walked in the lake to hide your tracks!"

Paredes smiled.

"It was very dark. That was chance. Quite silly of me. My feet got wet."

"I gather," Rawlins said, "it was chance that took you to the deserted house."

Paredes shook his head.

"Don't you think I was as much puzzled as the rest by that strange, disappearing light? It was as good a place to walk as any."

"Where have you been since?" Graham asked.

"When I had got there I was tired," Paredes answered. "Since it wasn't far to the station I thought I'd go on into Smithtown and have a bath and rest. But I a.s.sure you I've trudged back from the station just now."

Suddenly he repeated the apparently absurd formula he had used with Howells.

"You know the court seems full of unfriendly things--what the ignorant would call ghosts. I'm Spanish and I know." After a moment he added: "The woods, too. I shouldn't care to wander through them too much after dark."

Robinson stared, but Rawlins brushed the question aside.

"What hotel did you go to in Smithtown?"

"It's called the 'New.' Nothing could be farther from the fact."

"Shall I see if that's straight, sir?"

The district attorney agreed, and Rawlins left the room. Paredes laughed.

"How interesting! I'm under suspicion. It would be something, wouldn't it, to commit crimes with the devilish ingenuity of these? No, no, Mr. District Attorney, look to the ghosts. They alone are sufficiently clever. But I might say, since you take this att.i.tude, that I don't care to answer any more questions until you discover something that might give you the right to ask them."

He lay back on the divan, languidly lighting another cigarette. Graham beckoned Robinson. Bobby followed them out, suspecting Graham's purpose, unwilling that action should be taken too hastily against the Panamanian; for even now guilty knowledge seemed incompatible with Paredes's polished reserve. When he joined the others, indeed, Graham with an aggressive air was demanding the district attorney's intentions.

"If he could elude you so easily last night, it's common sense to put him where you can find him in case of need. He's given you excuse enough."

"The man's got me guessing," Robinson mused, "but there are other elements."

"What's happened since we left?" Graham asked quickly. "Have you got any trace of Howells's evidence?"

Robinson smiled enigmatically, but his failure was apparent.

"I'm like Howells," he said. "I'd risk nearly anything myself to learn how the room was entered, how the crimes were committed, how those poor devils were made to alter their positions."

"So," Bobby said, "you had my rooms in New York searched. You had me followed to-day. It's ridiculous."

Robinson ignored him. He stepped to the front door, opened it, and looked around the court.

"What did the sphinx mean about ghosts in the court?"

They walked out, gazing helplessly at the trampled gra.s.s about the fountain, at the melancholy walls, at the partly opened window of the room of mystery.

"He knows something," Robinson mused. "Maybe you're right, Mr. Graham, but I wonder if I oughtn't to go farther and take you all."

Graham smiled uncomfortably, but Bobby knew why the official failed to follow that radical course. Like Howells, he hesitated to remove from the Cedars the person most likely to solve its mystery. As long as a chance remained that Howells had been right about Bobby he would give Silas Blackburn's grandson his head, merely making sure, as he had done this morning, that there should be no escape. He glanced up.

"I wonder if our foreigner's laughing at me now."

Graham made a movement toward the door.

"We might," he said significantly, "find that out without disturbing him."

Robinson nodded and led the way silently back to the house. Such a method was repugnant to Bobby, and he followed at a distance. Then he saw from the movements of the two men ahead that the library had again offered the unexpected, and he entered. Paredes was no longer in the room. Bobby was about to speak, but Robinson shook his head angrily, raising his hand in a gesture of warning. All three strained forward, listening, and Bobby caught the sound that had arrested the others--a stealthy sc.r.a.ping that would have been inaudible except through such a brooding silence as pervaded the old house.

Bobby's interest quickened at this confirmation of Graham's theory. There was a projection of cold fear, moreover, in its sly allusion. It gave to his memory of Paredes, with his tall, graceful figure, his lack of emotion, his inscrutable eyes, and his pointed beard, a suggestion nearly satanic. For the stealthy sc.r.a.ping had come from behind the closed door of the private staircase. Howells had gone up that staircase. None of them could forget for a moment that it led to the private hall outside the room in which the murders had been committed.

It occurred to Bobby that the triumph Graham's face expressed was out of keeping with the man. It disturbed him nearly as thoroughly as Paredes's stealthy presence in that place.

"We've got him," Graham whispered.

Robinson's bulky figure moved cautiously toward the door. He grasped the k.n.o.b, swung the door open, and stepped back, smiling his satisfaction.

Half way down the staircase Paredes leaned against the wall, one foot raised and outstretched, as though an infinitely quiet descent had been interrupted. The exposure had been too quick for his habit. His face failed to hide its discomfiture. His laugh rang false.

"h.e.l.lo!"

"I'm afraid we've caught you, Paredes," Graham said, and the triumph blazed now in his voice.

What Paredes did then was more startling, more out of key than any of his recent actions. He came precipitately down. His eyes were dangerous. As Bobby watched the face whose quiet had at last been tempestuously destroyed, he felt that the man was capable of anything under sufficient provocation.

"Got me for what?" he snarled.

"Tell us why you were sneaking up there. In connection with your little excursion before dawn it suggests a guilty knowledge."

Paredes straightened. He shrugged his shoulders. With an admirable effort of the will he smoothed the rage from his face, but for Bobby the satanic suggestion lingered.

"Why do you suppose I'm here?" he said in a restrained voice that scarcely rose above a whisper. "To help Bobby. I was simply looking around for Bobby's sake."

That angered Bobby. He wanted to cry out against the supposed friend who had at last shown his teeth.

"That," Graham laughed, "is why you sneaked, why you didn't make any noise, why you lost your temper when we caught you at it? What about it, Mr. District Attorney?"

Robinson stepped forward.

"Nothing else to do, Mr. Graham. He's too slippery. I'll put him in a safe place."

"You mean," Paredes cried, "that you'll arrest me?"

"You've guessed it. I'll lock you up as a material witness."

Paredes swung on Bobby.

"You'll permit this, Bobby? You'll forget that I am a guest in your house?"

Bobby flushed.

"Why have you stayed? What were you doing up there? Answer those questions. Tell me what you want."