The Abandoned Room Part 25

"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 G.o.d'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 mult.i.tude 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 grat.i.tude 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 p.r.o.nounced. 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.

"h.e.l.lo!" 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, un.o.bserved 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sume 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.

"n.o.body 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 G.o.d'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 a.s.surance 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 s.h.i.+vered. 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 s.h.i.+vering. 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.