The Abandoned Room Part 26

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.

CHAPTER X.

THE CEDARS IS LEFT TO ITS SHADOWS.

Straightway Bobby repented the alarm he had, perhaps too impulsively, given. For the hand protruding from the wall was, indeed, flesh and blood, and with the knowledge came back his fear for Katherine, conquering his first relief. A sick revulsion swept him. He remembered the evidence found in Katherine's room, and her refusal to answer questions. Could Paredes and the officers have been right? Was it conceivably her hand struggling weakly in his grasp?

The door from the corridor crashed open. Rawlins burst through. Graham ran after him. From the private stairway arose the sound of the district attorney's hurrying footsteps.

"What is it? What have you got?" Rawlins shouted.

Graham cried out: "You're all right, Bobby?"

The candle which the detective carried gleamed on the slender fingers, showing Bobby that they had been inserted through an opening in the wall. He couldn't understand, for time after time each one of the panels had been sounded and examined. Beyond, he could see dimly the dark clothing of the person who, with a stealth in itself suggestive of abnormal crime, had made use of such a device. As Rawlins hurried up he wondered if it wouldn't be the better course to free his prisoner, to cry out, urging an escape.

Already it was too late. The detective and Graham had seen, and clearly they had no doubt that he held the one responsible for two brutal murders and for the confusing mysteries that had capped them.

"Looks like a lady's hand," Rawlins called. "Don't let go, young fellow."

He unlocked the door to the private hallway. Graham and he dashed out. In Bobby's uncertain grasp the hand twitched.

Robinson's voice reached him through the opening.

"Let go, Mr. Blackburn. You've done your share, the Lord knows. You've caught the beast with the goods."

Bobby released the slender fingers. He saw them vanish through the opening. He left the bed and reluctantly approached the door to the private hall. Excited phrases roared in his ears. He scarcely dared listen because of their possible confirmation of his doubt. The fingers, he repeated to himself, had been too slender. The moment that had freed him from fear of his own guilt had constructed in its place an uncertainty harder to face. Yet there was nothing to be gained by waiting. Sooner or later he must learn whether Katherine had hidden the evidence, whether she had used the stout and deadly hatpin, whether she struggled now in the grasp of vindictive men.

A voice from the corridor arrested him.

"Bobby!"

With a glad cry he swung around. Katherine stood in the opposite doorway. Her presence there, beyond a doubt, was her exculpation. He crossed the sombre room. He grasped her hands. He smiled happily. After all, the hand he had held was not as slender as hers.

"Thank heavens you're here."

In a word he recited the result of his vigil.

"It clears you," she said. "Quick! We must see who it is."

But he lingered, for he wanted that ugly fear done with once for all.

"You can tell me now how the evidence got in your room."

"I can't," she said. "I don't know."

The truth of her reply impressed him. He looked at her and wondered that she should be fully dressed.

"Why are you dressed?" he asked.

She was puzzled.

"Why not? I don't think any one had gone to bed."

"But it must be very late. I supposed it was the same time--half-past two."

She started to cross the room. She laughed nervously.

"It isn't eleven."

He recalled his interminable antic.i.p.ation among the shadows of the old room.

"I've watched there only a little more than an hour!"

"Not much more than that, Bobby."

"What a coward! I'd have sworn it was nearly daylight."

She pressed his hand.

"No. Very brave," she whispered. "Let us see if it was worth it."

They stepped through the doorway. Half way down the hall Robinson, Graham, and Rawlins held a fourth, who had ceased struggling. Bobby paused, yet, since seeing Katherine step from the corridor, his reason had taught him to expect just this.

The fourth man was Paredes, nearly effeminate, slender-fingered.

"Carlos!" Bobby cried. "You can't have done these unspeakable things!"

The Panamanian stared without answering. Evidently he had had time to control his chagrin, to smother his revolt from the future; for the thin face was bare of emotion. The depths of the eyes as usual turned back scrutiny. The man disclosed neither guilt nor the outrage of an a.s.sumed innocence; neither confession nor denial. He simply stared, straining a trifle against the eager hands of his captors.

Rawlins grinned joyously.

"You ought to have a medal for getting away with this, young fellow. Things didn't look so happy for you an hour or so ago."

"And I had half a mind," Robinson confessed, "to refuse you the chance. Glad I didn't. Glad as I can be you made good."

With the egotism any man is likely to draw from his efforts in the detection of crime he added easily: "Of course I've suspected this spigotty all along. I don't have to remind you of that."

"Sure," Rawlins said. "And didn't I put it up to him strong enough to-night?"

Paredes laughed lightly.

"All credit where it is due. You also put it up to Miss Perrine."

"The details will straighten all that out," Robinson said. "I don't pretend to have them yet."

"I gather not," Paredes mused, "with old Blackburn's ghost still in the offing."

"That talk," Rawlins said, "won't go down from you any more. I daresay you've got most of the details in your head."

"I daresay," Paredes answered dryly.

He fought farther back against the detaining hands.

"Is there any necessity for this exhibition of brute strength? You must find it very exhausting. You may think me dangerous, and I thank you; but I have no gun, and I'm no match for four men and a woman. Besides, you hurt my arm. Bobby was none too tender with that. I ought to have used my good arm. You'll get no details from me unless you take your hands off."

Robinson's hesitation was easily comprehensible. If Paredes were responsible for the abnormalities they had experienced at the Cedars he might find it simple enough to trick them now, but the man's mocking smile brought the anger to Robinson's face.

"Of course he can't get away. See if there's anything on his clothes, Rawlins. He ought to have the hatpin. Then let him go."

The detective, however, failed to find the hatpin or any other weapon.

"You see," Paredes smiled. "That's something in my favour."

He stepped back, brus.h.i.+ng his clothing with his uninjured hand. He lighted a cigarette. He drew back the coat sleeve of his left arm and readjusted the bandage. He glanced up as heavy footsteps heralded Doctor Groom.

"h.e.l.lo, Doctor," he called cheerily. "I was afraid you'd nap through the show. It seems the bloodhounds of the law left us out of their confidence."

"What's all this?" the doctor rumbled.

Paredes waved his hand.

"I am a prisoner."

The doctor gaped.

"You mean you--"

"Young Blackburn caught him," Robinson explained. "He was in a position to finish him just as he did Howells."

"Except that I had no hatpin," Paredes yawned.

The doctor's uneasy glance sought the opening in the wall.

"I thought you had examined all these walls," he grumbled. "How did you miss this?"

Robinson ran his fingers through his hair.

"That's what I've been asking myself," he said. "I went over that panelling a dozen times myself."

Bobby and Katherine went closer. Bobby had been from the first puzzled by Paredes's easy manner. He had a quick hope. He saw the man watch with an amused tolerance while the district attorney bent over, examining the face of the panel.

"An entire section," Robinson said--"the thickness of the wall--has been s.h.i.+fted to one side. No wonder we didn't see any joints or get a hollow sound from this panel any more than from the others. But why didn't we stumble on the mechanism? Maybe you'll tell us that, Paredes."

The Panamanian blew a wreath of smoke against the ancient wall.

"Gladly, but you will find it humiliating. I have experienced humility in this hall myself. The reason you didn't find any mechanism is that there wasn't any. You looked for something most cautiously concealed, not realizing that the best concealment is no concealment at all. It's fundamental. I don't know how it slipped my own mind. No grooves show because the door is an entire panel. There isn't even a latch. You merely push hard against its face. Such arrangements are common enough in colonial houses, and there was more than the nature of the crimes to tell you there was some such thing here. I mean if you will examine the farther door closer than you have done you will find that it has fewer coats of paint than the one leading to the corridor, that its frame is of newer wood. In other words, it was cut through after the wing was built. This panel was the original door, designed, with the private stairway and the hall, for the exclusive use of the master of the house. Try it."

Robinson braced himself and shoved against the panel. It moved in its grooves with a vibrant stirring.

"Rusty," he said.

Katherine started.

"That's what I heard each time," she cried.

Above his heavy black beard the doctor's cheeks whitened. Robinson made a gesture of revulsion.

"That gives the nasty game away."

"Naturally," Paredes said, "and you must admit the game is as beautifully simple as the panel. The instrument of death wasn't inserted through the bedding as you thought inevitable, Doctor. Suppose you were lying in that bed, asleep, or half asleep, and you were aroused by such a sound as that in the wall behind you? What would you do? What would any man do first of all?"

Robinson nodded.

"I see what you mean. I'd get up on my elbow. I'd look around as quickly as I could to see what it was. I'd expose myself to a clean thrust. I'd drop back on the bed, more thoroughly out of it than though I'd been struck through the heart."

"Exactly," Paredes said, with the familiar shrug of his shoulders.

"You're sensible to give up this way," Robinson said. "It's the best plan for you. What about Mr. Blackburn?"

Graham interfered.

"After all," he said thoughtfully. "I'm a lawyer, and it isn't fair, Robinson. It's only decent to tell him that anything he says may be used against him."

"Keep your mouth shut," Robinson shouted.

But Paredes smiled at Graham.

"It's very good of you, but I agree with the district attorney. There's no point in being a clam now."

"Can you account for Silas Blackburn's return?" the doctor asked eagerly.

"That's right, Doctor," Paredes said. "Stick to the ghosts. I fancy there are plenty in this house. I'm afraid we must look on Silas Blackburn as dead."

"You don't mean we've been talking to a dead man?" Katherine whispered.

"Before I answer," Paredes said, "I want to have one or two things straight. These men, Bobby, I really believe, think me capable of the crimes in this house. I want to know if you accept such a theory. Do you think I had any idea of killing you?"