The Abandoned Room. Charles Wadsworth Camp
get far, and I've a feeling that if he confessed by running he'd break down and give up the whole thing. You've no idea how it frets me, Mr. Graham. I've got my man practically in the chair, but from a professional point of view it isn't a pretty piece of work until I find out how he got in and out of that room. The thing seems impossible, and yet here we are, knowing that he did it. Well, maybe I'll find out to-night. Hello!"
The door opened. Bobby from his hiding place could see Paredes on the threshold, yawning and holding a cigarette in his fingers.
"Here you are," he said drowsily. "I've just been in the court. It made me seek company. That court's too damp, Mr. Detective."
His laugh was lackadaisical.
"When the sun leaves it, the court seems full of, unfriendly things—what the ignorant would call, ghosts. I'm Spanish and I know."
The detective grunted.
"Funny!" Paredes went on. "Observation doesn't seem to interest you. I'd rather fancied it might."
He yawned again and put his cigarette to his lips. Puffing placidly, he turned and left.
"What do you suppose he means by that?" the detective said to Graham.
Without waiting for an answer he followed Paredes from the room. Graham went after him. Bobby threw back the rug and arose. For a moment he was as curious as the others as to Paredes's intention. He slipped across the dining room. The hall was deserted. The front door stood open. From the court came Paredes's voice, even, languid, wholly without expression:
"Mean to tell me you don't react to the proximity of unaccountable forces here, Mr. Howells?"
The detective's laugh was disagreeable.
"You trying to make a fool of me? That isn't healthy."
As Bobby hurried across the hall and up the stairs he heard
Paredes answer:
"You should speak to Doctor Groom. He says this place is too crowded by the unpleasant past—"
Bobby climbed out of hearing. He entered his bedroom and locked the door. He resented Paredes's words and attitude which he defined as studied to draw humour out of a tragic and desperate situation. He thought of them in no other way. His tired mind dismissed them. He threw himself on the bed, muttering:
"If I run away I'm done for. If I stay I'm done for."
He took a fierce twisted joy in one phase of the situation.
"If I was there last night," he thought, "Howells will never find out how I got into the room, because, no matter what trap he sets, I can't tell him."
His leaden weariness closed his eyes. For a few minutes he slept again.
Once more it was a voice that awakened him—this time a woman's, raised in a scream. He sprang up, flung open the door, and stumbled into the corridor. Katherine stood there, holding her dressing gown about her with trembling hands. The face she turned to Bobby was white and panic-stricken. She beckoned, and he followed her to the main hall. The others came tearing up the stairs—Graham, Paredes, the detective, and the black and gigantic doctor.
In answer to their quick questions she whispered breathlessly:
"I heard. It was just like last night. It came across the court and stole in at my window."
She shook. She stretched out her hands in a terrified appeal.
"Somebody—something moved in that room where he—he's dead."
"Nonsense," the detective said. "Both doors are locked, and I have the keys in my pocket."
Paredes fumbled with a cigarette.
"You're forgetting what I said about my sensitive apprehension of strange things—"
The detective interrupted him loudly, confidently:
"I tell you the room is empty except for the murdered man—unless someone's broken down a door."
Katherine cried out:
"No. I heard that same stirring. Something moved in there."
The detective turned brusquely and entered the old corridor.
"We'll see."
The others followed. Katherine was close to Bobby. He touched her hand.
"He's right, Katherine. No one's there. No one could have been there. You mustn't give way like this. I'm depending on you—on your faith."
She pressed his hand, but her assurance didn't diminish.
The key scraped in the lock. They crowded through the doorway after the detective. He struck a match and lighted the candle. He held it over the bed. He sprang back with a sharp cry, unlike his level quality, his confident conceit. He pointed. They all approximated his helpless gesture, his blank amazement. For on the bed had occurred an abominable change.
The body of Silas Blackburn no longer lay peacefully on its back. It had been turned on its side, and remained in a stark and awkward attitude. For the first time the back of the head was disclosed.
Their glances focussed there—on the tiny round hole at the base of the brain, on the pillow where the head had rested and which they saw now was stained with an ugly and irregular splotch of blood.
Bobby saw the candle quiver at last in the detective's hand. The man strode to the door leading to the private hall and examined the lock.
"Both doors," he said, "were locked. There was no way in—"
He turned to the others, spreading his hands in justification. The candle, which he seemed to have forgotten, cast gross, moving shadows over his face and over the face of the dead man.
"At least you'll all grant me now that he was murdered."
They continued to stare at the body of Silas Blackburn. Cold for many hours, it was as if he had made this atrocious revealing movement to assure them that he had, indeed, been murdered; to expose to their startled eyes the sly and deadly method.
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