The Abandoned Room/Chapter 10
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 anticipation 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 assumed 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, brushing 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.
"Hello, 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 shifted 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?"
Bobby studied the reserved face which even now was without emotion.
"I can't think anything of the kind," he said softly.
"That's very nice," Paredes said. "If you had answered differently I'd have let these clever policemen lay their own ghosts."
He turned to Robinson.
"Even you must begin to see that I'm not guilty. Your common sense will tell you so. If I had been planning to kill Bobby, why didn't I bring the weapon? Why did I put my hand through the opening before I was ready to strike? Why did I use my left hand—my injured hand? I was like Howells. I couldn't consider the case finished until I had solved the mystery of the locked doors. I supposed the room was empty. When I found the secret to-night, I reached through to see how far my hand would be from the pillow."
Bobby's assurance of Paredes's innocence clouded his own situation; made it, in a sense, more dangerous than it had ever been. His wanderings about the Cedars remained unexplained, and they knew now it had never been necessary for the murderer to enter the room, Katherine, too, evidently realized the menace.
"Do you think I" she began.
Paredes bowed.
"You dislike me, Miss Katherine, but don't be afraid for yourself or Bobby. I think I can tell you how the evidence got in your room. I can answer nearly everything. There's one point"
He broke off, glancing at his watch.
"Extraordinary courage!" he mused enigmatically. "I scarcely understand it."
Rawlins looked at him suspiciously.
"All this explaining may be a trick, Mr. Robinson. The man's slippery."
"I've had to be slippery to work under your noses," Paredes laughed. "By the way, Bobby, did you hear a woman crying about the time I opened this door?"
"Yes. It sounded like the voice we heard at the grave."
"I thought I heard it from the library," Robinson put in. "Then the rumpus up here started, and I forgot about it."
"The woman in black is very brave," Paredes mused. "We should have had a visit from her long before this."
"Do you know who she is?" Robinson asked. "And as Rawlins says, no tricks. We haven't let you go yet."
"I thought," Paredes mocked, "that you had identified the woman in black as Miss Katherine. She hasn't had anything to do with the mystery directly. Neither has Bobby. Neither have I."
"Then what the devil have you been doing here?" Robinson snapped.
"Seeing your job through," Paredes answered, "for Bobby's sake."
With a warm gratitude Bobby knew that Paredes had told the truth. Then he had told it in the library yesterday when they had caught him prowling in the private staircase. All along he had told it while they had tried to convict him of under-handed and unfriendly intentions.
"I saw," Paredes was saying, "that Howells wouldn't succeed, and it was obvious you and Rawlins would do worse, while Graham's blundering from the start left no hope. Somebody had to rescue Bobby."
"Then why did you give us the impression," Graham asked, "that you were not a friend?"
Paredes held up his hand.
"That's going rather far, Mr. Graham. Never once have I given such an impression. I have time after time stated the fact that I was here in Bobby's service. That has been the trouble with all of you. As most detectives do, you have denied facts, searching always for something more subtle. You have asked for impossibilities while you blustered that they couldn't exist. Still every one is prone to do that when he fancies himself in the presence of the supernatural. The facts of this case have been within your reach as well as mine. The motive has been an easy one to understand. Money! And you have consistently turned your back."
Robinson spread his hands.
"All right. Prove that I'm a fool and I'll acknowledge it."
Doctor Groom interrupted sharply.
"What was that?"
They bent forward, listening. Even with Paredes offering them a physical explanation they shrank from the keening that barely survived the heavy atmosphere of the old house.
"You see the woman in black isn't Miss Perrine," Paredes said.
He ran down the stairs. They followed, responding to an excited sense of imminence. Even in the private staircase the pounding that had followed the cry reached them with harsh reverberations. Its echoes filled the house as they dashed across the library and the dining room. In the hall they realized that it came from the front door. It had attained a feverish, a desperate insistence.
Paredes walked to the fireplace.
"Open the door," he directed Rawlins.
Rawlins stepped to the door, unlocked it, and flung it wide.
"The woman!" Katherine breathed.
A feminine figure, white with snow, stumbled in, as if she had stood braced against the door. Rawlins caught her and held her upright. The flakes whirled from the court in vicious pursuit. Bobby slammed the door shut.
"Maria!" he cried. "You were right, Hartley!"
Yet at first he could scarcely accept this pitiful creature as the brilliant and exotic dancer with whom he had dined the night of the first murder. As he stared at her, her features twisted. She burst into retching sobs. She staggered toward Paredes. As she went the snow melted from her hat and cloak. She became a black figure again. With an appearance of having been immersed in water she sank on the hearth, swaying back and forth, reaching blindly for Paredes's hand.
"Do what you please with me, Carlos," she whimpered with her slight accent from which all the music had fled. "I couldn't stand it another minute. I couldn't get to the station, and I—I wanted to know which—which"
Paredes watched her curiously.
"Get Jenkins," he said softly to Rawlins.
He faced Maria again.
"I could have told you, I think, when you fought me away out there. No one wants to arrest you. Jenkins will verify my own knowledge."
"This is dangerous," the doctor rumbled. "This woman shouldn't wait here. She should have dry clothing at once."
Maria shrank from him. For the first time her wet skirt exposed her feet, encased in torn stockings. The dancer wore no shoes, and Bobby guessed why she had been so elusive, why she had left so few traces.
"I won't go," she cried, "until he tells me."
Katherine got a cloak and threw it across the woman's shoulders. Maria looked up at her with a dumb gratitude. Then Rawlins came back with Jenkins. The butler was bent and haggard. His surrender to fear was more pronounced than it had been at the grave or when they had last seen him in the kitchen. He grasped a chair and, breathing heavily, looked from one to the other, moistening his lips.
Paredes faced the man, completely master of the situation. Through the old butler, it became clear, he would make his revelation and announce that simple fact they all had missed.
"It was Mr. Silas, of course, who came back?"
"Oh my God!" the butler moaned, "What do you mean?"
"I know everything, Jenkins," Paredes said evenly.
The butler collapsed against the chair. Paredes grasped his arm.
"Pull yourself together, man. They won't want you as more than an accessory."
Maria started to rise. She shrank back again, shivering close to the fire.
"Is your master hiding," Paredes asked, "or has he left the house?"
Jenkins's answer came through trembling lips.
"He's gone! Mr. Silas is gone! How did you find out? My God! How did you find out?"
"He said nothing to you?" Paredes asked.
Jenkins shook his head.
"Tell me how he was dressed."
The old servant covered his face.
"Mr. Silas stumbled through the kitchen," he answered hoarsely. "I tried to stop him, but he pushed me away and ran out." His voice rose. "I tell you he ran without a coat or a hat into the storm."
Paredes sighed.
"The Cedars's final tragedy, yet it was the most graceful exit he could have made."
Maria struggled to her feet. Her eyes were the eyes of a person without reason. That familiar, hysterical quality which they had heard before at a distance vibrated in her voice.
"Then he was the one! I wanted to kill him, I couldn't kill him because I never was sure."
"Did you see him go out an hour or so ago?" Paredes asked.
"I saw him," she cried feverishly, "run from the back of the house and down the path to the lake. I—I tried to catch him, but my feet were frozen, and the snow was slippery, and I couldn't find my shoes. But I called and he wouldn't stop. I had to know, because I wanted to kill him if it was Silas Blackburn. And I saw him run to the lake and splash in until the water was over his head."
She flung her clenched hands out. Her voice became a scream, shot with all her suffering, all her doubt, all her fury.
"You don't understand. He can't be punished. I tell you he's at the bottom of the lake with the man he murdered. And I can't pay him. I tried to go after him, but it—it was too cold."
She sank in one of the chairs, shaking and sobbing.
"Unless we want another tragedy," the doctor said, "this woman must be put to bed and taken care of. She has been terribly exposed. You've heard her. She's delirious."
"Not so delirious that she hasn't told the truth," Paredes said.
The doctor lifted her in his arms and with Rawlins's help carried her upstairs. Katherine went with them. Almost immediately the doctor and Rawlins hurried down.
"I have told Katherine what to do," Doctor Groom said. "The woman may be all right in the morning. What's she been up to here?"
"Then," Bobby cried, "there was a connection between the dinner party and the murders. But what about my coming here unconscious? What about my handkerchief?"
"I can see no answer yet," Graham said.
Paredes smiled.
"Not when you've had the answer to everything? I have shown you that Silas Blackburn was the murderer. The fact stared you in the face. Everything that has happened at the Cedars has pointed to his guilt."
"Except," the doctor said, "his own apparent murder which made his guilt seem impossible. And I'm not sure you're right now, for there is no other Blackburn he could have murdered, and Blackburns look alike. You wouldn't mistake another man for one of them."
"This house," Paredes smiled, "has all along been full of the presence of the other Blackburn. There has been evidence enough for you all to have known he was here."
He stretched himself in an easy chair. He lighted a cigarette and blew the smoke toward the ceiling.
"I shall tell you the simple facts, if only to save my skin from this blood-thirsty district attorney."
"Rub it in," Robinson grinned. "I'll take my medicine."
They gathered closer about the Panamanian. Jenkins sidled to the back of his chair.
"I don't see how you found it out," he muttered.
"I had only one advantage over you or the police, Graham," Paredes began, "and you were in a position to overcome that. Maria did telephone me the afternoon of that ghastly dinner. She asked me to get hold of Bobby. She was plainly anxious to keep him in New York that night, and, to be frank, I was glad enough to help her when you turned up, trying to impress us with your puritan watchfulness. Even you guessed that she had drugged Bobby. I suspected it when I saw him go to pieces in the café. He gave me the slip, as I told you, in the coat room when I was trying to get him home, so I went back and asked Maria what her idea was. She laughed in my face, denying everything. I, too, suspected the stranger, but I've convinced myself that he simply happened along by chance.
"Now here's the first significant point: Maria by drugging Bobby defeated her own purpose. He had been drinking more than the Band of Hope would approve of, and on top of that he got an overdose of a powerful drug. The doctor can tell you better than I of the likely effect of such a combination."
"What I told you in the court, Bobby," the doctor answered, "much the same symptoms as genuine aphasia. Your brain was unquestionably dulled by an overdose on top of all that alcohol, while your mechanical reflexes were stimulated. Automatically you followed your ruling impulse. Automatically at the last minute you revolted from exposing yourself in such a condition to your cousin and your grandfather. Your lucid period in the woods just before you reached the deserted house and went to sleep showed that your exercise was overcoming the effect of the drug. That moment, you'll remember, was coloured by the fanciful ideas such a drug would induce."
"So, Bobby," Paredes said, "although you were asleep when the body moved and when Howells was murdered, you can be sure you weren't anywhere near the old room."
"But I walked in my sleep last night," Bobby reminded him.
The doctor slapped his knee.
"I understand. It was only when we thought that was your habit that it frightened us. It's plain. This sleep-walking had been suggested to you and you had brooded upon the suggestion until you were bound to respond. Graham's presence in your room, watching for just that reaction, was a perpetual, an unescapable stimulation. It would have been a miracle in itself if your brain had failed to carry it out."
Bobby made a swift gesture of distaste.
"If you hadn't come, Carlos, where would I have been?"
"Why did you come?" Graham asked.
"Bobby was my friend," the Panamanian answered. "He had been very good to me. When I read of his grandfather's death I wondered why Maria had drugged him to keep him in New York. In the coincidence lurked an element of trouble for him. At first I suspected some kind of an understanding between her and old Blackburn—perhaps she had engaged to keep Bobby away from the Cedars until the new will had been made. But here was Blackburn murdered, and it was manifest she hadn't tried to throw suspicion on Bobby, and the points that made Howells's case incomplete assured me of his innocence. Who, then, had killed his grandfather? Not Maria, for I had dropped her at her apartment that night too late for her to get out here by the hour of the murder. Still, as you suspected, Maria was the key, and I began to speculate about her.
"She had told me something of her history. You might have had as much from her press agent. Although she had lived in Spain since she was a child, she was born in Panama, my own country, of a Spanish mother and an American father. Right away I wondered if Blackburn had ever been in Panama or Spain. I began to seek the inception of the possible understanding between them. Since I found no illuminating documents about Blackburn's past in the library, I concluded, if such papers existed, they would be locked up in the desk in his room. I searched there a number of times, giving you every excuse I could think of to get upstairs. The other night, after I had suspected her of knowing something, Miss Katherine nearly caught me. But I found what I wanted—a carefully hidden packet of accounts and letters and newspaper clippings. They're at your service, Mr. District Attorney. They told me that Silas Blackburn had been in Panama. They proved that Maria, instead of ever having been his accomplice, was his enemy. They explained the source of his wealth and the foundation of that enmity. Certainly you remember the doctor told us Silas Blackburn started life with nothing; and hadn't you ever wondered why with all his money he buried himself in this lonely hole?"
"He returned from South America, rich, more than twenty-five years ago," the doctor said. "Why should we bother about his money?"
"I wish you had bothered about several things besides your ghosts," Paredes said. "You'd have found it significant that Blackburn laid the foundation of his fortune in Panama during the hideous scandals of the old French canal company. We knew he was a selfish tyrant. That discovery showed me how selfish, how merciless he was, for to succeed in Panama during those days required an utter contempt for all the standards of law and decency. The men who got along held life cheaper than a handful of coppers. That's what I meant when I walked around the hall talking of the ghosts of Panama. For I was beginning to see. Silas Blackburn's fear, his trip to Smithtown, were the first indications of the presence of the other Blackburn. The papers outlined him more clearly. Why had it been forgotten here, Doctor, that Silas Blackburn had a brother—his partner in those wretched and profitable contract scandals?"
"You mean," the doctor answered, "Robert Blackburn. He was a year younger than Silas. This boy was named in memory of him. Why should any one have remembered? He died in South America more than a quarter of a century ago, before these children were born."
"That's what Silas Blackburn told you when he came back," Paredes said. "He may have believed it at first or he may not have. I daresay he wanted to, for he came back with his brother's money as well as his own—the cash and the easily convertible securities that were all men would handle in that hell. But he never forgot that his brother's wife was alive, and when he ran from Panama he knew she was about to become a mother.
"That brings me to the other feature that made me wander around here like a restless spirit myself that night. You had just told your story about the woman crying. If there was a strange woman around here it was almost certainly Maria. As Rawlins deduced, she must either be hysterical or signalling some one. Why should she come unless something had gone wrong the night she drugged Bobby to keep him in New York? She wasn't his enemy, because that very night she did him a good turn by trampling out his tracks in the court."
Bobby took Maria's letter from his pocket and handed it to Paredes.
"Then how would you account for this?"
The Panamanian read the letter.
"Her way of covering herself," he explained, "in case you suspected she had made you drink too much or had drugged you. She really wanted you to come to tea that afternoon. It was after writing that that she found out what had gone wrong. In other words, she read in the paper of Silas Blackburn's death, and in a panic she put on plain clothes and hurried out to see what had happened. The fact that she forgot her managers, her professional reputation, everything, testified to her anxiety, and I began to sense the truth. She had been born in Panama of a Spanish mother and an American father. She had some stealthy interest in the Cedars and the Blackburns. She was about the right age. Ten to one she was Silas Blackburn's niece. So for me, many hours before Silas Blackburn walked in here, the presence of the other Blackburn about the Cedars became a tragic and threatening inevitability. Had Silas Blackburn been murdered or had his brother? Where was the survivor who had committed that brutal murder? Maria had come here hysterically to answer those questions. She might know. The light in the deserted house! She might be hiding him and taking food to him there. But her crying suggested a signal which he never answered. At any rate, I had to find Maria. So I slipped out. I thought I heard her at the lake. She wasn't there. I was sure I would trap her at the deserted house, for the diffused glow of the light we had seen proved that it had come through the cobwebbed windows of the cellar, which are set in little wells below the level of the ground. The cellar explained also how she had turned her flashlight off and slipped through the hall and out while we searched the rooms. She hadn't gone back. I couldn't find her. So I went on into Smithtown and sent a costly cable to my father. His answer came to-night just before Silas Blackburn walked in. He had talked with several of the survivors of those evil days. He gave me a confirmation of everything I had gathered from the papers. The Blackburns had quarrelled over a contract. Robert had been struck over the head. He wandered about the isthmus, half-witted, forgetting his name, nursing one idea. Someone had robbed him, and he wanted his money back or a different kind of payment, but he couldn't remember who, and he took it out in angry talk. Then he disappeared, and people said he had gone to Spain. Of course his wife suspected a good deal. In Blackburn's desk are pitiful and threatening letters from her which he ignored. Then she died, and Blackburn thought he was safe. But he took no chances. Some survivor of those days might turn up and try blackmail. It was safer to bury himself here."
"Then," Bobby said, "Maria must have brought her father with her when she came from Spain last summer."
"Brought him or sent for him," Paredes answered. "She's made most of her money on this side, you know. And she's as loyal and generous as she is impulsive. Undoubtedly she had the doctors do what they could for her father, and when she got track of Silas Blackburn through you, Bobby, she nursed in the warped brain that dominant idea with her own Latin desire for justice and payment."
"Then," Graham said, "that's what Silas Blackburn was afraid of instead of Bobby, as he tried to convince us to-night to cover himself."
"One minute, Mr. Paredes," Robinson broke in. "Why did you maintain this extraordinary secrecy? Nobody would have hurt you if you had put us on the right track and asked for a little help. Why did you throw sand in our eyes? Why did you talk all the time about ghosts?"
"I had to go on tiptoe," Paredes smiled. "I suspected there was at least one spy in the house. So I gave the doctor's ghost talk all the impetus I could. I was like Howells, as I've told you, in believing the case couldn't be complete without the discovery of the secret entrance of the room of death. My belief in the existence of such a thing made me lean from the first to Silas Blackburn rather than Robert. It's a tradition in many families to hand such things down to the head of each generation. Silas Blackburn was the one most likely to know. Such a secret door had never been mentioned to you, had it, Bobby?"
Bobby shook his head. Paredes turned and smiled at the haggard butler.
"I'm right so far, am I not, Jenkins?"
Jenkins bobbed his head jerkily.
"Then," Paredes went on, "you might answer one or two questions. When did the first letter that frightened your master come?"
"The day he went to Smithtown and talked to the detective," the butler quavered.
"You can understand his reflections," Paredes mused. "Money was his god. He distrusted and hated his own flesh and blood because he thought they coveted it. He was prepared to punish them by leaving it to a public charity. Now arises this apparition from the past with no claim in a court of law, with an intention simply to ask, and, in case of a refusal, to punish. The conclusion reached by that selfish and merciless mind was inevitable. He probably knew nothing whatever about Maria. If all the world thought his brother dead, his brother's murder now wouldn't alter anything. I'll wager, Doctor, that at that time he talked over wounds at the base of the brain with you."
The doctor moved restlessly.
"Yes. But he was very superstitious. We talked about it in connection with his ancestors who had died of such wounds in that room."
"Everything was ready when he made the rendezvous here," Paredes went on. "He expected to have Bobby at hand in case his plan failed and he had to defend himself. But Maria had made sure that there should be no help for him. When the man came did you take him upstairs, Jenkins?"
"No, sir. I watched that Miss Katherine didn't leave the library, but I think she must have caught Mr. Silas in the upper hall after he had pretended to give up and had persuaded his brother to spend the night."
Paredes smiled whimsically. He took two faded photographs from his pocket. They were of young men, after the fashion of Blackburns, remarkably alike even without the gray, obliterating marks of old age.
"I found these in the family album," he said.
"We should have known the difference just the same," the doctor grumbled. "Why didn't we know the difference?"
"I've complained often enough," Paredes smiled, "of the necessity of using candles in this house. There was never more than one candle in the old bedroom. There were only two when we looked at the murdered man in his coffin. And in death there are no familiar facial expressions, no eccentricities of speech. So you can imagine my feelings when I tried to picture the drama that had gone on in that room. You can imagine poor Maria's. Which one? And Maria didn't know about the panel, or the use of Miss Katherine's hat-pin, or the handkerchief. All of those details indicated Silas Blackburn."
"How could my handkerchief indicate anything of the kind?" Bobby asked, "How did it come there?"
"What," Paredes said, "is the commonest form of borrowing in the world, particularly in a climate where people have frequent colds? I found a number of your handkerchiefs in your grandfather's bureau. The handkerchief furnished me with an important clue. It explains, I think, Jenkins will tell you, the moving of the body. It was obviously the cause of Howells's death."
"Yes, sir," Jenkins quavered. "Mr. Silas thought he had dropped his own handkerchief in the room with the body. I don't know how you've found these things out."
"By adding two and two," Paredes laughed. "In the first place, you must all realize that we might have had no mystery at all if it hadn't been for Miss Katherine. For I don't know that Maria could have done much in a legal way. Silas Blackburn had intended to dispose of the body immediately, but Miss Katherine heard the panel move and ran to the corridor. She made Jenkins break down the door, and she sent for the police. Silas Blackburn was helpless. He was beaten at that moment, but he did the best he could. He went to Waters, hoping, at the worst, to establish an alibi through the book-worm who probably wouldn't remember the exact hour of his arrival. Waters's house offered him, too, a strategic advantage. You heard him say the spare room was on the ground floor. You heard him add that he refused to open his door, either asking to be left alone or failing to answer at all. And he had to return to the Cedars the next day, for he missed his handkerchief, and he pictured himself, since he thought it was his own, in the electric chair. I'm right, Jenkins?"
"Yes, sir. I kept him hidden and gave him his chance along in the afternoon. He wanted me to try to find the handkerchief, but I didn't have the courage. He couldn't find it. He searched through the panel all about the body and the bed."
"That was when Katherine heard," Bobby said, "when we found the body had been moved."
"It put him in a dreadful way," Jenkins mumbled, "for no one had bothered to tell me it was young Mr. Robert the detective suspected, and when Mr. Silas heard the detective boast that he knew everything and would make an arrest in the morning, he thought about the handkerchief and knew he was done for unless he took Howells up. And the man did ask for trouble, sir. Well! Mr. Silas gave it to him to save himself."
"I've never been able to understand," Paredes said, "why he didn't take the evidence when he killed Howells."
"Didn't you know you prevented that, sir?" Jenkins asked. "I heard you come in from the court. I thought you'd been listening. I signalled Mr. Silas there was danger and to get out of the private stairway before you could trap him. And I couldn't give him another chance for a long time. Some of you were in the room after that, or Miss Katherine and Mr. Graham were sitting in the corridor watching the body until just before Mr. Robert tried to get the evidence for himself. Mr. Silas had to act then. It was his last chance, for he thought Mr. Robert would be glad enough to turn him over to the law."
"Why did you ever hide that stuff in Miss Katherine's room?" Bobby asked.
Jenkins flung up his hands.
"Oh, he was angry, sir, when he knew the truth and learned what a mistake he'd made. Howells didn't give me that report I showed you. It was in his pocket with the other things. We got it open without tearing the envelope and Mr. Silas read it. He wouldn't destroy anything. He never dreamed of anybody's suspecting Miss Katherine, so he told me to hide the things in her bureau. I think he figured on using the evidence to put the blame on Mr. Robert in case it was the only way to save himself."
"Why did you show the report to me?" Bobby asked.
"I—I was afraid to take all that responsibility," the butler quavered. "I figured if you were partly to blame it might go easier with me."
Paredes shrugged his shoulders.
"You were a good mate for Silas Blackburn," he sneered.
"Even now I don't see how that old scoundrel had the courage to show himself to-night," Rawlins said.
"That's the beautiful justice of the whole thing," Paredes answered, "for there was nothing else whatever for him to do. There never had been anything else for him to do since Miss Katherine had spoiled his scheme, since you all believed that it was he who had been murdered. He had to hide the truth or face the electric chair. If he disappeared he was infinitely worse off than though he had settled with his brother—a man without a home, without a name, without a penny."
Jenkins nodded.
"He had to come back," he said slowly, "and he knew how scared you were of the old room."
"The funeral and the snow," Paredes said, "gave him his chance. Jenkins will doubtless tell you how they uncovered the grave late this afternoon, took that poor devil's body, and threw it in the lake, then fastened the coffin and covered it again. Of course the snow effaced every one of their tracks. He came in, naturally scared to death, and told us that story based on the legends of the Cedars and the doctor's supernatural theories. And you must admit that he might, as you call it, have got away with it. He did create a mystification. The body of the murdered man had disappeared. There was no murdered Blackburn as far as you could tell. Heaven knows how long you might have struggled with the case of Howells."
He glanced up.
"Here is Miss Katherine."
She stood at the head of the stairs.
"I think she's all right," she said to the doctor. "She's asleep. She went to sleep crying. May I come down?"
The doctor nodded. She walked down, glancing from one to the other questioningly.
"Poor Maria!" Paredes mused. "She's the one I pity most. She's been at times, I think, what Rawlins suspected—an insane woman, wandering and crying through the woods. Assuredly she was out of her head to-night, when I found her finally at the grave. I tried to tell her that her father was dead. I begged her to come in. I told her we were friends. But she fought. She wouldn't answer my questions. She struck me finally when I tried to force her to come out of the storm. Robinson, I want you to listen to me for a moment. I honestly believe, for everybody's sake, I did a good thing when I asked Silas Blackburn just before he disappeared why he had thrown his brother's body in the lake. I'd hoped it would simply make him run for it. I prayed that we would never hear from him again, and that Miss Katherine and Bobby could be spared the ugly scandal. Doesn't this do as well? Can't we get along without much publicity?"
"You've about earned the right to dictate," Robinson said gruffly.
"Thanks."
"For everybody's sake!" Bobby echoed. "You're right, Carlos. Maria must be considered now. She shall have what was taken from her father, with interest. I know Katherine will agree."
Katherine nodded.
"I doubt if Maria will want it or take it," Paredes said simply. "She has plenty of her own. It isn't fair to think it was greed that urged her. You must understand that it was a bigger impulse than greed. It was a thing of which we of Spanish blood are rather proud—a desire for justice, for something that has no softer name than revenge."
Suddenly Rawlins stooped and took the Panamanian's hand.
"Say! We've been giving you the raw end of a lot of snap judgments. We've never got acquainted until to-night."
"Glad to meet you, too," Robinson grinned.
Rawlins patted the Panamanian's shoulder.
"At that, you'd make a first-class detective."
Paredes yawned.
"I disagree with you thoroughly. I have no equipment beyond my eyes and my common sense."
He yawned again. He arranged the card table in front of the fire. He got the cards and piled them in neat packs on the green cloth. He placed a box of cigarettes convenient to his right hand. He smoked.
"I'm very sleepy, but I've been so stupid over this solitaire since I've been at the Cedars that I must solve it in the interest of my self-respect before I go to bed."
Bobby went to him impulsively.
"I'm ashamed, Carlos. I don't know what to say. How can I say anything? How can I begin to thank you?"
"If you ever tell me I saved your life," Paredes yawned, "I shall have to disappear because then you'd have a claim on me."
Katherine touched his hand. There were tears in her eyes. It wasn't necessary for her to speak. Paredes indicated two chairs.
"If you aren't too tired, sit here and help me for a while. Perhaps between us we'll get somewhere. I wonder why I have been so stupid with the thing."
After a time, as he manipulated the cards, he laughed lightly.
"The same thing—the thing I've been scolding you all for. With a perfectly simple play staring me in the face I nearly made the mistake of choosing a difficult one. That would have got me in trouble while the simple one gives me the game. Why are people like that?"
As he moved the cards with a deft assurance to their desired combination he smiled drolly at Graham, Rawlins, and Robinson.
"I guess it must be human nature. Don't you think so, Mr. District Attorney?"
•••••••
The condition Paredes had more than once foreseen was about to shroud the Cedars in loneliness and abandonment. After the hasty double burial in the old graveyard the few things Bobby and Katherine wanted from the house had been packed and taken to the station. At Katherine's suggestion they had decided to leave last of all and to walk. Paredes with a tender solicitude had helped Maria to the waiting automobile. He came back, trying to colour his good-bye with cheerfulness.
"After all, you may open the place again and let me visit you."
"You will visit us perpetually," Bobby said, while Katherine pressed the Panamanian's hand, "but never here again. We will leave it to its ghosts, as you have often prophesied."
"I am not sure," Paredes said thoughtfully, "that the ghosts aren't here."
It was evident that Graham wished to speak to Bobby and Katherine alone, so the Panamanian strolled back to the automobile. Graham's embarrassment made them all uncomfortable.
"You have not said much to me, Katherine," he began. "Is it because I practically lied to Bobby, trying to keep you apart?"
She tried to smile.
"I, too, must ask forgiveness. I shouldn't have spoken to you as I did the other night in the hall, but I thought, because you saw Bobby and I had come together, that you had spied on me, had deliberately tricked me, knowing the evidence was in my room. Of course you did try to help Bobby."
"Yes," he said, "and I tried to help you that night. I was sure you were innocent. I believed the best way to prove it to them was to let them search. The two of you have nothing worse than jealousy to reproach me with."
In a sense it pleased Bobby that Graham, who had always made him feel unworthy in Katherine's presence, should confess himself not beyond reproach.
"Come, Hartley," he cried, "I was beginning to think you were perfect. We'll get along all the better, the three of us, for having had it out."
Graham murmured his thanks. He joined Paredes and Maria in the automobile. As they drove off Paredes turned. His face, as he waved a languid farewell, was quite without expression.
Bobby and Katherine were left alone to the thicket and the old house. After a time they walked through the court and from the shadow of the time-stained, melancholy walls. At the curve of the driveway they paused and looked back. The shroud of loneliness and abandonment descending upon the Cedars became for them nearly ponderable. So they turned from that brooding picture, and hand in hand walked out of the forest into the friendly and welcoming sunlight.
THE END
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.