The Abandoned Room/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
THE CRYING THROUGH THE WOODS
Bobby's inability to cry out alone prevented his alarming the others and announcing to Paredes and Doctor Groom his unlawful presence in the room. During the moment that the shock held him, silent, motionless, bent in the darkness above the bed, he understood there could have been no ambiguity about his ghastly and loathsome experience. The dead detective had altered his position as Silas Blackburn had done, and this time someone had been in the room and suffered the appalling change. Bobby's fingers still responded to the charnel feeling of cold, inactive flesh suddenly become alive and potent beneath his touch. And a reason for the apparent miracle offered itself. Between the extinction of his candle and the commencement of that movement!—only a second or so—the evidence had disappeared from the detective's pocket.
Bobby relaxed. He stumbled across the room and into the corridor. He went with hands outstretched through the blackness, for no candle burned in the upper hall, but he knew that Katherine was on guard there. When he left the passage he saw her, an unnatural figure herself, in the yellowish, unhealthy twilight which sifted through the stair well from the lamp in the hall below.
She must have sensed something out of the way immediately, for she hurried to meet him and her whisper held no assurance.
"You got the cast and the handkerchief, Bobby?"
And when he didn't answer at once she asked with a sharp rush of fear:
"What's the matter? What's happened?"
He shuddered. At last he managed to speak.
"Katherine! I have felt death cease to be death."
Later he was to recall that phrase with a sicker horror than he experienced now.
"You saw something!" she said. "But your candle is out. There is no light in the room."
He took her hand. He pressed it.
"You're real!" he said with a nervous laugh. "Something I can understand. Everything is unreal. This light"
He strode to the table, found a match, and lighted his candle. Katherine, as she saw his face, drew back.
"Bobby!"
"My candle went out," he said dully, "and he moved through the darkness. I tell you he moved beneath my hand."
She drew farther away, staring at him.
"You were frightened"
"No. If we go there with a light now," he said with the same dull conviction, "we will find him as we found my grandfather this afternoon."
The monotonous voices of the three men in the lower hall weaved a background for their whispers. The normal, familiar sound was like a tonic. Bobby straightened. Katherine threw off the spell of his announcement.
"But the evidence! You got"
She stared at his empty hands. He fancied that he saw contempt in her eyes.
"In spite of everything you must go back. You must get that."
"Even if I had the courage," he said wearily, "it would be no use, for the evidence is gone."
"But I saw it. At least I saw his pocket"
"It was there," he answered, "when my light went out. I did put my hand in his pocket. In that second it had gone."
"There was no one there," she said, "no one but you, because I watched."
He leaned heavily against the wall.
"Good God, Katherine! It's too big. Whatever it is, we can't fight it."
She looked for some time down the corridor at the black entrance of the sinister room. At last she turned and walked to the banister. She called:
"Hartley! Will you come up?"
Bobby wondered at the steadiness of her voice. The murmuring below ceased. Graham ran up the stairs. Her summons had been warning enough. Their attitudes, as Graham reached the upper hall, were eloquent of Bobby's failure.
"You didn't get the cast and the handkerchief?" he said.
Bobby told briefly what had happened.
"What is one to do?" he ended. "Even the dead are against me."
"It's beyond belief," Graham said roughly.
He snatched up the candle and entered the corridor. Uncertainly Katherine and Bobby followed him. He went straight to the bed and thrust the candle beneath the canopy. The others could see from the door the change that had taken place. The body of Howells was turned awkwardly on its side. The coat pocket was, as Bobby had described it, flat and empty.
Katherine turned and went back to the hall. Graham's hand shook as Bobby's had shaken.
"No tricks, Bobby?"
Bobby couldn't resent the suspicion which appeared to offer the only explanation of what had happened. The candle flickered in the draft.
"Look out!" Bobby warned.
The misshapen shadows danced with a multiple vivacity across the walls. Graham shaded the candle flame, and the shadows became like morbid decorations, gargantuan and motionless.
"It's madness," Graham said. "There's no explanation of this that we can understand."
Howells's straight smile mocked them. As if in answer to Graham a voice sighed through the room. Its quality was one with the shadows, unsubstantial and shapeless. Bobby grasped one of the bed posts and braced himself, listening. The candle in Graham's hand commenced to flicker again, and Bobby knew that it hadn't been his fancy, for Graham listened, too.
It shook again through the heavy, oppressive night, merely accentuated by the candle—a faint ululation barely detaching itself from silence, straying after a time into the silence again. At first it was like the grief of a woman heard at a great distance. But the sound, while it gained no strength, forced on them more and more an abhorrent sense of intimacy. This crying from an infinite distance filled the room, seemed finally to have its source in the room itself. After it had sobbed thinly into nothing, its pulsations continued to sigh in Bobby's ears. They seemed timed to the renewed and eccentric dancing of the amorphous shadows.
Graham straightened and placed the candle on the bureau. He seemed more startled than he had been at the unbelievable secretiveness of a dead man.
"You heard it?" Bobby breathed.
Graham nodded.
"What was it? Where did you think it came from?" Bobby demanded. "It was like someone mourning for this—this poor devil."
Graham couldn't disguise his effort to elude the sombre spell of the room, to drive from his brain the illusion of that unearthly moaning.
"It must have come from outside the house," he answered "There's no use giving way to fancies where there's a possible explanation. It must have come from outside—from some woman in great agony of mind."
Bobby recalled his perception of a woman moving with a curious absence of sound about the edges of the stagnant lake. He spoke of it to Graham.
"I couldn't be sure it was a woman, but there's no house within two miles. What would a woman be doing wandering around the Cedars?"
"At any rate, there are three women in the house," Graham said, "Katherine and the two servants, Ella and Jane. The maids are badly frightened. It may have come from the servants' quarters. It must have been one of them."
But Bobby saw that Graham didn't believe either of the maids had released that poignant suffering.
"It didn't sound like a living voice," he said simply.
"Then how are we to take it?" Graham persisted angrily. "I shall question Katherine and the two maids."
He took up the candle with a stubborn effort to recapture his old forcefulness, but as they left the room the shadows thronged thickly after them in ominous pursuit; and it wasn't necessary to question Katherine. She stood in the corridor, her lips parted, her face white and shocked.
"What was it?" she said. "That nearly silent grief?"
She put her hands to her ears, lowering them helplessly after a moment.
"Where did you think it came from?" Graham asked.
"From a long ways off," she answered. "Then I—I thought it must be in the room with you, and I wondered if you saw"
Graham shook his head.
"We saw nothing. It was probably Ella or Jane. They've been badly frightened. Perhaps a nightmare, or they've heard us moving around the front part of the house. I am going to see."
Katherine and Bobby followed him downstairs. Doctor Groom and Paredes stood in front of the fireplace, questioningly looking upward. Paredes didn't speak at first, but Doctor Groom burst out in his grumbling, bass voice:
"What's been going on up there?"
"Did you hear just now a queer crying?" Graham asked.
"No."
"You, Paredes?"
"I've heard nothing," Paredes answered, "except Doctor Groom's disquieting theories. It's an uncanny hour for such talk. What kind of a cry—may I ask?"
"Like a woman moaning," Bobby said, "and, Doctor, Howells has changed his position."
"What are you talking about?" the doctor cried.
"He has turned on his side as Mr. Blackburn did," Graham told him.
Paredes glanced at Bobby.
"And how was this new mystery discovered?"
Bobby caught the implication. Then the Panamanian clung to his slyly expressed doubt of Katherine which might, after all, have had its impulse in an instinct of self-preservation. Bobby knew that Graham and Katherine would guard the fashion in which the startling discovery had been made. Before he could speak for himself, indeed, Graham was answering Paredes:
"This crying seemed after a time to come from the room. We entered."
"But Miss Katherine called you up," Paredes said. "I supposed she had heard again movements in the room."
Bobby managed a smile.
"You see, Carlos, nothing is consistent in this case."
Paredes bowed gravely.
"It is very curious a woman should cry about the house."
"The servants may make it seem natural enough," Graham said. "Will you come, Bobby?"
As they crossed the dining room they heard a stirring in the kitchen. Graham threw open the door. Jenkins stood at the foot of the servants' stairs. The old butler had lighted a candle and placed it on the mantel. The disorder of his clothing suggested the haste with which he had left his bed and come downstairs. His wrinkled, sunken face had aged perceptibly. He advanced with an expression of obvious relief.
"I was just coming to find you, Mr. Robert."
"What's up?" Bobby asked. "A little while ago I thought you were all asleep back here."
"One of the women awakened him," Graham said. "It's just as I thought."
"Was that it?" the old butler asked with a quick relief. But immediately he shook his head. "It couldn't have been that, Mr. Graham, for I stopped at Ella's and Jane's doors, and there was no sound. They seemed to be asleep. And it wasn't like that."
"You mean," Bobby said, "that you heard a woman crying?"
Jenkins nodded. "It woke me up."
"If you didn't think it was one of the maids," Graham asked, "what did you make of it?"
"I thought it came from outside. I thought it was a woman prowling around the house. Then I said to myself, why should a woman prowl around the Cedars? And it was too unearthly, sir, and I remembered the way Mr. Silas was murdered, and the awful thing that happened to his body this afternoon, and I—you won't think me foolish, sirs?—I doubted if it was a human voice I had heard."
"No," Graham said dryly, "we won't think you foolish."
"So I thought I'd better wake you up and tell you."
Graham turned to Bobby.
"Katherine and you and I," he said, "fancied the crying was in the room with us. Jenkins is sure it came from outside the house. That is significant."
"Wherever it came from," Bobby said softly, "it was like some one mourning for Howells."
Jenkins started.
"The policeman!"
Bobby remembered that Jenkins hadn't been aroused by the discovery of Howells's murder.
"You'd know in a few minutes anyway," he said. "Howells has been killed as my grandfather was."
Jenkins moved back, a look of unbelief and awe in his wrinkled face.
"He boasted he was going to sleep in that room," he whispered.
Bobby studied Jenkins, not knowing what to make of the old man, for into the awe of the wrinkled face had stolen a positive relief, an emotion that bordered on the triumphant.
"It's terrible," Jenkins whispered.
Graham grasped his shoulder.
"What's the matter with you, Jenkins? One would say you were glad."
"No. Oh, no, sir. It is terrible. I was only wondering about the policeman's report."
"What do you know about his report?" Bobby cried.
"Only that—that he gave it to me to mail just before he went up to the old room."
"You mailed it?" Graham snapped.
Jenkins hesitated. When he answered his voice was self-accusing.
"I'm an old coward, Mr. Robert. The policeman told me the letter was very important, and if anything happened to it I would get in trouble. He couldn't afford to leave the house himself, he said. But, as I say, I'm a coward, and I didn't want to walk through the woods to the box by the gate. I figured it all out. It wouldn't be taken up until early in the morning, and if I waited until daylight it would only be delayed one collection. So I made up my mind I'd sleep on it, because I knew he had it in for you, Mr. Robert. I supposed I'd mail it in the morning, but I decided I'd think it over anyway and not harrow myself walking through the woods."
"You've done a good job," Graham said excitedly. "Where is the report now?"
"In my room. Shall I fetch it, sir?"
Graham nodded, and Jenkins shuffled up the stairs.
"What luck!" Graham said. "Howells must have telephoned his suspicions to the district attorney. He must have mentioned the evidence, but what does that amount to since it's disappeared along with the duplicate of the report, if Howells made one?"
"I can fight with a clear conscience," Bobby cried. "I wasn't asleep when Howells's body altered its position. Do you realize what that means to me? For once I was wide awake when the old room was at its tricks."
"If Howells were alive," Graham answered shortly, "he would look on the fact that you were awake and alone with the body as the worst possible evidence against you."
Bobby's elation died.
"There is always something to tangle me in the eyes of the law with these mysteries. But I know, and I'll fight. Can you find any trace of a conspiracy against me in this last ghastly adventure?"
"It complicates everything," Graham admitted.
"It's beyond sounding," Bobby said, "for my grandfather's death last night and the disturbance of his body this afternoon seemed calculated to condemn me absolutely, yet Howells's murder and the movement of his body, with the disappearance of the cast and the handkerchief, seem designed to save me. Are there two influences at work in this house—one for me, one against me?"
"Let's think of the human elements," Graham answered with a frown. "I have no faith in Paredes. My man has failed to report on Maria. That's queer. You fancy a woman in black slipping through the woods, and we hear a woman cry. I want to account for those things before I give in to Groom's spirits. I confess at times they seem the only logical explanation. Here's Jenkins."
"If trouble comes of his withholding the report I'll take the blame," Bobby said.
Graham snatched the long envelope from Jenkins' hand. It was addressed in a firm hand to the district attorney at the county seat.
"There's no question," Graham said. "That's it. We mustn't open it. We'd better not destroy it. Put it where it won't be easily found, Jenkins. If you are questioned you have no recollection of Howells having given it to you. Mr. Blackburn promises he will see you get in no trouble."
The old man smiled.
"Trouble!" he scoffed. "Mr. Blackburn needn't fret himself about me. He's the last of this family—that is Miss Katherine and he. I'm old and about done for. I don't mind trouble. Not a bit, sir."
Bobby pressed his hand. His voice was a little husky: "I didn't think you'd go that far in my service, Jenkins."
The old butler smiled slyly: "I'd go a lot further than that, sir."
"We'd better get back," Graham said. "The blood hounds ought to be here, and they'll sniff at the case harder than ever because it's done for Howells."
They watched Jenkins go upstairs with the report.
"We're taking long chances," Graham said, "desperately long chances, but you're in a desperately dangerous position. It's the only way. You'll be accused of stealing the evidence; but remember, when they question you, they can prove nothing unless the cast and the handkerchief turn up. If they've been taken by an enemy in some magical fashion to be produced at the proper moment, there's no hope. Meantime play the game, and Katherine and I will help you all we can. The doctor, too, is friendly. There's no doubt of him. Come, now. Let's face the music."
Bobby followed Graham to the hall, trying to strengthen his nerves for the ordeal. Even now he was more appalled by the apparently supernatural background of the case than he was by the material details which pointed to his guilt. More than the report and the cast and the handkerchief, the remembrance of that impossible moment in the blackness of the old room filled his mind, and the unearthly and remote crying still throbbed in his ears.
Katherine, Graham, and the doctor waited by the fireplace. They had heard nothing from the authorities.
"But they must be here soon," Doctor Groom said.
"Did you learn anything back there, Hartley?" Katherine asked.
"It wasn't the servants," he said. "Jenkins heard the crying. He's certain it came from outside the house."
Paredes looked up.
"Extraordinary!" he said.
"I wish I had heard it," Doctor Groom grumbled.
Paredes laughed.
"Thank the good Lord I didn't. Perpetually, Bobby, your house reminds me that I've nerves sensitive to the unknown world. I will go further than the doctor. I will say that this house is crowded with the supernatural. It shelters things that we cannot understand, that we will never understand. When I was a child in Panama I had a nurse who, unfortunately, developed too strongly my native superstition. How she frightened me with her bedtime stories! They were all of men murdered or dead of fevers, crossing the trail, or building the railroad, or digging insufficient ditches for De Lesseps. Some of her best went farther back than that. They were thick with the ghosts of old Spaniards and the crimson hands of Morgan's buccaneers. Really that tiny strip across the isthmus is crowded with souls snatched too quickly from torn and tortured bodies. If you are sensitive you feel they are still there."
"What has all this to do with the Cedars?" Doctor Groom grumbled.
"It explains my ability to sense strange elements in this old house. There are in Panama—if you don't mind, doctor—improvised graveyards, tangled by the jungle, that give you a feeling of an active, unseen population precisely as this house does."
He arose and strolled with a cat-like lack of sound about the hall. When he spoke again his voice was scarcely audible. It was the voice of a man who thinks aloud, and the doctor failed to interrupt him again.
"I have felt less spiritually alarmed in those places of grinning skulls, which always seem trying to recite agonies beyond expression, than I feel in this house. For here the woods are more desolate than the jungle, and the walls of houses as old as this make a prison for suffering."
A vague discomfort stole through Bobby's surprise. He had never heard Paredes speak so seriously. In spite of the man's unruffled manner there was nothing of mockery about his words. What, then, was their intention?
Paredes said no more, but for several minutes he paced up and down the hall, glancing often with languid eyes toward the stairs. He had the appearance of one who expects and waits.
Katherine, Graham, and the doctor, Bobby could see, had been made as uneasy as himself by the change in the Panamanian. The doctor cleared his throat. His voice broke the silence tentatively:
"If this house makes you so unhappy, young man, why do you stay?"
Paredes paused in his walk. His thin lips twitched. He indicated Bobby.
"For the sake of my very good friend. What are a man's personal fears and desires if he can help his friends?"
Graham's distaste was evident. Paredes recognized it with a smile. Bobby watched him curiously, realizing more and more that Graham was right to this extent: they must somehow learn the real purpose of the Panamanian's continued presence here.
Paredes resumed his walk. He still had that air of expectancy. He seemed to listen. This feeling of imminence reached Bobby; increased his restlessness. He thought he heard an automobile horn outside. He sprang up, went to the door, opened it, and stood gazing through the damp and narrow court. Yet, he confessed, he listened for a repetition of that unearthly crying through the thicket rather than for the approach of those who would try to condemn him for two murders. Paredes was right. The place was unhealthy. Its dark walls seemed to draw closer. They had a desolate and unfriendly secretiveness. They might hide anything.
The whirring of a motor reached him. Headlights flung gigantic, distorted shadows of trees across the walls of the old wing. Bobby faced the others.
"They're coming," he said, and his voice was sufficiently apprehensive now.
Graham joined him at the door. "Yes," he said. "There will be another inquisition. You all know that Howells for some absurd reason suspected Bobby. Bobby, it goes without saying, knows no more about the crimes than any of us. I dare say you'll keep that in mind if they try to confuse you. After all, there's very little any of us can tell them."
"Except," Paredes said with a yawn, "what went on upstairs when the woman cried and Howells's body moved. Of course I know nothing about that."
Graham glanced at him sharply.
"I don't know what you mean, but you have told us all that you are Bobby's friend."
"Quite so. And I am not a spy."
He moved his head in his grave and dignified bow.
The automobile stopped at the entrance to the court. Three men stepped out and hurried up the path. As they entered the hall Bobby recognized the sallow, wizened features of the coroner. One of the others was short and thick set. His round and florid face, one felt, should have expressed friendliness and good-humour rather than the intolerant anger that marked it now. The third was a lank, bald-headed man, whose sharp face released more determination than intelligence.
"I am Robinson, the district attorney," the stout one announced, "and this is Jack Rawlins, the best detective I've got now that Howells is gone. Jack was a close friend of Howells, so he'll make a good job of it, but I thought it was time I came myself to see what the devil's going on in this house."
The lank man nodded.
"You're right, Mr. Robinson. There'll be no more nonsense about the case. If Howells had made an arrest he might be alive this minute."
Bobby's heart sank. These men would act from a primary instinct of revenge. They wanted the man who had killed Silas Blackburn principally because it was certain he had also killed their friend. Rawlins's words, moreover, suggested that Howells must have telephoned a pretty clear outline of the case. Robinson stared at them insolently.
"This is Doctor Groom, I know. Which is young Mr. Blackburn?"
Bobby stepped forward. The sharp eyes, surrounded by puffy flesh, studied him aggressively. Bobby forced himself to meet that unfriendly gaze. Would Robinson accuse him now, before he had gone into the case for himself? At least he could prove nothing. After a moment the man turned away.
"Who is this?" he asked, indicating Graham.
"A very good friend—my lawyer, Mr. Graham," Bobby answered.
Robinson walked over to Paredes.
"Another lawyer?" he sneered.
"Another friend," Paredes answered easily.
Robinson glanced at Katherine.
"Of course you are Miss Perrine. Good. Coroner, these are all that were in the front part of the house when you were here before?"
"The same lot," the coroner squeaked.
"There are three servants, a man and two women," Robinson went on. "Account for them, Rawlins, and see what they have to say. Come upstairs when you're through. All right, Coroner."
But he paused at the foot of the steps.
"For the present no one will leave the house without my permission. If you care to come upstairs with me, Mr. Blackburn, you might be useful."
Bobby shrank from the thought of returning to the old room even with this determined company. He didn't hesitate, however, for Robinson's purpose was clear. He wanted Bobby where he could watch him. Graham prepared to accompany them.
"If you need me," the doctor said. "I looked at the body"
"Oh, yes," Robinson sneered. "I'd like to know exactly what time you found the body."
Graham flushed, but Katherine answered easily:
"About half-past two—the hour at which Mr. Blackburn was killed."
"And I," Robinson sneered, "was aroused at three-thirty. An hour during which the police were left out of the case!"
"We thought it wise to get a physician first of all," Graham said.
"You knew Howells never had a chance. You knew he had been murdered the moment you looked at him," Robinson burst out.
"We acted for the best," Graham answered.
His manner impressed silence on Katherine and Bobby.
"We'll see about that later," Robinson said with a clear threat. "If it doesn't inconvenience you too much we'll go up now."
In the upper hall he snatched the candle from the table.
"Which way?"
Katherine nodded to the old corridor and slipped to her room. Robinson stepped forward with the coroner at his heels. Bobby, Graham, and the doctor followed. Inside the narrow, choking passage Bobby saw the district attorney hesitate.
"What's the matter?" the doctor rumbled.
The district attorney went on without answering. He glanced at the broken lock.
"So you had to smash your way in?"
He walked to the bed and looked down at Howells.
"Poor devil!" he murmured. "Howells wasn't the man to get caught unawares. It's beyond me how any one could have come close enough to make that wound without putting him on his guard."
"It's beyond us, as it was beyond him," Graham answered, "how any one got into the room at all."
In response to Robinson's questions he told in detail about the discovery of both murders. Robinson pondered for some time.
"Then you and Mr. Blackburn were asleep," he said. "Miss Perrine aroused you. This foreigner Paredes was awake and dressed and in the lower hall."
"I think he was in the court as we went by the stair-well," Graham corrected him.
"I shall want to talk to your foreigner," Robinson said. He shivered. "This room is like a charnel house. Why did Howells want to sleep here?"
"I don't think he intended to sleep," Graham said. "From the start Howells was bound to solve the mystery of the entrance of the room. He came here, hoping that the criminal would make just such an attempt as he did. He was confident he could take care of himself, get his man, and clear up the last details of the case."
Robinson looked straight at Bobby.
"Then Howells knew the criminal was in the house."
"Howells, I daresay," Graham said, "telephoned you something of his suspicions." Robinson nodded.
"He was on the wrong line," Graham argued, "or he wouldn't have been so easily overcome. You can see for yourself. Locked doors, a wound that suggests the assailant was close to him, yet he must have been awake and watchful; and if there had been a physical attack before the sharp instrument was driven into his brain he would have cried out, yet Miss Perrine was aroused by nothing of the sort, and the coroner, I daresay, will find no marks of a struggle about the body."
The coroner who had been busy at the bed glanced up.
"No mark at all. If Howells wasn't asleep, his murderer must have been invisible as well as noiseless."
Doctor Groom smiled. The coroner glared at him.
"I suggest, Mr. District Attorney," he squeaked, "that the ordinary layman wouldn't know that this type of wound would cause immediate death."
"Nor would any man," the doctor answered angrily, "be able to make such a wound with his victim lying on his back."
"On his back!" Robinson echoed. "But he isn't on his back."
The doctor told of the amazing alteration in the positions of both victims. Bobby regretted with all his heart that he had made the attempt to get the evidence. Already complete frankness was impossible for him. Already a feeling of guilt sprang from the necessity of withholding the first-hand testimony which he alone could give.
"And a woman cried!" Robinson said, bewildered. "All this sounds like a ghost story."
"You've more sense than I thought," Doctor Groom said dryly. "I never could get Howells to see it that way."
"What are you driving at?" Robinson snapped.
"These crimes," the doctor answered, "have all the elements of a ghostly impulse."
Robinson's laugh was a little uncomfortable.
"The Cedars is a nice place for spooks, but it won't do. I'll be frank. Howells telephoned me. He had found plenty of evidence of human interference. It's evident in both cases that the murderer came back and disturbed the bodies for some special purpose. I don't know what it was the first time, but it's simple to understand the last. The murderer came for evidence Howells had on his person."
Bobby couldn't meet the sharp, puffy eyes. He alone was capable of testifying that the evidence had been removed as if to secrete it from his unlawful hand. Yet if he spoke he would prove the district attorney's point. He would condemn himself.
"Curious," Graham said slowly, "that the murderer didn't take the evidence when he killed his man."
"I don't know about that," Robinson said, "but I know Howells had evidence on his person. You through, Coroner? Then we'll have a look, although it's little use."
He walked to the bed and searched Howells's pockets.
"Just as I thought. Nothing. He told me he was preparing a report. If he didn't mail it, that was stolen with the rest of the stuff. Rawlins's right. He waited too long to make his arrest."
Again Bobby wondered if the man would bring matters to a head now. He could appreciate, however, that Robinson, with nothing to go on but Howells's telephoned suspicions, might spoil his chances of a solution by acting too hastily. Rawlins strolled in.
"The two women were asleep," he said. "The old man knows nothing beyond the fact that he heard a woman crying outside a little while ago."
"I don't think we need bother about the back part of the house for the present," Robinson said. "Howells's evidence has been stolen. It's your job to find it unless it's been destroyed. Your other job is to discover the instrument that caused death in both cases. Then maybe our worthy doctor will desert his ghosts. Mr. Blackburn, if you will come with me there's a slight possibility of checking up some of the evidence of which Howells spoke. Our fine fellow may have made a slip in the court."
Bobby understood and was afraid—more afraid than he had been at any time since he had overheard Howells catalogue his case to Graham in the library. Why, even in so much confusion, had Graham and he failed to think of those tell-tale marks in the court? They had been intact when he had stood there just before dark. It was unlikely any one had walked across the grass since. He saw Graham's elaborate precautions demolished, the case against him stronger than it had been before Howells's murder. Graham's face revealed the same helpless comprehension. They followed Robinson downstairs. Graham made a gesture of surrender. Bobby glanced at Paredes who alone had remained below. The Panamanian smoked and lounged in the easy chair. His eyes seemed restless.
"I shall wish to ask you some questions in a few minutes, Mr. Paredes," the district attorney said.
"At your service, I'm sure," Paredes drawled.
He watched them until they had entered the court and closed the door. The chill dampness of the court infected Bobby as it had always done. It was a proper setting for his accusation and arrest. For Robinson, he knew, wouldn't wait as Howells had done to solve the mystery of the locked doors.
Robinson, while the others grouped themselves about him, took a flashlight from his pocket and pressed the control. The brilliant cylinder of light illuminated the grass, making it seem unnaturally green. Bobby braced himself for the inevitable denouement. Then, while Robinson exclaimed angrily, his eyes widened, his heart beat rapidly with a vast and wondering relief. For the marks he remembered so clearly had been obliterated with painstaking thoroughness, and at first the slate seemed perfectly clean. He was sure his unknown friend had avoided leaving any trace of his own. Each step in the grass had been carefully scraped out. In the confusion of the path there was nothing to be learned.
The genuine surprise of Bobby's exclamation turned Robinson to him with a look of doubt.
"You acknowledge these footmarks were here, Mr. Blackburn?"
"Certainly," Bobby answered. "I saw them myself just before dark. I knew Howells ridiculously connected them with the murderer."
"You made a good job of it when you trampled, them out," Robinson hazarded.
But it was clear Bobby's amazement had not been lost on him.
"Or," he went on, "this foreigner who advertises himself as your friend! He was in the court tonight. We know that."
Suddenly he stooped, and Bobby got on his knees beside him. The cylinder of light held in its centre one mark, clear and distinct in the trampled grass, and with a warm gratitude, a swift apprehension, Bobby thought of Katherine. For the mark in the grass had been made by the heel of a woman's shoe.
"Not the foreigner then," Robinson mused, "not yourself, Blackburn, but a woman, a devoted woman. That's something to get after."
"And if she lies, the impression of the heel will give her away," the coroner suggested.
Robinson grinned.
"You'd make a rotten detective, Coroner. Women's heels are cut to a pattern. There are thousands of shoes whose heels would fit this impression. We need the sole for identification, and that she hasn't left us. But she's done one favour. She's advertised herself as a woman, and there are just three women in the house. One of those committed this serious offence, and the inference is obvious."
Before Bobby could protest, the doctor broke in with his throaty rumble: "One of those, or the woman who cried about the house."
Bobby started. The memory of that eerie grief was still uncomfortable in his brain. Could there have been actually a woman at the stagnant lake that afternoon and close to the house to-night—some mysterious friend who assumed grave risks in his service? He recognized Robinson's logic. Unless there were something in that far-fetched theory, Katherine faced a situation nearly as serious as his own. Robinson straightened. At the same moment the scraping of a window reached them. Bobby glanced at the newer wing. Katherine leaned from her window. The coincidence disturbed him. In Robinson's mind, he knew, her anxiety would assume a colour of guilt. Her voice, moreover, was too uncertain, too full of misgivings:
"What is going on down there? There have been no—no more tragedies?"
"Would you mind joining us for a moment?" Robinson asked.
She drew back. The curtain fell over her lighted window. The darkness of the court was disturbed again only by the limited radiance of the flashlight. She came hurriedly from the front door.
"I saw you gathered here. I heard you talking. I wondered."
"You knew there were footprints in this court," Robinson said harshly, "that Howells connected them with the murderer of your uncle."
"Yes," she answered simply.
"Why then," he asked, "did you attempt to obliterate them?"
She laughed.
"What do you mean? I didn't. I haven't been out of the house since just after luncheon."
"Can you prove that?"
"It needs no proof. I tell you so."
The flashlight exposed the ugly confidence of Robinson's smile.
"I am sorry to suggest the need of corroboration."
"You doubt my word?" she flashed.
"A woman," he answered, "has obliterated valuable testimony, I shall make it my business to punish her."
She laughed again. Without another word she turned and reëntered the house. Robinson's oath was audible to the others.
"We can't put up with that sort of thing, sir," Rawlins said.
"I ought to place this entire household under arrest," Robinson muttered.
"As a lawyer," Graham said easily, "I should think with your lack of evidence it might be asking for trouble. There is Paredes who acknowledges he was in the court."
"All right. I'll see what he's got to say."
He started for the house. Bobby lingered for a moment with Graham.
"Do you know anything about this, Hartley?"
"Nothing," Graham whispered.
"Then you don't think Katherine"
"If she'd done it she'd have taken good care not to be so curious. I doubt if it was Katherine."
They followed the others into the hall. Bobby, scarcely appreciating why at first, realized there had been a change there. Then he understood: Robinson faced an empty chair. The hall was pungent with cigarette smoke, but Paredes had gone.
Robinson pointed to the stairs.
"Get him down," he said to Rawlins.
"He wouldn't have gone to bed," Graham suggested. "Suppose he's in the old room where Howells lies?"
But Rawlins found him nowhere upstairs. With an increasing excitement Robinson joined the search. They went through the entire house. Paredes was no longer there. He had, to all appearances, put a period to his unwelcome visit. He had definitely disappeared from the Cedars.
His most likely exit was through the kitchen door which was unlocked, but Jenkins who had returned to his room had heard no one. With their electric lamps Robinson and Rawlins ferreted about the rear entrance for traces. The path there was as trampled and useless as the one in front. Rawlins, who had gone some distance from the house, straightened with a satisfied exclamation. The others joined him.
"Here's where he left the path right enough," he said. "And our foreigner wasn't making any more noise than he had to."
He flashed his lamp on a fresh footprint in the soft soil at the side of the path. The mark of the toe was deep and firm. The impression of the heel was very light. Paredes, it was clear, had walked from the house on tiptoe.
"Follow on," Robinson commanded. "I told this fellow I wanted to question him. I've scared him off."
Keeping his light on the ground, Rawlins led the way across the clearing. The trail was simple enough to follow. Each of the Panamanian's footprints was distinct. Each had that peculiarity that suggested the stealth of his progress.
As they continued Bobby responded to an excited premonition. He sensed the destination of the chase. He could picture Paredes now in the loneliest portion of the woods, for the trail unquestionably pointed to the path he had taken that afternoon toward the stagnant lake.
"Hartley!" he said. "Paredes left the house to go to the stagnant lake where I fancied I saw a woman in black. Do you see? And he didn't hear the crying of a woman a little while ago, and when we told him he became restless. He wandered about the hall talking of ghosts."
"A rendezvous!" Graham answered. "He may have been waiting for just that. The crying may have been a signal. Perhaps you'll believe now, Bobby, that the man has had an underhanded purpose in staying here."
"I've made too many hasty judgments in my life, Hartley. I'll go slow on this. I'll wait until we see what we find at the lake."
Rawlins snapped off his light. The little party paused at the black entrance of the path into the thicket.
"He's buried himself in the woods," Rawlins said.
They crowded instinctively closer in the sudden darkness. A brisk wind had sprung up. It rattled among the trees, and set the dead leaves in gentle, rustling motion. It suggested to Bobby the picture which had been forced into his brain the night of his grandfather's death. The moon now possessed less light, but it reminded him again of a drowning face, and through the darkness he could fancy the trees straining in the wind like puny men. Abruptly the thought of penetrating the forest became frightening. The silent loneliness of the stagnant lake seemed as unfriendly and threatening as the melancholy of the old room.
"There are too many of us," Robinson was saying. "You'd better go on alone, Rawlins, and don't take any chances. I've got to have this man. You understand? I think he knows things worth while."
The rising wind laughed at his whisper. The detective flashed his lamp once, shut it off again, and stepped into the close embrace of the thicket.
Suddenly Bobby grasped Graham's arm. The little group became tense, breathless. For across the wind with a diffused quality, a lack of direction, vibrated to them again the faint and mournful grief of a woman.