The Abandoned Room/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE GRAVE
"Hello, Katy! Hello, Bobby! You shown your face at last? I hope you've come sober."
The thin, quarrelsome voice of Silas Blackburn echoed in the mouldy court. The stout, bent figure in the candlelight studied them suspiciously. Katherine clung to Bobby, trembling, startled beyond speech by the apparition. They both stared at the gray face, at the thick figure, which, three days after death, they had seen buried that noon in the overgrown cemetery. Bobby recalled how Doctor Groom had reminded him that an activity like this might emerge from such places. He had suggested that the condition of the family burial ground might be an inspiration to such strayings. Yet why should the spirit of Silas Blackburn have escaped? Why should it have returned forthwith to the Cedars, unless to face his grandson as his murderer?
Afterward Bobby experienced no shame for these reflections. The encounter was a fitting sequel to the moment in the dark room when he had felt Howells move beneath his hand. He had a fleeting faith that the void between the living and the dead had, indeed, been bridged.
Then he wondered that the familiar figure failed to disintegrate, and he noticed smoke curling from the blackened briar pipe. He caught its pungent aroma in the damp air of the court. Moreover, Silas Blackburn had spoken, challenging him as usual with a sneer.
"Let us go past," Katherine whispered.
But Silas Blackburn stepped out, blocking their way. He spoke again. His whining accents held a reproach.
"What's the matter with you two? You might 'a' seen a ghost. Or maybe you're sorry to have me back. Didn't you wonder where I was, Katy? Reckon you hoped I was dead, Bobby."
Bobby answered. He had a fancy of addressing emptiness.
"Why have you come? That is what you are to us—dead."
Silas Blackburn chuckled. He took the pipe from his mouth and tapped the tobacco down with a knotted forefinger.
"I'll show you how dead I am! Trying to be funny, ain't you? I'll make you laugh on the wrong side of your face. It's cold here. I'm going in."
The same voice, the same manner! Yet his presence denied that great fact which during three days had been impressed upon them with a growing fear.
The old man jerked his thumb toward the dimly lighted windows of the wing.
"What you got the old room lighted up for? What's going on there? I tried to sleep there the other night"
"Uncle!"
Katherine sprang forward. She stretched out her hand to him with a reluctance as pronounced as Graham's when he had touched Howells's body. Her fingers brushed his hand. Her shoulders drooped. She clung to his arm. To Bobby this resolution was more of a shock, less to be explained, than his first assurance of an immaterial visitor. What did it mean to him? Was it an impossible assurance of safety?
The old man patted Katherine's shoulder.
"Why, what you crying for, Katy? Always seems something to scare you lately."
He jerked his thumb again toward the lighted windows.
"You ain't told me yet what's going on in the old room."
Bobby's laugh was dazed, questioning.
"They're trying to account for your murder there."
His grandfather looked at him with blank amazement.
"You out of your head?"
"No," Katherine cried. "We saw you lying there, cold and still. I—I found you."
"You've not forgotten, Katherine," Bobby said breathlessly, "that he moved afterward."
Silas Blackburn took his hand from Katherine's shoulder.
"Trying to scare me? What's the matter with you? Some scheme to get my money?"
"You slept in the old room the other night?" Bobby asked helplessly.
"No, I didn't sleep there," his grandfather whined. "I went in and lay down, but I didn't sleep. I defy anybody to sleep in that room. What you talking about? It's cold here. This court was always damp. I want to go in. Is there a fire in the hall? We'll light one, while you tell me what's ailin' you."
He turned, and grasped the door knob. They followed him into the hall, shaking the snow from their coats.
Paredes sat alone by the fire, languidly engaged in the solitaire which exerted so potent a fascination for him. He didn't turn at their entrance. It wasn't until Bobby called out that he moved.
"Carlos!"
Bobby's tone must have suggested the abnormal, for Paredes sprang to his feet, knocking over the table. The cards fell lightly to the floor, straying as far as the hearth. His hands caught at the back of his chair. He remained in an awkward position, rigid, white-faced, staring at the new-comer.
"I told you all," he whispered, "that the court was full of ghosts."
Silas Blackburn walked to the fire, and stood with his back to the smouldering logs. In this light he had the pallor of death—the lack of colour Bobby remembered beneath the glass of the coffin. The old man, always so intolerant and authoritative, was no longer sure of himself.
"Why do you talk about ghosts?" he whined. "I—I wish I hadn't waked up."
Paredes sank back in his chair.
"Waked up!" he echoed in an awe-struck voice.
Bobby took a trivial interest, as one will turn to small things during the most vital moments, in the reflection that twice within twenty-four hours the Panamanian had been startled from his cold reserve.
"Waked up!" Paredes repeated.
His voice rose.
"At what time? Do you remember the time?"
"Not exactly. Sometime after noon."
Bobby guessed the object of Paredes's question. He knew it had been about noon when they had seen the coffin covered in the restless, wind-swept cemetery.
Paredes hurried on.
"How long had you been asleep?"
"What makes you ask that?" the other whined. "I don't know."
"It was a long time?"
Blackburn's voice rose complainingly.
"How did you guess that? I never slept so. I dozed nearly three days, but I'm tired now—tired as if I hadn't slept at all."
Paredes made a gesture of surrender. Bobby struggled against the purpose of the man's questions, against the suggestion of his grandfather's unexpected answers.
"Your idea is madness, Carlos," he whispered.
"This house is filled with it," Paredes said. "I wish Groom were here. Groom ought to be here."
"He's coming back," Bobby told him. "He shouldn't be long now. He said before dinner time."
Paredes stirred.
"I wish he would hurry."
The Panamanian said nothing more, as if he realized the futility of pressing the matter before Doctor Groom should return. Necessary questions surged in Bobby's brain. The two that Paredes had put, however, disturbed his logic.
Katherine, who hadn't spoken since entering, kept her eyes fixed on her uncle. Her lips were slightly parted. She had the appearance of one afraid to break a silence covering impossible doubts.
Bobby called on his reason. His grandfather stood before him in flesh. With the old man, in spite of Paredes's ghastly hint, probably lay the solution of the entire mystery and his own safety. He was about to speak when he heard footsteps in the upper hall. His grandfather glanced inquiringly through the stair-well, asking:
"Who's that up there?"
The sharp tone confessed that fear of the Cedars was active in the warped brain.
"The district attorney," Bobby answered, "a detective, probably Hartley Graham."
"What they doing here?"
He indicated Paredes.
"What's this fellow doing here? I never liked him."
Katherine answered:
"They've all come because I thought I saw you dead, lying in the old room."
"We all saw," Bobby cried angrily, and Paredes nodded.
Blackburn shrank away from them.
The three men descended the stairs. Half way down they stopped.
"Who is that?" Robinson cried.
Graham's face whitened. He braced himself against the banister.
"Next time, Mr. District Attorney," Paredes said, "you'll believe me when I say the court is full of ghosts. He walked in from the court. I tell you they found him in the court."
Silas Blackburn's voice rose, shrill and angry:
"What's the matter with you all? Why do you talk of ghosts and my being dead? Haven't I a right to come in my own house? You all act as if you were afraid of me."
Paredes's questions had clearly added to the uncertainty of his manner. Katherine spoke softly:
"We are afraid."
The others came down. Robinson walked close to Silas Blackburn and for some time gazed at the gray face.
"Yes," he said. "You are Silas Blackburn. You came to my office in Smithtown the other day and asked for a detective, because you were afraid of something out here."
"There's no question," Graham cried. "Of course it is Mr. Blackburn, yet it couldn't be."
"What you all talking about? Why are the police in my house? Why do you act like fools and say I was dead?"
They gathered in a group at some distance from him. They unconsciously ignored this central figure, as if he were, in fact, a ghost. Bobby and Katherine told how they had found the old man, a black shadow against the wall of the wing. Paredes repeated the questions he had asked and their strange answers. Afterward Robinson turned to Silas Blackburn, who waited, trembling.
"Then you did go to the old room to sleep. You lay down on the bed, but you say you didn't stay. You must tell us why not, and how you got out, and where you've been during this prolonged sleep. I want everything that happened from the moment you entered the old bedroom until you wakened."
"That's simple," Silas Blackburn mouthed. "I went there along about ten o'clock, wasn't it, Katy?"
"Nearly half past," she said. "And you frightened me."
"He must tell us why he went, why he was afraid to sleep in his own room," Graham began.
Robinson held up his hand.
"One question at a time, Mr. Graham. The important thing now is to learn what happened in the room. You're not forgetting Howells, are you?"
Silas Blackburn glanced at the floor. He moved his feet restlessly. He fumbled in his pocket for some loose tobacco. With shaking fingers he refilled his pipe.
"Except for Bobby and Katherine," he quavered, "you don't know what that room means to Blackburns; and they only know by hearsay, because I've seen it was kept closed. Don't see how I'm going to tell you"
"You needn't hesitate," Robinson encouraged him. "We've all experienced something of the peculiarities of the Cedars. Your return alone's enough to keep us from laughter."
"All right," the old man stumbled on. "I was raised on stories of that room—even before my father shot himself there. Later on I saw Katherine's father die in the big bed, and after that I never cared to go near the place unless I had to. The other night, when I made up my mind to sleep there, I tried to tell myself all this talk was tommyrot. I tried to make myself believe I could sleep as comfortably in that bed as anywhere. So I went in and locked the door and raised the window and lay down."
"You're sure you locked the door?" Robinson asked.
"Yes. I remember turning the key in both doors, because I didn't want anything bothering me from outside."
They all looked at each other, unable to forecast anything of Blackburn's experiences; for both doors had been locked when the body had been found. Granted life, how would it have been possible for Silas Blackburn to have left the room to commence his period of drowsiness? An explanation of that should also unveil the criminal's route in and out.
The tensity of the little group increased, but no one interposed the obvious questions. Robinson was right. It would be quicker to let the protagonist of this unbelievable adventure recite its details in his own fashion. Paredes ran his slender fingers gropingly over the faces of several of the cards he had picked up.
"When I got in bed," Silas Blackburn continued, "I thought I'd let the candle burn for company's sake, but there was a wind, and it came in the open window, and it made the queerest black shadows dance all over the walls until I couldn't stand it a minute longer. I blew the candle out and lay back in the dark."
He drew harshly on his cold pipe. He looked at it with an air of surprise, and slipped it in his pocket.
"It was the funniest darkness. I didn't like it. You put your hand out and closed your fingers as if you could feel it. But it wasn't all black, either. Some moonlight came in with the wind between the curtains. It wasn't exactly yellow, and it wasn't white. After a little it seemed alive, and I wouldn't look at it any more. The only way I could stop myself was to shut my eyes, and that was worse, for it made me recollect my father the way I saw him lying there when I was a boy. God grant none of you will ever have to see anything like that. Then I seemed to see Katy's father, too; and I remembered his screams. The room got thick with, things like that—with those two, and with a lot of others come out of the pictures and the stories I've heard about my family."
His experience when he had gone to the room to take the evidence from Howells's body became active in Bobby's memory.
"There I lay with my eyes shut," Silas Blackburn went on in his strange, inquiring voice. "And yet I seemed to see those dead people all around me, and I thought they were in pain again, and were mad at me because I didn't do anything. I guess maybe I must 'a' been dozing a little, for I thought"
He broke off. He raised his hand slowly and pointed in the direction of the overgrown cemetery where they had seen his coffin covered that noon. His voice was lower and harsher when he continued:
"I—I thought I heard them say that things were all broken out there, and—and awful—so awful they couldn't stay."
His voice became defiant.
"I ain't going to tell you what I dreamed. It was too horrible, but I made up my mind I would do what I could if I ever escaped from that room. I—I was afraid they'd take me back with them underneath those broken stones. And you—you stand there trying to tell me that they did."
He paused again, looking around with a more defiant glare in his bloodshot eyes. He appeared to be surprised not to find them laughing at him.
"What's the matter with you all?" he cried. "Why ain't you making me out a fool? You seen something in that room, too?"
"Go on," Robinson urged. "What happened then? What did you do?"
Blackburn's voice resumed its throaty monotone. As he spoke he glanced about slyly, suspecting, perhaps, the watchfulness of the fancies that had intimidated him.
"I realized I had to get out if they would let me. So I left the bed. I went."
He ceased, intimating that he had told everything.
"I know," Robinson said, "but tell us how you got out of the room, for when you—when the murder was discovered, both doors were locked on the inside, and you know how impossible the windows are."
"I tell you," Katherine said hysterically, "it was his body in the bed."
Bobby knew her assurance was justified, but he motioned her to silence.
"Let him answer," Robinson said.
Silas Blackburn ran his knotted fingers through his hair. He shook his head doubtfully.
"That's what I don't understand myself. That's what's been worrying me while these young ones have been talking as if I was dead and buried. I recollect telling myself I must go. I seem to remember leaving the bed all right, but I don't seem to remember walking on the floor or going through the door. You're sure the doors were locked?"
"No doubt about that," Rawlins said.
"Seems to me," Blackburn went on, "that I was in the private staircase, but did I walk downstairs? First thing I see clearly is the road through the woods, not far from the station."
"What did you wear?" Robinson asked.
"I'd had my trousers and jacket on under my dressing-gown," the old man answered, "because I knew the bed wasn't made up. That's what I wore except for the dressing-gown. I reckon I must have left that in the room. I wouldn't have gone back there for anything. My mind was full of those angry people. I wanted to get as far away from the Cedars as possible. I knew the last train from New York would be along about three o'clock, so I thought I'd go on into Smithtown and in the morning see this detective I'd been talking to. I went to Robert Waters's house. I've known him for a long time. I guess you know who he is. He's such a book worm I figured he might be up, and he wouldn't ask a lot of silly questions, being selfish like most people that live all the time with books. He came to the door, and I told him I wanted to spend the night. He offered to shake hands. That's funny, too. I didn't feel like shaking hands with anybody. I recollect that, because I'd felt sort of queer ever since going in the old room, and something told me I'd better not shake hands."
Paredes looked up, wide-eyed. The cards slipped from his fragile, pointed fingers.
"Do you realize, Mr. District Attorney, what this man is saying?"
But Robinson motioned him to silence.
"Let him go on. What happened then?"
"That's all," Blackburn answered, "except this long sleep I can't make out. Old Waters didn't get mad at my not shaking hands. He was too tied up in some book, I guess. I told him I was sleepy and didn't want to be bothered, and he nodded to the spare room off the main hall, and I tumbled into bed and was off almost before I knew it."
Paredes sprang to his feet and commenced to walk about the hall.
"Tell us," he said, "when you first woke up?"
"I guess it was late the next afternoon," Silas Blackburn quavered, fumbling with his pipe again. "But it was only for a minute."
Paredes stopped in front of Robinson.
"When he turned! You see!"
"It was Waters knocking on the door," Blackburn went on. "I guess he wanted to know what was the matter, and he talked about some food, but I didn't want to be bothered, so I called to him through the door to go away, and turned over and went to sleep again."
"He turned over and went to sleep again!" Katherine said breathlessly, "and it was about that time that I heard the turning in the old bedroom."
"Katherine!" Graham called. "What are you talking about? What are you thinking about?"
"What else is there?" she asked.
"She's thinking about the truth," Paredes said tensely. "I've always heard of such things. So have you. You've read of them, if you read at all. India is full of it. It goes back to ancient Egypt—the same person simultaneously in two places—the astral body—whatever you choose to call it. It's the projection of one's self whether consciously or unconsciously; perhaps the projection of something that retains reason after an apparent death. You heard him. He didn't seem to walk. He doesn't remember leaving the room, which was locked on the inside. His descent of the stairs was without motion as we know it. He had gone some distance before his mind consciously directed the movement of this active image of Silas Blackburn, while the double from which it had sprung lay apparently dead in the old room. You notice he shrank from shaking hands, and he slept until we hid away the shell. What disintegration and coming together again has taken place since we buried that shell in the old graveyard? If his friend had shaken hands with him would he have grasped emptiness? Did his normal self come back to him when the shell was put from our sight, and he awakened? These are some of the questions we must answer."
"You've a fine imagination, Mr. Paredes," Robinson said dryly.
His fat face, nevertheless, was bewildered, and in the eyes, surrounded by puffy flesh, smouldered a profound uncertainty.
"I wish Groom were here," Paredes was saying. "He would agree with me. He would know more about it than I."
Robinson threw back his shoulders. He turned to Rawlins with his old authority. The unimaginative detective had stood throughout, releasing no indication of his emotions; but as he raised his hand now to an unnecessary adjustment of his scarf pin, the fingers were not quite steady.
"Telephone this man Waters," Robinson directed. "Then get in communication with the office and put them on that end."
Rawlins walked away. Robinson apologized to Silas Blackburn with an uneasy voice.
"Got to check up what I can. Can't get anywhere with these things unless you make sure of your first facts. I daresay Waters's story will tally with yours."
Blackburn nodded. Graham cleared his throat.
"Now perhaps we may ask that very important question. The day Mr. Blackburn called at your office in Smithtown he told Howells he was afraid of being murdered. According to Howells, he said: 'My heart's all right. It won't stop yet awhile unless it's made to. So if I'm found cold some fine morning you can be sure I was put out of the way.'"
"I know," Robinson said.
"And that night," Graham continued, "when he went to the old room, he was terrified of something which he wouldn't define for Miss Perrine."
"He warned me not to mention he'd gone there," Katherine put in. "He told me he was afraid—afraid to sleep in his own room any longer."
Robinson turned.
"What about that, Mr. Blackburn?"
For a moment Bobby's curiosity overcame the confusion aroused by his grandfather's apparently occult return. All along they had craved the knowledge he was about to give them, the statement on which Bobby's life had seemed to depend. Blackburn, however, was unwilling. The question seemed to have returned to him something of his normal manner.
"No use," he mumbled, "going into that."
"A good deal of use," Robinson insisted.
Blackburn shifted his feet. He gazed at his pipe doubtfully.
"I don't see why. That didn't come, and seems it wasn't what I ought to have been afraid of after all. All along I ought to have been afraid only of the Cedars and the old room. I've been accused of being unjust. I don't want to do an injustice now."
"Please answer," Robinson said impatiently.
"You must answer," Graham urged.
"I don't see that it makes the slightest difference," Paredes drawled. "What has it got to do with the case as it stands to-night?"
Robinson snapped at him.
"You keep out of it. Don't forget there's a lot you haven't answered yet."
Silas Blackburn looked straight at Bobby. Slowly he raised his hand, pointing an accusing finger at his grandson.
"If you want to know, I was afraid of that young rascal."
Katherine started impulsively forward in an effort to stop him. Blackburn waved her away.
"You trying to scare me, Katy?" he asked suspiciously.
"Evidently," Robinson commented to Graham, "Howells wasn't as dull as we thought him. Go on, Mr. Blackburn. Why were you afraid of your grandson?"
"Maybe he can tell you better than I can," the old man answered. "Don't see any use raking up such things, anyway. Maybe I'd been pretty harsh with him. Anyway, I knew he hated the ground I walked on and would be glad enough to see me drop in my tracks."
"That isn't so," Bobby said.
"You keep quiet now. You always talked too much."
So the old feeling survived.
"Go on," Robinson urged.
"I'd always been a hard worker," Blackburn whined, "and he was a waster. Naturally we didn't get along. I'd decided to make a new will, leaving my money to the Bedford Foundation, and I wrote him that, thinking it would bring him hot foot to make it up with me. I'd been nervous about him before, because I didn't know what might come into his head when he was on these wild parties. So I'd spoken to Howells, thinking I'd trip him if he tried any funny business. When he didn't come that night I got scared. He knew I wouldn't make the new will until morning, and since I couldn't see any man throwing all that money away, I figured he'd guessed he couldn't turn me and wouldn't waste any time talking.
"When you got a lot of money and a grandson who hates you, you have to think of such things. Suppose, I thought, he should come out here drunk when I was sound asleep. I knew he had a latch key, and he might sneak up to my room before I could even get to the telephone. Or I was afraid he might hire somebody. You can buy men for that sort of work in New York. I tell you the more I thought of it the more I was sure he'd do something. You'd understand if you lived in this lonely place with all that money and nobody you wanted to will it to. I nearly sent for Howells right then. But if nothing had happened I'd have looked a fool."
"I wanted you to send for a man," Katherine cried.
Bobby leaned against the wall, repeating to himself the words of Maria's note which accused him of having made the very threat his grandfather had feared.
"So," Blackburn rambled on, "I decided I wouldn't sleep in my room that night, and I picked out the least likely place for anybody to find me. I was more afraid of him than I was of the old room, but, as I've told you, the old room made me forget Master Robert."
Robinson stepped to Bobby's side.
"All along Howells was right. Tell me what you did with that evidence."
Bobby turned away. Katherine tried to laugh. Graham beckoned to Robinson.
"What's the use of bothering with evidence against a suspected murderer when the murdered man stands talking to you?"
Robinson frowned helplessly. Paredes sprang to his feet.
"You're taking too much for granted, Graham. There was a murder. Blackburn was killed. We've as many witnesses to that fact as we have that he's come back. This man who talks with us, accusing Bobby, may not stay. Have you thought of that? I have noticed something that makes me think it possible. I have been afraid to speak of it. But it makes me hesitate to say that this man is alive, as we understand life. We have to learn the nature of the forces we are dealing with, exactly how dangerous they are."
They started at a sharp rap on the front door.
"Now who?" the old man whined. "I wish you wouldn't look at me so. It makes me feel queer. You're all crazy."
"It's probably Doctor Groom," Bobby said, and stepped to the door, opening it.
It was Groom. The huge man walked in, struggling out of his coat. At first the others screened Silas Blackburn from him, but he acknowledged their strained attitudes, the excitement that still animated Paredes's face.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked. "Found something, Mr. District Attorney?"
Robinson moved to one side, jerking his thumb at Silas Blackburn. The coat and hat slipped from Doctor Groom's hand. His mouth opened. His great body crept slowly back until the shoulders rested against the wall. He placed the palms of his hands against the wall as if to push it away in order to assure further retreat. Always the little, infused eyes remained fixed on the man who had been his friend. Such terror was chiefly arresting because of the great figure conquered by it.
Blackburn thrust his pipe in his mouth. He laughed shakily.
"That fellow Groom will have a stroke."
The Doctor's greeting had the difficult quality of a masculine sob.
"Silas Blackburn!"
"Who do you think?" the other whined. "You going to try to frighten me out of my skin, too? These people are trying to say I've been lying dead in the old room. Hoped you'd have enough sense to set them right and tell me what it's all about."
The doctor straightened.
"You did lie dead in the old room."
His harsh, amazed tones held an unqualified conviction.
"I saw you there. I helped the coroner make the examination. You had been dead for many hours. And I saw you bolted in your coffin. I saw you buried in the graveyard you'd let go to pieces."
The others had, as far as possible, recovered from the first shock, had done their best to fathom the mystery, but Groom's fear increased. His reddish eyes grew always more alarmed. Silas Blackburn turned with a quick, frightened gesture, facing the fire. Paredes drew a deep breath.
"Now you'll see," he said.
Doctor Groom shrank against the wall again. After a moment, with the motions of one drawn by an outside will, he approached the figure at the fireplace. Then Bobby saw, and he heard Katherine's choked scream. For now that his grandfather's back was turned there was plainly visible on the white of the collar, near the base of the brain, a scarlet stain. And the hair above it was matted.
"That's what I meant," Paredes whispered.
Graham moved back.
"Good God!"
Robinson stared. The fear had found him, too.
Doctor Groom touched Blackburn's shoulder tentatively.
"What's the matter with the back of your neck?"
Blackburn drew fearfully away. He raised his hand and fumbled at the top of his collar. He held his fingers to the firelight.
"Why," he said blankly, "I been bleeding back there."
To an extent the doctor controlled himself.
"Sit down here, Silas Blackburn," he said. "I want to get the lamplight on your head."
"I ain't badly hurt?" Blackburn whined.
"I don't know," the doctor answered. "Heaven knows."
Blackburn sat down. The light shone full on the stained collar and the dark patch of hair at the base of the brain. Doctor Groom examined the wound minutely. He straightened. He spoke unsteadily:
"It is a healed wound. It was made by something sharp."
Robinson thrust his hands in his pockets.
"You're getting beyond my depths, Doctor. Bring him up to the old bedroom. I want him to see that pillow."
But Blackburn cowered in his chair.
"I won't go to that room again. They don't want me there. I'll have work started in the cemetery to-morrow."
"Mr. Blackburn," Robinson said, "the man we buried in the cemetery to-day, the man these members of your family identify as yourself, died of just such a wound as the doctor says has healed in your head."
Blackburn cowered farther in his chair.
"You're making fun of me," he whimpered. "You're trying to scare an old man."
"No," Robinson said. "How was that wound made?"
The crouched figure wagged its head from side to side.
"I don't know. Nothing's touched me there. I remember I had a headache when I woke up. Why doesn't Groom tell me why I slept so long?"
"I only know," Groom rumbled, "that the wound I examined upstairs must have caused instant death."
Paredes whispered to him. The doctor nodded reluctantly.
"What do you mean?" Blackburn cried. "You trying to tell me I can't stay with you?"
He pointed to Paredes.
"That's what he said—that I might have to go back, but I never heard of such a thing. I'm all right. My neck doesn't hurt. I'm alive. I tell you I'm alive. I'll teach you"
Rawlins returned from the telephone.
"His story's straight," he said in his crisp manner. "I've been talking to Waters himself. Says Mr. Blackburn turned up about three-thirty, looking queer and acting queer. Wouldn't shake hands, just as he says. He went to the spare room and slept practically all the time until this afternoon. No food. Waters couldn't rouse him. Mr. Blackburn wouldn't answer at all or else seemed half asleep. He'd made up his mind to call in a doctor this afternoon. Then Mr. Blackburn seemed all right again, and started home."
Robinson gazed at the fire.
"What's to be done now, sir?" Rawlins asked.
"Find the answer if we can," Robinson said.
Paredes spoke as softly as he had done the other night while reciting his sensitive reaction to the Cedars's gloomy atmosphere. Only now his voice wasn't groping.
"Call me a dreamer if you want, Mr. District Attorney, but I have given you the only answer. This man's soul has dwelt in two places."
Robinson grinned.
"I'm going slow on calling anybody names, but I haven't forgotten that there's been another crime in this house. Howells was killed in that room, too. I would like to believe he could return as Mr. Blackburn has."
Blackburn looked up.
"What's that? Who's Howells?"
And as Robinson told him of the second crime he sank back in his chair again, whimpering from time to time. His fear was harder to watch.
"Might I suggest," Graham said, "that Howells isn't out of the case yet? It would be worth looking into."
"By all means," Robinson agreed.
Rawlins coughed apologetically.
"I asked them about that at the office. Howells was taken to his home in Boston to-day. The funeral's to be to-morrow."
"Then," Robinson said, "we're confined for the present to this end of the case. The facts I have tell me that two murders have been committed in this house. It is still my first duty to convict the guilty man."
Graham indicated the huddled, frightened figure in the chair.
"You are going against the evidence of your own eyes."
"I shall do what I can," Robinson said sternly. "We buried one of those men this noon. His grandson, his niece, and those who saw him frequently, swear it was this living being who has such a wound as the one that caused the death of that man. There is only one thing to do—see who we buried."
"The permits?" Graham suggested.
"I shall telephone the judge," Robinson answered, "and he can send them out, but I shan't wait for hours doing nothing. I am going to the grave at once."
"A waste of time," Paredes murmured.
"I don't understand," Silas Blackburn whined, "You say the doors were locked. Then how could anybody have got in that room to be murdered? How did I get out?"
Robinson turned on Paredes angrily.
"I'm not through with you yet. Before I am I'll get what I want from you."
He stormed away to the telephone. No one spoke. The doctor's rumpled head was still bent over the back of Silas Blackburn's chair. The infused eyes didn't waver from the crimson stain and the healed wound, and Blackburn remained huddled among the cushions, his shoulders twitching. Paredes commenced gathering up his cards. Katherine watched him out of expressionless eyes. Graham walked to her side. Rawlins, as always phlegmatic, remained motionless, waiting for his superior.
Bobby threw off his recent numbness. He realized the disturbing parallel in the actions of his grandfather and himself. He had come to the Cedars unconsciously, perhaps directed by an evil, external influence, on the night of the first murder. Now, it appeared, the man he was accused of killing had also wandered under an unknown impulse that night. Was the same subtle control responsible in both cases? Was there at the Cedars a force that defied physical laws, moving its inhabitants like puppets for special aims of its own? Yet, he recalled, there was something here friendly to him. After the movement of Howells's body and the disappearance of the evidence, the return of Silas Blackburn stripped Robinson's threats of power and seemed to place the solution beyond the district attorney's trivial reach.
The silence and the delay increased their weight upon the little group. Silas Blackburn, huddled in his chair, was grayer, more haggard than he had been at first. He appeared attentive to an expected summons. He seemed fighting the idea of going back.
The proximity of Graham to Katherine quieted the turmoil of Bobby's thoughts. If he could only have foreseen this return he would have listened to the whispered encouragement of the forest.
Robinson reappeared. Anxiety had replaced the anger in the round face which, one felt, should always have been no more than good-natured.
"Jenkins will have to help," he said.
Silas Blackburn arose unsteadily.
"I'm coming with you. You're not going to leave me here. I won't stay here alone."
"He should come by all means," Paredes said, "in case anything should happen"
The old man put his hands to his ears.
"You keep quiet. I'm not going back, I tell you."
Bobby didn't want to hear any more. He went to the kitchen and called Jenkins. He let the butler go to the hall ahead of him in order that he might not have to witness this new greeting. But Jenkins's cry came back to him, and when he reached the hall he saw that the man's terror had not diminished.
They went through the court and around the house to the stable where they found spades and shovels. Their grim purpose holding them silent, they crossed the clearing and entered the pathway that had been freshly blazed that day for the passage of the men in black.
The snow was quite deep. It still drifted down. It filled the woods with a wan, unnatural radiance. Without really illuminating the sooty masses of the trees it made the night white.
Silas Blackburn stumbled in the van with Paredes and Robinson. The doctor and Rawlins followed. Graham was with Katherine behind them. Bobby walked last, fighting an instinct to linger, to avoid whatever they might find beneath the white blanket of the little, intimate burial ground.
Groom turned and spoke to Graham. Katherine waited for Bobby, and the white night closed swiftly about them, whispering until the shuffling of the others became inaudible.
Was she glad of this solitude? Had she sought it? Her extraordinary request in that earlier solitude came to him, and he spoke of it while he tried to control his emotions, while he sought to mould the next few minutes reasonably and justly.
"Why did you tell me to make no attempt to find the guilty person?"
"Because," she answered, "you were too sure it was yourself. Why, Bobby, did you think I was the—the woman in black? That has hurt me."
"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said, "but there is something I must tell you now that may hurt you a little."
And he explained how Graham had awakened him at the head of the stairs.
"You're right," he said. "I was sure then it was myself, in spite of Howells's movement. It followed so neatly on the handkerchief and the footmarks. But now he has come back, and it changes everything. So I can tell you."
He couldn't be sure whether it was the cold, white loneliness through which they paced, or what he had just said that made her tremble.
"Perhaps I shouldn't have told you that."
"I am glad," she answered. "You must never close your confidence to me again. Why have you done it these last few months? I want to know."
Calculation died.
"Then you shall know."
Through the white night his hands reached for her, found her, drew her close. The moment was too masterful for him to mould. He became, instead, plastic in its white and stealthy grasp.
"I couldn't stay," he said, "and see you give yourself to Hartley."
She raised her hands to his shoulders. He barely caught her whisper because of the sly communicativeness of the snow.
"I am glad, but why didn't you say so then?"
The intoxication faded. The enterprise ahead gave to their joy a fugitive quality. Moreover, with her very surrender came to him a great misgiving.
"But you and Hartley? I've watched. It's been forced on me."
"Then you have misunderstood," she answered. "You put me too completely out of your life after our quarrel. That was about Hartley. You were too jealous, but it was my fault."
"Hartley," he asked, "spoke to you about that time?"
"Yes, and I told him he was a very dear friend, and he was kind enough to accept that and not to go away."
His measure of the widening of the rift between them made her more precious because of its affectionate human quality. She had been kinder to Graham, more mysterious about him, to draw Bobby back. Yet ever since his arrival at the Cedars, Graham had assumed toward Katherine an attitude scarcely to be limited by friendship. He had done what he had in Bobby's service clearly enough for her sake. For a long time past, indeed, in speaking of her Graham always seemed to discuss the woman he expected to marry.
"You are quite sure," he asked, puzzled, "that Hartley understood?"
"Why do you ask? He has shown how good a friend he is."
"He has always made me think," Bobby said, "that he had your love. You're sure he guessed that you cared for me?"
In that place, at that moment, there was a tragic colour to her coquetry.
"I think every one must have guessed it except you, Bobby."
He raised her head and touched her lips. Her lips were as cold as the caresses of the drifting snowflakes.
"We must go on," she sighed.
In his memory the chill of her kiss was bitter. In the forest they could speak no more of love.
But Bobby, hand in hand with her as they hurried after the others, received a new strength. He saw as a condition to their happiness the unveiling of the mystery at the Cedars. He gathered his courage for that task. He would not give way even before the memory of all that he had experienced, even before the return of his grandfather, even before the revelation toward which they walked. And side by side with his determination grew shame for his former weakness. It was comforting to realize that the causes for his weakness and his strength were identical.
The subdued murmur of voices reached them. They saw among the indistinct masses of the trees restless patches of black. Katherine stumbled against one of the fallen stones. They stood with the others in the burial ground, close to the mound that had been made that day.
"They haven't begun," Bobby whispered.
She freed her hand.
A white flame sprang across the mound. The trees from formless masses took on individual shapes. A row of cypresses on which the light gleamed were like sombre sentinels, guarding the dead. The snow patches, clustered on their branches, were like funeral decorations pointing their morbid function. The light gave the overturned stones an illusion of striving to struggle from their white imprisonment. Robinson swung his lamp back to the mound.
"The snow isn't heavy," he said, "and the ground isn't frozen. It oughtn't to take long."
Silas Blackburn commenced to shake.
"It's a desecration of the dead."
"We have to know," Robinson said, "who is buried in that grave."
With a spade Jenkins scraped the snow from the mound. Rawlins joined him. They commenced to throw to one side, staining the white carpet, spadesful of moist, yellow earth. Their labour was rapid. Silas Blackburn watched with an unconquerable fascination. He continued to shake.
"I'm too cold. I'll never be warm again," he whined. "If anything happens to me, Bobby, try to forget I've been hard, and don't let them bury me. Suppose I should be buried alive?"
"Suppose," Paredes said, "you were buried alive to-day?"
He turned to Bobby and Katherine.
"That also is possible. You remember the old theories that have never been disproved of the disintegration of matter into its atoms, of its passage through solid substances, of its reforming in a far place? I wouldn't have to ask an East Indian that."
Jenkins, standing in the excavation, broke into torrential speech.
"Mr. Robinson! I can't work with the light. It makes the stones seem to move. It throws too many shadows. I seem to see people behind you, and I'm afraid to look."
Nothing aggressive survived in Rawlins's voice.
"We can work well enough without it, sir."
Robinson snapped off the light. The darkness descended eagerly upon them. Above the noise of the spades in the soft earth Bobby heard indefinite stirrings. In the graveyard at such an hour the supernatural legend of the Cedars assumed an inescapable probability. Bobby wished for some way to stop the task on which they were engaged. He felt instinctively it would be better not to tamper with the mystery of Silas Blackburn's return.
Bobby grew rigid.
"There it is again," Graham breathed.
A low keening came from the thicket. It increased in power a trifle, then drifted into silence.
It wasn't the wind. It was like the moaning Bobby had heard at the stagnant lake that afternoon, like the cries Graham and he had suffered in the old room. Seeming at first to come from a distance, it achieved a sense of intimacy. It was like an escape of sorrow from the dismantled tombs.
Bobby turned to Katherine. He couldn't see her for the darkness. He reached out. She was not there.
"Katherine," he called softly.
Her hand stole into his. He had been afraid that the forest had taken her. Under the reassurance of her handclasp he tried to make himself believe there was actually a woman near by, if not Maria, some one who had a definite purpose there.
Robinson flashed on his light. Old Blackburn whimpered:
"The Cedars is at its tricks again, and there's nothing we can do."
"It was like a lost soul," Katherine sighed. "It seemed to cry from this place."
"It must be traced," Bobby said.
"Then tell me its direction certainly," Robinson challenged. "We'd flounder in the thicket. A waste of time. Let us get through here. Hurry, Rawlins!"
The light showed Bobby that the detective and Jenkins had nearly finished. He shrank from the first hard sound of metal against metal.
It came. After a moment the light shone on the dull face of the casket which was streaked with dirt.
Jenkins rested on his spade. He groaned. It occurred to Bobby that the man couldn't have worked hard enough in this cold air to have started the perspiration that streamed down his wrinkled face.
"It would be a tough job to lift it out," Rawlins said.
"No need," Robinson answered. "Get the soil away from the edges."
He bent over, passing a screw driver to the detective.
"Take off the top plate. That will let us see all we want."
Jenkins climbed out.
"I shan't look. I don't dare look."
Silas Blackburn touched Bobby's arm timidly.
"I've been a hard man, Bobby"
He broke off, his bearded lips twitching.
The grating of the screws tore through the silence. Rawlins glanced up.
"Lend a hand, somebody."
Groom spoke hoarsely:
"It isn't too late to let the dead rest."
Robinson gestured him away. Graham, Paredes, and he knelt in the snow and helped the detective raise the heavy lid. They placed it at the side of the grave.
They all forced themselves to glance downward.
Katherine screamed. Silas Blackburn leaned on Bobby's arm, shaking with gross, impossible sobs. Paredes shrugged his shoulders. The light wavered in Robinson's hand. They continued to stare. There was nothing else to do.
The coffin was empty.