The Abandoned Room Part 19

The woods seemed to receive an ashy illumination from the pa.s.sage of the snowflakes. Katherine walked a little faster.

"Don't be discouraged, Bobby," she begged him. "Everything will come out straight. You must keep telling yourself that. You must fight until you believe it."

The nearness of her dusk-clothed, slender figure filled him with a new courage, obscured to an extent his real situation. He burst out impulsively: "Don't worry. I'll fight. I'll make myself believe. If necessary I'll tell everything I know in order to find the guilty person."

She placed her hand on his arm. Her voice fell to a whisper.

"Don't fight that way. Uncle Silas is dead; Howells has been taken away. The police will find nothing. By and by they will leave. It will all be forgotten. Why should you keep it active and dangerous by trying to find who is guilty?"

"Katherine!" he cried, surprised. "Why do you say that?"

Her hand left his arm. She walked on without answering. Paredes came back to him--Paredes serenely calling attention to the fact that Katherine had alarmed the household and had led it to the discovery of the Cedars's successive mysteries. He shrank from asking her any more.

They left the thicket. In the open s.p.a.ce about the house the snow had spread a white mantle. From it the heavy walls rose black and forbidding.

"I don't want to go in," Katherine said.

Their feet lagged as they followed the driveway to the entrance of the court. The curtains of the room of death, they saw, had been raised. A dim, unhealthy light slipped from the small-paned windows across the court, staining the snow. Robinson and Rawlins were probably searching again.

Suddenly Katherine stopped. She pointed.

"What's that?" she asked sharply.

Bobby followed the direction of her glance. He saw a black patch against the wall of the wing opposite the lighted windows.

"It is a shadow," he said.

She relaxed and they walked on. They entered the court. There she turned, and Bobby stopped, too, with a sudden fear. For the thing he had called a shadow was moving. He stared at it with a hypnotic belief that the Cedars was at last disclosing its supernatural secret. He knew it could be no illusion, since Katherine swayed, half-fainting, against him. The moving shadow a.s.sumed the shape of a stout figure, slightly bent at the shoulders. A pipe protruded from the bearded mouth. One hand waved a careless welcome.

Bobby's first instinct was to cry out, to command this old man they had seen buried that day to return to his grave. For there wasn't the slightest doubt. The unhealthy candlelight from the room of death shone full on the gray and wrinkled face of Silas Blackburn.

CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE GRAVE.

"h.e.l.lo, Katy! h.e.l.lo, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.surance of an immaterial visitor. What did it mean to him? Was it an impossible a.s.surance 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 k.n.o.b. 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 newcomer.

"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 gla.s.s 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?"