The Abandoned Room, Charles Wadsworth Camp [best book clubs .txt] 📗

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 reentered 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.

CHAPTER VI THE ONE WHO CREPT IN THE PRIVATE STAIRCASE

The odd, mournful crying lost itself in the restless lament of the wind. The thicket from which it had seemed to issue assumed in the pallid moonlight a new unfriendliness. Instinctively the six men moved closer together. The coroner's thin tones expressed his alarm:

"What the devil was that? I don't really believe there could be a woman around here."

"A queer one!" the detective grunted.

The district attorney questioned Bobby and Graham.

"That's the voice you heard from the house?"

Graham nodded.

"Perhaps not so far away."

Doctor Groom, hitherto more captured than any of them by the imminence of a spiritual responsibility for the mystery of the Cedars, was the first now to reach for a rational explanation of this new phase.

"We mustn't let our fancies run away with us. The coroner's right for once. No excuse for a woman hiding in that thicket. A bird, maybe, or some animal—"

"Sounded more like a human being," Robinson objected.

The detective reasoned in a steady unmoved voice: "Only a mad woman would wander through the woods, crying like that without a special purpose. This man Paredes has left the house and come through here. I'd guess it was a signal."

"Graham and I had thought of that," Bobby said.

"Howells was a sharp one," Robinson mused, "but he must have gone wrong on this fellow. He 'phoned me the man knew nothing. Spoke of him as a foreigner who lolled around smoking cigarettes and trying to make a fool of him with a lot of talk about ghosts."

"Howells," Graham said, "misjudged the case from the start. He wasn't to blame, but his mistake cost him his life."

Robinson didn't answer. Bobby saw that the man had discarded his intolerant temper. From that change he drew a new hope. He accepted it as the beginning of fulfilment of his prophecy last night that an accident to Howells and the entrance of a new man into the case would give him a fighting chance. It was clearly Paredes at the moment who filled the district attorney's mind.

"Go after him," he said shortly to Rawlins. "If you can get away with it bring him back and whoever you find with him."

Rawlins hesitated.

"I'm no coward, but I know what's happened to Howells. This isn't an ordinary case. I don't want to walk into an ambush. It would be safer not to run him down alone."

"All right," Robinson agreed, "I don't care to leave the Cedars for the present. Perhaps Mr. Graham—"

But Graham wasn't enthusiastic. It never occurred to Bobby that he was afraid. Graham, he guessed, desired to remain near Katherine.

"I'll go, if you like," Doctor Groom rumbled.

It was probable that Graham's instinct to stay had sprung from service rather than sentiment. The man, it was reasonable, sought to protect Katherine from the Cedars itself and from Robinson's too direct methods of examination. As an antidote for his unwelcome jealousy Bobby offered himself to Rawlins.

"Would you mind if I came, too? I've known Paredes a long time."

Robinson sneered.

"What do you think of that, Rawlins?"

But the detective stepped close and whispered in the district attorney's ear.

"All right," Robinson said. "Go with 'em, if you want, Mr. Blackburn."

And Bobby knew that he would go, not to help, but to be watched.

The others strayed toward the house. The three men faced the entrance of the path alone.

"No more loud talk now," the detective warned. "If he went on tiptoe so can we."

Even with this company Bobby shrank from the dark and restless forest. With a smooth skill the detective followed the unfamiliar path. From time to time he stooped close to the ground, shaded his lamp with his hand, and pressed the control. Always the light verified the presence of Paredes ahead of them. Bobby knew they were near the stagnant lake. The underbrush was thicker. They went with more care to limit the sound of their passage among the trees. And each moment the physical surroundings of the pursuit increased Bobby's doubt of Paredes. No ordinary impulse would bring a man to such a place in this black hour before the dawn—particularly Paredes, who spoke constantly of his superstitious nature, who advertised a thorough-paced fear of the Cedars. The Panamanian's decision to remain, his