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

in his life during the stretch of which he might have committed an unspeakable crime. For he couldn't believe as firmly as Katherine did. Since he couldn't remember, he might have done anything.

"Come!" he called in response to a stealthy rapping at the door.

Stealth, it occurred to him, had, since last night, become a stern condition of his life.

Graham entered and noiselessly closed the door.

"I had a chance to slip in," he explained. "Paredes is wandering about the place. I'd give a lot to know what he's after at the Cedars. Katherine is in her room, trying to rest after last night, I fancy."

"And," Bobby asked, "the detective—Howells?"

"If he's back from the station," Graham answered, "he's keeping low. I wonder if it was he or Paredes who followed you through the woods?"

"Why should Carlos have followed me?" Bobby asked. "I've been thinking it over, Hartley. It isn't a bad scheme having him here, since you think he hasn't told all he knows."

"I don't say that," Graham answered. "I don't know what to think about Paredes. I've come to talk about just that. I'm a lawyer, and I've had some criminal practice. Since this detective will be satisfied with you for a victim, I'm going to take your case, if you'll have me. I'll be your detective as well as your lawyer."

Bobby was a good deal touched.

"That's kind of you—more than I deserve, for I have resented you at times."

Graham, it was clear, didn't guess he referred to his friendship for
Katherine, for he answered quickly:

"I must have seemed a nuisance, but I was only trying to get you back on the straight path where you've always belonged. I can't believe you did this thing, even unconsciously, until I'm shown proof without a single flaw. Until the autopsy the only thing we have to work on is that party last night. I've telephoned to New York and put a trustworthy man on the heels of Maria and the stranger. Meantime I think I'd better watch developments here."

"Please," Bobby agreed. "Stay with me, Hartley, until this man takes some definite action."

He picked at the fringe of the window curtain. "If the autopsy shows that my grandfather was murdered," he said, "either I killed him, or else some one has deliberately tried to throw suspicion on me, for with only a motive to go on this detective wouldn't be so sure. Why in the name of heaven should any one kill the old man, place all this money in my hands, and at the same time send me to the electric chair? Don't you see how absurd it is that Carlos, Maria, or any one else should have had a hand in it? There was nothing for them to gain from his death. I've thought and thought in such circles until I am almost convinced of the logic of my guilt."

He drew the curtain farther back and gazed across the court at the room where his grandfather lay dead. One of the two windows of the room was a little raised, but the blinds were closely drawn.

"I did hate him," he mused. "There's that. Ever since I can remember he did things to make me despise him. Have—have you seen him?"

Graham nodded.

"Howells took me in. He looked perfectly normal—not a mark."

"I don't want to see him," Bobby said.

He drew back from the window, pointing. The detective, Howells, had strolled into the court. His hands hung at his sides. They didn't swing as he walked. His lips were stretched in that thin, straight smile. He paused by the fountain, glancing for a moment anxiously downward. Then he came on and entered the house.

"He'll be restless," Graham said, "until the coroner comes, and proves or disproves his theory of murder. If he questions you, you'd better say nothing for the present. From his point of view what you remember of last night would be only damaging."

"I want him to leave me alone," Bobby said. "If he doesn't arrest me I won't have him bullying me."

Jenkins knocked and entered. The old butler was as white-faced as Bobby, more tremulous.

"The policeman, sir! He's asking for you."

"Tell him I don't wish to see him."

The detective, himself, stepped from the obscurity of the hall, smiling his queer smile.

"Ah! You are here, Mr. Blackburn! I'd like a word with you."

He turned to Graham and Jenkins.

"Alone, if you please."

Bobby mutely agreed, and Graham and the butler went out. The detective closed the door and leaned against it, studying Bobby with his narrow eyes.

"I don't suppose," he began, "that there's any use asking you about your movements last night?"

"None," Bobby answered jerkily, "unless you arrest me and take me before those who ask questions with authority."

The detective's smile widened.

"No matter. I didn't come to argue with you about that. I was curious to know if you'd tried to see your grandfather's body."

Bobby shook his head.

"I took it for granted the room was locked."

"Yes," the detective answered, "but some people, it seems, have skilful ways of overcoming locks."

He moved to one side, placing his hand on the door knob.

"I've come to open doors for you, to give you the opportunity an affectionate grandson must crave."

Bobby hesitated, fighting back his feeling of repulsion, his first instinct to refuse. The detective might take it as an evidence against him. On the other hand, if he went, the man would unquestionably try to tear from a meeting between the living and the dead some valuable confirmation of his theory.

"Well?" the detective said. "What's the matter? Thought the least I could do was to give you a chance. Wouldn't do it for everybody. Then everybody hasn't your affectionate nature."

Bobby advanced.

"For God's sake, stop mocking me. I'll go, since you wish."

The detective opened the door and stood aside to let Bobby pass.

"Daresay you know the room—the way to it?"

Bobby didn't answer. He went along the corridor and into the main hall where Katherine had met Silas Blackburn last night. He fought back his aversion and entered the corridor of the old wing. He heard the detective behind him. He was aware of the man's narrow eyes watching him with a malicious assurance.

Bobby, with a feeling of discomfort, sprung in part from the gloomy passageway, paused before the door his grandfather had had the unaccountable whim of entering last night. The detective took a key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock.

"Had some trouble repairing the lock this morning," he said. "That fellow, Jenkins, entered with a heavy hand—a good deal heavier than whoever was here before him."

He opened the door.

"Queerest case I've ever seen," he mumbled. "Step in, Mr. Blackburn."

Because of the drawn blinds the room was nearly as dark as the corridor. Bobby entered slowly, his nerves taut. Against the farther wall the bed was like an enormous shadow, without form.

"Stay where you are," the detective warned, "until I give you more light. You know, I wouldn't want you to touch anything, because the room is exactly as it was when he was murdered!"

Bobby experienced a swift impulse to strangle the brutal word in the detective's throat. But he stood still while the man went to the bureau, struck a match, and applied it to a candle. The wick burned reluctantly. It flickered in the wind that slipped past the curtain of the open window.

"Come here," the detective commanded roughly.

Bobby dragged himself forward until he stood at the foot of the four-poster bed. The detective lifted the candle and held it beneath the canopy.

"You look all you want now, Mr. Robert Blackburn," he said grimly.

Bobby conquered the desire to close his eyes, to refuse to obey. He stared at his grandfather, and a feeling of wonder grew upon him. For Silas Blackburn rested peacefully in the great bed. His eyes were closed. The thick gray brows were no longer gathered in the frown too familiar to Bobby. The face with its gray beard retained no fear, no record of a great shock.

Bobby glanced at the detective who bent over the bed watching him out of his narrow eyes.

"Why," he asked simply, "do you say he was murdered?"

"He was murdered," the detective answered. "Murdered in cold blood, and, look you here, young fellow, I know who did it. I'm going to strap that man in the electric chair. He's got just one chance—if he talks out, if he makes a clean breast of it."

Across the body he bent closer. He held the candle so that its light searched Bobby's face instead of the dead man's, and the uncertain flame was like an ambush for his eyes.

In response to those intolerable words Bobby's sick nerves stretched too tight. No masquerade remained before this huntsman who had his victim trapped, and calmly studied his agony. The horror of the accusation shot at him across the body of the man he couldn't be sure he hadn't murdered, robbed him of his last control. He cried out hysterically:

"Why don't you do something? For God's sake, why don't you arrest me?"

A chuckle came from the man in ambush behind the yellow flame.

"Listen to the boy! What's he talking about? Grief for his grandfather.
That's what it is—grief."

"Stop!" Bobby shouted. "It's what you've been accusing me with ever since you stopped me at the station." He indicated the silent form of the old man. "You keep telling me I murdered him. Why don't you arrest me then? Why don't you lock me up? Why don't you put the case on a reasonable basis?"

He waited, trembling. The flame continued to flicker, but the hand holding the candlestick failed to move, and Bobby knew that the eyes didn't waver, either. He forced his glance from the searching flame. He managed to lower and steady his voice.

"You can't. That's the trouble. He wasn't murdered. The coroner will tell you so. Anybody who looks at him will tell you so. Since you haven't the nerve to arrest me. I'm going. I'm glad to have had this out with you. Understand. I'm my own master. I do what I please. I go where I please."

At last the candle moved to one side. The detective straightened and walked to Bobby. The multitude of small lines in his face twitched. His voice was too cold for the fury of his words.

"That's just what I want you to do, damn you—anything you please. I'm accusing nobody, but I'm getting somebody. I've got somebody right now for this old man's murder. My man's going to writhe and burn in the chair, confession or no confession. Now get out of this room since you're so anxious, and don't come near it again."

Bobby went. At the end of the corridor he heard the closing of the door, the scraping of the key. He was afraid the detective might follow him to his room to heckle him further. To avoid that he hurried to the lower floor. He wanted to be alone. He must have time to accustom himself to this degrading fate which loomed in the too-close future. Unless they could demolish the detective's theory he, Bobby Blackburn, would go to the death house.

A fire blazed in the big hall fireplace. Paredes stood with his back to it, smoking and warming his hands. A man sat in the shadow of a deep leather chair, his rough, unpolished boots stretched toward the flaming logs. As he came down the stairs Bobby heard the heavy, rumbling voice of the man in the chair:

"Certainly it's a queer case, but not the way Howells means. I daresay the old fool died what the world will call a natural death. If you smoke so much you will, too, before long."

Bobby tried to slip past, but Paredes saw him.

"Feeling better, Bobby?"

The boots were drawn in. From the depths of the chair arose a figure nearly gigantic in the firelight. The man's face, at first glance, appeared to be covered with hair. Black and curling, it straggled over his forehead. It circled his mouth, and fell in an unkempt beard down his waistcoat. The huge man must have been as old as Silas Blackburn, but he showed no touch of gray. His only concession to age was the sunken and bloodshot appearance of his eyes.

Bobby and Katherine had always been afraid of this great, grim country practitioner who had