The Abandoned Room - Charles Wadsworth Camp (best ebook reader for ubuntu TXT) 📗

stepped back, brushing his clothing with his uninjured hand. He lighted a cigarette. He drew back the coat sleeve of his left arm and readjusted the bandage. He glanced up as heavy footsteps heralded Doctor Groom.

"Hello, Doctor," he called cheerily. "I was afraid you'd nap through the show. It seems the bloodhounds of the law left us out of their confidence."

"What's all this?" the doctor rumbled.

Paredes waved his hand.

"I am a prisoner."

The doctor gaped.

"You mean you—"

"Young Blackburn caught him," Robinson explained. "He was in a position to finish him just as he did Howells."

"Except that I had no hatpin," Paredes yawned.

The doctor's uneasy glance sought the opening in the wall.

"I thought you had examined all these walls," he grumbled. "How did you miss this?"

Robinson ran his fingers through his hair.

"That's what I've been asking myself," he said. "I went over that panelling a dozen times myself."

Bobby and Katherine went closer. Bobby had been from the first puzzled by Paredes's easy manner. He had a quick hope. He saw the man watch with an amused tolerance while the district attorney bent over, examining the face of the panel.

"An entire section," Robinson said—"the thickness of the wall—has been shifted to one side. No wonder we didn't see any joints or get a hollow sound from this panel any more than from the others. But why didn't we stumble on the mechanism? Maybe you'll tell us that, Paredes."

The Panamanian blew a wreath of smoke against the ancient wall.

"Gladly, but you will find it humiliating. I have experienced humility in this hall myself. The reason you didn't find any mechanism is that there wasn't any. You looked for something most cautiously concealed, not realizing that the best concealment is no concealment at all. It's fundamental. I don't know how it slipped my own mind. No grooves show because the door is an entire panel. There isn't even a latch. You merely push hard against its face. Such arrangements are common enough in colonial houses, and there was more than the nature of the crimes to tell you there was some such thing here. I mean if you will examine the farther door closer than you have done you will find that it has fewer coats of paint than the one leading to the corridor, that its frame is of newer wood. In other words, it was cut through after the wing was built. This panel was the original door, designed, with the private stairway and the hall, for the exclusive use of the master of the house. Try it."

Robinson braced himself and shoved against the panel. It moved in its grooves with a vibrant stirring.

"Rusty," he said.

Katherine started.

"That's what I heard each time," she cried.

Above his heavy black beard the doctor's cheeks whitened. Robinson made a gesture of revulsion.

"That gives the nasty game away."

"Naturally," Paredes said, "and you must admit the game is as beautifully simple as the panel. The instrument of death wasn't inserted through the bedding as you thought inevitable, Doctor. Suppose you were lying in that bed, asleep, or half asleep, and you were aroused by such a sound as that in the wall behind you? What would you do? What would any man do first of all?"

Robinson nodded.

"I see what you mean. I'd get up on my elbow. I'd look around as quickly as I could to see what it was. I'd expose myself to a clean thrust. I'd drop back on the bed, more thoroughly out of it than though I'd been struck through the heart."

"Exactly," Paredes said, with the familiar shrug of his shoulders.

"You're sensible to give up this way," Robinson said. "It's the best plan for you. What about Mr. Blackburn?"

Graham interfered.

"After all," he said thoughtfully. "I'm a lawyer, and it isn't fair, Robinson. It's only decent to tell him that anything he says may be used against him."

"Keep your mouth shut," Robinson shouted.

But Paredes smiled at Graham.

"It's very good of you, but I agree with the district attorney. There's no point in being a clam now."

"Can you account for Silas Blackburn's return?" the doctor asked eagerly.

"That's right, Doctor," Paredes said. "Stick to the ghosts. I fancy there are plenty in this house. I'm afraid we must look on Silas Blackburn as dead."

"You don't mean we've been talking to a dead man?" Katherine whispered.

"Before I answer," Paredes said, "I want to have one or two things straight. These men, Bobby, I really believe, think me capable of the crimes in this house. I want to know if you accept such a theory. Do you think I had any idea of killing you?"

Bobby studied the reserved face which even now was without emotion.

"I can't think anything of the kind," he said softly.

"That's very nice," Paredes said. "If you had answered differently I'd have let these clever policemen lay their own ghosts."

He turned to Robinson.

"Even you must begin to see that I'm not guilty. Your common sense will tell you so. If I had been planning to kill Bobby, why didn't I bring the weapon? Why did I put my hand through the opening before I was ready to strike? Why did I use my left hand—my injured hand? I was like Howells. I couldn't consider the case finished until I had solved the mystery of the locked doors. I supposed the room was empty. When I found the secret to-night, I reached through to see how far my hand would be from the pillow."

Bobby's assurance of Paredes's innocence clouded his own situation; made it, in a sense, more dangerous than it had ever been. His wanderings about the Cedars remained unexplained, and they knew now it had never been necessary for the murderer to enter the room, Katherine, too, evidently realized the menace.

"Do you think I—" she began.

Paredes bowed.

"You dislike me, Miss Katherine, but don't be afraid for yourself or Bobby. I think I can tell you how the evidence got in your room. I can answer nearly everything. There's one point—"

He broke off, glancing at his watch.

"Extraordinary courage!" he mused enigmatically. "I scarcely understand it."

Rawlins looked at him suspiciously.

"All this explaining may be a trick, Mr. Robinson. The man's slippery."

"I've had to be slippery to work under your noses," Paredes laughed. "By the way, Bobby, did you hear a woman crying about the time I opened this door?"

"Yes. It sounded like the voice we heard at the grave."

"I thought I heard it from the library," Robinson put in. "Then the rumpus up here started, and I forgot about it."

"The woman in black is very brave," Paredes mused. "We should have had a visit from her long before this."

"Do you know who she is?" Robinson asked. "And as Rawlins says, no tricks. We haven't let you go yet."

"I thought," Paredes mocked, "that you had identified the woman in black as Miss Katherine. She hasn't had anything to do with the mystery directly. Neither has Bobby. Neither have I."

"Then what the devil have you been doing here?" Robinson snapped.

"Seeing your job through," Paredes answered, "for Bobby's sake."

With a warm gratitude Bobby knew that Paredes had told the truth. Then he had told it in the library yesterday when they had caught him prowling in the private staircase. All along he had told it while they had tried to convict him of under-handed and unfriendly intentions.

"I saw," Paredes was saying, "that Howells wouldn't succeed, and it was obvious you and Rawlins would do worse, while Graham's blundering from the start left no hope. Somebody had to rescue Bobby."

"Then why did you give us the impression," Graham asked, "that you were not a friend?"

Paredes held up his hand.

"That's going rather far, Mr. Graham. Never once have I given such an impression. I have time after time stated the fact that I was here in Bobby's service. That has been the trouble with all of you. As most detectives do, you have denied facts, searching always for something more subtle. You have asked for impossibilities while you blustered that they couldn't exist. Still every one is prone to do that when he fancies himself in the presence of the supernatural. The facts of this case have been within your reach as well as mine. The motive has been an easy one to understand. Money! And you have consistently turned your back."

Robinson spread his hands.

"All right. Prove that I'm a fool and I'll acknowledge it."

Doctor Groom interrupted sharply.

"What was that?"

They bent forward, listening. Even with Paredes offering them a physical explanation they shrank from the keening that barely survived the heavy atmosphere of the old house.

"You see the woman in black isn't Miss Perrine," Paredes said.

He ran down the stairs. They followed, responding to an excited sense of imminence. Even in the private staircase the pounding that had followed the cry reached them with harsh reverberations. Its echoes filled the house as they dashed across the library and the dining room. In the hall they realized that it came from the front door. It had attained a feverish, a desperate insistence.

Paredes walked to the fireplace.

"Open the door," he directed Rawlins.

Rawlins stepped to the door, unlocked it, and flung it wide.

"The woman!" Katherine breathed.

A feminine figure, white with snow, stumbled in, as if she had stood braced against the door. Rawlins caught her and held her upright. The flakes whirled from the court in vicious pursuit. Bobby slammed the door shut.

"Maria!" he cried. "You were right, Hartley!"

Yet at first he could scarcely accept this pitiful creature as the brilliant and exotic dancer with whom he had dined the night of the first murder. As he stared at her, her features twisted. She burst into retching sobs. She staggered toward Paredes. As she went the snow melted from her hat and cloak. She became a black figure again. With an appearance of having been immersed in water she sank on the hearth, swaying back and forth, reaching blindly for Paredes's hand.

"Do what you please with me, Carlos," she whimpered with her slight accent from which all the music had fled. "I couldn't stand it another minute. I couldn't get to the station, and I—I wanted to know which—which—"

Paredes watched her curiously.

"Get Jenkins," he said softly to Rawlins.

He faced Maria again.

"I could have told you, I think, when you fought me away out there. No one wants to arrest you. Jenkins will verify my own knowledge."

"This is dangerous," the doctor rumbled. "This woman shouldn't wait here.
She should have dry clothing at once."

Maria shrank from him. For the first time her wet skirt exposed her feet, encased in torn stockings. The dancer wore no shoes, and Bobby guessed why she had been so elusive, why she had left so few traces.

"I won't go," she cried, "until he tells me."

Katherine got a cloak and threw it across the woman's shoulders. Maria looked up at her with a dumb gratitude. Then Rawlins came back with Jenkins. The butler was bent and haggard. His surrender to fear was more pronounced than it had been at the grave or when they had last seen him in the kitchen. He grasped a chair and, breathing heavily, looked from one to the other, moistening his lips.

Paredes faced the man, completely master of the situation. Through the old butler, it became clear, he would make his revelation and announce that simple fact they all had missed.

"It was Mr. Silas, of course, who came back?"

"Oh my God!" the butler moaned, "What do you mean?"

"I know everything, Jenkins," Paredes said evenly.

The butler collapsed against the chair. Paredes grasped his arm.

"Pull yourself together, man. They won't want you as more than an accessory."

Maria started to rise. She shrank back again, shivering close to the fire.

"Is your master hiding," Paredes asked, "or has he left the house?"

Jenkins's answer came through trembling lips.

"He's gone! Mr. Silas is gone! How did you find out? My God! How did you find out?"

"He said nothing to you?" Paredes asked.

Jenkins shook his head.

"Tell me how he was dressed."

The old servant covered his face.

"Mr. Silas stumbled through the kitchen," he answered hoarsely. "I tried to stop him, but he pushed me away and ran out." His voice rose. "I