The Abandoned Room:: A Mystery Story Read online

  “Both doors,” he said, “were locked. There was no way in—”

  He turned to the others, spreading his hands in justification. The candle, which he seemed to have forgotten, cast gross, moving shadows over his face and over the face of the dead man.

  “At least you’ll all grant me now that he was murdered.”

  They continued to stare at the body of Silas Blackburn. Cold for many hours, it was as if he had made this atrocious revealing movement to assure them that he had, indeed, been murdered; to expose to their startled eyes the sly and deadly method.

  CHAPTER III. HOWELLS DELIVERS HIMSELF TO THE ABANDONED ROOM

  For a long time no one spoke. The body of Silas Blackburn had been alone in a locked room, yet before their eyes it lay, turned on its side, as if to inform them of the fashion of this murder. The tiny hole at the base of the brain, the blood-stain on the pillow, which the head had concealed, offered their mute and ghastly testimony.

  Doctor Groom was the first to relax. He raised his great, hairy hand to the bed-post and grasped it. His rumbling voice lacked its usual authority. It vibrated with a childish wonder:

  “I’m reminded that it isn’t the first time there’s been blood from a man’s head on that pillow.”

  Katherine nodded.

  “What do you mean?” the detective snarled. “There’s only one answer to this. There must have been a mechanical post-mortem reaction.”

  For a moment Doctor Groom’s laugh filled the old room. It ceased abruptly. He shook his head.

  “Don’t be a fool, Mr. Policeman. At the most conservative estimate this man has been dead more than thirteen hours. Even a few instants after death the human body is incapable of any such reaction.”

  “What then?” the detective asked. “Some one of us, or one of the servants, must have overcome the locks again and deliberately disturbed the body. That must be so, but I don’t get the motive.”

  “It isn’t so,” Doctor Groom answered bluntly.

  Already the detective had to a large extent controlled his bewilderment.

  “I’d like your theory then,” he said dryly. “You and Mr. Paredes have both been gossiping about the supernatural. When you first came you hinted dark things. You said he’d probably died what the world would call a natural death.”

  “I meant,” the doctor answered, “only that Mr. Blackburn’s heart might have failed under the impulse of a sudden fright in this room. I also said, you remember, that the room was nasty and unhealthy. Plenty of people have remarked it before me.”

  Graham touched the detective’s arm.

  “A little while ago you admitted yourself that the room was uncomfortable.”

  Doctor Groom smiled. The detective faced him with a fierce belligerency.

  “You’ll agree he was murdered.”

  “Certainly, if you wish to call it that. But I ask for the sharp instrument that caused death. I want to know how, while Blackburn lay on his back, it was inserted through the bed, the springs, the mattress, and the pillow.”

  “What are you driving at?”

  Doctor Groom pointed to the dead man.

  “I merely repeat that it isn’t the first time that pillow’s been stained from unusual wounds in the head. Being, as you call it, a trifle superstitious, I merely ask if the coincidence is significant.”

  Katherine cried out. Bobby, in spite of his knowledge that sooner or later he would be arrested for his grandfather’s murder, stepped forward, nodding.

  “I know what you mean, doctor.”

  “Anybody,” the doctor said, “who’s ever heard of this house knows what I mean. We needn’t talk of that.”

  The detective, however, was insistent. Paredes in his unemotional way expressed an equal curiosity. Bobby and Katherine had been frightened as children by the stories clustering about the old wing. They nodded from time to time while the doctor held them in the desolate room with the dead man, speaking of the other deaths it had sheltered.

  Silas Blackburn’s great grandfather, he told the detective, had been carried to that bed from a Revolutionary skirmish with a bullet at the base of his brain. For many hours he had raved deliriously, fighting unsuccessfully against the final silence.

  “It has been a legend in the family, as these young people will tell you, that Blackburns die hard, and there are those who believe that people who die hard leave something behind them—something that clings to the physical surroundings of their suffering. If it was only that one case! But it goes on and on. Silas Blackburn’s father, for instance, killed himself here. He had lost his money in silly speculations. He stood where you stand, detective, and blew his brains out. He fell over and lay where his son lies, his head on that pillow. Silas Blackburn was a money grubber. He started with nothing but this property, and he made a fortune, but even he had enough imagination to lock this room up after one more death of that kind. It was this girl’s father. You were too young, Katherine, to remember it, but I took care of him. I saw it. He was carried here after he had been struck at the back of the head in a polo match. He died, too, fighting hard. God! How the man suffered. He loosened his bandages toward the end. When I got here the pillow was redder than it is to-day. It strikes me as curious that the first time the room has been slept in since then it should harbour a death behind locked doors—from a wound in the head.”

  Paredes’s fingers were restless, as if he missed his customary cigarette. The detective strolled to the window.

  “Very interesting,” he said. “Extremely interesting for old women and young children. You may classify yourself, doctor.”

  “Thanks,” the doctor rumbled. “I’ll wait until you’ve told me how these doors were entered, how that wound was made, how this body turned on its side in an empty room.”

  The detective glanced at Bobby. His voice lacked confidence.

  “I’ll do my best. I’ll even try to tell you why the murderer came back this afternoon to disturb his victim.”

  Bobby went, curiously convinced that the doctor had had the better of the argument.

  For a moment Katherine, Graham, Paredes, and he were alone in the main hall.

  “God knows what it was,” Graham said, “but it may mean something to you, Bobby. Tell us carefully, Katherine, about the sounds that came to you across the court.”

  “It was just what I heard last night when he died,” she answered. “It was like something falling softly, then a long-drawn sigh. I tried to pay no attention. I fought it. I didn’t call at first. But I couldn’t keep quiet. I knew we had to go to that room. It never occurred to me that the detective or the coroner might be there moving around.”

  “You were alone up here?” Graham said.

  “I think so.”

  “No,” Bobby said. “I was in my room.”

  “What were you doing?” Graham asked.

  “I was asleep. Katherine’s call woke me up.”

  “Asleep!” Paredes echoed. “And she didn’t call at once—”

  He broke off. Bobby grasped his arm.

  “What are you trying to do?”

  “I’m sorry,” Paredes said. “Now, really, you mustn’t think of that. I shouldn’t have spoken. I’m more inclined to agree with the doctor’s theory, impossible as it seems.”

  “Yesterday,” Katherine said, “I would have thought it impossible. After last night and just now I’m not so sure. I—I wish the doctor were right. It would clear you, Bobby.”

  He smiled.

  “Do you think any jury would listen to such a theory?”

  Katherine put her finger to her lips. Howells and the doctor came from the corridor of the old wing. At the head of the stairs the detective turned.

  “You will find it very warm and comfortable by the fire in the lower hall, Mr. Blackburn.”

  He waited until Katherine had slipped to her room until Graham, Paredes, the doctor, and Bobby were on the stairs. Then he walked slowly into the new corridor.

  Bobby knew what he wa
s after. The detective had made no effort to disguise his intention. He wanted Bobby out of the way while he searched his room again, this time for a sharp, slender instrument capable of penetrating between the bones at the base of a man’s brain.

  Paredes lighted a cigarette and warmed his back at the fire. The doctor settled himself in his chair. He paid no attention to the others. He wouldn’t answer Paredes’s slow remarks.

  “Interesting, doctor! I am a little psychic. Always in this house I have responded to strange, unfriendly influences. Always, as now, the approach of night depresses me.”

  Bobby couldn’t sit still. He nodded at Graham, arose, got his coat and hat, and stepped into the court. The dusk was already thick there. Dampness and melancholy seemed to exude from the walls of the old house. He paused and gazed at one of the foot-prints in the soft earth by the fountain. Shreds of plaster adhered to the edges, testimony that the detective had made his cast from this print. He tried to realize that that mute, familiar impression had the power to send him to his execution. Graham, who had come silently from the house, startled him.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “No use, Hartley. I was on the library lounge. I heard every word Howells said.”

  “Perhaps it’s just as well,” Graham said. “You know what you face. But I hate to see you suffer. We’ve got to find a way around that evidence.”

  Bobby pointed to the windows of the room of death.

  “There’s no way around except the doctor’s theory.”

  He laughed shortly.

  “Much as I’ve feared that room, I’m afraid the psychic explanation won’t hold water. Paredes put his finger on it. I would have had time to get back to my room before Katherine called—”

  “Stop, Bobby!”

  “Hartley! I’m afraid to go to sleep. It’s dreadful not to know whether you are active in your sleep, whether you are evil and ingenious to the point of the miraculous in your sleep. I’m so tired, Hartley.”

  “Why should you have gone to that room this afternoon?” Graham asked. “You must get this idea out of your head. You must have sleep, and, perhaps, when you’re thoroughly rested, you will remember.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Bobby said, “that I want to remember.”

  He pointed to the footprint.

  “There’s no question. I was here last night.”

  “Unless,” Graham said, “your handkerchief and your shoes were stolen.”

  “Nonsense!” Bobby cried. “The only motive would be to commit a murder in order to kill me by sending me to the chair. And who would know his way around that dark house like me? Who would have found out so easily that my grandfather had changed his room?”

  “It’s logical,” Graham admitted slowly, “but we can’t give in. By the way, has Paredes ever borrowed any large sums?”

  Bobby hesitated. After all, Paredes and he had been good friends.

  “A little here and there,” he answered reluctantly.

  “Has he ever paid you back?”

  “I don’t recall,” Bobby answered, flushing. “You know I’ve never been exactly calculating about money. Whenever he wanted it I was always glad to help Carlos out. Why do you ask?”

  “If any one,” Graham answered, “looked on you as a certain source of money, there would be a motive in conserving that source, in increasing it. Probably lots of people knew Mr. Blackburn was out of patience with you; would make a new will to-day.”

  “Do you think,” Bobby asked, “that Carlos is clever enough to have got through those doors? And what about this afternoon—that ghastly disturbing of the body?”

  He smiled wanly.

  “It looks like me or the ghosts of my ancestors.”

  “If Paredes,” Graham insisted, “tries to borrow any money from you now, tell me about it. Another thing, Bobby. We can’t afford to keep your experiences of last night a secret any longer.”

  He stepped to the door and asked Doctor Groom to come out.

  “He won’t be likely to pass your confidences on to Howells,” he said. “Those men are natural antagonists.”

  After a moment the doctor appeared, a slouch hat drawn low over his shaggy forehead.

  “What you want?” he grumbled. “This court’s a first-class place to catch cold. Dampest hole in the neighbourhood. Often wondered why.”

  “I want to ask you,” Graham began, “something about the effects of such drugs as could be given in wine. Tell him, will you, Bobby, what happened last night?”

  Bobby vanquished the discomfort with which the gruff, opinionated physician had always filled him. He recited the story of last night’s dinner, of his experience in the cafe, of his few blurred impressions of the swaying vehicle and the woods.

  “Hartley thinks something may have been put in my wine.”

  “What for?” the doctor asked. “What had these people to gain by drugging you? Suppose for some far-fetched reason they wanted to have Silas Blackburn put out of the way. They couldn’t make you do it by drugging you. At any rate, they couldn’t have had a hand in this afternoon. Mind, I’m not saying you had a thing to do with it yourself, but I don’t believe you were drugged. Any drug likely to be used in wine would probably have sent you into a deep sleep. And your symptoms on waking up are scarcely sharp enough. Sorry, boy. Sounds more like aphasia. The path you’ve been treading sometimes leads to that black country, and it’s there that hates sharpen unknown. I remember a case where a tramp returned and killed a farmer who had refused him food. Retained no recollection of the crime—hours dropped out of his life. They executed him while he still tried to remember.”

  “I read something about the case,” Bobby muttered.

  “Been better if you hadn’t,” the doctor grumbled. “Suggestions work in a man’s brain without his knowing it.”

  He thought for a moment, his heavy, black brows coming closer together. He glanced at the windows of the old room. His sunken, infused eyes nearly closed.

  “I know how you feel, and that’s a little punishment maybe you deserve. I’ll say this for your comfort. You probably followed the plan that had been impressed on your brain by Mr. Graham. You came here, no doubt, and stood around. With an automatic appreciation of your condition you may have taken that old precaution of convivial men returning home, and removed your shoes. Then your automatic judgment may have warned you that you weren’t fit to go in at all, and you probably wandered off to the empty house.”

  “Then,” Bobby asked, “you don’t think I did it?”

  “God knows who did it. God knows what did it. The longer I live the surer I become that we scientists can’t probe everything. Whenever I go near Silas Blackburn’s body I receive a very powerful impression that his death in that room from such a wound goes deeper than ordinary murder, deeper than a case of recurrent aphasia.”

  His eyes widened. He turned with Graham and Bobby at the sound of an automobile coming through the woods.

  “Probably the coroner at last,” he said.

  The automobile, a small runabout, drew up at the entrance to the court. A little wizened man, with yellowish skin stretched across high cheek bones, stepped out and walked up the path.

  “Well!” he said shrilly. “What you doing, Doctor Groom?”

  “Waiting to witness another reason why coroners should be abolished,” the doctor rumbled. “This is the dead man’s grandson, Coroner; and Mr. Graham, a friend of the family’s.”

  Bobby accepted the coroner’s hand with distaste.

  “Howells,” the coroner said in his squeaky voice, “seems to think it’s a queer case. Inconvenient, I call it. Wish people wouldn’t die queerly whenever I go on a little holiday. I had got five ducks, gentlemen, when they came to me with that damned telegram. Bad business mine, ‘cause people will die when you least expect them to. Let’s go see what Howells has got on his mind. Bright sleuth, Howells! Ought to be in New York.”

  He started up the path, side by side with Doctor Groom.
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  “Are you coming?” Graham asked Bobby. Bobby shook his head. “I don’t want to. I’d rather stay outside. You’d better be there, Hartley.”

  Graham followed the others while Bobby wandered from the court and started down a path that entered the woods from the rear of the house.

  Immediately the forest closed greedily about him. Here and there, where the trees were particularly stunted, branches cut against a pallid, greenish glow in the west—the last light.

  Bobby wanted, if he could, to find that portion of the woods where he had stood last night, fancying the trees straining in the wind like puny men, visualizing a dim figure in a black mask which he had called his conscience.

  The forest was all of a pattern—ugly, unfriendly, melancholy. He went on, however, hoping to glimpse that particular picture he remembered. He left the path, walking at haphazard among the undergrowth. Ahead he saw a placid, flat, and faintly luminous stretch. He pushed through the bushes and paused on the shore of a lake, small and stagnant. Dead, stripped trunks of trees protruded from the water. At the end a bird arose with a sudden flapping of wings; it cried angrily as it soared above the trees and disappeared to the south.

  The morbid loneliness of the place touched Bobby’s spirit with chill hands. As a child he had never cared to play about the stagnant lake, nor, he recalled, had the boys of the village fished or bathed there. Certainly he hadn’t glimpsed it last night. He was about to walk away when a movement on the farther bank held him, made him gaze with eager eyes across the sleepy water.

  He thought there was something black in the black shadows of the trees—a thing that stirred through the heavy dusk without sound. He received, moreover, an impression of anger and haste as distinct as the bird had projected. But he could see nothing clearly in this bad light. He couldn’t be sure that there was any one over there.

  He started around the end of the lake, and for a moment he thought that the shape of a woman, clothed in black, detached itself from the shadow. The image dissolved. He wondered if it had been more substantial than fancy.