The night of his
grandfather's mysterious death at the Cedars, Bobby Blackburn was,
at least until midnight, in New York. He was held there by the
unhealthy habits and companionships which recently had angered his
grandfather to the point of threatening a disciplinary change in
his will. As a consequence he drifted into that strange adventure
which later was to surround him with dark shadows and overwhelming
doubts.
Before following Bobby through
his black experience, however, it is better to know what happened
at the Cedars where his cousin, Katherine Perrine was, except for
the servants, alone with old Silas Blackburn who seemed
apprehensive of some sly approach of disaster.
At twenty Katherine was too
young, too light-hearted for this care of her uncle in which she
had persisted as an antidote for Bobby's shortcomings. She was
never in harmony with the mouldy house or its surroundings, bleak,
deserted, unfriendly to content.
Bobby and she had frequently
urged the old man to give it up, to move, as it were, into the
light. He had always answered angrily that his ancestors had lived
there since before the Revolution, and that what had been good
enough for them was good enough for him. So that night Katherine
had to hear alone the sly stalking of death in the house. She told
it all to Bobby the next day—what happened, her emotions, the
impression made on her by the people who came when it was too late
to save Silas Blackburn.
She said, then, that the old man
had behaved oddly for several days, as if he were afraid. That
night he ate practically no dinner. He couldn't keep still. He
wandered from room to room, his tired eyes apparently seeking.
Several times she spoke to him.
"What is the matter, Uncle? What
worries you?"
He grumbled unintelligibly or
failed to answer at all.
She went into the library and
tried to read, but the late fall wind swirled mournfully about the
house and beat down the chimney, causing the fire to cast
disturbing shadows across the walls. Her loneliness, and her
nervousness, grew sharper. The restless, shuffling footsteps
stimulated her imagination. Perhaps a mental breakdown was
responsible for this alteration. She was tempted to ring for
Jenkins, the butler, to share her vigil; or for one of the two
women servants, now far at the back of the house.
"And Bobby," she said to herself,
"or somebody will have to come out here to-morrow to help."
But Silas Blackburn shuffled in
just then, and she was a trifle ashamed as she studied him standing
with his back to the fire, glaring around the room, fumbling with
hands that shook in his pocket for his pipe and some loose tobacco.
It was unjust to be afraid of him. There was no question. The man
himself was afraid—terribly afraid.
His fingers trembled so much that
he had difficulty lighting his pipe. His heavy brows, gray like his
beard, contracted in a frown. His voice quavered unexpectedly. He
spoke of his grandson:
"Bobby! Damned waster! God knows
what he'll do next."
"He's young, Uncle Silas, and too
popular."
He brushed aside her customary
defence. As he continued speaking she noticed that always his voice
shook as his fingers shook, as his stooped shoulders jerked
spasmodically.
"I ordered Mr. Robert here
to-night. Not a word from him. I'd made up my mind anyway. My
lawyer's coming in the morning. My money goes to the Bedford
Foundation—all except a little annuity for you, Katy. It's hard on
you, but I've got no faith left in my flesh and blood."
His voice choked with a sentiment
a little repulsive in view of his ruthless nature, his unbending
egotism.
"It's sad, Katy, to grow old with
nobody caring for you except to covet your money."
She arose and went close to him.
He drew back, startled.
"You're not fair, Uncle."
With an unexpected movement,
nearly savage, he pushed her aside and started for the door.
"Uncle!" she cried. "Tell me! You
must tell me! What makes you afraid?"
He turned at the door. He didn't
answer. She laughed feverishly.
"It—it's not Bobby you're afraid
of?"
"You and Bobby," he grumbled,
"are thicker than thieves."
She shook her head.
"Bobby and I," she said
wistfully, "aren't very good friends, largely because of this life
he's leading."
He went on out of the room,
mumbling again incoherently.
She resumed her vigil, unable to
read because of her misgivings, staring at the fire, starting at a
harsher gust of wind or any unaccustomed sound. And for a long time
there beat against her brain the shuffling, searching tread of her
uncle. Its cessation about eleven o'clock increased her uneasiness.
He had been so afraid! Suppose already the thing he had feared had
overtaken him? She listened intently. Even then she seemed to sense
the soundless footsteps of disaster straying in the decayed house,
and searching, too.
A morbid desire to satisfy
herself that her uncle's silence meant nothing evil drove her
upstairs. She stood in the square main hall at the head of the
stairs, listening. Her uncle's bedroom door lay straight ahead. To
her right and left narrow corridors led to the wings. Her room and
Bobby's and a spare room were in the right-hand wing. The opposite
corridor was seldom used, for the left-hand wing was the oldest
portion of the house, and in the march of years too many legends
had gathered about it. The large bedroom was there with its private
hall beyond, and a narrow, enclosed staircase, descending to the
library. Originally it had been the custom for the head of the
family to use that room. Its ancient furniture still faded within
stained walls. For many years no one had slept in it, because it
had sheltered too much suffering, because it had witnessed the
reluctant spiritual departure of too many Blackburns.
Katherine shrank a little from
the black entrance of the corridor, but her anxiety centred on the
door ahead. She was about to call when a stirring beyond it
momentarily reassured her.
The door opened and her uncle
stepped out. He wore an untidy dressing-gown. His hair was
disordered. His face appeared grayer and more haggard than it had
downstairs. A lighted candle shook in his right hand.
"What are you doing up here,
Katy?" he quavered.
She broke down before the picture
of his increased fear. He shuffled closer.
"What you crying for,
Katy?"
She controlled herself. She
begged him for an answer to her doubts.
"You make me afraid."
He laughed scornfully.
"You! What you got to be afraid
of?"
"I'm afraid because you are," she
urged. "You've got to tell me. I'm all alone. I can't stand it.
What are you afraid of?"
He didn't answer. He shuffled on
toward the disused wing. Her hand tightened on the banister.
"Where are you going?" she
whispered.
He turned at the entrance to the
corridor.
"I am going to the old
bedroom."
"Why? Why?" she asked
hysterically. "You can't sleep there. The bed isn't even
made."
He lowered his voice to a hoarse
whisper:
"Don't you mention I've gone
there. If you want to know, I am afraid. I'm afraid to sleep in my
own room any longer."
She nodded.
"And you don't think they'd look
for you there. What is it? Tell me what it is. Why don't you send
for some one—a man?"
"Leave me alone," he mumbled.
"Nothing for you to be worried about, except Bobby."
"Yes, there is," she cried. "Yes,
there is."
He paid no attention to her
fright. He entered the corridor. She heard him shuffling between
its narrow walls. She saw his candle disappear in its gloomy
reaches.
She ran to her own room and
locked the door. She hurried to the window and leaned out, her body
shaking, her teeth chattering as if from a sudden chill. The quiet,
assured tread of disaster came nearer.
The two wings, stretching at
right angles from the main building, formed a narrow court. Clouds
harrying the moon failed quite to destroy its power, so that she
could see, across the court, the facade of the old wing and the two
windows of the large room through whose curtains a spectral glow
was diffused. She heard one of the windows opened with a grating
noise. The court was a sounding board. It carried to her even the
shuffling of the old man's feet as he must have approached the bed.
The glow of his candle vanished. She heard a rustling as if he had
stretched himself on the bed, a sound like a long-drawn sigh.
She tried to tell herself there
was no danger—that these peculiar actions sprang from the old man's
fancy—but the house, her surroundings, her loneliness, contradicted
her. To her over-acute senses the thought of Blackburn in that
room, so often consecrated to the formula of death, suggested a
special and unaccountable menace. Under such a strain the
supernatural assumed vague and singular shapes.
She slept for only a little
while. Then she lay awake, listening with a growing expectancy for
some message to slip across the court. The moon had ceased
struggling. The wind cried. The baying of a dog echoed mournfully
from a great distance. It was like a remote alarm bell which
vibrates too perfectly, whose resonance is too prolonged.
She sat upright. She sprang from
the bed and, her heart beating insufferably, felt her way to the
window. From the wing opposite the message had come—a soft,
shrouded sound, another long-drawn sigh.
She tried to call across the
court. At first no response came from her tight throat. When it did
at last, her voice was unfamiliar in her own ears, the voice of one
who has to know a thing but shrinks from asking.
"Uncle!"
The wind mocked her.
"It is nothing," she told
herself, "nothing."
But her vigil had been too long,
her loneliness too complete. Her earlier impression of the presence
of death in the decaying house tightened its hold. She had to
assure herself that Silas Blackburn slept untroubled. The thing she
had heard was peculiar, and he hadn't answered across the court.
The dark, empty corridors at first were an impassable barrier, but
while she put on her slippers and her dressing-gown she
strengthened her courage. There was a bell rope in the upper hall.
She might get Jenkins.
When she stood in the main hall
she hesitated. It would probably be a long time, provided he heard
at all, before Jenkins could answer her. Her candle outlined the
entrance to the musty corridor. Just a few running steps down
there, a quick rap at the door, and, perhaps, in an instant her
uncle's voice, and the blessed power to return to her room and
sleep!
While her fear grew she called on
her pride to let her accomplish that brief, abhorrent
journey.
Then for the first time a
different doubt came to her. As she waited alone in this disturbing
nocturnal intimacy of an old house, she shrank from no thought of
human intrusion, and she wondered if her uncle had been afraid of
that, too, of the sort of thing that might lurk in the ancient wing
with its recollections of birth and suffering and death. But he had
gone there as an escape. Surely he had been afraid of men. It
shamed her that, in spite of that, her fear defined itself ever
more clearly as something indefinable. With a passionate
determination to strangle such thoughts she held her breath. She
tried to close her mind. She entered the corridor. She ran its
length. She knocked at the locked door of the old bedroom. She
shrank as the echoes rattled from the dingy walls where her candle
cast strange reflections. There was no other answer. A sense of an
intolerable companionship made her want to cry out for brilliant
light, for help. She screamed.
"Uncle Silas! Uncle Silas!"
Through the silence that crushed
her voice she became aware finally of the accomplishment of its
mission by death in this house. And she fled into the main hall.
She jerked at the bell rope. The contact steadied her, stimulated
her to reason. One slender hope remained. The oppressive bedroom
might have driven Silas Blackburn through the private hall and down
the enclosed staircase. Perhaps he slept on the lounge in the
library.
She stumbled down, hoping to meet
Jenkins. She crossed the hall and the dining room and entered the
library. She bent over the lounge. It was empty. Her candle was
reflected in the face of the clock on the mantel. Its hands pointed
to half-past two.
She pulled at the bell cord by
the fireplace. Why didn't the butler come? Alone she couldn't climb
the enclosed staircase to try the other door. It seemed impossible
to her that she should wait another instant alone—
The butler, as old and as gray as
Silas Blackburn, faltered in. He started back when he saw
her.
"My God, Miss Katherine! What's
the matter? You look like death."
"There's death," she said.
She indicated the door of the
enclosed staircase. She led the way with the candle. The panelled,
narrow hall was empty. That door, too, was locked and the key, she
knew, must be on the inside.
"Who—who is it?" Jenkins asked.
"Who would be in that room? Has Mr.
Bobby come back?"
She descended to the library
before answering. She put the candle down and spread her
hands.
"It's happened, Jenkins—whatever
he feared."
"Not Mr. Silas?"
"We have to break in," she said
with a shiver. "Get a hammer, a chisel, whatever is
necessary."
"But if there's anything wrong,"
the butler objected, "if anybody's been there, the other door must
be open."
She shook her head. Those two
first of all faced that extraordinary puzzle. How had the murderer
entered and left the room with both doors locked on the inside,
with the windows too high for use? They went to the upper story.
She urged the butler into the sombre corridor.
"We have to know," she whispered,
"what's happened beyond those locked doors."
She still vibrated to the feeling
of unconformable forces in the old house. Jenkins, she saw,
responded to the same superstitious misgivings. He inserted the
chisel with maladroit hands. He forced the lock back and opened the
door. Dust arose from the long-disused room, flecking the yellow
candle flame. They hesitated on the threshold. They forced
themselves to enter. Then they looked at each other and smiled with
relief, for Silas Blackburn, in his dressing-gown, lay on the bed,
his placid, unmarked face upturned, as if sleeping.
"Why, miss," Jenkins gasped.
"He's all right."
Almost with confidence Katherine
walked to the bed.
"Uncle Silas—" she began, and
touched his hand.
She drew back until the wall
supported her. Jenkins must have read everything in her face, for
he whimpered:
"But he looks all right. He can't
be—"
"Cold—already! If I hadn't
touched—"
The horror of the thing descended
upon her, stifling thought. Automatically she left the room and
told Jenkins what to do. After he had telephoned police
headquarters in the county seat and had summoned Doctor Groom, a
country physician, she sat without words, huddled over the library
fire.
The detective, a competent man
named Howells, and Doctor Groom arrived at about the same time. The
detective made Katherine accompany them upstairs while he
questioned her. In the absence of the coroner he wouldn't let the
doctor touch the body.
"I must repair this lock," he
said, "the first thing, so nothing can be disturbed."
Doctor Groom, a grim and dark
man, had grown silent on entering the room. For a long time he
stared at the body in the candle light, making as much of an
examination as he could, evidently, without physical contact.
"Why did he ever come here to
sleep?" he asked in his rumbling bass voice. "Nasty room! Unhealthy
room! Ten to one you're a formality, policeman. Coroner's a
formality."
He sneered a little.
"I daresay he died what the
hard-headed world will call a natural death.
Wonder what the coroner'll
say."
The detective didn't answer. He
shot rapid, uneasy glances about the room in which a single candle
burned. After a time he said with an accent of complete
conviction:
"That man was murdered."
Perhaps the doctor's significant
words, added to her earlier dread of the abnormal, made Katherine
read in the detective's manner an apprehension of conditions
unfamiliar to the brutal routine of his profession. Her glances
were restless, too. She had a feeling that from the shadowed
corners of the faded, musty room invisible faces mocked the man's
stubbornness.
All this she recited to Bobby
when, under extraordinary circumstances neither of them could have
foreseen, he arrived at the Cedars many hours later.
Of the earlier portion of the
night of his grandfather's death Bobby retained a minute
recollection. The remainder was like a dim, appalling nightmare
whose impulse remains hidden.
When he went to his apartment to
dress for dinner he found the letter of which Silas Blackburn had
spoken to Katherine. It mentioned the change in the will as an
approaching fact nothing could alter. Bobby fancied that the old
man merely craved the satisfaction of terrorizing him, of casting
him out with all the ugly words at his command. Still a good deal
more than a million isn't to be relinquished lightly as long as a
chance remains. Bobby had an engagement for dinner. He would think
the situation over until after dinner, then he might go.
It was, perhaps, unfortunate that
at his club he met friends who drew him in a corner and offered him
too many cocktails. As he drank his anger grew, and it wasn't all
against his grandfather. He asked himself why during the last few
months he had avoided the Cedars, why he had drifted into too vivid
a life in New York. It increased his anger that he hesitated to
give himself a frank answer. But always at such moments it was
Katherine rather than his grandfather who entered his mind. He had
cared too much for her, and lately, beyond question, the bond of
their affection had weakened.
He raised his glass and drank. He
set the glass down quickly as if he would have liked to hide it. A
big man, clear-eyed and handsome, walked into the room and came
straight to the little group in the corner. Bobby tried to carry it
off.
"'Lo, Hartley, old preacher. You
fellows all know Hartley Graham? Sit down. We're going to have a
little cocktail."
Graham looked at the glasses,
shaking his head.
"If you've time, Bobby, I'd like
a word with you."
"No preaching," Bobby bargained.
"It isn't Sunday."
Graham laughed pleasantly.
"It's about money. That talks any
day."
Bobby edged a way out and
followed Graham to an unoccupied room. There the big man turned on
him.
"See here, Bobby! When are you
going out to the Cedars?"
Bobby flushed.
"You're a dear friend, Hartley,
and I've always loved you, but I'm in no mood for preaching
tonight. Besides, I've got my own life to lead"—he glanced away—"my
own reasons for leading it."
"I'm not going to preach," Graham
answered seriously, "although it's obvious you're raising the devil
with your life. I wanted to tell you that I've had a note from
Katherine to-day. She says your grandfather's threats are taking
too much form; that the new will's bound to come unless you do
something. She cares too much for you, Bobby, to see you throw
everything away. She's asked me to persuade you to go out."
"Why didn't she write to
me?"
"Have you been very friendly with
Katherine lately? And that's not fair. You're both without parents.
You owe Katherine something on that account."
Bobby didn't answer, because it
was clear that while Katherine's affection for him had weakened,
her friendship for Graham had grown too fast. Looking at the other
he didn't wonder.
"There's another thing," Graham
was saying. "The gloomy old Cedars has got on Katherine's nerves,
and she says there's been a change in the old man the last few
days—wanders around as if he were afraid of something."
Bobby laughed outright.
"Him afraid of something! It's
always been his system to make everybody and everything afraid of
him. But you're right about Katherine. We have always depended on
each other. I think I'll go out after dinner."
"Then come have a bite with me,"
Graham urged. "I'll see you off afterward. If you catch the
eight-thirty you ought to be out there before half-past ten."
Bobby shook his head.
"An engagement for dinner,
Hartley. I'm expecting Carlos Paredes to pick me up here any
minute."
Graham's disapproval was
belligerent.
"Why, in the name of heaven,
Bobby, do you run around with that damned Panamanian? Steer him off
to-night. I've argued with you before. It's unpleasant, I know, but
the man carries every mark of crookedness."
"Easy with my friends, Hartley!
You don't understand Carlos. He's good fun when you know
him—awfully good fun."
"So," Graham said, "is this sort
of thing. Too many cocktails, too much wine. Paredes has the same
pleasant, dangerous quality."
A club servant entered.
"In the reception room, Mr.
Blackburn."
Bobby took the card, tore it into
little bits, and dropped them one by one into the waste-paper
basket.
"Tell him I'll be right out." He
turned to Graham.
"Sorry you don't like my
playmates. I'll probably run out after dinner and let the old man
terrorize me as a cure for his own fear. Pleasant prospect! So
long."
Graham caught at his arm.
"I'm sorry. Can't we forget
to-night that we disagree about Paredes? Let me dine with
you."
Bobby's laugh was
uncomfortable.
"Come on, if you wish, and be my
guardian angel. God knows I need one."
He walked across the hall and
into the reception room. The light was not brilliant there. One or
two men sat reading newspapers about a green-shaded lamp on the
centre table, but Bobby didn't see Paredes at first. Then from the
obscurity of a corner a form, tall and graceful, emerged with a
slow monotony of movement suggestive of stealth. The man's dark,
sombre eyes revealed nothing. His jet-black hair, parted in the
middle, and his carefully trimmed Van Dyke beard gave him an air of
distinction, an air, at the same time, a trifle too reserved. For a
moment, as the green light stained his face unhealthily, Bobby
could understand Graham's aversion. He brushed the idea
aside.
"Glad you've come, Carlos."
The smile of greeting vanished
abruptly from Paredes's face. He looked with steady eyes beyond
Bobby's shoulder. Bobby turned. Graham stood on the threshold, his
face a little too frank. But the two men shook hands.
"I'd an idea until I saw Bobby,"
Graham said, "that you'd gone back to Panama."
Paredes yawned.
"Each year I spend more time in
New York. Business suggests it. Pleasure demands it."
His voice was deep and pleasant,
but Bobby had often remarked that it, like Paredes's eyes, was too
reserved. It seemed never to call on its obvious powers of
expression. Its accent was noticeable only in a pleasant, polished
sense.
"Hartley," Bobby explained, "is
dining with us."
Paredes let no disapproval slip,
but Graham hastened to explain.
"Bobby and I have an engagement
immediately after dinner."
"An engagement after dinner! I
didn't understand—"
"Let's think of dinner first,"
Bobby said. "We can talk about engagements afterward. Perhaps
you'll have a cocktail here while we decide where we're
going."
"The aperitif I should like very
much," Paredes said. "About dinner there is nothing to decide. I
have arranged everything. There's a table waiting in the Fountain
Room at the C—— and there I have planned a little surprise for
you."
He wouldn't explain further.
While they drank their cocktails Bobby watched Graham's disapproval
grow. The man glanced continually at his watch. In the restaurant,
when Paredes left them to produce, as he called it, his surprise,
Graham appraised with a frown the voluble people who moved
intricately through the hall.
"I'm afraid Paredes has planned a
thorough evening," he said, "for which he'll want you to pay. Don't
be angry, Bobby. The situation is serious enough to excuse facts.
You must go to the Cedars to-night. Do you understand? You must go,
in spite of Paredes, in spite of everything."
"Peace until train time," Bobby
demanded.
He caught his breath.
"There they are. Carlos has kept
his word. See her, Hartley. She's glorious."
A young woman accompanied the
Panamanian as he came back through the hall. She appeared more
foreign than her guide—the Spanish of Spain rather than of South
America. Her clothing was as unusual and striking as her beauty,
yet one felt there was more than either to attract all the glances
in this room, to set people whispering as she passed. Clearly she
knew her notoriety was no little thing. Pride filled her
eyes.
Paredes had first introduced her
to Bobby a month or more ago. He had seen her a number of times
since in her dressing-room at the theatre where she was featured,
or at crowded luncheons in her apartment. At such moments she had
managed to be exceptionally nice to him. Bobby, however, had
answered merely to the glamour of her fame, to the magnetic
response her beauty always brought in places like this.
"Paredes," Graham muttered, "will
have a powerful ally. You won't fail me, Bobby? You will go?"
Bobby scarcely heard. He hurried
forward and welcomed the woman. She tapped his arm with her
fan.
"Leetle Bobby!" she lisped. "I
haven't seen very much of you lately. So when Carlos proposed—you
see I don't dance until late. Who is that behind you? Mr. Graham,
is it not? He would, maybe, not remember me. I danced at a dinner
where you were one night, at Mr. Ward's. Even lawyers, I find, take
enjoyment in my dancing."
"I remember," Graham said. "It is
very pleasant we are to dine together." He continued tactlessly:
"But, as I've explained to Mr. Paredes, we must hurry. Bobby and I
have an early engagement."
Her head went up.
"An early engagement! I do not
often dine in public."
"An unavoidable thing," Graham
explained. "Bobby will tell you."
Bobby nodded.
"It's a nuisance, particularly
when you're so condescending, Maria."
She shrugged her shoulders. With
Bobby she entered the dining-room at the heels of Paredes and
Graham.
Paredes had foreseen everything.
There were flowers on the table. The dinner had been ordered.
Immediately the waiter brought cocktails. Graham glanced at Bobby
warningly. He wouldn't, as an example Bobby appreciated, touch his
own. Maria held hers up to the light.
"Pretty yellow things! I never
drink them."
She smiled dreamily at
Bobby.
"But see! I shall place this to
my lips in order that you may make pretty speeches, and maybe tell
me it is the most divine aperitif you have ever drunk."
She passed the glass to him, and
Bobby, avoiding Graham's eyes, wondering why she was so gracious,
emptied it. And afterward frequently she reminded him of his wine
by going through the same elaborate formula. Probably because of
that, as much as anything else, constraint grasped the little
company tighter. Graham couldn't hide his anxiety. Paredes mocked
it with sneering phrases which he turned most carefully. Before the
meal was half finished Graham glanced at his watch.
"We've just time for the
eight-thirty," he whispered to Bobby, "if we pick up a taxi."
Maria had heard. She
pouted.
"There is no engagement," she
lisped, "as sacred as a dinner, no entanglement except marriage
that cannot be easily broken. Perhaps I have displeased you, Mr.
Graham. Perhaps you fancy I excite unpleasant comment. It is
unjust. I assure you my reputation is above reproach"—her dark eyes
twinkled—"certainly in New York."
"It isn't that," Graham answered.
"We must go. It's not to be evaded."
She turned tempestuously.
"Am I to be humiliated so?
Carlos! Why did you bring me? Is all the world to see my companions
leave in the midst of a dinner as if I were plague-touched? Is
Bobby not capable of choosing his own company?"
"You are thoroughly justified,
Maria," Paredes said in his expressionless tones. "Bobby, however,
has said very little about this engagement. I did not know, Mr.
Graham, that you were the arbiter of Bobby's actions. In a way I
must resent your implication that he is no longer capable of caring
for himself."
Graham accepted the challenge. He
leaned across the table, speaking directly to Bobby, ignoring the
others:
"You've not forgotten what I told
you. Will you come while there's time?
You must see. I can't remain here
any longer."
Bobby, hating warfare in his
present mood, sought to temporize:
"It's all right, Hartley. Don't
worry. I'll catch a later train."
Maria relaxed.
"Ah! Bobby still chooses for
himself."
"I'll have enough rumpus," Bobby
muttered, "when I get to the Cedars.
Don't grudge me a little peace
here."
Graham arose. His voice was
discouraged.
"I'm sorry. I'll hope,
Bobby."
Without a word to the others he
walked out of the room.
So far, when Bobby tried
afterward to recall the details of the evening, everything was
perfectly distinct in his memory. The remainder of the meal, made
uncomfortable by Maria's sullenness and Paredes's sneers, his
attempt to recapture the earlier gayety of the evening by
continuing to drink the wine, his determination to go later to the
Cedars in spite of Graham's doubt—of all these things no particular
lacked. He remembered paying the check, as he usually did when he
dined with Paredes. He recalled studying the time-table and finding
that he had just missed another train.
Maria's spirits rose then. He was
persuaded to accompany her and Paredes to the music hall. In her
dressing-room, while she was on the stage, he played with the boxes
of make-up, splashing the mirror with various colours while Paredes
sat silently watching.
The alteration, he was sure, came
a little later in the cafe at a table close to the dancing floor.
Maria had insisted that Paredes and he should wait there while she
changed.
"But," he had protested, "I have
missed too many trains."
She had demanded his time-table,
scanning the columns of close figures.
"There is one," she had said, "at
twelve-fifteen—time for a little something in the cafe, and who
knows? If you are agreeable I might forgive everything and dance
with you once, Bobby, on the public floor."
So he sat for some time,
expectant, with Paredes, watching the boisterous dancers, listening
to the violent music, sipping absent-mindedly at his glass. He
wondered why Paredes had grown so quiet.
"I mustn't miss that
twelve-fifteen," he said, "You know, Carlos, you weren't quite fair
to Hartley. He's a splendid fellow. Roomed with me at college,
played on same team, and all that. Only wanted me to do the right
thing. Must say it was the right thing. I won't miss that
twelve-fifteen."
"Graham," Paredes sneered, "is a
wonderful type—Apollo in the flesh and
Billy Sunday in the
conscience."
Then, as Bobby started to
protest, Maria entered, more dazzling than at dinner; and the
dancers swayed less boisterously, the chatter at the tables
subsided, the orchestra seemed to hesitate as a sort of
obeisance.
A man Bobby had never seen before
followed her to the table. His middle-aged figure was loudly
clothed. His face was coarse and clean shaven. He acknowledged the
introductions sullenly.
"I've only a minute," Bobby said
to Maria.
He continued, however, to raise
his glass indifferently to his lips. All at once his glass shook.
Maria's dark and sparkling face became blurred. He could no longer
define the features of the stranger. He had never before
experienced anything of the kind. He tried to account for it, but
his mind became confused.
"Maria!" he burst out. "Why are
you looking at me like that?"
Her contralto laugh
rippled.
"Bobby looks so funny! Carlos!
Leetle Bobby looks so queer! What is the matter with him?"
Bobby's anger was lost in the
increased confusion of his senses, but through that mental turmoil
tore the thought of Graham and his intention of going to the
Cedars. With shaking fingers he dragged out his watch. He couldn't
read the dial. He braced his hands against the table, thrust back
his chair, and arose. The room tumbled about him. Before his eyes
the dancers made long nebulous bands of colour in which nothing had
form or coherence. Instinctively he felt he hadn't dined recklessly
enough to account for these amazing symptoms. He was suddenly
afraid.
"Carlos!" he whispered.
He heard Maria's voice
dimly:
"Take him home."
A hand touched his arm. With a
supreme effort of will he walked from the room, guided by the hand
on his arm. And always his brain recorded fewer and fewer
impressions for his memory to struggle with later.
At the cloak room some one helped
him put on his coat. He was walking down steps. He was in some kind
of a conveyance. He didn't know what it was. An automobile, a
carriage, a train? He didn't know. He only understood that it went
swiftly, swaying from side to side through a sable pit. Whenever
his mind moved at all it came back to that sensation of a black pit
in which he remained suspended, swinging from side to side, trying
to struggle up against impossible odds. Once or twice words flashed
like fire through the pit: "Tyrant!—Fool to go."
From a long immersion deeper in
the pit he struggled frantically. He must get out. Somehow he must
find wings. He realized that his eyes were closed. He tried to open
them and failed. So the pit persisted and he surrendered himself,
as one accepts death, to its hateful blackness.
Abruptly he experienced a
momentary release. There was no more swaying, no more movement of
any kind. He heard a strange, melancholy voice, whispering without
words, always whispering with a futile perseverance as if it wished
him to understand something it could not express.
"What is it trying to tell me?"
he asked himself.
Then he understood. It was the
voice of the wind, and it tried to tell him to open his eyes, and
he found that he could. But in spite of his desire they closed
again almost immediately. Yet, from that swift glimpse, a picture
outlined itself later in his memory.
In the midst of wild, rolling
clouds, the moon was a drowning face. Stunted trees bent before the
wind like puny men who strained impotently to advance. Over there
was one more like a real man—a figure, Bobby thought, with a black
thing over its face—a mask.
"This is the forest near the
Cedars," Bobby said to himself. "I've come to face the old devil
after all."
He heard his own voice, harsh,
remote, unnatural, speaking to the dim figure with a black mask
that waited half hidden by the straining trees.
"Why am I here in the woods near
the Cedars?"
And he thought the thing
answered:
"Because you hate your
grandfather."
Bobby laughed, thinking he
understood. The figure in the black mask that accompanied him was
his conscience. He could understand why it went masked.
The wind resumed its whispering.
The figures, straining like puny men, fought harder. The drowning
face disappeared, wet and helpless. Bobby felt himself sinking
back, back into the sable pit.
"I don't want to go," he
moaned.
A long time afterward he heard a
whisper again, and he wondered if it was the wind or his
conscience. He laughed through the blackness because the words
seemed so absurd.
"Take off your shoes and carry
them in your hand. Always do that. It is the only safe way."
He laughed again, thinking:
"What a careful
conscience!"
He retained only one more
impression. He was dully aware that some time had passed. He
shivered. He thought the wind had grown angry with him, for it no
longer whispered. It shrieked, and he could make nothing of its
wrath. He struggled frantically to emerge from the pit. The quality
of the blackness deepened. His fright grew. He felt himself
slipping, slowly at first then faster, faster down into impossible
depths, and there was nothing at all he could do to save
himself.
* * * * *
"Go away! For God's sake, go
away!"
Bobby thought he was speaking to
the sombre figure in the mask. His voice aroused him to one more
effort at escape, but he felt that there was no use. He was too
deep.
Something hurt his eyes. He
opened them and for a time was blinded by a narrow shaft, of
sunlight resting on his face. With an effort he moved his head to
one side and closed his eyes again, at first merely thankful that
he had escaped from the black hell, trying to control his
sensations of physical evil. Subtle curiosity forced its way into
his sick brain and stung him wide awake. This time his eyes
remained open, staring about him, dilating with a wilder fright
than he had experienced in the dark mazes of his nightmare
adventure.
He had never seen this place
before. He lay on the floor of an empty room. The shaft of sunlight
that had aroused him entered through a crack in one of the tightly
drawn blinds. There were dust and grime on the wails, and cobwebs
clustered in the corners.
In the silent, deserted room the
beating of his heart became audible. He struggled to a sitting
posture. He gasped for breath. He knew it was very cold in here,
but perspiration moistened his face. He could recall no such
suffering as this since, when a boy, he had slipped from the crisis
of a destructive fever.
Had he been drugged? But he had
been with friends. There was no motive.
What house was this? Was it, like
this room, empty and deserted? How had he come here? For the first
time he went through that dreadful process of trying to draw from
the black pit useful memories.
He started, recalling the strange
voice and its warning, for his shoes lay near by as though he might
have dropped them carelessly when he had entered the room and
stretched himself on the floor. Damp earth adhered to the soles.
The leather above was scratched.
"Then," he thought, "that much is
right. I was in the woods. What was I doing there? That dim figure!
My imagination."
He suffered the agony of a man
who realizes that he has wandered unawares in strange places, and
retains no recollection of his actions, of his intentions. He went
back to that last unclouded moment in the cafe with Maria, Paredes,
and the stranger. Where had he gone after he had left them? He had
looked at his watch. He had told himself he must catch the
twelve-fifteen train. He must have gone from the restaurant,
proceeding automatically, and caught the train. That would account
for the sensation of motion in a swift vehicle, and perhaps there
had been a taxicab to the station. Doubtless in the woods near the
Cedars he had decided it was too late to go in, or that it was
wiser not to. He had answered to the necessity of sleeping
somewhere. But why had he come here? Where, indeed, was he?
At least he could answer that. He
drew on his shoes—a pair of patent leather pumps. He fumbled for
his handkerchief, thinking he would brush the earth from them. He
searched each of his pockets. His handkerchief was gone. No matter.
He got to his feet, lurching for a moment dizzily. He glanced with
distaste at his rumpled evening clothing. To hide it as far as
possible he buttoned his overcoat collar about his neck. On tip-toe
he approached the door, and, with the emotions of a thief, opened
it quietly. He sighed. The rest of the house was as empty as this
room. The hall was thick with dust. The rear door by which he must
have entered stood half open. The lock was broken and rusty.
He commenced to understand. There
was a deserted farmhouse less than two miles from the Cedars. Since
he had always known about it, it wasn't unusual he should have
taken shelter there after deciding not to go in to his
grandfather.
He stepped through the doorway to
the unkempt yard about whose tumbled fences the woods advanced
thickly. He recognized the place. For some time he stood ashamed,
yet fair enough to seek the cause of his experience in some mental
unhealth deeper than any reaction from last night's folly.
He glanced at his watch. It was
after two o'clock. The mournful neighbourhood, the growing chill in
the air, the sullen sky, urged him away. He walked down the road.
Of course he couldn't go to the Cedars in this condition. He would
return to his apartment in New York where he could bathe, change
his clothes, recover from this feeling of physical ill, and
remember, perhaps, something more.
It wasn't far to the little
village on the railroad, and at this hour there were plenty of
trains. He hoped no one he knew would see him at the station. He
smiled wearily. What difference did that make? He might as well
face old Blackburn, himself, as he was. By this time the thing was
done. The new will had been made. He was penniless and an outcast.
But his furtive manner clung. He didn't want Katherine to see him
like this.
From the entrance of the village
it was only a few steps to the station. Several carriages stood at
the platform, testimony that a train was nearly due. He prayed that
it would be for New York. He didn't want to wait around. He didn't
want to risk Katherine's driving in on some errand.
His mind, intent only on escaping
prying eyes, was drawn by a man who stepped from behind a carriage
and started across the roadway in his direction, staring at him
incredulously. His quick apprehension vanished. He couldn't recall
that surprised face. There was no harm being seen, miserable as he
was, dressed as he was, by this stranger. He looked at him closer.
The man was plainly clothed. He had small, sharp eyes. His hairless
face was intricately wrinkled. His lips were thin, making a
straight line.
To avoid him Bobby stepped aside,
thinking he must be going past, but the stranger stopped and placed
a firm hand on Bobby's shoulder. He spoke in a quick, authoritative
voice:
"Certainly you are Mr. Robert
Blackburn?"
For Bobby, in his nervous,
bewildered condition, there was an ominous note in this surprise,
this assurance, this peremptory greeting.
"What's amazing about that?" he
jerked out.