The Abandoned Room - Wadsworth Camp
THE ABANDONED ROOM
A Mystery Story
BY WADSWORTH CAMP
Author of "The House of Fear," "War's Dark Frame," etc.
1917
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. KATHERINE HEARS THE SLY STEP OF DEATH AT THE CEDARS
II. THE CASE AGAINST BOBBY
III. HOWELLS DELIVERS HIMSELF TO THE ABANDONED ROOM
IV. A STRANGE LIGHT APPEARS AT THE DESERTED HOUSE
V. THE CRYING THROUGH THE WOODS
VI. THE ONE WHO CREPT IN THE PRIVATE STAIRCASE
VII. THE AMAZING MEETING IN THE SHADOWS OF THE OLD COURTYARD
VII. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE GRAVE
IX. BOBBY'S VIGIL IN THE ABANDONED ROOM
X. THE CEDARS IS LEFT TO ITS SHADOWS
THE ABANDONED ROOM
CHAPTER I
KATHERINE HEARS THE SLY STEP OF DEATH AT THE CEDARS
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.