The abandoned

urned 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

m?" "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. "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. "Who is that?" he called. The woods muffled his voice. There was no answer. Nor was there, he noticed, any crackling of twigs or rustling of dead leaves. If there had been a woman there she had fled noiselessly, yet, as he went on around the lake, his own progress was distinctly audible through the decay of autumn. It was too dark on the other side to detect any traces of a recent human presence in the thicket. He couldn't quiet, however, the feeling that he had had a glimpse of a woman clothed in black who had studied him secretly across the stagnant stretch of the lake. On the other hand, there was no logic in a woman's presence here at such an hour, no logic in a stranger's running away from him. While he pondered the night invaded the forest completely, making it impossible for him to search farther. It had grown so dark, indeed, that he found his way out with difficulty. The branches caught at his clothing. The underbrush tangled itself about his feet. It was as if the thicket were trying to hold him away from the house. As he entered the court he noticed a discoloured glow diffusing itself through the curtains of the room of death. He opened the front door. Paredes and Graham alone sat by the fire. "Then they're not through yet," Bobby said. Graham arose. He commenced to pace the length of the hall. "They've had Katherine in that room. One would think she'd been through enough. Now they've sent for the servants." Paredes laughed lightly. "After this," he said, "I'm afraid, Bobby, you'll need the powers of the police to keep servants in your house." Muttering, frightened voices came from the dining-room. Jenkins entered, and, shaking his head, went up the stairs. The two women who followed him, were in tears. They paused, as if seeking an excuse to linger on the lower floor, to postpone as long as possible their entrance of the room of death. Ella, a pretty girl, whose dark hair and eyes suggested a normal vivacity, spoke to Bobby. "It's outrageous, Mr. Robert. He found out all we knew this morning. What's he after now? You might think we'd murdered Mr. Blackburn." Jane was older. An ugly scar crossed her cheek. It was red and like an open wound as she demanded that Bobby put a stop to these inquisitions. "I can do nothing," he said. "Go on up and answer or they can make trouble for you." Muttering again to each other, they followed Jenkins, and in the lower hall the three men waited. Jenkins came down first. His face was white. It twitched. "The body!" he mouthed. "It's moved! I saw it before." He stretched out his hands to Bobby. "That's why they wanted us, to find out where we were this afternoon, and everything we've done, as if we might have gone there, and disturbed-" Angry voices in the upper hall interrupted him. The two women ran down, as white as Jenkins. At an impatient nod from Bobby the three servants went on to the kitchen. Howells, the coroner, and Doctor Groom descended. "What ails you, Doctor?" the coroner was squeaking. "I agree it's an unpleasant room. Lots of old rooms are. I follow you when you say no post-mortem contraction would have caused such an alteration in the position of the body. There's no question about the rest of it. The man was clearly murdered with a sharp tool of some sort, and the murderer was in the room again this afternoon, and disturbed the corpse. Howells says he knows who. It's up to him to find out how. He says he has plenty of evidence and that the guilty person's in this house, so I'm not fretting myself. I'm cross with you, Howells, for breaking up my holiday. One of my assistants would have done as well." Howells apparently paid no attention to the coroner. His narrow eyes followed the doctor with a growing curiosity. His level smile seemed to have drawn his lips into a line, inflexible, a little cruel. The doctor grunted: "Instead of abolishing coroners we ought to double their salaries." The coroner made a long squeak as an indication of mirth. "You think unfriendly spooks did it. I've always believed you were an old fogy. Hanged if that doesn't sound modern." The doctor ran his fingers through his thick, untidy hair. "I merely ask for the implement that caused death. I only ask to know how it was inserted through the bed while Blackburn lay on his back. And if you've time you might tell me how the murderer entered the room last night and to-day." The coroner repeated his squeak. He glanced at the little group by the fire. "Out in the kitchen, upstairs, or right here under our noses is almost certainly the person who could tell us. Interesting case, Howells!" Howells, who still watched the doctor, answered dryly: "Unusually interesting." The coroner struggled into his coat. "Permits are all available," he squeaked. "Have your undertakers out when you like." Graham answered him brusquely. "Everything's arranged. I've only to telephone." The coroner nodded at Doctor Groom. His voice pointed its humour with a thinner tone. "If I were you, Howells, I'd take this hairy old theorist up as a suspicious character." The doctor made a movement in his direction while Howells continued to stare. The doctor checked himself. He went to the closet and got his hat and coat. "Want me to drop you, old sawbones?" the coroner asked. Savagely the doctor shook his head. "My buggy's in the stable." The coroner's squeak was thinner, more irritating than ever. "Then don't let the spooks get you, driving through the woods. Old folks say there are a-plenty there." Bobby arose. He couldn't face the prospect of the man's squeaking again. "We find nothing to laugh at in this situation," he said. "You're quite through?" The coroner's eyes blazed. "I'm through, if that's the way you feel. Goodnight." He added with a sharp maliciousness: "I leave my sympathy for whoever Howells has his eagle eye on." Howells, when the doctor and the coroner had gone, excused himself with a humility that mocked the others: "With your permission I shall write in the library until dinner." He bowed and left. "He wants to work on his report," Graham suggested. "An exceptional man!" Paredes murmured. "Has he questioned you?" Graham asked. "I'd scarcely call it that," Paredes replied. "We've both questioned, and we've both been clams. I fancy he doesn't think much of me since I believe in ghosts, yet the doctor seems to interest him." "Where were you?" Graham asked, "when Miss Perrine's scream called us?" Paredes stifled a yawn. "Dozing here by the fire. I am very tired after last night." "You don't look particularly tired." "Custom, I'm ashamed to say, constructs a certain armour. To-morrow, with a fresh mind, I hope to be able to dissect all I have seen and heard, all that has happened here to-day." "The thing that counts is what happened to me last night, Carlos," Bobby said. "It's the only way you can help me." As Paredes strolled to the foot of the stairs Bobby waited for a defensive reply, for a sign, perhaps, that the Panamanian was offended and proposed to depart. Paredes, however, went upstairs, yawning. He called back: "I must make myself a trifle more presentable for dinner." Graham faced Bobby with the old question: "What can he want hanging around here unless it's money?" And after a moment: "He's clever-hard to sound. I have to leave you, Bobby. I must telephone-the ugly formalities." "It's good of you to take them off my mind," Bobby answered. He remained in his chair, gazing drowsily at the fire, trying, always trying to remember, yet finding no new light among the shadows of his memory. Just before dinner Katherine joined him. She wore a sombre gown that made her face seem too white, that heightened the groping curiosity of her eyes. Without speaking she sat down beside him and stared, too, at the smouldering fire. From her presence, from her tactful silence he drew comfort-to an extent, rest. "You make me ashamed," he whispered once. "I've been a beast, leaving you here alone these weeks. You don't understand quite, why that was." She wouldn't let him go on. She shook her head. They remained silently by the fire until Graham and Paredes joined them. When dinner was announced the detective came from the library, and, uninvited, sat at the table with them. His report evidently still filled his mind, for he spoke only when it was unavoidable and then in monosyllables. Paredes alone ate with a show of enjoyment, alone attempted to talk. Eventually even he fell silent before the lack of response. Afterward he arranged a small card table by the fire in the hall. He found cards, and, with a package of cigarettes and a box of matches convenient to his hand, commenced to play solitaire. The detective, Bobby gathered, had brought his report up to date, for he lounged near by, watching the Panamanian's slender fingers as they handled the cards deftly. Bobby, Graham, and Katherine were glad to withdraw beyond the range of those narrow, searching eyes. They entered the library and closed the door. Graham, expectant of a report from his man in New York as to the movements of Maria and the identity of the stranger, was restless. "If we could only get one fact," he said, "one reasonable clue that didn't involve Bobby! I've never felt so at sea. I wonder if, in spite of Howells's evidence, we're not all a little afraid since this afternoon, of something such as Katherine felt last night-something we can't define. Howells alone is satisfied. We must believe in the hand of another man. Doctor Groom talks about indefinable hands." "Uncle Silas was so afraid last night!" Katherine whispered. "That," Bobby cried, "is the fact we must have." He paused. "What's that?" he asked sharply. They sat for some time, listening to the sound of wheels on the gravel, to the banging of the front door, and, later, to the pacing of men in the room of death overhead. They tried again to thread the mazes of this problem whose only conceivable exit led to Bobby's guilt. The movements upstairs persisted. At last they became measured and dragging, like the footsteps of men who carried some heavy burden. They looked at each other then. Katherine hid her eyes. "It's like a tomb here," Bobby said. He arranged kindling in the fireplace and touched a match to it. It hadn't occurred to him to ring for Jenkins. None of them wished to be disturbed. Eventually it was the detective who intruded. He strolled in, glanced at them curiously for a moment, then walked to the door of the enclosed staircase. He grasped the knob. "To-night," he announced, "I am trying a small experiment on the chance of clearing up the last details of the mystery. Since it depends on the courage of whoever murdered Mr. Blackburn I've small hope of its success." He indicated t