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:
