“Somebody—something moved in that
room where he—he’s dead.”
“Nonsense,” the detective said. “Both
doors are locked, and I have the keys in my pocket.”
Paredes fumbled with a cigarette.
“You’re forgetting what I said about my
sensitive apprehension of strange things—”
The detective interrupted him loudly, confidently:
“I tell you the room is empty except for the
murdered man—unless someone’s broken
down a door.”
Katherine cried out:
“No. I heard that same stirring. Something
moved in there.”
The detective turned brusquely and entered the old
corridor.
“We’ll see.”
The others followed. Katherine was close to Bobby.
He touched her hand.
“He’s right, Katherine. No one’s
there. No one could have been there. You
mustn’t give way like this. I’m depending
on you—on your faith.”
She pressed his hand, but her assurance didn’t
diminish.
The key scraped in the lock. They crowded through
the doorway after the detective. He struck a
match and lighted the candle. He held it over
the bed. He sprang back with a sharp cry, unlike
his level quality, his confident conceit. He
pointed. They all approximated his helpless gesture,
his blank amazement. For on the bed had occurred
an abominable change.
The body of Silas Blackburn no longer lay peacefully
on its back. It had been turned on its side,
and remained in a stark and awkward attitude.
For the first time the back of the head was disclosed.
Their glances focussed there—on the tiny
round hole at the base of the brain, on the pillow
where the head had rested and which they saw now was
stained with an ugly and irregular splotch of blood.
Bobby saw the candle quiver at last in the detective’s
hand. The man strode to the door leading to the
private hall and examined the lock.
“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.
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.
