"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.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.
Doctor Groom was the first to relax. He raised his great, hairy hand to the bed-post and grasped it. His
rumbling voice lacked its usual authority. It vibrated with a childish wonder:
"I'm reminded that it isn't the first time there's been blood from a man's head on that pillow."
Katherine nodded.
"What do you mean?" the detective snarled. "There's only one answer to this. There must have been a
mechanical post-mortem reaction."
For a moment Doctor Groom's laugh filled the old room. It ceased abruptly. He shook his head.
"Don't be a fool, Mr. Policeman. At the most conservative estimate this man has been dead more than thirteen
hours. Even a few instants after death the human body is incapable of any such reaction."
"What then?" the detective asked. "Some one of us, or one of the servants, must have overcome the locks
again and deliberately disturbed the body. That must be so, but I don't get the motive."
"It isn't so," Doctor Groom answered bluntly.
Already the detective had to a large extent controlled his bewilderment.
"I'd like your theory then," he said dryly. "You and Mr. Paredes have both been gossiping about the
supernatural. When you first came you hinted dark things. You said he'd probably died what the world would
call a natural death."
"I meant," the doctor answered, "only that Mr. Blackburn's heart might have failed under the impulse of a
sudden fright in this room. I also said, you remember, that the room was nasty and unhealthy. Plenty of people
have remarked it before me."
Graham touched the detective's arm.
"A little while ago you admitted yourself that the room was uncomfortable."
Doctor Groom smiled. The detective faced him with a fierce belligerency.
"You'll agree he was murdered."
"Certainly, if you wish to call it that. But I ask for the sharp instrument that caused death. I want to know how,
while Blackburn lay on his back, it was inserted through the bed, the springs, the mattress, and the pillow."
"What are you driving at?"