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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ