VENGEANCE FOR JULES DE
GRANDIN!
Jules de Grandin tried to remove
the mask covering the face
of the
girl prostrate on the bed,
but so firmly was it bound
that it resisted his efforts.
Again he pulled, more
sharply this time, until he
noticed a movement at
the side of her head.
Grandin felt for the mask
cords, then started
back with a low cry of
horror. The mask was not
tied, but wired to her flesh!
"Oh, the villains, the assassins, the ninety-thou-sand-times-damned
beastP Grandin gritted through
his teeth. "If
ever Satan walked the earth
in human guise, he
lodges within this accursed kennel of hell-hounds. Though this
monster has as many gullets as
the fabled hydra, I shall
slit them all for this night's
business r
For the first time Jules de
Grandin realized the enormity of the
evil he had uncovered, the monstrous might of
his eerie
enemy—and now as never before the great sleuth knew
he had
to triumph,
or die a devilish death trying.
.. •
Also
by Seabury Quinn and available from Popular Library:
The Adventures of Jules de Grandin
The Casebook of Jules
de Grandin
The Devil's Bride The Hell
fire Files of Jules de
Grandin [The Skeleton Closet of Jules
de Grandin
Unable to find these or other Popular Library books at your local
bookstore or newsstand?
If you are unable to locate
a book
published by Popular Library, or, If you
wish to see a list
of all available Popular Library titles,
writs for our FREE catalog to:
Popular Library
Reader Service Department
P.O. Box
5755 Terre Haute, Indiana 47805
(Please enclose
25$ to
help pay for postage and handling)
POPULAR
LIBRARY • NEW YORK
All
POPULAR LIBRARY books are carefully selected by the POPULAR LIBRARY Editorial
Board and represent titles by the world's greatest authors.
POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION
Copyright © 1977 by Margaret C. Qujnn
Published by arrangement with the author's
estate
ISBN: 0-445-03183-2
"The
Gods of East and West," by Seabury Quirin,
copyright 1927 by the Popular Fiction Publishing Co. for Weird Tales, January, 1928.
"The
Poltergeist," by Seabury Quinn, copyright 1927 by the Popular Fiction Publishing Co. for Weird Tales,
October, 1927.
"The
House of Golden Masks," by Seabury Quinn, copyright 1929 by the Popular Fiction Publishing Co. for Weird Tales, June, 1929.«
"The
Jest of Warburg Tantavul," by Seabury Quinn, copyright 1934 by the Popular Fiction Publishing Co. for Weird Tales, September, 1934.
"Stealthy Death," by Seabury Quinn, copyright 1930 by the Popular Fiction Publishing Co. for Weird Tales,
November, 1930.
"A
Gamble in Souls," by Seabury Quinn, copyright 1932 by the Popular Fiction Publishing Co. for Weird Tales,
January, 1933.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA All Rights
Reserved
Contents
The Gods of
East and West 9
The Poltergeist 45
The House of
Golden Masks 69
The Jest of
Warburg Tantavul 101
Stealthy Death 133
A Gamble in
Souls 177
Afterword by Robert
Weinberg 221
The Cods of East and West
"Tiens,
Friend Trowbridge, you work
late tonight."
Jules
de Grandin, debonair in faultlessly pressed dinner clothes, a white gardenia
sharing his lapel buttonhole with the red ribbon of the Legion dHonneur,
paused at the door of my consulting-room, glimpsed the box of coronas lying
open on the table, and straightway entered, seating himself opposite me and
selecting a long, black cigar with all the delighted precision of a child
choosing a bon-bon from a box of sweets.
I laid aside the copy of Baring's Diagnosis in Disease of the Blood I had been studying and helped myself to a
fresh cigar. "Have a pleasant time at the Medical Society dinner?" I
asked, somewhat sourly.
"But yes," he agreed, nodding
vigorously while his little blue eyes shone with enthusiasm. "They are a
delectable crowd of fellows, those New York physicians. I regret you would not
accompany me. There was one gentleman in particular, a full-blooded Indian,
who—but you do not listen, my friend; you are distrait. What is the trouble?"
"Trouble enough," I returned
ungraciously. "A patient's dying for no earthly reason that I can see except
that she is."
"Ah? You interest me. Have you made a
tentative diagnosis?"
"Half
a dozen, and none of 'em check* up. I've examined her and re-examined her, and
the only thing I'm certain of is that she's fading away right before my eyes,
and nothing I can do seems an earthly bit of good."
"U'm.
Phthisis, perhaps?"
"Not
a bit of it I've tested her sputum numerous times; every result is negative.
There isn't a thing wrong with her organically, and her temperature is almost
always normal, fluctuating slightly at times one way or the other, but hardly
ever more than one or two degrees. I've made several blood counts, and while
she runs slightly under the million mark, the
deficiency isn't enough to cause alarm. About the only objective symptoms she
displays are a steady falling off in weight and a progressive pallor, while subjectively
she complains of loss of appetite, slight headaches and profound lassitude in
the morning.''
"ITm,"
he repeated thoughtfully, expelling a twin cloud of smoke from his narrow
nostrils and regarding the ash of his cigar as though it were something of intense
interest. "And how long has this condition of affairs obtained?"
"About
three months. She's a Mrs. Chetwynde, wife of a likable young chap who's
superintending a piece of railway construction for an English company in Burma.
He's been away about six months or so, and while she would naturally be
expected to pine for him to some extent—they've been
married only a couple of years—this illness has been going on only since about
the middle of August."
"U'ml"
He knocked the ash from his cigar with a deft motion of his little finger and
inhaled a great lungful of strong, fragrant smoke with careful deliberation.
"This case interests me, Friend Trowbridge. These diseases which defy
diagnosis are the things which make the doctors trade exciting. With your
permission I will accompany you when next you visit Madame Chetwynde. Who
knows? Together we may find the doormat under which the key of her so mysterious
malady lies hidden. Meantime, I famish for sleep."
"fm with you," I agreed as I closed my book, shut off
the light and accompanied him upstairs to bed.
The
Chetwynde cottage was one of the smallest 10 and newest of the lovely little dwellings in
the Rock-wood section of town. Although it contained but seven rooms, it was as
completely a piece of art as any miniature painted on ivory, and the
appointments and furnishings comported perfectly with the exquisite
architectural artistry of the house. Jules de Gran-din's round little eyes
danced delightedly as he took in the perfect harmony existing inside and out
when we parked my car before the rose-trellised porch and entered the charming
reception hall. "Eh bien, my friend," he whispered as we followed
the black-and-white-uniformed maid toward the stairs, "whatever her
disease may be, she has the hon gout—how do you say? good
taste?—this Madame Chetwynde."
Lovely as a piece of Chinese porcelain—and as
frail—Idohne Chetwynde lay on the scented pillows of her Louis Treize bed, a
negligee of knife-plaited crepe de chine trimmed with fluffy black marabou
shrouding her lissom form from slender neck to slenderer ankles, but
permitting occasional highlights of ivory body to be glimpsed through its sable
folds. Little French-heeled mules of scarlet satin trimmed with black fur were
on her stocldngless feet, and the network of veins showed pale violet against
the dead-white of her high-arched insteps. Her long, sharp-chinned face was a
rich olive hue in the days of her health, but now her cheeks had faded to the
color of old ivory, and her fine, high forehead was as pale and well-nigh as
translucent as candle-wax. The long, beautifully molded lips of her expressive
mouth were more an old rose than a coral red, and her large gray eyes, lifted
toward the temples like those of an Oriental, shone with a sort of patient
resignation beneath the "flying gull" curve of her intensely black
brows. Her hair cut. short as a boy's at the back, had
been combed across her forehead from right to left and plastered down with some
perfumed unguent so that it surmounted her white face like a close-wrapped
turban of gleaming ebon silk. Diamond studs, small, but very brilliant,
flickered lambently in the lobes of her low-set ears. Some women cast the aura
of their feminine allure about them as a bouquet of roses exudes its perfume.
Idoline Chetwynde was one of these.
"Not
so well this morning, thank you, Doctor," she replied to my inquiry.
"The weakness seems greater than usual, and I had a dreadful nightmare
last night."
"Humph, nightmare, eh?" I answered gruffly. "Well soon attend
to that. What did you dream?"
"I—I don't know," she replied
languidly, as though the effort of speaking was almost too much for her.
"I just remember that I dreamed something awful, but what it was I haven't
the slightest notion. It really doesn't matter, anyway."
"Pardonnez-moi, Madame, but it matters extremely much," de
Grandin contradicted. "These things we call dreams, they are sometimes the
expression of our most secret thoughts; through them we sometimes learn things
concerning ourselves which we should not otherwise suspect. Will you try to
recall this unpleasant dream for us?"
As he spoke he busied himself with a minute
examination of the patient, tapping her patellar tendons, feeling along her
wrists and forearms with quick, practiced fingers, lifting her lids and
examining the pupils of both her luminous eyes, searching on her throat, neck
and cardiac region for signs of abrasions. "Eh bien," and "morbleu, c'est estrangeF I heard him mutter to himself once or twice, but no further comment did
he make until he had completed his examination.
"Do
you know, Dr. Trowbridge," Mrs. Chetwynde remarked as de Grandin rolled
down his cuffs and scribbled a memorandum in his notebook, "I've been gone
over so many times I've begun to feel like an entry at the dog show. It's
really not a bit of use, either. You might just as well save yourselves and me
the trouble and let me die comfortably. I've a feeling I shan't be here much
longer anyway, and it might be better for all concerned if ..."
"Zutr de Grandin snapped the elastic about his
pocketbook with a sharp report and leveled a shrewd, unwinking stare at her. "Say not so, Madame. It
is your duty to live. Parbleu,
the garden of the world is
full to sufFocation with weeds; flowers like yourself
"should be most sedulously cultivated for the joying of all mankind."
"Thank you, Doctor," Mrs. Chetwynde
smiled slowly in acknowledgment of the compliment and pressed the
ebony-and-silver bell which hung over the ornamental head of her bed.
"Madame has called?" The swart-visaged maidservant
appeared at the door of the chamber with a promptitude which led me to suspect
her ear had never been far from the keyhole.
"Yes,
Dr. Trowbridge and Dr. de Grandin are leaving," her mistress replied in a
tired voice.
"Adieu, Madame," de Grandin murmured in farewell, leaning
forward and possessing himself of the slender hand our hostess had not troubled
to lift as we turned to go. "We go, but we shall return anon, and with us,
unless I greatly mistake, we shall bring you a message of good cheer. No case
is hopeless until ..."
"Until the undertaker's been
called?"
Mrs. Chetwynde interrupted with another of her slow tired smiles as the little
Frenchman pressed his lips to her pale fingers and turned to accompany the maid
and me from the room.
"Be careful—sir," the maid
cautioned, with just enough space between the command and the title of courtesy
to rob her utterance of all semblance of respect. De Grandin, turning from the
stairs into the hall, had almost collided with a statuette which stood on a pedestal
in a niche between the staircase and the wall. To me it seemed the woman bent a
look of almost venomous hate on him as he regained his footing on the highly
polished floor and wheeled about to stare meditatively at the figurine into
which he had nearly stumbled.
"This way—if you please, sir," the
servant admonished, standing by the front door and offering his hat in a most
suggestive manner.
"Ah,
yes, just so," he agreed, turning from the statue to her, then back again.
"And do you suffer from the mosquitoes here at this time of year, Mademoiselle?0
"Mosquitoes?" the woman's reply was
half word, half scornful sniff at the little foreigner's irrelevant remark.
"Precisely, the mosquito, the gnat, the moustique," he rejoined with a humorous lift of his
brows. "The little, buzzing pests, you know."
"No, sirl" The answer served notice
there was no more to be said on the subject.
"Ah? Perhaps it is then that Madame your mistress delights in the incense which annoys the moths, yes?"
T*o,
sir!"
"Parbleu, ma vierge, there are many strange things in the world,
are there not?" he returned with one of his impish grins. "But the
strangest of all are those who attempt to hold information from me."
The servant's only reply was a look which
indicated clearly that murder was the least favor she cared to bestow on him.
"La, la" he chuckled as we descended the steps to my
car. "I did her in the eye, as the Englishmen say, that time, did I not,
my friend?"
"You certainly had the last word,"
I admitted won-deringly, "but you'll have to grant her the last look, and
it was no very pleasant one, either."
"Ah bah," he returned with another grin, "who
cares how old pickleface looks so long as her looks reveal
that which I seek? Did not you notice how she stiffened when I hinted at the
odor of incense in the house? There is no reason why they should not burn
incense there, but, for some cause, the scent is a matter of utmost
privacy—with the maid, at least."
"U'm?"
I commented.
"Quite right, my friend, your objection is well 14 taken," he responded with a chuckle.
"Now tell me something of our fair patient. Who is she, who were her forebears, how long has she resided here?"
"She's
the wife of Richard Chetwynde, a naturalized Englishman, who's been working on
an engineering job in India, as I told you last night," I replied.
"As to her family, she was a Miss Millatone before her marriage, and the
Millatones have been here since the Indians—in fact, some of them have been
here quite as long, since an ancestress of bers was a member of one of the
aboriginal tribes—but that was in the days when the Swedes and Dutch were
contending for this part of the country. Her family is more than well to do, and ..
"No more, my friend; you have told me
enough, I think," he interrupted. "That strain of Indian ancestry may
account for something which has caused me much wonderment. Madame Chetwynde, is a rarely beautiful woman, my friend, but there
is that indefinable something about her which tells the careful observer her
blood is not entirely Caucasian. No disgrace, that; parbleu, a mixture of strain is often an improvement
of the breed, but there was a certain-how shall I say it?—foreignness about her
which told me she might be descended from Orientals, perhaps; perhaps from the
Turk, the Hindu, the ..."
"No,"
I cut in with a chuckle, "she's what you might call a hundred and ten
percent American."
"U*m," he commented dryly, "and therefore ten percent
nearer the bare verities of nature than the thinner-blooded European. Yes. I think we may win this case, my
friend, but I also think we shall have much study to do."
"Oh"—I
looked at him in surprise—"so you've arrived at a hypothesis?"
"Hardly that, my friend. There are certain possibilities, but as yet
Jules de Grandin has not the courage to call them probabilities. Let us say no
more for the time being. I would think, I would cogitate, I
would meditate upon the matter." Nor could all my urging extract a single
hint concerning the theory which I knew was humming like a gyroscope inside his
active little brain as we drove home through the rows of brilliant maple trees
lining the wide streets of our pretty little city.
A spirited altercation was under way when we
arrived at my house. Taking advantage of the fact that office hours were over
and no patients within earshot, Nora McGinnis, my household factotum, was
engaged in the pleasing pastime of expressing her unvarnished opinion with all
the native eloquence of a born Irishwoman. "Take shame to yerself, Katy
Rooney," she was advising her niece as de Grandin and I opened the front
door, "sure, 'tis yerself as ought to be ashamed to set foot in me kitchen
an* tell me such nonsense! Afther all th' doctor's
been afther doin' for yez, too! Desertin' th' pore lady while she's sick an' in
distriss, ye are an' without so much as sayin' by yer lave to th' doctor.
Wurra, 'tis Nora McGinnis that's strainin' ivery nerve in her body to kape from
takin* her hand off th' side o* yer face!"
"Take
shame ter meself, indadeP an equally belligerent voice responded. " Tis little enough ye know of th'
goin's on in that there house! S'posin' 'twas you as had ter live under th' same roof wid a hay-then statchoo, an see th' misthress
ye wuz takin' yer wages from a-crawlin' on her hands an' knees before th' thing
as if she was a haythen or a Protestant or sumpin, instid of a Christian woman!
When first I come to Missis Chetwynde's house th' thing was no larger nor th'
span o' me hand, an' ivery day it's growed an' growed until it's as long as me
arm this minit, so it is, an' no longer ago than yestiddy it wunk its haythen
eye at me as I was passin' through th' hall. I tell ye, Nora darlin', what wid
that black statchoo a-standin' in th' hall an' gittin bigger an' bigger day be
day, an' th' missis a-crawlin' to it on her all-fours, an' that slinky, sneaky
English maid o' hern actin' as if I, whose ancistors wuz kings in Ireland, wuz
no better than th' dirt benathe her feet, an' belike not as good, I'd not be
answerable fer me actions another day—th' saints hear me when I say itl"
I was striding toward the kitchen with intent
to bring the argument to an abrupt close when de Gran-din's fingers suddenly
bit into my arm so sharply that I winced from the pressure. "No, no,
Friend Trowbridge," he whispered fiercely in my ear, 'let us hear what
else she has to say. This information is a gift from heaven, no less!"
Next moment he was in the kitchen, smiling ingratiatingly at the two angry
women.
"Dr. de Grandin, sor," began Nora,
anxious to refer the dispute to his arbitration, "'tis meself that's
ashamed to have to own this gurrul as kin o' mine. When Mrs. Chetwynde wuz
taken sick, Dr. Trowbridge got her to go over an' cook fer th'
pore lady, fer all our family's good cooks, though I do say it as shouldn't.
An' now, bad cess to her, she's fer up an' laving* th' pore lady in th' midst
of her trouble, like as if she were a Scandinavian or Eyetalian, or some kind
o' stinkin' furriner, beggin' yer pardon, sor."
"Faith, Doctor," the accused
Kathleen answered in defense, "I'm niver th' one to run out from a good
situation widout warnin', but that Chetwynde house is no Christian place at
all, at all. Tis some kind o' hay-then madhouse, no
less."
De Grandin regarded her narrowly a moment,
then broke into one of his quick smiles. "What was it you did say
concerning a certain statue and Madame Chetwynde?" he asked.
"Sure, an' there's enough ter say,"
"she replied, "but th' best part of it's
better left unsaid, I'm thinkin*. Mrs. Chetwynde's husband, as belike you know,
sor, is an engineer in India, an' he's forever sendin' home all sorts o' furrin
knickknacks fer souvenirs. Some o' th' things is reel
pretty an' some of 'em ain't so good. It wuz about three months ago, just
before I came wid her, he sent home th' statchoo of
some old haythen goddess from th' furrin land. She set it up on a pedistal
like as if it were th' image of some blessed saint, an
there it stands to this day, a-poisonin' th* pure air o* th' entire house.
"I niver liked th' looks o' th' thing
from th' first moment I clapped me two eyes on it, but I didn't have ter pass
through th' front end o' th' house much, an* when I did I turned me eyes away,
but one day as I was passin through th' hall I looked at it, an' ye can belave
me or not, Doctor, but th' thing had growed half a foot since last time I seen
it!"
"Indeed?"
de Grandin responded politely. "And then ..
"Then I sez to meself, sez I, Til jist
fix you, me beauty, that I will,* an* th* next evenin', when no one wuz lookin*, I sneaked into
th' hall an' doused th' thing 'wid howly wather from th' church font!"
"Ah?
And then . . . ?" de Grandin prompted gently, his little eyes gleaming
with interest.
"Ouch, Doctor darlin', if I hadn't seen
it I wouldn't a' belaved it! May I niver move offn this spot if th' blessed wather didn't boil an' stew as if I'd poured it
onto a red-hot sthove!"
"Parbleul" the Frenchman murmured.
"Th' next time I went past th' thing, so
help me hivin, if it didn't grin at me!"
"Mordieu, do you say so? And then . . . ?"
"An' no longer ago than yestiddy it wunk
its eye at me as I went by!"
"And you did say something concerning
Madame Chetwynde praying to this ..
"Doctor"—the
woman sidled nearer and took his lapel between her thumb and
forefinger—"Doctor, 'tis meself as knows better than to bear tales
concernin' me betters, but I seen sumpin last week that give me th' cowld
shivers from me big toes to me eye-teeth. Td been shlapin' as paceful as a lamb
that hadn't been born yet, when all of a suddent I heard sumpin downstairs that
sounded like burgulars. "Bad cess ter th' murtherin' scoundrils,' says I,
'comin' here to kill pore definseless women in their be<Ss!' an' wid that I
picks up a piece o' iron pipe I found handy-like beside me door an' shtarts ter
crape downstairs ter lane it agin th' side o' their heads.
"Dr.
de Grandin, sor, 'tis th' blessed truth an' no lie I'm
tellin' ye. When I come to th' head o' th' stheps, there was Mrs. Chetwynde,
all barefooty, wid some sort o' funny-lookin' thing on her head, a-lightin*
hay-then punk-sthicks before that black haythen image an' a-goin' down on her
two knees to itl
"'Katy Hooney,' sez I to meselfF, 'this
is no fit an" proper house fer you, a Christian woman an' a good Catholic,
to be livin in, so it's not,* an' as soon as iver I could I give me notice to
Mrs. Chetwynde, an' all th' money in th' mint couldn't hire me to go back to
that place agin, sor."
"Just so," the little Frenchman
agreed, nodding his sleek blond head vigorously. "I understand your reluctance
to return; but could you not be induced by some consideration greater than
money?"
"Sure, an' Yd not go back there fer ..." Katy began, but
he cut her short with a sudden gesture.
"Attend
me, if you please," he commanded. "You are a Christian woman, are you
not?"
"To be sure, I
am."
"Very good. If I told you your going back to Madame Chetwynde's service until I
give you word to leave might be instrumental in saving a Christian soul—a
Christian body, certainly—would you undertake the duty?"
"rd do most annything ye towld me to, sor," the woman replied soberly,
"but th' blessed saints know I'm afeared to shlape under th' same roof wid
that there black thing another night."
"U'm," de
Grandin took his narrow chin in his hand and bowed his head in thought a
moment, then turned abruptly toward the door. "Await me here," he
commanded. "I shall return."
Less
than two minutes later he re-entered the kitchen, a tiny package of tissue
paper, bound with red ribbon, in his hand. "Have you ever been by the
Killamey
lakes?" he demanded of Katy, fixing his level, unwinking stare on her.
"Sure,
an I have that," she replied fervently.
"More than onct I've sthood beside th' blue
wathers an ..."
"And
who is it comes out of the lake once each year and rides across the water on a
great white horse, attended by ..." he began, but she interrupted with a
cry that was almost a scream of ecstasy:
" Tis th* OTDonohue
himselfl Th' brave (TDonohue, a-ridin his grrate white harse, an' a-headin' his
band o' noble Fayneans, all ridin an' prancin' ter set owld Ireland free!"
"Precisely,"
de Grandin replied. "I, too, have stood beside the lake, and with me have
stood certain good friends who were born and bred in Ireland. One of those once
secured a certain souvenir of the O'Donohue's yearly ride. Behold!"
Undoing the tissue paper parcel he exhibited
a tiny ring composed of two or three strands of white horsehairs loosely
plaited together. "Suppose I told you these were from the tail of the
O'Donohue's horse?" he demanded. "Would you take them with you as a
safeguard and re-enter Madame Chetwynde's service until I gave you leave to
quit?"
"Glory
be, I would that, sor!" she replied. "Faith, wid three hairs from th' O'Donohue's horse, Td take service in th' Divil's own
kitchen an' brew him as foine a broth o' brimsthone as iver he drank, that I
would. Sure, th' O'Donohue is more than a match fer
any murtherin' haythen that iver came out o' India, I'm thinldn', sor."
"Quite
right," he agreed with a smile. "It is understood, then, that you
will return to Madame Chetwynde's this afternoon and remain there until you
hear further from me? Very good."
To me, as we returned to thé front of the house,
he confided: "A pious fraud is its own excuse, Friend Trowbridge. What we
believe a thing is, it is, as far as we are concerned. Those hairs, now, I did
extract them from the mattress of my bed; but our supersti-
tious Katy is brave as a lion in the belief that
they came from the O'Donohue's horse." . "Do you mean to tell me you
actually take any stock in that crazy Irishwoman's story, de Grandin?" I
demanded incredulously.
"Eh
bien," he
answered with a shrug of his narrow shoulders, "who knows what he
believes, my friend? Much she may have imagined, much more she may have made up
from the activity of her superstitious mind; but if all she said is truth I
shall not be so greatly surprised as I expect to be before we have finished
this case."
"Weill" I returned, too amazed to
think of any adequate reply.
"Trowbridge, my friend," he
informed me at breakfast the following morning. "I have thought deeply
upon the case of Madame Chetwynde, and it is my suggestion that we call upon
the unfortunate lady without further delay. There are several things I should
very much like to inspect in her so charming house, for what the estimable Katy
told us yesterday has thrown much light on things which before were entirely
dark."
"All right," I assented. "It
seems to me you're taking a fantastic view of the case, but everything I've
done thus far has been useless, so I dare say you'll do no harm by your
tricks."
"Morbleu,
I warrant I shall
not!" he agreed with a short nod. "Come, let us go."
The
dark-skinned maid who had conducted us to and from her mistress the previous
day met us at the door in answer to my ring and favored de Grandin with an even
deeper scowl than she had shown before, but she might as well have been a
graven image for all the attention he bestowed on her. However:
"Mon Dieu, I faint, I am ill, I shall collapse, Friend Trowbridge!" he cried
in a choking voice as we approached the stairs. "Water, I pray you; a
glass of water, if you please!"
I turned to the domestic and demanded a
tumbler 21 of water, and as she left to procure it, de Grandin leaped forward
with a quick, catlike movement and pointed to the statuette standing at the
foot of the stairs. "Observe it well, Friend Trowbridge," he commanded
in a low, excited voice. "Look upon its hide-ousness, and take particular
notice of its height and width. See, place yourself here, and draw a visual
line from the top of its head to the woodwork behind, then make a mark on the
wood to record its stature. Quick, she will return in a moment, and we have no
time to lose!"
Wonderingly, I obeyed his commands, and had
scarcely completed my task when the woman came with a goblet of ice-water. De
Grandin pretended to swallow a pill and wash it down with copious drafts of the
chilled liquid, then followed me up the stairs to Mrs. Chetwynde's room.
"Madame"
he began without
preliminary when the maid had left us, "there are certain things I should
like to ask you. Be so good as to reply, if you please. First, do you know
anything about the statue which stands in your hallway below?"
A
troubled look flitted across our patient's pale face. "No, I can't say I
do," she replied slowly. "My husband sent it back to me from India
several months ago, together with some other curios. I felt a sort of aversion
to it from the moment I first saw it, but somehow it fascinated me, as well.
After Yd set it up in the hall I made up my mind to
take it down, and I've been on the point of having it taken out half a dozen times,
but somehow Tve never been able to make up my mind about it. I really wish I
had, now, for the thing seems to be growing on me, if you understand what I
mean. I find myself thinking about it—it's so adorably ugly, you know—more and
more during the day, and, somehow, though I can't quite explain, I think I
dream about it at night, too. I wake up every morning with the recollection of
having had a terrible nightmare the night before, but I'm never able to recall
any of the incidents of my dream except that the statue figures in it
somehow."
"U*m?" de Grandin murmured
noncommittally. "This is of interest, Madame. Another question, if you please, and, I pray
you, do not be offended if it seems unduly personal. I notice you have a penchant for attar of rose. Do you employ any other
perfume?"
"No," wonderingly.
"No
incense, perhaps, to render the air more fragrant?"
"No,
I dislike incense, it makes my head ache. And yet"—she wrinkled her smooth
brow in a puzzled manner—"and yet I've thought I smelled a faint odor of
some sort of incense, almost like Chinese punk, in the house more than once.
Strangely enough, the odor seems strongest on die mornings following one of my
unremembered nightmares."
"H'm,"
de Grandin muttered, "I think, perhaps, we begin to see a fine, small ray
of light. Thank you, Madame;
that is all."
"The moon is almost at the full, Friend
Trowbridge," he remarked apropos of nothing, about 11 o'clock that night.
"Would it not be an ideal evening for a little drive?"
"Yes,
it would not," I replied. Tm tired, and I'd a lot rather go to bed than be
gallivanting all over town with you, but I suppose you have something up your
sleeve, as usual."
"Mais oui" he responded with one of his impish smiles,
"an elbow in each, my friend—and other things, as well. Suppose we drive
to Madame Chetwynde's."
I grumbled, but complied.
"Well,
here we are," I growled as we passed the Chetwynde cottage. "What do
we do next?"
"Go in, of
course," he responded.
"Go in? At this hour of night?"
"But
certainly; unless I am more mistaken than I think, there is that to be seen
within which we should do well not to miss."
"But
it's pteposterous," I objected. "Who ever heard of disturbing a sick
woman by a call at this hour?"
"We shall not disturb her, my
friend," he replied. "See, I have here the key to her house. We shall
let ourselves in like a pair of wholly disreputable burglars and dispose
ourselves as comfortably as may be to see what we shall see, if anything."
"The key to her house!" I echoed in amazement "How the deuce
did you get it?"
"Simply. While the sour-faced maid fetched me the glass of water this morning,
and you did observe the statue, I took an impression of the key, which I did
notice yesterday, in a cake of soap I had brought for that very purpose. This
afternoon I had a locksmith prepare me a duplicate from the stamp I had made. Parbleu, my friend, Jules de Grandin has not served these many years with the Sûreté and failed to learn more ways than one of
entering other peoples' houses!"
Quietly,
treading softly, we mounted the veranda steps, slipped the Judas-key into the
front door lock and let ourselves into Mrs. Chetwynde's hall. "This way,
if you please, Friend Trowbridge," de
Grandin ordered, plucking
me by the sleeve. "If we seat ourselves in the drawing-room we shall have
an uninterrupted view of both stairs and hall, yet remain ourselves in
shadow. That is well, for we have come to see, not to be seen."
T feel like a malefactor ..." I began in a nervous
whisper, but he cut me off sharply.
"Quiet!" he.ordered in a low
breath.
"Observe the moon, if you please, my friend. Is it not already almost
peering through yonder window?"
I
glanced toward the hall window before which the black statuette stood and
noticed that the edge of the lunar disk was beginning to show through the opening,
and long silver beams were commencing to stream across the polished floor,
illuminating the figure and surrounding it with a sort of cold effulgence. The
statue represented a female figure, gnarled and knotted, and articulated in a
manner suggesting horrible deformity. It was of some kind of black stone or
composition which glistened
as though freshly anointed with oil, and from the
shoulder-sockets three arms sprang out to right and left. A sort of pointed cap
adorned the thing's head, and about the pendulous breasts and twisting arms
serpents twined and writhed, while a girdle of skulls, carved from gleaming
white bone, encircled its waist. Otherwise it was nude, and nude with a
nakedness which was obscene even to me, a medical practitioner for whom the human
body held no secrets. As I watched the slowly growing patch of moonlight on the
floor it seemed the black figure grew slowly in size, then shrunk again, and
again increased in stature, while its twisting arms and garlands of contorting
serpents appeared to squirm with a horrifying suggestion of waking into life.
I
blinked my eyes several times, sure I was the victim of some optical illusion
due to the moon rays against the silhouette of the statue's blackness, but a
sound from the stairhead brought my gaze upward with a quick, startled jerk.
Light and faltering, but unquestionably approaching,
a soft step sounded on the uncarpeted stairs, nearer, nearer, until a tall,
slow-moving figure came into view at the staircase turn. Swathed from breast to
insteps in a diaphanous black silk nightrobe, a pair of golden-strapped boudoir
sandals on her little naked feet and a veil* of black tulle shrouding her face,
Idoline Chetwynde slowly descended the stairs, feeling her way carefully, as
though the covering on her face obscured her vision. One hand was outstretched
before her, palm up, fingers close together; in the other she bore a cluster
of seven sticks of glowing, smoking Chinese punk spread fanwise between her
fingers, and the heavy, cloyingly sweet fumes from the joss-sticks spiraled
slowly upward, surrounding her veiled head in a sort of nimbus and trailing
behind her like an evil-omened cloud.
Straight
for the black image of the Indian goddess she trod, feeling each slow, careful
step with faltering deliberation, halted a moment and inclined her head, then
thrust the punk-sticks into a tiny bowl of
sand
which stood on the floor at the statue's feet. This* done, she stepped back
five slow paces, slipped the gilded sandals off and placed her bared feet
parallel and close together, then with a sudden forward movement dropped to
her knees. Oddly, with that sense for noting trifles in the midst of more
important sights which we all have, I noticed that when she knelt instead of
straightening her feet out behind her with her insteps to the floor, she bent
her toes forward beneath her weight
For an instant she remained kneeling upright
before the black image, which was already surrounded by a heavy cloud of
punk-smoke; then, with a convulsive gesture, she tore the veil from before her
face and rent the robe from her bosom, raised her hands and crossed them, palms
forward, in front of her brow and bent forward and downward till crossed hands
and forehead rested on the waxed boards of the floor. For a moment she remained
thus in utter self-abasement, then rose upright, flinging her hands high above
her head, recrossed them before her face and dropped forward in complete
prostration once more. Again and again she repeated this genuflection, faster
and faster, until it seemed her body swayed forward and back' thirty or forty
times a minute, and the soft pat-pat of her hands against the floor assumed a
rhythmic, drumlike cadence as she began a faltering chant in eager,
short-breathed syllables:
Ho,
Devi, consort of Siva and daughter of Hima-vat!
Ho,
Sakti, fructifying principle of the Universe! Ho, Devi, the Goddess; Ho, Gauri,
the Yellow; Ho, Uma, the Bright; Ho, Durga, the Inaccessible; Ho, Chandi, the
Fierce; Listen Thou to my Mantra!
Ho, Kali, the Black,
Ho,
Kali, the Six-armed One of Horrid Form, 26
Ho, Thou about whose waist hangs a girdle of human skulls as if it were
a precious pendant; Ho, Malign Image of Destructiveness—
She paused an instant, seeming to swallow rising trepidation,
gasped for breath a moment, like a timid but determined bather about to plunge
into a pool of icy water, then:
Take Thou the soul and the body of this woman
prostrate before Thee,
Take Thou her body and her
spirit, freely and voluntarily offered,
Incorporate her body, soul
and spirit into Thy godhead, to strengthen Thee in Thine undertakings.
Freely is she given Thee, Divine Destroyer. Freely of her own accord, and
without reservation.
Asking naught but to become
a part of Thee and of Thy supreme wickedness.
Ho, Kali of horrid form,
Ho, Malign Image of
Destructiveness,
Ho, eater-up of all that is
good,
Ho, disseminator of all
which is wicked,
Listen Thou to my Mantra!
"Grand
Dieu, forgive her
invincible ignorance; she knows not what she says!" de Grandin muttered
beside me, but made no movement to stop her in her sacrilegious rite.
I half-rose from my chair to seize the
frenzied woman and drag her from her knees, but he grasped my elbow in a
viselike grip and drew me back savagely. "Not now, foolish one!" he
commanded in a sibilant whisper. And so we watched the horrid ceremony to its
close.
For upward of a quarter-hour, Idoline
Chetwynde continued her prostrations before the heathen idol, and, either
because the clouds drifting across the moon's face played tricks with the light
streaming through the hall window, or because my eyes grew undependable from
the strain of watching the spectacle before me, it seemed as though some hovering,
shifting pall of darkness took form in the corners of the room and wavered
forward like a sheet of windblown sable cloth until it almost enveloped the
crouching woman, then fluttered back again. Three or four times I noted this
phenomenon, then as I was almost sure it was no trick of lighting or
imagination, the moon, sailing serenely in the autumn sky, passed beyond the
line of the window, an even tone of shadow once more filled the hall, and Mrs.
Chetwynde sank forward on her face for the final time, uttered a weak,
protesting little sound, halfway between a moan and a whimper, and lay there, a
lifeless, huddled heap at the foot of the graven image, her white arms and
feet protruding from the black folds of her robe and showing like spots of pale
light against the darkness of the floor.
Once
more I made to rise and take her up, but again de Grandin restrained me.
"Not yet, my friend," he whispered. "We must see the tragic
farce played to its conclusion."
For a few minutes we sat there in absolute silence;
then, with a shuddering movement, Mrs. Chetwynde regained consciousness, rose
slowly and dazedly to her feet, resumed her sandals, and walked falteringly
toward the stairs.
Quick
and silent as a cat, de Grandin leaped across the room, passed within three
feet of her and seized a light chair, thrusting it forward so that one of its
spindle legs barred her path.
Never
altering her course, neither quickening nor reducing her shuffling walk, the
young woman proceeded, collided with the obstruction, and would have stumbled
had not de Grandin snatched away the chair as quickly as he had thrust it
forward. With never a backward look, with no exclamation of pain— although the
contact must have hurt her cruelly— without even a glance at the little
Frenchman who stood half an arm's length from her, she walked to the stairs,
felt for the bottommost tread a second, then began a slow ascent.
"Très bonr de Grandin muttered as he restored the chair to its
place and took my elbow in a firm grip, guiding me down the hall and through
the front door.
"What in heaven's name does it all
mean?" I demanded as we regained my car. "From what I've just seen
I'd have no hesitancy in signing commitment papers to incarcerate Mrs.
Chetwynde in an institution for the insane—the woman's suffering from a masochistic
mania, no doubt of it—but why the deuce did you try to trip her with a
chair?"
"Softly,
my friend," he replied, touching fire to a vile-smelling French cigarette
and puffing furiously at it. "Did you help commit that poor girl to an
insane asylum you would be committing a terrible crime, no less. Normal she is
not, but her abnormality is entirely subjective. As for the chair, it was the
test of her condition. Like you, I had a faint fear her actions were due to
some mental breakdown, but did you notice her walk? Parbleu, was it the walk of a person in possession of his faculties? I say no!
And the chair proved it, though it must have caused her tender body much pain,
she neither faltered nor cried out. The machinery which telegraphed the
sensation of hurt from her leg to her brain did suffer a
short-circuit. My friend, she was in a state of complete anesthesia as
regarded the outward world. She was, how do you say
..."
"Hypnotized?" I suggested.
"U'm, perhaps. Something like that;
although the controlling agent was one far, far different from any you have
seen in the psychological laboratory, my friend."
"Then ..."
"Then
we would do well not to speculate too deeply until we have more pieces of
evidence to fit into the picture-puzzle of this case. Tomorrow morning we
shall call on Madame Chetwynde, if you please."
We did. The patient was markedly worse. Great
lavender circles showed under her eyes, and her face, which I had thought as
pale as any countenance could be in life, was even a shade paler than theretofore.
She was so weak she could hardly lift her hand in greeting, and her voice was
barely more than a whisper. On her left leg, immediately over the fibula, a
great patch of violet bruise showed plainly the effects of her collision with
the chair. Throughout the pretty, cozy little cottage there hung the faint
aroma of burnt joss-sticks.
"Look well, my friend," de Grandin
ordered in a whisper as we descended the stairs; "observe the mark you
made behind the statue's head no later than yesterday."
I paused before the horrid thing, closed one
eye and sighted from the tip of its pointed cap to the scratch I had made on
the woodwork behind it. Then I turned in amazement to my companion. Either my
eye was inaccurate or I had made incorrect measurements the previous day.
According to yesterday's marks on the woodwork the statue had grown fully two
inches in height.
De
Grandin met my puzzled look with an unwavering stare, as he replied to my
unspoken question: "Your eye does not deceive you, my friend; the
hell-hag's effigy has enhanced."
"But-but," I stammered, "that
can't bel"
"Nevertheless, it is."
"But, good heavens, man; if this keeps
up. ..
"This
will not keep up, my friend. Either the devil's dam takes her prey or Jules de
Grandin triumphs. The first may come to pass; but my wager is that the second
occurs."
"But, for the Lord's
sakel What can we do?"
"We
can do much for the Lord's sake, my friend, and He can do much for ours, if it
be His will. What we can do, we will; no more and certainly no less. Do you
make your rounds of mercy, Friend Trowbridge, and beseech the so excellent Nora
to prepare an extra large apple tart for dinner, as I shall undoubtlessly bring
home a guest. Me, I hasten, I rush, I fly to New York
to consult a gentleman I met at the Medical Society dinner the other night. I
shall get back when I return, but, if that be not in time for an early dinner,
it will be no fault of Jules de Grandin's. Adieu, my friend, and may good luck attend me in my
errand. Cordieu,
but I shall need itl"
"Dr.
Trowbridge, may I present
Dr. Wolf?" de Grandin requested that evening, standing aside to permit a
tall, magnificently built young man to precede him through the doorway of my
consulting room. "I have brought him from New York to take dinner with us,
and—perhaps—to aid us in that which we must do tonight without fail."
"How do you do, Dr. Wolf?" I responded
formally, taking the visitors hand in mine, but staring curiously at him the
while. Somehow the name given by de Grandin did not seem at all appropriate. He
was tall, several inches over six feet, with an enormous breadth of shoulder
and extraordinary depth of chest. His face, disproportionately large for even
bis great body, was high-cheeked and unusually broad, with a jaw of implacable
squareness, and the deep-set, burning eyes beneath his overhanging brows were
of a peculiarly piercing quality. There was something in the impassive
nobility and' steadfastness of purpose in that face of the central allegorical
figure in Franz Stuck's masterpiece, War.
Something of my thought must have been
expressed in my glance, for the young man noticed it and a smile passed swiftly
across his rugged countenance, leaving it calm again in an instant. "The
name is a concession to civilization, Doctor," he informed me. "I
began life under the somewhat unconventional sobriquet of 'Johnny Curly Wolf,
but that hardly seemed appropriate to my manhood's environment, so I have
shortened the name to its greatest common divisor—I'm a full-blooded Dakotah,
you know."
"Indeed?" I
replied lamely.
"Yes.
I've been a citizen for a number of years, for there are certain limitations on
the men of my people who retain their tribal allegiance which would hamper me
greatly in my lifework. My father became wealthy by grace of the white man's
bounty and the demands of a growing civilization for fuel-oil, and he had the
good judgment to have me educated in an Eastern university instead of one of
the Indian training schools. An uncle of mine was a tribal medicine man and I
was slated to follow in his footsteps, but I determined to graft the white
man's scientific medicine onto my primitive instruction. Medical work has
appealed to me ever since I was a little shaver and was permitted to help the
post surgeon at the agency office. I received my license to practice in '14,
and was settling down to a study of pulmonary diseases when the big
unpleasantness broke out in Europe."
He
smiled again, somewhat grimly this time. "My people have been noted for
rather bloody work in the old days you know, and I suppose the call of my lineage
was too strong for me. At any rate, I was inside a Canadian uniform and
overseas within two months of the call for Dominion troops, and for three
sV>lid years I was in the thick of it with the British. When we came in I
was transferred to the A. E. F., and finished my military career in a burst of
shrapnel in the Ar-gonne. I've three silver bones in each leg now and am
drawing half-compensation from the government every month. I endorse the check
over to the fund to relieve invalid Indian veterans of the army who aren't as
well provided with worldly goods by Standard Oil as I am."
"But
are you practicing in New York now, Doctor?" I asked.
"Only as a student. I've been taking some special post-graduate work in diseases of the
lungs and postenor poliomyelitis. As soon as my studies are completed I'm
going west to devote my life and fortune to fighting those twin scourges of my
people."
"Just
so,"1 de Grandin cut in, unable longer to ref-frain from taking
part in the conversation. "Dr. Wolf and I have had many interesting things
to speak of during our trip from New York, Friend Trowbridge, and now, if all
is prepared, shall we eat?"
The young Indian proved a charming dinner companion.
Finely educated and highly cultured, he was indued with extraordinary skill as
a raconteur, and his matter-of-fact stories of the "old contemps'"
titanic struggle" from the Marne and back, night raids in the trenches and
desperate hand-to-hand fights in the blackness of No Man's land, of the mud and
blood and silent heroism of the dressing-stations and of the phantom armies
which rallied to the assistance of the British at Mons were colorful as the
scenes of some old Spanish tapestry. Dinner was long since over and 11 o'clock
had struck, still we lingered over our cigars, liqueurs and coffee in the
drawing room. It was de Grandin who dragged us back from the days of '15 with a
hasty glance at the watch strapped to his wrist
"Parbleu, my friends," he exclaimed, "it
grows late and we have a desperate experiment to try before the moon passes the
meridian. Come, let us be about our work."
I
looked at him in amazement, but the young Indian evidently understood his
meaning, for he rose with a shrug of his broad shoulders and followed my
diminutive companion out into the hall, where a great leather kit bag which
bore evidence of having accompanied its owner through Flanders and Picardy
rested beside the hall rack. "What's on the program?" I demanded,
trailing in the wake of the other two, but de Grandin thrust hat and coat into
my hands, exclaiming:
"We
go to Madame Chetwynde's again, my friend. Remember what you saw about this
time last night?
Cordieu,
you shall see that which
has been vouchsafed to few men before another hour has passed, or Jules de
Crandin is wretchedly mistaken!"
Piling
my companions into the back seat, I took the wheel and drove through the still,
moonlit night toward the Chetwynde cottage. Half an hour
later we let ourselves quietly into the house with de Grandin's duplicate key
and took our station in the darkened parlor once more.
A quick word from de Grandin gave Dr. Wolf
his cue, and taking up his travel-beaten bag the young Indian let himself out of the house and paused on the porch. For a
moment I saw his silhouette against the glass panel of the door, then a sudden
movement carried him out of my line of vision, and I turned to watch the
stairs down which I knew Idoline Chetwynde would presently come to perform her
unholy rites of secret worship.
The
ticking pulse-beats of the little ormolu clock on the mantelpiece sounded
thunderous in the absolute quiet of the house; here and there a board squeaked
and cracked in the gradually lowering temperature; somewhere outside, a motor
horn tooted with a dismal, wailing note. I felt my nerves gradually tightening
like the strings of a violin as the musician keys them up before playing, and
tiny shivers of horripilation pursued each other down my spine and up my
forearms as I sat waiting in the shadowy room.
The
little French clock struck twelve sharp, silvery chimes. It had arrived, that
hideous hour which belongs neither to the day which is dead nor to the new day
stirring in the womb of Time, and which we call midnight for want of a better
term. The moon's pale visage slipped slowly into view through the panes of the
window behind the Indian statue and a light, faltering step sounded on the
stairs above us.
"Mon
Dieu," de Grandin whispered fervently, "grant
that I shall not have made a mistake in my calculations!" He half rose
from his chair, gazing fixedly at the lovely, unconscious woman walking her
tranced march toward the repellent idol, then stepped softly to the front
window and tapped lightly on its pane with his fingertips.
Once
again we saw Idoline Chetwynde prostrate herself at the feet of the black
statue; once more her fluttering, breathless voice besought the evil thing to
take her soul and destroy her body; then, so faint I scarcely heard it through
the droning of the praying woman's words, the front door gave a soft click as
it swung open on its hinges.
Young
Dr. Wolf, once Johnny Curly Wolf, medicine man of the Dakotahs, stepped into
the moonlit hall.
Now I understand why he had hidden himself in
the shadows of the porch when he left the house. Gone were his stylishly—cut
American clothes, gone was his air of well-bred sophistication. It was not the
highly educated, cultured physician and student who entered the Chetwynde home,
but a medicine man of America's primeval race in all the panoply of his traditional
office. Naked to the waist he was, his bronze torso gleaming like newly molded
metal from the furnace. Long, tight-fitting trousers of beaded buckskin
encased his legs, and on his feet were the moccasins of his forefathers. Upon
his head was the war-bonnet of eagle feathers, and his face was smeared with
alternate streaks of white, yellow and black paint. In one hand he bore a
bull-hide tom-tom, and in his deep-set, smoldering eyes there burned the awful,
deadly earnestness of his people.
Majestically he strode down the hall, paused
some three or four paces behind the prostrate woman, then,
raising his tom-tom above his head, struck it sharply with his knuckles.
Toom,
toom, toom toom! the
mellow, booming notes sounded again and still again. Bending slightly at the
knees, he straightened himself, repeated the movement, quickened the cadence
until he was rising and sinking a distance of six inches or so in a sort of
stationary, bobbing dance. "Manitou, Great Spirit of my fathers I" he
called in a strong, resonant voice. "Great spirit of the forest dwellers
and of the people of the plains, hear the call of the last of Thy worshippers:
"Hear
my prayer, O Mighty Spirit, As I do
the dance before Thee, Do the dance my fathers taught me, Dance it as they
danced before me, As they danced it in their lodges, As they danced it at their
councils When of old they sought Thy succor.
"Look
upon this prostrate woman, See her bow in supplication To an alien, wicked
spirit Thine she is by right of lineage, Thine by right of blood and forebears.
In the cleanly air of heaven She should make her supplication, • Not before the
obscene statue Of a god of alien people.
"Hear
my prayer, O Mighty Spirit, Hear, Great Spirit of my fathers, Save this woman of Thy people, Smite and strike and make
impotent -Demons from across the water, Demons vile and wholly filthy, And not
seemly for devotion From a woman of Thy people."
The solemn, monotonous intoning ceased, but
the dance continued. But now it was no longer a stationary dance, for, with
shuffling tread and half-bent body, Johnny Curly Wolf was circling slowly about
the Hindu idol and its lone worshipper.
Something—a cloud, perhaps—drifted slowly
across the moon's face, obscuring the light which streamed into the hall. An
oddly shaped cloud it was, something like a giant man astride a giant horse,
and on his brow there seemed to be the feathered war-bonnet of the Dakotahs.
The cloud grew in density. The moon rays became fainter and fainter, and
finally the hall was in total darkness.
In the west there sounded the whistling
bellow of a rising wind, shaking the casements of the house and making the very
walls tremble. Deep and rumbling, growing louder and louder as it seemed to
roll across the heavens on iron wheels, a distant peal of thunder sounded,
increased in volume, finally burst in a mighty clap directly over our heads,
and a fork of blinding, jagged lightning shot out of the angry sky. A shivering
ring of shattered glass and of some heavy object toppling to a fall, a woman's
wild, despairing shriek, and another rumbling, crashing peal of thunder
deafened me.
By the momentary glare of a second
lightning-flash I beheld a scene stranger than any painted by Dante in his
vision of the underworld. Seemingly, a great female figure crouched with all
the ferocity of a tigress above the prostrate form of Idoline Chetwynde, its
writhing, sextuple arms grasping at the woman's prone body, or raised as though
to ward off a blow, while from the window looking toward the west there leaped
the mighty figure of an Indian brave armed with shield and war-club.
Johnny Curly Wolf? Nol For Johnny
Curly Wolf circled and gyrated in the measures of his tribal ghost-dance, and
in one hand he held his tom-tom, while with the other he beat out the rhythm of
his dance-music. *
It was but an instant that the lightning
showed me this fantastic tableau, then all was darkness blacker than before,
and a crashing of some stone thing shattered into half a thousand fragments
broke the rumble of the thunder.
"Lights! Grand
Dieu, lights, Friend
Trowbridge!" de Grandin screamed in a voice gone high and thin with
hysteria.
I pressed the electric switch in the hall and
beheld Johnny Curly Wolf, still in tribal costume, great beads of sweat dewing
his brow, standing over the body of Idoline Chetwynde, the hall window-panes
blown from their frame and scattered over the floor like tiny slivers of frozen
moonlight, and, toppled from its pedestal and broken into bits almost as fine
as powder, the black statue of Kali, Goddess of the East.
"Take her up, my friend," de
Grandin ordered me, pointing to Mrs. Chetwynde's lifeless body. Tick her up and
restore her to her bed. Morbleu,
but we shall have to attend
her like a new-born infant this night, for I fear me
her nerves have had a shock from which they will not soon recover!"
All night and far past daylight we sat beside
Idoline Chetwynde's bed, watching the faint color ebb and flow in her sunken
cheeks, taking heedful count of her stimulants when the tiny spark of waning
life seemed about to flicker to extinction.
About
10 o'clock in the morning de Grandin rose from his seat beside the bed and
stretched himself like a cat rising from prolonged sleep. "Bon, tres bonH he exclaimed. "She
sleeps. Her pulse, it is normal; her temperature, it is right. We can safely
leave her now, my friends. Anon, we shall call on her; but I doubt me if we
shall more to do than wish her felicitations on her so miraculous cure.
Meantime, let us go. My poor, forgotten stomach cries aloud reproaches on my so
neglected mouth. I starve, I famish, I faint of
inanition. Behold, I am already become but a wraith and a shadow!"
Jules
de Grandin drained his third cup of coffee at a gulp and passed the empty
vessel back for replenishment. "Parbleu, my
friends," he exclaimed, turning his quick, elfin smile from Dr. Wolf to
me, "it was the beautiful adventure, was it not?"
"It might have been a beautiful
adventure," I agreed grudgingly, "but just what the deuce was it? The whole thing's a mystery to me from beginning to end. What caused
Mrs. Chetwynde's illness in the first place, what was the cause of her insane
actions, and what was it I saw last night? Was there really a thunderstorm
that broke the black image, and did I really see ..."
"But
certainly, my excellent one," he cut in with a smile as he emptied his cup and lighted a
cigarette, "you did behold all that you thought you saw; no less."
"But r. r
"No
buts, if you please, good friend. I well know you will tease for an explanation
as a pussy-cat begs for food while the family dines, and so I shall enlighten
you as best I can. To begin:
"When first you told me of Madame
Chetwynde's illness I knew not what to think, nor did I think anything in
particular. Some of her symptoms made me fear she might have been the victim of
a revenant, but there were no signs of bloodletting upon
her, and so I dismissed that diagnosis. But as we descended the stairs after
our first visit, I did behold the abominable statue in the hall. *Ah ha,' I
say to me, 'what does this evil thing do here? Perhaps it makes the trouble
with Madame Idoline?' And so I look at it most carefully.
"My friends, Jules de Grandin has
covered much land with his little feet. In the arctic snows and in the
equatorial heat he has seen the sins and follies and superstitions of men, and
learned to know the gods they worship. So he recognized that image for what it
was. It is of the goddess Kali, tutelary deity of the Thugs of India, whose worship is murder and whose service is bloodshed. She
goes by many names, my friends: sometimes she is known as Devi, consort of Siva
and daughter of Himavat, the Himalaya Mountains. She is the Sakti, or female
energy of Siva, and is worshiped in a variety of forms under two main classes,
according as she is conceived as a mild and beneficent or as a malignant deity.
In her milder shapes, besides Devi, 'the goddess,' she is called also
Gauri 'the yellow,' or Uma, 'the bright.' In her malignant forms she is Durga, 'the
inaccessible,' represented as a yellow woman mounted on a tiger, Chandi?
'the fierce,' and, worst of all, Kali, 'the black,' in which guise she is
portrayed as dripping with blood, encircled with snakes and adorned with human
skulls. In the latter form she is worshiped with obscene and bloody rites,
oftener than not with human sacrifice. Her special votaries are the Thugs, and at her dreadful name all India trembles, for the law of the English
has not yet wiped out the horrid practice of thuggee.
"Now, when I beheld this filthy image
standing in Madame Chetwynde's home I wondered much. Still, I little suspected
what we later came to know for truth, for it is a strange thing that the gods
of the East have little power over the people of the West. Behold, three
hundred thousand Englishmen hold in complete subjection as many million Hindus,
though the subject people curse their masters daily by all the gods whom they
hold "sacred. It seems, I think, that only those who stand closer to the
bare verities of nature are liable to be affected by gods and goddesses which
are personifications of nature's forces. I know not whether this be so, it is
but a theory of mine. At any rate, I saw but small connection between the idol
and our sick lady's illness until Friend Trowbridge told me of her strain of
American Indian ancestry. Then I say to me: 'Might not she, who holds a mixture
of aboriginal blood in her veins, become affected by the strength of this
heathen goddess? Or perhaps it is that fused blood is weaker than the pure
strain, and the evil influence of the Black One may have found some loophole in
her defense. One thing was most sure, in Madame Chetwynde's house there was
clearly the odor of Eastern incense, yet nowhere was there visible evidence of
perfume save such as a dainty woman of the West might use. Me, I sniffed like a
hound while examining her, and kissed her fingers twice in farewell to make
sure. This incense which were so all unaccounted for
did puzzle me.
"You
recall, Friend Trowbridge, how I questioned her maid about the punk smell, and
how little satisfaction I got of her. There is going on here the business of
monkeys,' I tell me as we leave the house. And so I make a print of the front
door key that we may enter again at our convenience and see what is what.
"Eh bien, my friends, did we not see a sufficiency the
following night when we beheld Madame Idoline fall forward on her face and make
a voluntary offer of her soul and body to the Black One? I shall say so.
"*How to overcome this Eastern fury?* I
ask me. The excellent Katy Rooney have bathed her in
holy water, and the blessed fluid have burned and sizzled on her so infamous
head. Clearly, the force of Western churches is of little value in this case.
Ah, perhaps she have attacked Madame Chetwynde through her strain
of primitive blood. Then what?
"Mori
dun chat, all
suddenly I have itl At the dinner in New York I have
met the young Dr. Wolf. He is a full-blooded American Indian and, he have told me, a medicine man of his people as well. Now, if
this woman's weakness is her Indian blood, may not that same blood be her
strength and her protection as well? I hope so.
"So I persuade Monsieur Wolf to come
with me and pit the strength of his Great Spirit against the evil force of Kali
of the Thugs. Who will win? Le bon Dieu alone knows, but I have hopes."
For a moment he regarded us with a quizzical
smile, then resumed.
"The Indian of America, my friends, was
truly un sauvage noble. The Spaniard saw in him only something like
a beast to be enslaved and despoiled; the Englishman saw in him only a barrier
to possession of the new country, and as such to be swept back or exterminated;
but to the Frenchman he was a noble character. Ha, did not my illustrious
countrymen, the
Sieurs
La Salle and Frontenac, accord him his just dues? Certainly.
His friendship was true, his courage undoubted, his religion a clean one. Why,
then, could we not invoke the Indians' Great Spirit?
"We know, my friends, or at least think
we know, that there is but one true God, almighty and everlasting, without
body, parts, or passions; but does that same God appear in the same manner to
all peoples? Mais
non. To the Arab He is Allah; to many so-called Christians He is but a sort
of celestial Santa Claus; I greatly fear, Friend Trowbridge, that to many of
your most earnest preachers He is little more than a disagreeable old man with
the words Thou Shalt Not!' engraved upon His forehead. But, for all these
different conceptions, He is still God.
"And what of the deities of heathendom?" He paused, looking expectantly from one of
us to the other, but as we made no reply, proceeded to answer his own question:
"They are nothing, and yet they are something, too. They are the
concentrated power of thought, of mistaken belief, of misconception. Yet, because
thoughts are truly things, they have a certain power—parhleu, I think a power which is not to be sneezed
upon. For years, for centuries, perhaps, that evil statue of Kali has been
invoked in bloody and unseemly rites, and before her misshapen feet has been
poured out the concentrated hate and wickedness of countless monkey-faced
heathens. That did indue her with an evil power which might easily overcome the
resistance of a sensitive nature, and all primitive peoples are more sensitive
to such influences than are those'whose ancestors have long been agnostic, however
much and loudly they have prated of their piety.
"Very good. The Great Spirit of the Indian of America,
on the other hand, being a clean and noble conception, is one of the
manifestations of God Himself. For countless generations the noble Red Man had
clothed him with all the attributes of nobility. Shall this pure conception of
the godhead go to waste? No, my friends, ten thousand times no! You cannot ldll
a noble thought any more than you can slay a noble soul; both are immortal.
"And
so I did prevail upon the good Wolf to come with us and summon the massed
thought of those despicable ones who have made him a goddess of their own
uncleanness of mind. Norn
dune anguille, but
the struggle was magnificent!"
"You
mean to tell me that I actually saw the Great Spirit, then?" I demanded
incredulously.
"Ah
bah, my friend," he
replied, "have I not been at pains to tell you it was the massed, the
concentrated thought and belief of all the Indians of today and for countless
generations before today which our good Wolf invoked? Mordieu, can I never convince you that thought, though
it be immaterial, is as much a thing as—as for example, the skull in your thick
head?"
"But what about Mrs. Chetwynde's maid?" I asked, for deep in my mind there Jurked a
suspicion that the woman might know more of the unholy sights we had seen than
she care to tell."
"Quite
right," he replied, nodding gravely. "I, too, suspected her once. It
was because of that I induced the excellent Katy to return to Madame Idoline's
service and spy upon her. I discovered much, for Katy, like all her race, is
shrewd, and when she knows what is wanted she knows how to get it. It appears
the maid was fully aware of her mistress' subjection to the Black One, but,
though she understood it not, so deep was her devotion to Madame her mistress that she took it on herself to cast obstacles in our way
lest we prevent a continuance of Madame's secret
worship. Loyalty is a great, a wonderful thing, my friends. That poor woman
was shocked by the spectacle of her beloved mistress casting herself before
the thing of stone, but the bare fact that her mistress did it was
justification enough for her. Had she been asked to do so by Madame Chetwynde,
I firmly believe she would have joined in the obscene devotions and given her
own body and soul to the Black One along with that of her beloved mistress whom
she adored."
"Well—HI
be ... But look here ..." I
began again, but:
"No more, Friend Trowbridge," de
Grandin commanded, rising and motioning to Dr. Wolf and me. "Tf is
long since we have slept. Come, let us retire. Me. parbleu, I shall sleep until your learned societies
shall issue profound treatises on the discovery of a twin brother to Monsieur
Rip Van Winklel"
The Poltergeist
"And
so, Dr. de Grandin," our visitor concluded, "this is really a case
for your remarkable powers."
Jules
de Grandin selected a fresh cigarette from his engine-turned silver case,
tapped it thoughtfully against a well-manicured thumb nail, and regarded the
caller with one of his disconcertingly unwinking stares. "Am I to
understand that all attempts to effect a cure have
failed, Monsieur?" he asked at length.
"Utterly. We've tried everything in reason—and out of
it," Captain Loudon replied. "We've had some of the best neurologists
in consultation, we've employed faith healers, spiritualistic mediums, even had
her given 'absent treatment,' all to no avail. All the physicians, all the
cultists and quacks have failed us; now—"
"Now I do not think I care to be
numbered among those quacks, Monsieur," the Frenchman returned coldly.
"Had you called me into consultation with an accredited physician—"
"But that's just it," the captain
interrupted. "Every doctor we've had has been confident he could work a
cure, but they've all failed. Julia is a lovely girl—I don't say it because
she's my daughter—I state it as a fact—and was to have been married this fall.
Now this—this disorder has taken complete possession of her and it's wrecking her life. Robert—Lieutenant Proudfit, her
fiance—and I are almost beside ourselves, and as for my daughter, I fear her
mind will give way and she'll destroy herself unless somebody can do somethingV
"Ah?" the little Frenchman arched
the slim black 45
brows that were in such a vivid contrast to his
blond hair and mustache. "Why did not you say so before, Monsieur le Capitaine? It is not merely the curing of one nervous
young woman you would have me undertake, but the fruition of a romance I
should bring about? Bien, good, very well; I accept. If you will also
retain my good Friend Trowbridge, so that there shall be a locally licensed and
respected physician in the case, my powers which you have been kind enough to
call remarkable are entirely at your disposal."
"Splendid!" Captain Loudon agreed,
rising. "Then it's arranged. I may expect you to—"
"One
moment, if you please," de
Grandin interrupted,
raising his slim white hand for silence. "Suppose we make a précis
of the case before
proceeding." He drew a pad of note paper and pencil toward him as he
continued:
"Your daughter, Mademoiselle Julia, how
old is she?"
"Twenty-nine."
"A most charming
age." He
scribbled a note. "And she is your only child?" "Yes sir."
"Now, these manifestations of the outré, these so unusual happenings, they began to take place some six months
ago?"
"Just about; I can't place the time
exactly."
"No matter. They have assumed various mystifying forms? She has refused food, she
has had visions, she shouts, she sings uncontrollably, she speaks in a voice
which is strange to her—at times she goes into a deathlike trance and from her
throat come strange voices, voices of men, or other women, even of little children?"
"That's correct,
sir."
"Other seemingly inexplicable things
occur. Chairs, books, tables, even such heavy pieces of furniture as a piano,
move from their accustomed places when she is near, and bits of jewelry and
other small objects are hurled through the air?"
"Yes, and
worse than that, I've seen
pins and needles fly from her
work basket and bury themselves
in her cheeks and arms," the captain interrupted. "Lately she's been
persecuted by scars—scars from an
invisible source. Great weals,
like the claw-marks of some beast,
have appeared on her arms
and face,
right while I looked
on, and
I've been wakened at night by
her screams,
and when
I rush
into her room I find the
marks of long, thin fingers
on her
throat. It's maddening, sir; terrifying. Yd say it
was a
case of Biblical demoniacal possession, if I didn't disbelieve
all that sort of
supernaturalism."
"U'm," de
Grandin looked up from the
pad on
which he had been
industriously scribbling. "There
is nothing in the world, or
out of
it, my
friend, which is supernatural. The wisest
man today
cannot say where the powers and
possibilities of nature begin or
end. We say, Thus and so
is beyond the
bounds of our experience,' but does that therefore
put it
beyond the bonds of nature? I
think not. Myself, I have
seen such things as no man
can hear
me relate
without calling me a liar, and
my good,
unimaginative Friend Trowbridge has witnessed
wonders such as no writer
of fiction
would dare set down on
paper, yet I do declare
we have never seen
that which I would call
supernatural.
"But we waste
the time.
Let us
hasten to your house; I would
interview Mademoiselle Julia and see
for myself some of
these so remarkable afflictions of hers.
"Remember," he turned his fixed, unwinking
stare on our patron as we
paused for our outdoor things
in the hall, "remember, if you
please, Monsieur, I am not
like one of those
quacks who have failed you.
I do
not say that I can work
a cure.
I can
but promise
I will
try. Agreed? Trds ban. We shall
see what
we shall
see. Let us be
upon our way."
Robert Beauregard
Loudon was a retired Naval
captain, a widower with
more than sufficient means to
gratify his rather Epicurian
tastes, and possessed one of the finest houses in the fashionable new westside suburb. The
furnishings bespoke something more than wealth as we surveyed them; they
proclaimed that vague but nevertheless tangible thing known as "background"
which is to be had only from generations of ancestors to the manner born.
Original pieces of mahogany by Sheraton and Chippendale and the Brothers Adam,
family portraits from the brush of Benjamin West, silver in the best tradition
of the early eighteenth century smiths, even the dignified aloof, elderly
black butler, announced our patient's father was in every sense of the term an
officer and gentleman.
"If
you'll give Hezekiah your things," Captain Loudon indicated the solemn old
Negro with a nod, "I'll tell my daughter you're here. I know shell be glad
to—"
A clanking, banging noise, like a tin can
clattering at the tail of some luckless dog, interrupted him, and as we turned
in amazement toward the wide staircase at the far end of the hall the noise
grew louder, almost deafening. Then it ceased abruptly as it had begun, and a
young girl rounded the curve of the stairway, coming slowly toward us.
She was of more than middle height, slender
and supple as a willow withe, and carried herself with the bearing of a young
princess. A lovely though almost unfashionably long gown of white satin and
chiffon draped its uneven hem almost to her ankles and about her slender
shoulders and over her arms hung a richly embroidered shawl of Chinese silk.
One hand rested lightly on the mahogany rail of the balustrade, as though
partly for support, partly for guidance. This much we saw at first glance, but
our second look remained fixed on her sweet pale face.
Almost
unbeautifully long it was, pale with the rich, creamy pallor which is some
women's birthright and not the result of poor health, and her vivid, scarlet
lips showed in contrast to her pale cheeks. At first I thought her gaze was on
the steps before her, and that she made each movement carefully lest she fall
from weakness or nervous exhaustion, but in a moment I realized that whether
in natural sleep or in some supernatural trance, she was descending the stairs
with eyes tight shut
"La
pauvre petite" de
Grandin exclaimed under his breath. "Grand Dieu, Friend Trowbridge, but she is beautiful! Why did I not come here
before?"
Out
of the empty air, apparently some six feet above the girl's head, a burst of
mocking, maniacal laughter answered him, and from the thick-piled stair carpet
before her suddenly rose again the clanging racket we had heard before she came
into view.
"ff^W—de Grandin turned a pitying look on the girl's father,
then: "Norn de
Dieu!" He
ducked his head with a quick dodging movement. Against the wall some twenty
feet away there hung a stand of arms, one or two swords", a spear and
several bolos, trophies of the captain's service in the Philippines. As though
seized by an invisible hand, one of the bolos had detached itself from the
wall, hurtled through the air and embedded itself nearly an inch deep in the
white wainscoting behind the little Frenchman, missing his cheek by the barest
fraction of a centimetre as it flew whirring past.
The
clanking tumult at the girl's feet ended abruptly, and she took an uncertain
step forward and opened her eyes. They were unusually long, purple rather than
blue, and held such an expression of changeless melancholy as I had never seen
in one so young. It was the look of one foredoomed to death by an incurable
disease.
"Why—"
she began with the bewildered look of one suddenly roused from
sleep—"why—Father! I was lying down in my room when I thought I heard
Robert's voice. I tried to get up, but It' held me down, and I must have fallen
asleep—"
"Daughter," Captain Loudon's voice
shook with his effort to control it, "these gentlemen are Dr. de Grandin
and Dr. Trowbridge. They've come to—"
"Oh,"
the girl made an impatient gesture which yet seemed somehow strangely languid,
"more doctors!
Why
did you bring them, Father? You know they'll be just like the rest. Nothing can
help me—nothing's any good!"
"Pardonnez-moi, Mademoiselle" de Grandin bowed formally, "I think that you will find us different
from the rest. To begin, we come to give you to the man you love; and in the
second place I have a personal interest in this case."
"A personal interest?" she
acknowledged his bow with a rather negligent nod.
T have, indeed,
Mademoiselle. Did not the—the thing that troubles you, hurl a bolo-knife at me?
Mademoiselle, I assure you no fantôme,
no lutin, shall throw knives at Jules de
Grandin, then boast of the
exploit to his ghostly fellows. But no.
"Now,
Mademoiselle, we must ask your pardon for these questions," he began as we
entered the drawing room. "To you it is an old and much-told tale, but we
are ignorant, save for such meager information as your father has given. Tell us, if you please, when did these strange happenings begin
to happen?"
The
girl regarded him in silence, her brooding plum-colored eyes staring almost
resentfully into his small blue ones. "It was about six months ago,"
she began in a lifeless monotone like a child reciting a rote-learned but
distasteful- lesson. "I had come home from a dance in New Burnswick with
Lieutenant Proudfit. It must have been about three in the morning, for we
hadn't left the party till sometime after one, and had been delayed on the road
by a sleet storm. Lieutenant Proudfit was stopping overnight with us, for we
are—that is, we were—engaged, and I had said good night to him and gone to my
room when it seemed I heard something fluttering and tapping at my window, like
a bird attracted by the light, or—I don't know what made me think so, but I got
the impression somehow—a bat beating its wings against the panes.
"I
remember I was rather frightened at first, then I was
overcome with pity for the poor thing, for it was bitter cold outside and the
sleet was driving down like a whiplash. I went to the window and opened it to
see what was outside. I"—she hesitated a moment—"I'd partially
undressed, and the cold wind coming through the opened window chilled me, but I
leaned out, looking for the bird, or—" Once more she hesitated, then ceased speaking altogether.
"Proceed, Mademoiselle," de Grandin's voice was
absolutely toneless. "What was it you did next?"
T looked out and said, 'Come in, you poor
creature!' "
"Ah?" he raised his voice slightly.
"So you invited what was outside to enter?" Level as his tone was,
there was a note of shocked reproof in it.
"Of course. I know it was silly to speak to a bird that way, but you know we often
talk to animals as if they understand. At any rate, I might have saved myself
a chill, for there was nothing there, and when I closed the window again I
heard no further flutter-ings."
"Probably not," he agreed dryly.
"What then, if you please?"
"Why, nothing—right away. It seemed as
if the room had become permanently chilled, though, for even when I'd closed
the window the air was icy cold, and I had to wrap my dressing gown about me
while I made ready for bed. Then—" she stopped with an involuntary
shudder.
"Yes? Then?"
His eyes narrowed as he looked at her and his lean white fingers tapped a
devil's tattoo on his chair arm.
"Then the first strange thing happened.
As I was slipping my gown off I distinctly felt a hand grasp me about the upper
arm—a long, thin, deathly cold hand!" She looked up defiantly, as though
expecting some skeptical protest, but:
She
looked at him in wonder. "You believe me—believe I actually felt
something grasp my arm?" she asked incredulously.
"Have
you not said so, Mademoiselle?" he returned a trifle irritably.
"Proceed, if you please."
"But every
other doctor I've talked to
has told
me I
didn't—couldn't have actually felt such a thing," she persisted.
"Mademoiselle!" annoyance
cut through
his habitual
courtesy. "We waste time in
bickering. We are discussing you and
your case, not the other
doctors or their methods. Now, you
were saying—"
"That I felt
a long,
cold hand grasp me a"bout
the arm, and a moment later,
before I had a chance
to scream or even shrink away,
something began scratching my skin. It
was like
a long
blunt fingernail—a human nail, not
the claw
of an
animal, you understand. But it
had considerable
force behind it, and I could
see the
skin turn white in its
wake. Dr. de Grandin"—she
leant forward, staring with wide,
frightened eyes into his
face—"the welts formed let-tersT
"U'm?" he
nodded unexcitedly. "Do you recall
what they spelled?"
"They didn't
spell anything. It was like
the ram-blings
of a ouija
board when the little table
seems wandering from letter
to letter
without purpose. I made out a
crude D, and a smaller
r, then
an a and finally a c and u. That was all. You see, it
wasn't a word at all."
De Grandin
was sitting
on the
extreme forward edge of his chair,
his hands
grasping its arms as if
he were about to leap from
his seat.
"Dracu," he repeated
softly, then, still lower, "Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu! It is
entirely possible, but why?"
"Why, what
was it?"
the girl
demanded, his tense attitude reflected in
her widened
eyes and apprehensive expression.
He shook himself
like a spaniel emerging from
the water. "Nothing, really, Mademoiselle.
I thought
at first I recognized a name, but I must be mistaken.
You are sure there
were no other letters?"
"Positive. Just those five, no
more."
"Quite yes; and
after that?"
"All sorts
of dreadful
things began to happen. Fa-52
ther has
told you how chairs and tables rise up when I come near them, and how little
objects fly through the air?"
"But
of course. And I myself saw one small thing fly through the air—entirely too
close for my complete comfort. And these strange sleeps you have?"
"They
come on almost any time; mostly when I'm least expecting them. One time I was
seized while on the train from New York, and—" her face blushed coral at
the recollection—"and the conductor thought I was drunk!"
"BSter de Grandin murmured. "And
you have not heard the voices—the noises which sometime accompany you,
Mademoiselle?"
"No, I've been told about them, but I
know nothing of what happens while Tm in one of these seizures. I don't even
dream; at least, I have no dreams I can remember when I wake up. I only know
that I am apt to fall asleep at any time, and that I sometimes wander about
while unconscious, waking up in some totally different place. Once I walked half-way to the city while asleep, and narrowly
escaped being run down by a taxi when I came to in the middle of the
street."
"But this is villainous!" he burst
out. "This is infamous; this must not be permitted. Morbleu, I shall not permit it, me!"
Something
of the girl's weary manner returned as she asked, "How are you going to
stop it? The others all said-"
"Chut! Those others! We shall not discuss them, Mademoiselle. Me, I am not as
the others; I am Jules de Grandin!
"First, my friend," he turned to
me, "I would that you engage the service of a nurse, one whose discretion
is matched by her ability. You know one such? Trds bien. Rush, hasten, fly to procure her at once. Bid
her come with all celerity, and be prepared to serve until relieved.
"Next,"
he scribbled a prescription on a pad, "T would that Monsieur le Capitaine has this filled and administers a dose
dissolved in hot water at once. It is Somnol, a harmless mixture of drugs,
pleasant to the taste and of undoubted efficacy in this case. It will act
better than chloral."
"But
I don't want to take chloral," the girl protested. "I have enough
trouble with sleep as it is."
"Mademoiselle,"
there was something like a twinkle in his eyes as he replied, "have you
never heard of combatting the devil with flames? Take the medicine as directed.
Dr. Trowbridge and I shall return soon; we shall not rest until we have
produced a cure, do not doubt it."
"This
is the strangest case I ever saw," I confided as we drove toward town.
"That girl's symptoms all point to hysteria of the most violent sort, but
I'm hanged if I can account for those diabolical noises that accompanied her
down the stairs, or the laugh we heard as she reached
the bottom—"
"Or
the bolo-knife that nearly split the head of Jules de Grandin?" he
supplied with a chuckle. "Do you recall the ancient medical theory
regarding icterus?
"Jaundice?"
"But of course."
"You
mean it used to be considered a disease rather than a symptom?"
"Precisely. One hundred, two hundred years ago the craft
knew the yellow color of the patient's skin was due to diffused bile in the
system, but what caused the diffusion? Ah, that was a question long left
unanswered. So it is with this poor girl's case. Me, I recognize her symptoms,
some of their cause is plain to me, but—ten thousand small red devils!—why? Why
should she be the object of this persecution? One does not raise her window in
the dead of winter to invite a nonexistent bird into her boudoir, only to fall
victim to such scurvy tricks as have plagued her since that night. No, mordieu, there is a reason for it, for that which tapped upon her pane being
abroad that night. The writing on her arm, too; that did not
come without cause!"
I
listened in amazement to his tirade, but one of his statements struck a
responsive chord in my memory. "You spoke of 'writing' on her arm," I
interposed. "When she described it I thought you seemed to recognize some
connection between the incomplete word and her symptoms. Is 'dakboo' a complete
word, or the beginning of one?"
"Dracu,"
he corrected with a grin.
"Yes, my friend, it is a word. It is Romanian for devil, or, more exactly,
demon. You begin to see the connection?"
"No, I'm hanged if I
do."
"So am I," he
admitted laconically.
Lulled into counterfeit rest by the drug de
Grandin had prescribed, Julia Loudon passed the night
comfortably enough, and seemed brighter and happier when we called next
morning.
"Mademoiselle," he announced when
the customary medical mummery of taking temperature and pulse had been
completed, "the day is fine. I prescribe that you go for a drive this
morning, indeed, I strongly advise that you accompany
Dr. Trowbridge and me forthwith. He has a number of calls to make, and I would
observe the effect of fresh air on you. One suspects
that you have had but little of it lately."
"I
haven't," she confessed. "You see, since the time I wandered off in
my sleep, Tve been afraid to go anywhere by myself, and I've even shrunk from going
out with Father or Rob—Lieutenant Proudfit. I was so afraid of embarrassing
them by one of my seizures. But 111 be all
right with you and Dr. Trowbridge, I know." She smiled wistfully at him.
"Of
a surety," he agreed, twisting the ends of his small mustache.
She
turned to mount the stairs, a suggestion of freedom and returning health in the
spring of her walk, and de Grandin faced her father with a puzzled frown.
"Your daughter's case is simpler than I had supposed," he announced.
"I have so long been used to encountering what unthinking persons call the
supernatural that I fear I have become what you Americans call "hypped'
on the subject. Now, when first Mademoiselle Julie detailed her experiences to
me I was led to the certain conclusions which, happily, have not seemed
justified by what we have since observed. Medicine is helpful in most cases of
the kind, but I had feared—"
A
perfect pandemonium of cacophonous dissonances, like the braying of a dozen
jazz bands suddenly gone crazy, interrupted him. Clattering tin-cans, jangling
cowbells, the wailings of tortured fiddles and discordant shrieks of woodwind
instruments seemed mingled with shouts of wild, demoniac laughter as a bizarre
figure appeared on the stairs and half leaped, half fell into the hall.
For
an instant I failed to recognize patrician Julia Loudon in the grotesque thing.
Her luxuriant black hair had escaped from the Crecian coronal in which she wore
it and hung fantastically about her breast and shoulders, half-veiling,
half-disclosing a face from which every vestige of serenity had disappeared and
on which a leer—no other word expresses it—of mingled craft and idiotic
stupidity sat like a toad enthroned on a fungus. She was bare-armed and barelegged;
indeed, the only garment covering her supple white body was a Spanish shawl
wound tightly about breast and torso, its fringed ends dragging on the floor as
she capered like a female satyr across the hall to the accompaniment of the
infernal noise.
"Ai,
ai, ai-eer she screeched raucously, bending this way and
that in time to the devilish racket. "Behold my
work, O foolish man; behold my mastery! Fool that you are to try to take mine
from me! Today I shall make of this woman a scandal and disgrace; tonight I
shall require her life. Ai, ai,
ai-eer
For
a fleeting instant de Grandin turned an appalled face to me, and I met his
flying glance with one no less surprised, for the voice issuing from the girl's
slender throat was not hers. Every shrilling syllable spoke of a different
individual, a personality instinct with evil vivacity as hers seemed instinct
with sweetness and melancholy.
"Cordieur
he exclaimed,
then halted as though frozen. From every side of the room, like flickering
beams of light, tiny bits of metal flew toward the girl's body, and in an
instant her arms, her legs, her throat and cheeks were encrusted with
glittering pins and needles buried point-deep in her creamy skin like the
torture implements driven into the bodies of pain-defying dervishes or the
fakirs of India. Almost it seemed as though she had become a powerful electro-magnet
to which every scrap of movable metal in the apartment had leaped.
For an instant she stood swaying there, the
cruel points embedded in her flesh, yet apparently feeling no pain, then a wild,
heartrending scream burst from her, and her eyes opened wide in sudden terror
and consternation. Instantly it was apparent she had regained consciousness,
realizing her position, her almost complete nudity and the biting, stinging
points of the countless needles all at once.
"Quick,
Friend Trowbridge!" called de Grandin as he sprang forward. "Do not
let her fall—those pins, they will surely impale her if she drops."
Even
as I seized the fainting girl in my arms the Frenchman was furiously garnering
the pins from her flesh, cursing fiercely and imaginatively in mingled French
and English as he worked.
"Parbleu, cordieu, by damn-it!" he panted, "this is
the devil's doing, surely. By damn, I shall have words with this execrable Dracu who sticks.pins in young ladies and throws knives at Jules de
Grandin!"
Following
him, I bore the swooning girl up the stairs, placed her on her bed and turned
furiously in search of the nurse. What could the woman have been thinking of to
let her patient leave her room in such a costume? "Miss Stanton!" I
called angrily. "Miss Stanton, where are you?"
A
muffled sound, half-way between a scream and groan, and a faint ineffectual
tap-tap on the door of the closet answered me. Snatching the door of the
clothes-press open, I found her lying on the floor, half smothered by fallen dresses,
her mouth gagged with a Turkish towel, wrists tied behind her and ankles lashed
together with knotted silk stockings.
"A-ah,
oh!" she gasped as I relieved her of her fetters and helped her to her
feet. "It took me, Dr. Trowbridge. I was helpless as a baby!"
De
Grandin looked up from his ministrations to Julia. "What took you,
Mademoiselle?" he asked, folding back the shawl from the girl's injured
limbs and deftly shoving her beneath bedclothes. "Was it Mademoiselle
Loudon?"
"No!" the nurse gasped, her hands
still trembling nervously. "Oh, no, not Miss Loudon, sir. It was—I don't know what. Miss Loudon came upstairs a
few moments ago and said you and Dr. Trowbridge were taking her motoring, and
she must change her clothes. She began removing her house dress, but kept
taking her garments off till she was—she was—" she hesitated a moment,
catching her breath in short, laboring gasps.
"Mordieu, yes!" de Grandin prompted. "We
waste time, Mademoiselle. Is it that she removed her clothes until she was completely
nude?"
"Yes, sir," the nurse returned.
"I was about to ask her if she needed to change all her clothes when she turned and looked at me, and her face was like the
face of a devil. Then something seemed to come down on me like a wet blanket.
No, not a blanket, either. It clung to me and bore me down, and smothered me
all at once, but it was transparent. I could feel it, but couldn't see it. It
was like a—like a terrible, great jelly-fish, sir. It was cold and slimy and
strong, strong as a hundred men. I tried to call out, and it oozed into my
mouth—choked me; ugh!" she shuddered at the recollection.
"Then
I must have fainted, for the next thing I knew everything was dark and Dr. Trowbridge was calling me, so I tried
to answer and kicked as hard as I could-"
"One understands," he nodded. T do
not wonder 58 that your nerves jump like the frightened rabbit, Mademoiselle.
You are nerveux.
Corbleu, are
we not all so? I shall damn say yes!"
"Attend me, Friend Trowbridge," he
ordered. "Do you remain with Mademoiselle Stanton and the patient. Watch her well, my old one. I think she will require
careful watching from now on."
"But
it is damnable, my friends." he pronounced a few minutes later as he,
Captain Loudon and I conferred in the lower hall. This cursed poltergeist, it has complete possession of poor
Mademoiselle Julie, and it has manifested itself to Mademoiselle Stanton as
well. If we but knew from whence it came, and why, we might be better able to
combat it, but as things are all, all is mystery. It comes, it wreaks havoc,
and it remains. Pains of a dyspeptic bullfrog, I am greatly annoyed, me!"
He strode across the rug, twisting first one, then the other end of his small
wheat-blond mustache till I thought he would surely drag the hairs from his
lips.
"If only we could—" he began,
stopping in his nervous walk beside a buhl cabinet that stood between two low
windows. "If only we could—ah? What—who is that, Monsieur le Capitaine, if you please?"
His slender, carefully manicured forefinger
pointed to an exquisite little miniature which stood in a gold easel-frame on the cabinet's top.
Looking
over his shoulder, I saw the picture of a young
girl, black-haired, oval-faced, purple-eyed, her red' lips showing on the
pallor of her face almost like a wound. There was a subtle something of difference—more
in expression than in feature—from the original, but I recognized the likeness
as a well executed portrait of Julia Loudon, though made, I imagined, several
years before. "Why," I exclaimed in astonishment at his query,
"can't you see it's Miss Loudon, de Grandin?^
Ignoring
my remark, he kept his fixed, unwinking stare on Captain Loudon. "This
lady, if you please, mon
capitaine, she
is who?"
Tt's a picture
of my niece, Julia's cousin," Captain Loudon answered shortly, then:
"Doesn't it occur to you that we might occupy our time better than with
such trifles—"
"Trifles, Monsieur!" de Grandin cut
in. "In cases such as this there are no trifles. All, all is of the importance.
Tell me of this young lady, if you please. She bears a close resemblance to
your daughter, yet a look is in her eyes which Mademoiselle Julie
does not have. I would know all about her, if you please."
"She
was my niece, Anna Wassilko," the captain returned. "That picture
was made in Bukharest before the war."
"Ah?" the little Frenchman stroked
his mustache gently, as if to make amends for the fierce pulling to which he
had subjected it a moment earlier. "You did say 'was', Monsieur. One takes
it that she is no more?" He cast a speculative glance at the portrait,
then: "And her name, so different from yours, yet her appearance so
similar to your daughter's. You will explain, perhaps?"
Captain
Loudon looked as if he would enjoy wringing the inquisitive little man's neck.
"My wife was a Romanian lady," he replied. "I met
her while stationed at our legation in Bukharest shortly before World War I. We
were married on the first of July, 1914, the same month that Francis Ferdinand
was assassinated at Sarajevo, and one week later her twin sister Zoe married
Lieutenant Leonidas Wassilko of the Imperial Russian Navy.
"I
was ordered back to this country when the war broke out, and my sister-in-law
and her husband went to Russia. They escaped from the Bolsheviks when the
Russian revolution broke out and came to this country, where their daughter
Anna was born the same day Julia was. The children were inseparable almost
from birth, and when Leonidas died of tuberculosis in 1919, and Zoe went with
the same disease two years later Anna came to live with us. She and Julia grew
up together, and attended the same convent school at Lakeland.
"When Robert—Lieutenant Proudfit—came
along and courted Julia, Anna seemed to take it as a sort of personal affront.
Seems she had some sort of fool idea she and Julia were more than cousins, and
ought to remain celibate to devote their lives to each other. To tell the
truth, though, I've an idea she was more than a little taken with Proudfit
herself, and when he showed a preference for Julia—well, it didn't please her
any too much."
"Ah?"
a trace of the heat-lightning flashed that betokened excitement showed in de
Grandin's .eyes. "And she is now where, if you please?"
"She—died, poor
child."
"She committed suicide?" the
Frenchman's words were so low we could scarcely hear them. "I didn't say
so."
"Pardonnez-moi,
Monsieur le Capitaine, you
did not say otherwise, and the pause before you mentioned her death, surely,
that was something more than a tribute of momentary regret?"
"Humph!
Yes, you're right. She drowned herself about six months ago."
"Six
months, you say! Six months ago she drowned herself; how long ago was the
engagement of your daughter to Lieutenant Proudfit announced?"
"About the same time. Just a few days before—but look—see here—" De Grandin grinned
mirthlessly at him. "I look there, mon capitaine, and I see there. Parbleu, I see far past there! Six months, six months,
everything it dates from six months of yore! The death of Mademoiselle Anna,
the engagement of Mademoiselle Julie, the tapping at her window, the start of
all these so strange signs and wonders—all are six months old. My friend, it is
that I begin to see the light." Turning on his heel he mounted the stairs,
beckoning to me as he went.
"Mademoiselle—Mademoiselle Julie!"
he burst into the girl's room with hardly a perceptible pause between his
knock and the nurse's summons to enter. "You have not told me all,
Mademoiselle; no, nor near all. This Mademoiselle Anna, who was she, and what relation was there between you and her? Of haste; speak quickly; it is of the great
importance!"
"Why,"
Miss Loudon looked at him with startled eyes, "she was my cousin."
"But
certainly, that much I know. What I desire to learn is if there was some close
bond between you, some secret understanding?"
The girl regarded him fixedly a moment, then
in a whisper so low we could hardly hear, 'Tes, sir; there was," she answered. "Anna loved me; not as a cousin
or even as a sister, but more like a possessive mother, or perhaps as if she'd
been a man instead of another girl. She said she couldn't bear the thought of
my 'deserting' her by marrying anyone, and threatened to kill herself the day I
married Robert. I tried to laugh her but of the idea, and one day told her, If
you commit suicide so will I, and then there'll be two of us dead and nobody
any the happier.' "
The Frenchman eyed her steadily. "And
then?"
"She
gave me one of those queer, long looks of hers and her eyes filled with tears
as she replied, 'Maybe m hold you to that promise, cousin. Jizn kopyeka— life is a kopeck—it may be we shall spend it
together, you and 1.' That was all she said at the time, but two months later,
just after Robert and I announced our engagement, I found a note from her on my
dresser one evening. It said, 7 have gone to spend my kopeck. Remember your promise and do likewise.'
"Next morning—"
"Yes, Mademoiselle, next morning?" "Next morning they took her from the
Bay-drowned."
"A-a-a-ah!" He let the hissing syllable out through his
teeth slowly. "I think at last I understand, Mademoiselle."
"You mean—"
"Parbleu,
I mean nothing less. Tonight,
she said? Very well, then. Tonight it shall be. We
shall see what we shall see. Yes, certainly."
"Stay here, Friend Trowbridge, if you
please," he ordered. "I go to get matériel for battle."
Darkness
had fallen when he returned, a small black bag beneath one arm and an
expression of unbridled excitement on his face. "Any change in the patient?"
he asked. "Any further visitations from the accursed poltergeist?*
"No,"
I reported, "everything's been singularly quiet this afternoon."
"So?
I fear that means that we shall have the harder fight tonight."
He
tiptoed to the sickroom, entered quietly and took a seat beside the bed. "Regardez-vous, Mademoiselle Julie!" he ordered as he
opened his satchel and drew out an odd-looking contrivance. "He is a novelty which I obtained today at the magasin de joujoux, the—what you call him?—toy-shop." The
thing was something like the rotary toy fans which consist of three twisted
blades like reversed propeller wings and which whirl by the pressure of the
thumb against a trigger fitted in the handle. But instead of blades of colored
celluloid it had three brightly nickeled arms which shone like quicksilver in
the lamplight.
"Observe
him, if you please," he ordered again, and signaled me to turn the ceiling
light full-on.
Julia's
languid gaze fixed on the whirling mirrors, and he speeded up their motion with
increasing pressure on the rotator. "Regardez, s'il vous plaitr he commanded in a tense whisper.
The
three bright blades of metal seemed to merge into a single disc, and from their
flying tips a rain of tiny rays of brilliant light seemed to be splashing, like
water thrown from a revolving paddle wheel. The girl looked at the whirling
mirrors for a moment without interest, then gradually her gaze became fixed,
and a tense look, like that of one bracing himself
for a long jump, froze upon her features.
She moaned a little, as in pain, and he leant
forward, almost glaring at her in the excess of his earnestness. "Do not
heed them^ Mademoiselle!" he whispered. "Pay them no attention. Hear
no orders save the ones I give you!"
The fixed expression faded slowly from her
face, her tense, drawn mouth relaxed, her eyelids fluttered for a moment, then drooped sleepily. "Bien" he murmured. "Trds bien." The whirling nickel-plated mirrors cut the air with a soft whirring
sound, and in a moment this was seconded by her low, regular breathing.
"What
in the world—" I began, but he waved me into silence.
"Another
time, my friend," he promised in a low voice. "We must not talk at
present; there is too much at stake."
All
night he sat beside the bed, raising his whirling mirrors and commanding sleep
in tones of suppressed fury each time the girl stirred on her pillow. Then, as*
the first faint streaks of dawn began to lighten the sky: "The time has
come," he told me, opening his bag again and producing—of all things!—a
hyssop of mistletoe bough.
Around
the room he hurried, waving his small brush of mistletoe for all
the world like a country woman fanning flies from the house in
summertime. "Anna Wassilko, Anna Wassilko, who has wandered beyond the
bounds of the tomb," he ordered as he waved his little brush-broom,
"I command you to return from whence you came. To Death you have said,
Thou art my lord and my master,' and to the grave, 'Thou art my lover and my
betrothed.' Your business with this world is done, Anna Wassilko; get you to
the world you chose for a dwelling-place when you cast yourself into the
sea!"
Near the window, where the dimming lamplight
mingled with the beams of the coming day, he halted and repeated his command,
waving his brush toward the ocean surging on the beach a quarter-mile away.
Something
seemed to rustle past him, a thing invisible, yet with substance enough to
stir the scrim curtains trailing in the still air, and for an instant I
thought I caught the faint penumbra of a shadow cast against the wall. A
monstrous thing it was, large as a lion, yet like nothing I had ever seen or
imagined, for it seemed to partake of the shape of both bat and fox, with long,
pointed snout, claw-armed forepaws and great, spike-edged wings extending from
its shoulders.
"Get
you gone, unfortunate one," he cried, striking at the shadow with his
sprigs of mistletoe. "Poor soul who would collect the wager of a
thoughtless promise, hie you back to your own place and leave the ordering of
other lives to God."
The
dreadful shadow rested on the wall another fraction of a second, then, like
smoke borne away on a rising breeze, was gone.
"Gonel"
he murmured softly as he closed the window and shut off the lights. "Call
the nurse, if you will be so land, Friend Trowbridge. Her duties will be
simpler hereafter. A little medicine, a little tonic and much rest are all that
Mademoiselle Julie requires—and Monsieur Robert, of course," he added as
a smiling afterthought.
We tiptoed into the hall, roused the sleeping
nurse and turned the patient over to her care.
"And now that other time you spoke of
last night has come, I suppose?" I asked as we drove home. "You were
close-mouthed enough about it all the while it was happening. Will you explain,
or must I choke it out of you?"
"Most certainly," he agreed in high
good humor, lighting a cigarette and inhaling with gusty content. "It—like
everything else—was entirely simple, once I knew the answer.
"To begin: when Captain Loudon first explained
his daughters case it seemed like hysteria to me, the
sort of thing that any capable physician could handle. *Why, then,' I ask me,
'does he seek the services of Jules de Grandin? I am not a great physician.' I
had no answer, and at first I declined the case, as you know.
"But when we hear the other phases of
the case I take an interest, and when we hear those noises which accompany
Mademoiselle Julie I am of another mind. When the Whatever-It-Is throws a knife
at me
I am
of still a third mind. 'Pardieu,'
I tell me when I dodge that
knife, 'it is the challenge! Shall Jules de Grandin flee from such a contest? Sacr6 don dun chou-fleur, nonY I answer me.
"Across
the Rhine in that dark country which has spewed war on the world twice in one
generation they have some words that are most truly expressive. Among them is poltergeist, which signifies a ghost that pelts—that
flings things round the house—and plays the stupid childish tricks, although it
can be vicious, too. Quite often he is not a ghost at all, that is, he is not
truly ghostly in the sense that he has once inhabited a human form, but is some
evil entity which plagues a man, or more often a woman. It was not for nothing,
my friend, that the ancient ones referred to Satan as
Prince of the Powers of the Air, for there are many evil things in the air
which we can no more see than we can behold the germs of disease. Yes." He
nodded solemn affirmation.
When
Mademoiselle Julie told us of the mark that came upon her arm I recognized the
Romanian word for demon, and I think some more. And when she tells us of the
bird or bat that fluttered at her window, yet was not there, I recognize some
things in common with other cases I have observed.
"Foolish people sometimes say, 'Come
in,* when they think the wind has blown the door ajar. It is not well to do so.
Who knows what lurks outside, needing only the spoken invitation to enter?
Attend me, my friend: very rarely can the evil ones come in unless they are
first invited; very rarely can they be gotten out once they have been bidden to
enter. So all these things fit together in my mind, and I say to me, 'Jules de Grandin, we have here a poltergeist. But yes.*
"But why should a poltergeist attach his evil self to Mademoiselle Julie?
True, she are very pretty, but there are other pretty
women of whom the poltergeis-ten
do not seek shelter.
"Then,
when the demon tells us he holds her in his power and makes her dance almost
nude in her father's house and sticks pins in her, I hear something else. I
hear him promise to kill her.
"For why? I wonder. What have she done that she must die?"
"Then
I see the picture of Anna Wassilko. Very like poor Julie she was, yet a certain
subtle something in her face makes me know she was not the same. And what does Monsieur le Capitaine tell us when I ask about her? Ah, now we see
a little so small gleam of light among the shadows of this case. She was partially
Romanian, part Russian. Quel
milangel She have gone to school with Mademoiselle Julie, she have lived
here in the same house, she have loved the same man. Trds bien. She have committed suicide. Tant mieux. Now I need only a little reassuring as to the reason—the result I
already know.
"But
when Julie tells us of her cousin's fierce, possessive love for her, of her
jealousy of her fiance, of her threats of suicide, and her own unthinking
promise—grand
Dieu des procs, the
picture takes another shape, the horse assumes another colorl
"The
demon which made Julie do all kinds of things she knew
not of had promised to take her life. How to circumvent her? That was the
question. I think. 'This young woman goes off into trances, and does all manner
of queer things without knowing them,' I remind me. *Would she not do much the
same in hypnosis?* Assuredly.
"Very well. I procure a set of whirling mirrors, not because of any magic in them,
but because they are an easy thing on which to focus the subject's attention.
I use them, hypnotizing Julie before the poltergeist has
a chance to conquer her consciousness. Hypnotism, when all is said and done,
is the rendering of a subject's objective mind passive while that of the
operator is substituted for it. The poltergeist, which
was really the revenante
of Anna, had substituted her mind for Julie's on former occasions. Now I get there first, and place
my mind in her brain. There is no room for another, and Julie cannot take
suggestions or brainhints from the ghost and destroy herself, for
Jules
de Grandin is already in possession of her brain-house, and have
hung out a no trespassing sign. Yes, of course."
"But what was all that monkey-business
with the mistletoe?" I asked.
"Tiens, my friend, do you perhaps remember what the
mistletoe stands for at Noel?"
"You mean a lass?"
"What else? It is the plant held sacred
to lovers in this day, but in the elder times it was the holy bush of the
Druids. With it they cast many spells, and with it they cast out many
evil-workers. Not by mistake is it the lovers' tree today, for it is a powerful
charm against evil and will assuredly lay the unhappy ghost of one who dies
because of unfortunate love. VoilA—you catch the connection?"
"I never heard that before—" I
began, but his chuckle interrupted me.
"Ma
foi, Friend Trowbridge,
there is much of which you never heard, yet all of it is true, none the
less!"
"And
that hideous shadow?
He
sobered instantly. "Oh, Trowbridge, my friend, who can
say? She was beautiful, that Mademoiselle Anna, but she was the slave of
dark passions, and dominated by a strange, forbidden love like that of the
women of ancient Lesbos. Also she went forth from the world uncalled and in an
evil way. Who knows what shape she has been doomed to wear in the next world;
who knows but that the shadow which affrighted you is but the silhouette of the
misshapen soul that once inhabited her lovely body? The less we think upon
that subject the better we shall sleep hereafter.
"Come, we are arrived at your house. Let
us drink one glass of brandy for luck's sake, and then to sleep. Mordieu, me, I feel as if I had been stranger to my
bed since my fifth birthday!"
The House of Golden Masks
"An*
so, Dr. de Grandin, sor," Detective Sergeant Cos-tello concluded with a
pitying sidelong glance at his companion, "if there's annything ye can do
for th' pore lad, 'tis meself that'll be grateful to
ye for doin it. Faith, if sumpin like this had happened to me whilst I was
a-courtin' Maggie, I'd 'a' been a dead corpse from worry in less time than this
pore felley*s been sufferin'.
"Th'
chief won't raise his hand in th' matter wid th'
coroner's verdict starin' us in th' face, an' much as Yd like to do sumpin for th' boy, me hands is tied tighter'n th' neck of a
sack. But with you, now, 'tis a different matter entirely.
Meself, Ym inclined to agree with th' chief an' think
th' pore gur-ri's dead as a herring, but if there's sumpin in th' case th' rest
of us can't see, sure, 'tis Dr. Jools de Grandin can spot it quicker than a
hungry tom-cat smells a rat!"
Jules
de Grandin turned his quick, birdlike glance from the big, redheaded Irishman
to the slender, white-faced young man seated beside him. "What makes you
assume your beloved survives, Monsieur?' he
asked. "If the jury of the coroner returned a verdict
of suicide—"
"But, I tell you, sir, the jury didn't
know what they were talking aboutr
Young Everett Wilberding rose from his chair
and faced the little Frenchman, his knuckles showing white with the intensity
of his grip on the table edge. "My Ewell didn't commit suicide. She didn't kill herself, neither did Mazie. You must believe that, sir!"
Resuming his seat, he fought back to
comparative 69
calm as he laced his fingers together nervously.
"Last Thursday night Ewell and I were going to a dance out at the country
club. My friend, Bill Stimpson, was to take Mazie, Ewell's twin sister. The
girls had been out visiting an aunt and uncle at Reynoldstown, and were to meet
us at Monmouth Junction, then drive out to the club in Ewell's flivver.
"The
girls took their party clothes out to Reynolds-town with them, and were to
dress before leaving to meet us. They were due at the Junction at 9 o'clock,
but Ewell was hardly ever on time, so I thought nothing of it when they failed
to show up at half-past. But when 10 o'clock came, with no sign of the girls,
we began to think they must have had a blow-out or engine trouble. At
half-past 10 I went to the drug store and 'phoned the girls' uncle at
Reynoldstown, only to be told they had left at a quarter past 8—in plenty of
time to reach the Junction by 9, even if they had bad going. When I heard that
I began to worry sure enough. By 11 o'clock I was fit to be tied.
"Bill
was getting worried, too, but thought that one of 'em might have been taken ill
and that they'd rushed right to Harrisonville without coming through the
Junction, so we 'phoned their house here. Their folks didn't know any more than
we did.
"We caught the next bus to Harrisonville,
and went right up to the Eatons'. When nothing was heard of the girls by 4 the
next morning, Mr. Eaton notified the police."
"U'm?" de Crandin nodded slowly. "Proceed, if you please, young Monsieur."
"The searching parties didn't find a
trace of the
girls till next day about noon," young Wilberding an-
swered; "then a State Trooper came on Ewell's Ford
smashed almost out of shape against a tree half a mile
or more from the river, but no sign of blood any-
where around. A little later a couple of hunters found
Ewell's party dress, stockings and slippers on the
rocks above Sham in ee Falls. Mazie------- "
"They found th' pore child's body up agin th* grilles 70 leadin' to th'
turbine intakes o' Pierce's Mills next day, sor," Costello put in softly.
*Tes,
they did," Wilberding agreed, "and Mazie was wearing her dance frock—what was left of it. Why
didn't Ewell jump in the falls with hers on, too, if Mazie did? But Mazie didritr
Sergeant
Costello shook his head sadly. "Th' coroner's jury—" he began, as
though reasoning with a stubborn child, but the boy interrupted angrily:
"Oh, damn the coroner's jury! See here,
sir"—he turned to de Crandin as if for confirmation—"you're a
physician and know all about such things. What d'ye say
to this? Mazie's body was washed through the rapids above Shaminee Falls and
was terribly mauled against the rocks as it came down, so badly disfigured that
only the remnants of her clothes made identification possible. No one could
say definitely whether she'd been wounded before she went into the water or
not; but she
wasn't drownedT
"Eh, what is it you say?" de
Grandin straightened in his chair, his level, unwinking stare boring into the young
man's troubled eyes. "Continue, if you please, Monsieur; I am
interested."
"I mean just what I say," the other
returned. "They didn't find a half-teacupful of water in her lungs at the
autopsy; besides, this is March, and the water's almost ice-cold—yet they found
her floating next morning; if—"
"Barhe
dun chauve canard, yes!"
de Grandin exclaimed. "T« paries,
mon gargon! In
temperature such as this it would be days—weeks, perhaps—before putrefaction
had advanced enough to form sufficient gas to force the body to the surface.
But of course, it was the air in her lungs which buoyed her up. Morbleu, I think you have right, my friend;
undoubtlessly the poor one was dead before she touched the water!"
"Aw,
Doc, ye don't mean to say you're fallin'
for that theory?" Costello protested. "It's true she mightn't 'a'
been drowned, but th* coroner said death was due to
shock induced by—"
De Grandin waved him aside impatiently,
keeping 71 his gaze fixed intently on Everett. "Do you know any reason she
might have had for self-destruction, man vieuxf** he
demanded.
"No, sir—none whatever. She and Bill were secretly married at
Hacketstown last Christmas Eve. They'd been keeping it dark till Bill got his
promotion—it came through last week, and they were going to tell the world last
Sunday. You see, they couldn't have concealed it much longer."
"Ah?"
de Grandin's narrow brows elevated slightly. "And they were happy
together?"
"Yes, sir! You never saw a spoonier couple in your life. Can you imagine—"
"Tiens,
my friend," the
Frenchman interrupted with one of his quick, elfish grins, "you would be
surprized at that which I can imagine. Howeverly, let
us consider facts, not imaginings." Rising, he began pacing the floor,
ticking off his data on his fingers as he marched. "Let us make a precis:
"Here we have two young women, one in
love, though married—the other in love and affianced. They fail to keep an
appointment; it is not till the day following that their car is discovered,
and it is found in such position as to indicate a wreck, yet nowhere near it is
sign of injury to its passengers. Alors, what
do we find? The frock of one of the young ladies, neatly folded beside her
shoes and stockings upon a rock near the Shaminee Falls. In the river, some
miles below, next day is found the floating corpse of the other girl—and the
circumstances point conclusively that she did not drown. What now? The mishap
to the car occurred a half-mile from the river, yet
the young women were able to walk to the stream where one of them cast herself
in fully clothed; the other is supposed to have disrobed before immersing
herself.
"Non, non, my friends, the facts, they do not make sense. Women kill themselves for
good reasons, for bad reasons, and for no reasons at all, but they do it characteristically.
Me, I have seen ropes wherewith despondent females have strangled themselves,
and they have wrapped silken scarves about the rough hemp that it might not
bruise their tender necks. Tiens, would
a delicately nurtured girl strip herself to the rude March winds before
plunging into the water? I think not."
"So
do I," rumbled Costello's heavy voice in agreement Th' way you put it Dr.
de Grandin, sor, makes th* case crazier than ever.
Faith, there's no sense to it from beginnin' to end. I think we'd better be
callin' it a day
an' acceptin' th' coroner*s decision."
"Ztttr
de Grandin returned with a
smile. "Are you then so poor a poker player, mon sergent? Have you not learned the game is never over
until the play is done? Me, I shall give this matter my personal attention. I
am interested, I am fascinated, I am intrigued.
"To
your home, Monsieur Wilberding " he ordered.
"When I have some word for you, you will hear from me. Meantime do not
despair."
"Trowbridge,
mon deux" de Grandin greeted next morning when I joined
him in the dining-room, "I am perplexed; but yes, I am greatly puzzled; I
am mystified. Something has occurred since last night which may put a
different face upon all. Consider, if you please:' Half
an hour ago I received a telephone call from the good Costello. He tells me
three more young women have disappeared in a manner so similar to that of
Monsieur Wilberding*s sweetheart as to make it more than mere coincident At the
residence of one Monsieur Mason, who resides in West Fells, there was held a
meeting of the sorority to which his daughter belongs. Many young women
attended. Three, Mesdemoiselles Weaver, Damroche and Horn-bury, drove out in
the car of Mademoiselle Weaver. They left the Mason house sometime after
midnight At 6 o'clock
this morning they had not returned home. Their alarmed parents notified the
police, and"—he paused in his restless pacing, halting directly before me
as he continued—"a state dragoon discovered the motor in which they rode
lying on its side, mired in the swamps beside the Albemarle Road, but of the
young women no trace could be found. Figure to yourself, my friend. What do you
make of it?"
"Why—"
I began, but the shrill stutter of the office 'phone cut my reply in two.
"Alio?"
de Grandin called into the
transmitter. "Yes, Sergeant, it is I—grand Diable!
Another? You do not tell me sol"
To me he almost shouted as he slammed the receiver
back into its hook: "Do you hear, my friend? It is anotherl Sarah
Thompford, an employee of Braun-stein frères'
department store, left her
work at half-past 5 last evening, and has been seen no more. But her hat and
cloak were found upon the piers at the waterfront ten little minutes ago. Norn dun chou-fleur, I am vexed! These disappearances are becoming
epidemic. Either the young women of this city have developed a sudden mania for
doing away with themselves or some evil person attempts to make a monkey of
Jules de Grandin. In either case, my friend, I am aroused. Mordieu, we shall see who shall laugh in whose face
before this business of the fool is concluded!"
"What are you going to do?" I
asked, striving to keep a straight face.
"Do?"
he echoed. "Do? Parbleu,
I shall investigate, I
shall examine every clue, I shall leave no stone unturned, but"—he
sobered into sudden practicality as Nora McGinnis, my household factotum,
entered the dining-room with a tray of golden-brown waffles— "first I
shall eat breakfast. One can accomplish little on an empty stomach."
A
widespread, though fortunately mild, epidemic of influenza kept me busy in
office and on my rounds all day. Rainy, fog-bound darkness was approaching as I
turned toward home and dinner with a profound sigh of thankfulness that the
day's work was done, only to encounter fresh disappointment.
"Trowbridge,
Trowbridge, mon
vieux," an
excited voice hailed as I was waiting for the crosstown traffic lights to
change and let me pursue my homeward way, "draw to the curb; come with
me—I have important matters to communicate!" Swathed from knees to neck
in a waterproof leather jacket, his Homburg hat pulled rakishly down over his
right eye and a cigarette glowing between his lips, Jules de Grandin stood at
the curb, his little blue eyes dancing with excited elation.
"Name of a little blue man!" he
swore delightedly as I parked my motor and joined him on the sidewalk;
"it is a fortunate chance, this meeting; I was about to telephone the
office in hopes you had returned. Attend me, my friend,
I have twisted my hand in the tail of something of importance!"
Seizing
my elbow with a proprietary grip, he guided me toward the illuminated entrance
of a cafe" noted for the excellence of its food and its contempt of the
XVIIIth Amendment, chuckling with suppressed delight at every step.
"The
young Monsieur Wilberding was un-doubtlessly right in his surmises," he
confided as we found places at one of the small tables and he gave an order to
the waiter. "Parbleu,
what he lacked in
opportunity of observation he made up by the prescience of affection," he
continued, "for there can be no doubt that Madame Mazie was the victim of
murder. Regardez-vous:
At the police laboratories,
kindly placed at my disposal through the offices of the excellent Sergeant
Costello, I examined the tattered remnants of the frock they took from the
poor girl's body when they fished her from the river, and I did discover what
the coroner, cocksure of his suicide theory, had completely overlooked—a small,
so tiny stain. Hardly darker than the original pink of the fabric it was, but
sufficient to rouse my suspicions. Alors, I
proceeded to shred the chiffon and make the benzidine test. You know it? No?
"Very good. A few threads from the stained area of the dress I placed upon a piece
of white filter paper; thereafter I compounded a ten per cent solution of
benzidine in glacial acetic acid and mixed one part of this with ten parts of
hydrogen peroxide. Next, with a pipette I proceeded to apply one little, so
tiny drop of the solution to the threads of silk, and behold! a faint blue color manifested itself in the stained silken
threads and spread out on the white filter paper. Voila, that the stain of my suspicion had been caused by blood was no longer to
be doubted!"
"But
mightn't this bloodstain have been caused by an injury to Mazie's body as it
washed over the fallsr^ I objected.
"Ah
hah" he
returned. "You
ask that, Friend Trowbridge?
Pardieu, I had looked for better sense in your head.
Consider the facts: Should you cut your finger, then immediately submerge it in
a basin of water, would any trace of blood adhere to it? But
no. Conversely, should you incise the skin and permit even one little
drop of blood to gather at the wound and to dry there to any extent, the
subsequent immersion of the finger in water would not suffice to remove the
partly clotted blood altogether. Is it not so?
"Trds
hon. Had a sharp stone cut
poor Madame Mazie, it would undoubtlessly have done so after she was dead, in
which case there would have been no resultant hemorrhage; but even if a wound
had been inflicted while she lived, bethink you of her position—in the rushing
water, whirled round and round and over and over, any blood which flowed would
instantly have been washed away, leaving no slightest stain on her dress. Non, my friend there is but one explanation, and I have found it. Her gown
was stained by blood before she was cast into the river. Recall: Did not poor
young Monsieur Wilberding inform us the car in which she rode was found a
half-mile or more from the river? But certainly.
Suppose, then, these girls were waylaid at or near the spot where their car was
found, and one or both were done to death. Suppose, again, Madame Mazie's
life-blood flowed from her wound and stained her dress while she was in transit
toward the river. In that case her dress would have been so stained that even
though the foul miscreants who slew her cast her poor, broken body into the
water, there would remain stains for Jules de Grandin to find today. Yes, it is
so.
"But
wait, my friend, there is more to come. Me, I have been most busy this day. I
have run up and down and hither and yon like Satan seeking for lost souls. Out
on the Albemarle Road, where the unfortunate Mademoiselle Weaver's car was
discovered this morning, I repaired when I had completed my researches in the
city. Many feet had trampled the earth into the semblance of a pig-coop's floor
before I arrived, but grdce
a Dieu, there
still remained that which confirmed my worst suspicions.
"Finding
nothing near the spot where the mired car lay, I examined the earth on the
other side of the road. There I discovered that which made my hair to rise on
end. Pardieu, my friend, there is the business of the Fiend
himself being done herel
"Leading
from the road were three distinct sets of footprints—girl's footprints, made by
small, high-heeled shoes. Far apart they were, showing they had been made by
running feet, and all stopped abruptly at the same place.
"Back from the roadway, as you doubtless
remember, stands a line of trees. It was at these the foot-tracks halted, in
each instance ending in two little pointed depressions, set quite close
together. They were the marks of girls' slippers, my friend, and appeared to
have been made as the young women stood on tiptoe.
" *Now,' I ask me, why should three
young women leave the motor in which they ride, run from the road, halt on
their toes beneath these trees, and leave no footprints thereafter?'
"It seems they must have been driven
from the road like game in a European preserve at hunting-time, then seized by
those lying in wait for them among the tree-boughs as they passed beneath,' I
reply. 'And you are undoubflessly correct,' I answer me.
"Nevertheless,
to make my assurance sure, I examined all those trees and all the surrounding
land with great injury to my dignity and clothing, but my search was not
fruitless; for clinging to a tree-bough above one of the girls' toe-prints I
did find this." From his pocket he produced a tiny skein of light-brown
fiber and passed it across the table to me.
"U'm?" I
commented as I examined his find. "What is it?"
"Burlap," he returned. "You
look puzzled, my friend. So did I when first I found
it, but subsequent discoveries explained it—explained it all too well. As I
have said, there were no footprints to be found around the trees, save those
made by the fleeing girls, but, after much examination on my knees, I found
three strange trails leading toward the road, away from those trees. Most
carefully, with my nose fairly buried in the earth, I did examine those so
queer depressions in the moist ground. Too large for human feet they were, yet
not deep enough for an animal large enough to make them. At last I was rewarded
by finding a bit of cloth-weave pattern in one of them, and then I knew. They
were made by men whose feet had been wrapped in many thicknesses of burlap,
like the feet of choleric old gentlemen suffering from gout.
"Norn dun renard, but it was clever, almost clever enough to
fool Jules de Crandin, but not quite.
"Feet
so wrapped make no sound; they leave little or no track, and what track they do
leave is not easily recognized as of human origin by the average Western policeman;
furthermore, they leave no scent which may be followed by hounds. However, the
miscreants failed in one respect: They forgot Jules de Grandin has traveled the
world over on the trail of wickedness, and knows the ways of the East no less
than those of the West. In India I have seen such trails left by robbers;
today, in this so peaceful State of New Jersey, I recognized the spoor when I
saw it. Friend Trowbridge, we are upon the path of villains, assassins, apaches who steal women for profit. Yes"— he
nodded solemnly—"it is undoubtlessly so."
"But
how—" I began, when his suddenly upraised hand cut me short.
Seated in the next booth to that we occupied
was a pair of young men who had dined with greater liberality than wisdom. As
I started to speak they were joined by a third, scarcely more temperate, who began
descanting on the sensational features of a current burlesque show.
"Aw,
shut up, how d'ye get that way?" one of the youths demanded scornfully.
"Boy, till you've been where Harry and I were last night you ain't been nowhere and you ain't seen nothin'. Say, d'je ever see the chonkina?"
"Dieu de 'DieuT de Grandin murmured excitedly even as the
other young man replied:
"Chonkina? What
d'ye mean, chonkina?"
"You'd be surprized," his friend
assured him. "There's a place out in the country—mighty exclusive place,
too—where they'll let vou see something to write home about—if you're willing
to pay the price."
Tm
game," the other replied. "What say we go there tonight? If they can
show me something I never saw before, I'll blow the crowd to the best dinner in
town."
"You're on," his companions
accepted with a laugh, but!
"Quick, Friend Trowbridge," de
Grandin whispered, "do you go straightway to the
desk and settle our bill. I follow."
In a moment we stood before the cashier's
desk, and as I tendered the young woman a bill, the Frenchman suddenly reeled
as though in the last stages of drunkenness and began staggering across the
room toward the booth where the three sportively inclined youths sat. As he
drew abreast of them he gave a drunken lurch and half fell across their table,
regaining his balance with the greatest difficulty and pouring forth a flood of
profuse apologies.
A
few moments later he joined me on the street, all traces of intoxication
vanished, but feverish excitement shining in his small blue eyes.
"C'est
glorieuxr he
assured me with a chuckle. "Those three
empty-headed young rakes will lead us to our quarry, or I am more mistaken than
I think. In my pretended drunkenness, I fell among them and took time to
memorize their faces. Also, I heard them make a definite appointment for their
trip tonight. Trowbridge, my friend, we shall be there. Do you return home
with all speed, bring the pistols, the flashlight and the horn-handled knife
which you will find in my dressing-case, and meet me at police headquarters at
precisely a quarter of midnight. I should be glad to accompany you, but there
is a very great much for me to accomplish between now and then, and I fear
there will be little sleep for Jules de Gran-din this night. Allez, my friend, we have no time to waste!"
De
Grandin had evidently perfected his arrangements by the time I reached
headquarters; for a police car was waiting, and we drove in silence, with
dimmed lights, through the chill March rain to a lonely point not far from the
country club's golf links, where, at a signal from the little Frenchman, we
came to a halt.
"Now,
Friend Trowbridge," he admonished, "we must trust to our own heels,
for I have no desire to let our quarry know we approach. Softly, if you please,
and say anything you have to say m the lowest of whispers."
Quietly as an Indian stalking a deer he led
the way across the rolling turf of the links, pausing now and again to listen
attentively, at length bringing up under a clump of mournful weeping willows
bordering the Albemarle Road. "Here we rest till they arrive," he
announced softly, seating himself on the comparatively
dry ground beneath a tree and leaning his back against its trunk. "Name of
a name, but I should enjoy a cigarette; but"—he raised a shoulder in a resigned
shrug—"we must have the self-restraint, even as in the days when we faced
the sale boche in the trenches. Yes."
Time
passed slowly while we maintained our silent vigil, and I was on the point of
open rebellion when a warning ejaculation in my ear and the quick clasp of de
Grandin's hand on my elbow told me something was toward.
Looking through the branches of our shelter,
I beheld a long, black motor slipping noiselessly as a shadow down the road,
saw it come to a momentary halt beside a copse of laurels some twenty yards
away, saw three stealthy figures emerge from the bushes and parley a moment
with the chauffeur, then enter the tonneau.
"Ha,
they are cautious, these birds of evil," the Frenchman muttered as he
leaped from the shadows of the willows and raised an imperative hand
beckon-ingly.
It was with difficulty I repressed an
exclamation of surprise and dismay as a dozen shadowy figures emerged,
phantomlike, from the shrubbery bordering the highway.
"Are
you there, mon
lieutenant?" de
Grandin called, and I was relieved as an answering hail responded and I
realized we were surrounded by a cordon of State Troopers in command of a
young but exceedingly businesslike-looking lieutenant.
Motorcycles—two
of them equipped with sidecars-were wheeled from their covert in the bushes,
and in another moment we were proceeding swiftly and silently in the wake of
the vanishing limousine, de Grandin and I occupying the none too commodious
"bathtubs" attached to the troopers' cycles.
It
was a long chase our quarry led us and had our machines been less powerful and
less expertly managed we should have been distanced more than once, but the
automobile which can throw dust in the faces of the racing-cycles on which New
Jersey mounts its highway patrols has not been built, and we were within easy
hail of our game as they drew up before the gateway of a high-walled,
deserted-looking country estate.
"Now,
my lieutenant," de Grandin asked, "you thoroughly understand the
plans?"
"I think so, sir," the young
officer returned as he gathered his force about him with a wave of his hand.
Briefly,
as the Frenchman checked off our proposed campaign, the lieutenant outlined the
work to his men. "Surround the place," he ordered, "and lie low. Don't let anyone see you, and don't challenge
anyone going in, but—nobody comes out without permission. Get me?"
As the troopers assented,
he asked, "All set?"
There was a rattle of locks as the constables
swung their vicious little carbines up to " 'spection
arms," and each man felt the butt of the service revolver and the riot
stick swinging at his belt
"All
right, take cover. If you get a signal from the house, rush it. If no signal
comes, close in anyhow at the end of two hours. I've got a search warrant
here"—he patted his blouse pocket—"and we wont
stand any monkey business from the folks inside. Dr. de Grandin's going in to
reconnoiter; hell give the signal to charge with his flashlight, or by firing
his pistol when he's ready, but—"
"But
you will advance, even though my signal fails," de Grandin interrupted
grimly.
"Right-o,"
the other agreed. "Two hours from now—3 o'clock—is zero. Here, men,
compare your watches with mine; we don't want to go into action in ragged
formation."
Two husky young troopers bent their backs and
boosted de Grandin and me to the rim of the eight-foot brick wall surrounding
the grounds. La a moment we had dropped silently to the yard beyond and de
Grandin sent back a whispered signal.
Flattening
ourselves to the ground we proceeded on hands and knees toward the house,
taking advantage of every shrub and bush dotting the grounds, stealing forward
in little rushes, then pausing beneath some friendly evergreen to glance
cautiously about, listening for any sign or sound of activity from the big,
darkened house.
Tm
afraid you've brought us out on a fool's errand, old chap," I whispered.
"If we find anything more heinous than bootlegging here Til be surprised,
but—"
"S-sshr his hissing admonition silenced me. "To
the right, my friend, look to the right and tell me what it is you see."
Obediently, I glanced away from the house,
searching the deserted park for some sign of life. There, close to the ground,
shone a faint glimmer of light. The glow was stationary, for we watched it for
upward of ten minutes before the Frenchman ordered, "Let us investigate,
Friend Trowbridge. It may betoken something we should know."
Swerving our course toward the dim beacon, we
moved cautiously forward, and as we approached it I grew more and more puzzled.
The illumination appeared to rise from the ground, and, as we drew near, it
was intercepted for an instant by something which passed between it and us.
Again and yet again the glow was obscured with methodical regularity. For a
moment I thought it might be some signal system warning the inmates of the
house of our approach, but as we crawled still nearer my heart began to beat
more rapidly, for I realized the light shone from an old-fashioned oil lantern
standing on the ground and the momentary interruptions were due to shovelfuls
of earth being thrown up from a fairly deep excavation. Presently there was a
pause in the digging operations and two objects appeared above the surface
about three feet apart—the hands of a man in the act of stretching himself.
Assuming he were of average height, the trench in
which he stood would be some five feet deep, judging by the distance his hands
protruded above its lip.
Circling
warily about the workman and his work we were able to get a fairly clear view.
The hole was some two feet wide by six feet long, and, as I had already
estimated, something like five feet deep.
"What
sort of trench usually has those dimensions?" The question crashed through
my mind like an unexpected bolt of thunder, and the answer sent tiny ripples
of chills through my cheeks and up my arms.
De Grandin's thought had paralleled mine, for
he whispered, "It seems, Friend Trowbridge, that they prepare sepulture
for someone. For us, by example? Cordieu, if it be so, I can promise them we shall go
to it like kings of old, with more than one of them to bear us company in the
land of shadows!"
Our course
brought the grave-digger into view as we crept about him, and a fiercer, more
bloodthirsty scoundrel I had never before had the misfortune to encounter.
Taller than the average man by several inches he was, with enormously wide
shoulders and long, dangling arms like those of a gorilla. His face was almost
black, though plainly not that of a Negro, and his cheeks and chin were adorned
by a brisding black beard which glistened in the lantern light with some sort
of greasy dressing. Upon his head was a turban of tightly twisted woolen cloth.
"U'm?" de Grandin murmured quizzically. "A Pa-tan,
by the looks of him, Friend Trowbridge, and I think no more of him for it. In
upper India they have a saying, 'Trust a serpent or a tiger, but trust a Patan
never,' and the maxim is approved by centuries of unfortunate experience with
gentlemen like the one we see yonder.
"Come, let us
make haste for the house. It may be we shall arrive in time to cheat this
almost-finished grave of its intended tenant."
Wriggling
snakelike through the rain-drenched grounds, our progress rendered silent by
the soft turf, we made a wide detour round the dark-faced grave-digger and
approached the big, forbidding mansion through whose close-barred windows no
ray of light appeared.
The
place seemed in condition to defy a siege as we circled it warily, vainly
seeking some means of ingress. At length, when we were on the point of owning
defeat and rejoining the troopers, de Grandin came to a halt before an unbarred
window letting into a cellar. Unbuttoning his leather topcoat, he produced a
folded sheet of flypaper and applied the sticky stuff to the grimy windowpane,
smoothed it flat, then struck sharply with his elbow. The window shattered
beneath the impact, but the adhesive paper held the pieces firm, and there was
no telltale clatter of broken glass as the pane smashed. "One learns more
tricks than one when he associates with les apaches" he explained with a grin as he withdrew the flypaper and glass together,
laid them on the grass and inserted his hand through the opening, undoing the
window-catch. A moment later we had dropped to the cellar and de Grandin was
flashing his electric torch inquiringly about.
It was a sort of lumber room into which he
had dropped Bits of discarded furniture, an old rug or two and a pile of
miscellaneous junk occupied the place. The stout door at the farther end was
secured by an old-fashioned lock, and the first twist of de Grandin's skeleton
key sprung the bolt.
Beyond
lay a long, dusty corridor from which a number of doors opened, but from which
no stairway ascended. "U'm?" muttered the Frenchman. "There
seems no way of telling where the stairs lie save by looking for them, Friend
Trowbridge.'' Advancing at random, he inserted his key in the nearest lock and,
after a moment's tentative twisting, was rewarded by the sound of a sharp click
as the keeper shot back.
No
ray of moonlight filtered through the windows, for they were stopped with heavy
wooden shutters. As we paused irresolute, wondering if we had walked into a cul-de-sac, a faint, whimpering cry attracted our
attention. "Un
petit chatF* Grandin
exclaimed softly. "A poor little pussy-cat; he
has been locked in by mistake, no doubt, and hal Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu, regardez, mon ami! Do you, too, behold it?"
The
beam of his questing flashlight swept through the darkness, searching for the
feline, but it was no cat the ray flashed on. It was a girl
She lay on a rough, bedlike contrivance with
a net of heavily knotted, coarse rope stretched across its frame where the
mattress should have been, and was drawn to fullest compass in the form of a
St. Andraw's cross; for leathern thongs knotted to each finger and toe
strained tautly, holding hands and feet immovably toward the posts which stood
at the four corners of the bed of torment. The knots were cruelly drawn, and
even in the momentary flash of the light we saw the thongs were of rawhide,
tied and stretched wet, but now dry and pulling the tortured girl's toes and
fingers with a fury like that of a rack. Already the flesh about fingers and
toe-nails was puffy and impurpled with engorged blood cut off by the vicious
cinctures of the tightening strings.
The
torment of the constantly shortening thongs and the cruel pressure of the
rope-knots on which she lay were enough to drive the girl to madness, but an
ultimate refinement had been added to her agony; for the bed on which she
stretched was a full eight inches shorter than her height, so that her head
hung over the end without support, and she was obliged to hold it up by
continued flexion of the neck muscles or let it hang downward, either posture
being unendurable for more than a fraction of a minute.
wO Lord," she moaned weakly between swollen lips which had been
gashed and bitten till the blood showed on them in ruddy froth, "O dear
Lord, take me—take me quickly—I can't stand this; I can't—oh, oh,—o-o-oh!"
The prayerful exclamation ended in a half-whispered sob and her anguished head
fell limply back and swung pendulously from side to side as consciousness left
her.
"Ohe",
la pauvre crSatureF De
Grandin leaped forward, unsheathing his knife as he sprang. Thrusting the
flashlight into my hand, he slashed the cords from her hands and feet, cutting
through each group of five strings with a single slash of his razor-sharp
knife, and the thongs hummed and sang like broken banjo strings as they came
apart beneath his steel.
As
de Grandin worked I took note of the swooning girl. She was slight, almost to
the point of emaciation, her ribs and the processes of her wrists and ankles
showing whitely against the flesh. For costume she wore a wisp of printed
cotton twisted bandeauwise
about
her bosom, a pair of soiled and torn white-cotton bloomers which terminated in
tattered ruffles at her ankles and were held in place at the waist by a gayly
dyed cotton scarf secured by a sort of four-in-hand knot in front. A
close-wrapped bandanna kerchief swathed her head from brow to nape, covering
hair and ears alike, and from the handkerchiefs rim almost to the pink of her
upper lip a gilded metal mask obscured her features, leaving only mouth,
nose-tip and chin visible.
As
de Grandin lifted her from the bed-frame and rested her lolling head against
his shoulder, he tugged at the mask, but so firmly was it bound that it
resisted his effort.
Again he pulled, more sharply this time, and,
as he did so, we noticed a movement at the side of her head beneath the
handkerchief-turban. Snatching off the headgear, the Frenchman fumbled for the
mask cords, then started back with a low cry of horror
and dismay. The mask was not tied, but wired to her jlesh, two punctures having been made in each ear, one in the lobe, the other
in the pinna, and through the raw wounds fine golden wires had been thrust and
twisted into loops, so that removal of the mask would necessitate clipping the
wire or tearing the tender, doubly pierced ears.
"Oh,
the villains, the assassins, the ninety-thousand-times-damned beasts!" de
Grandin gritted through his teeth, desisting in his effort to take off the
metallic mask. "If ever Satan walked the earth in human guise, I think he
lodges within this accursed kennel of hellhounds, Friend Trowbridge, and, cordieu, though the monster have as many gullets as
the fabled hydra, I shall slit them all for this night's business!"
What
more he would have said I do not know, for the fainting girl rolled her head
and moaned feebly as she lay in his arms, and he was instantly all solicitude.
"Drink this, ma
pauvre," he
commanded, drawing a silver flask from his pocket and pressing it to her pale
lips.
She swallowed a bit of the fiery brandy,
choked 87 and gasped a little, then lay back against his arm with a weak sigh.
Again
he applied the restorative; then: "Who are you, ma petite?" he asked gently. "Speak bravely; we are
friends."
She shuddered convulsively and whimpered
weakly again; then, so faint we could scarcely catch the syllables, "Ewell
Eaton," she whispered.
"Cordieu, I
did know itl" de Gran din exclaimed delightedly. "Gloire a Dieu, we have found you, ma petite!
"The door, Friend Trowbridge—do you
stand guard at the portal lest we be surprised. Here"—he snatched a pistol
from his pocket and thrust it into my hand— "hesitate not to use it,
should occasion arise!"
I took station at the entrance of the torture
chamber while de Grandin set about making the half-conscious girl as
comfortable as possible. I could hear the murmur of their voices in soft
conversation as he worked frantically at her swollen feet and hands, rubbing
them with brandy from his flask and massaging her wrists and ankles in an
effort to restore circulation, but what they said I could not understand.
I was on the point of leaving my post to join
them, for the likelihood of our being interrupted seemed remote, when it
happened. Without so much as a warning creak from without, the door smashed
suddenly back on its hinges, flooring me as the kick of a mule might have done,
and three men rushed pell-mell into the room. I saw de Grandin snatch
frantically at his pistol, heard Ewell Eaton scream despairingly, and half-rose
to my feet, weak and giddy with the devastating blow I had received, but
determined to use my pistol to best advantage. One of the intruders turned
savagely on me, brought the staff of a long, spearlike weapon he carried down
upon my head, and caught me a smashing lack on the side of the head as I fell
"Trowbridge,
my friend, are you living—do you survive?" Jules de Grandin's anxious
whisper cut through the darkness surrounding me.
I was lying on my back, wrists and ankles
firmly bound, a bump like a goose-egg on my head where
the spear-butt had hit me. Through the grimy window of our cellar prison a
star or two winked mockingly; otherwise the place was dark as a cave. How long
we had lain there I had no way of telling. For all I knew the troopers might
have raided the place, arrested the inmates and gone, leaving us in our dungeon.
A dozen questions blazed through my mind like lightning-flashes across a summer
night as I strove to roll over and ease the pressure of the knots on my crossed
wrists.
"Trowbridge, mon vieux, do you live, are you awake, can you
hear?" the Frenchman's murmured query came through the darkness again.
"De
Gran din—where are you?" I asked, raising my
head, the better to locate his voice.
"Parbleu,
here I fie, trussed like a
capon ready for the spit!" he returned. "They are prodigal with their
rope, those assassins. Nevertheless, I think we shall make apes of them all.
Roll toward me if you can, my friend, and he with your hands toward me. Grdce a Dieu, neither age nor overeating has dulled my
teeth. Come, make haste!"
Followed a slow, dragging sound, punctuated
with muttered profanities in mingled French and English as he hitched himself
laboriously across the rough cement floor in my direction.
In a few moments I felt the stiffly waxed
hairs of his mustache against my wrists and the tightening of my bonds as his
small, sharp teeth sank into the cords, severing strand after strand.
Sooner
than I had hoped, my hands were free, and after a few seconds, during which I
wrung my fingers to restore circulation, I unfastened the ropes binding my
feet, then released de Gran din.
"Morbleu, at any rate we can move about, even if those sacrS rogues deprived us of our weapons," the Frenchman muttered as he
strode up and down our prison. "At least one thing is accomplished—Mademoiselle
Ewell is relieved of her torture. Before they beat me unconscious I heard her
told tomorrow she would be strangled, but as the Spaniards so sagely remark,
tomorrow is another day, and I trust we shall have increased hell's population
by that time.
"Have
you a match, by any land of chance?" he added, turning to me.
Searching my pockets, I found a packet of
paper matches and passed them over. Striking one, he held it torchwise above
his head, surveying our prison. It was a small, cement-floored room, its single
window heavily barred and its only article of furniture a large,
sheet-iron-sheathed furnace, evidently the building's
auxiliary heating-plant. The door was of stout pine planks, nailed and doweled
together so strongly as to defy anything less than a battering-ram, and secured
with a modern burglar-proof lock. Plainly, there was no chance of escape that
way.
"U'm?"
murmured de Gran din, surveying the old hot-air furnace speculatively. "U'm-m-m? It may be we shall find use for this, if my
boyhood's agility has not failed me, Friend Trowbridge."
"Use for that furnace?"
I asked incredulously.
"Mais oui, why not?" he returned. "Let us
see."
He jerked the heater's cast-iron door open,
thrusting a match inside and looking carefully up the wide, galvanized flues
leading to the upper floors. "It is a chance," he announced,
"but the good God knows we take an equal one waiting here. Au revoir, my friend, either I return to liberate us or
we say good morning in heaven."
Next
instant he had turned his back to the furnace, grasped the iron door-frame at
each side, thrust his head and shoulders through the opening and begun worming
himself upward toward the flue-mouth.
A
faint scraping sounded inside the heater's interior, then silence broken only
by the occasional soft thud of a bit of dislodged soot.
I
paced the dungeon in a perfect fever of apprehension. Though de Grandin was
slight as a girl, and almost as supple as an eel, I was certain I had seen the
last of him, for he would surely be hopelessly caught in the great, dusty
pipes, or, if not that, discovered by some of the villainous inmates of the
place when he attempted to force himself through a register. His plan of escape
was suicide, nothing less.
Click!
The strong, jimmy-proof
lock snapped back. I braced myself for the reappearance of our jailers, but the
Frenchman's delighted chuckle reassured me.
"Mordieu,
it was not even so
difficult as I had feared," he announced. "The pipes were large
enough to permit my passage without great trouble, and the registers—God be
thanked!—were not screwed to the floor. I had but to lift the first I came to
from its frame and emerge like a jack-in-the-box from his case. Yes. Come, let
us ascend. There is rheumatism, and other unpleasant things, to be contracted
in this cursed cellar."
Stepping as softly as possible, we traversed
a long, unlighted corridor, ascended two flights of winding stairs and came to
an upper hallway letting into a large room furnished in a garish East Indian
manner and decorated with a number of mediaeval sets of mail and a stand of
antique arms.
The Frenchman looked about, seeking covert,
but there was nothing behind which an underfed cat could hide, much less a man.
Finally: "I have itl" he declared, "Parbleu, c'est joli!"
Striding across the room he examined the
nearest suit of armor and turned to me with a chuckle. "Into it, mon ami" he commanded. "Quick!"
With
de Grandin's help I donned the beavered helmet and adjusted the gorget,
cuirass, brassards, cuisses and jambs, finding them a rather snug fit. In five
minutes I was completely garbed, and the Frenchman, laughing softly and
cursing delightedly, was clambering into another set of mail. When we stood
erect against the wall no one who had not seen us put on the armor could have
told us from the empty suits of mail which stood at regular intervals about the
wall.
From the stand of arms de Grandin selected a
keen, long-bladed misericorde, and gazed upon it lovingly.
Nor
had he armed himself a moment too soon, for even as he straightened back
against the wall and lowered the visor of his helmet there came the scuffle of
feet from the corridor outside and a bearded, muscular man in Oriental garb
dragged a half-fainting girl into the room. She was scantily clad in a Hindu
version of a Parisian night club costume.
"By
Vishnu, you shall!" the man snarled, grasping the girl's slender throat
between his blunt fingers and squeezing until she gasped for breath.
"Dance you must and dance you shall—as the Master has ordered—or I choke
the breath from your nostrils! Shame? What have you to do with shame, O creature? Daughter of a thousand iniquities,
tomorrow there shall be two stretched upon the *bed of roses' in the
cellar!"
"Eh
bien, my friend, you may be
right," de Grandin remarked, "but I damn think you shall not be
present to see it."
The
fellow toppled over without so much as a groan as the Frenchman, with the
precise skill of a practised surgeon, drove his dagger home where skull and
spine met.
"Silence,
little orange-pip!" the Frenchman ordered as the girl opened her lips to
scream. "Go below to your appointed place and do as you are bidden. The
time comes quickly when you shall be liberated and we shall drag such of these
sow-suckled sons of pigs as remain alive to prison. Quick, none must suspect
that help approaches!"
The girl ran quickly from the room, her soft,
bare feet making no sound on the thick carpets of the hall, and de Grandin
walked slowly to the door. In a moment he returned, lugging a suit of armor in
his arms. Standing it in the place against the wall he had vacated, he
repeated the trip, filling my space with a second empty suit, then motioning me to follow.
"Those sets of mail I did bring were
from the balcony at the stairhead," he explained softly. "In their
places we shall stand and see what passes below. Perhaps it is that we shall have
occasion to take parts in the play before all is done."
Stiff
and still as the lifeless ornaments we impersonated, we stood at attention at
the stairway's top. Below us lay the main drawing-room
of the house, a sort of low stage or dais erected at its
farther end, a crescent formation of folding-chairs, each
occupied by a man in evening clothes, standing in the main body of the room.
"Ah, it seems all is ready for the
play," the Frenchman murmured softly through the visor-bars of his
helmet. "Did you overhear the tale the little Mademoiselle Ewell told me
in the torture chamber, my friend?"
"No."
"Mordieu,
it was a story to make a man's hair erect itselfl This
is a house of evil, the abode of esclavage, no
less, Friend Trowbridge. Here stolen girls are brought and broken for a life of
degradation, even as wild animals from the jungle are trained for a career in
the arena. The master of this odious cesspool is a Hindu, as are his ten retainers, and well they know their beastly trade,
for he was a dealer in women in India before the British Raj put him in prison, and his underlings have all been corah-bundars—punishment-servants— in Indian harems before
he hired them for this service. ParbJeu, from
what we saw of the poor one in the cellars, I should say their technique has
improved since they left their native land!
"The
headquarters of this organization is in Spain—I have heard of it before—but
there are branches in almost every country. These evil ones work on commission,
and when the girls they steal have been sufficiently broken in spirit they are
delivered, like so many cattle, and their price paid by dive-keepers in South
America, Africa or China— wherever women command high prices and no questions
are asked.
"Hitherto
the slavers have taken their victims where they found them—poor shop-girls,
friendless waifs, or those already on the road to living death. This is a new
scheme. Only well-favored girls of good breeding are stolen and brought here
for breaking, and every luckless victim is cruelly beaten, stripped and
reclothed in the degrading uniform of the place within half an hour of her
arrival.
"Mordieu,
but their tactics are
clever! All faces obscured by masks which can not be removed, all hair covered
by exactly similar turbans, all clothing exactly alike—twin sisters might be
here together, yet never recognize each other, for the poor ones are forbidden
to address so much as a word to each other-Mademoiselle Ewell was stretched on
the bed of torture for no greater fault than breaking this rule."
"But this is horrible!" I
interrupted. "This is unbelievable—"
"Who says it?" he demanded
fiercely. "Have we not seen with our own eyes? Have we not Mademoiselle
EwelTs story for testimony? Do I not know how her sister, poor Madame Mazie,
came in the river? Assuredly: Attend me: the fiends who took her prisoner
quickly discovered the poor child's condition, and they thereupon deliberately
beat out her brains and cast her murdered body into the water, thinking the
river would wash away the evidence of their crime.
"Did
not that execrable slave-master whom I slew command the other girl to
dance—what did it mean?" He paused a moment, then continued in a sibilant
whisper:
"This, pardieu! Even as we send the young conscripts to Algeria to toughen them for
military service, so these poor ones are given their baptism into a life of
infamy by being forced to dance before half-drunken brutes to the music of the
whip's crack. Norn
dune pipe, I
damn think we shall see some dancing of the sort they little suspect before we
are done—no more, the master comes!"
As
de Grandin broke off, I noticed a sudden focusing of attention by the company
below.
Stepping
daintily as a tango dancer, a man emerged through the arch behind the dais at
the drawingroom's farther end. He was in full Indian court dress, a purple
satin tunic, high at the neck and reaching half-way to his knees, fastened at
the front with a row of sapphire buttons and heavily fringed with silver at the
bottom; trousers of white satin, baggy at the knee, skin-tight at the ankle,
slippers of red Morocco on his feet. An enormous turban of peach-bloom silk,
studded with brilliants and surmounted by a vivid green aigrette was on his head,
while round his neck dangled a triple row of pearls, its lowest loop hanging
almost to the bright yellow sash which bound his waist as tightly as a corset.
One long, brown hand toyed negligently with the necklace, while the other
stroked his black, sweeping mustache caressingly.
"Gentlemen,"
he announced in a languid Oxonian drawl, "if you are ready, we shall
proceed to make whoopee, as you so quaintly express it in your vernacular."
He turned and beckoned through the archway, and as the light struck his profile
I recognized him as the leader of the party which had surprised us in the
torture chamber.
De Grandin identified him at the same time,
for I heard him muttering through the bars of his visorT "Ha, toad, viper,
worm! Strut while you may; comes soon the time when
Jules de Grandin shall show you the posture you will not change in a
hurry!"
Through
the archway stepped a tall, angular woman, her face masked by a black cloth
domino, a small round samisen, or Japanese banfo, in her hand. Saluting the company
with a profound obeisance, she dropped to her knees and picked a short, jerky
note or two on her crude instrument
The
master of ceremonies clapped his hands sharply, and four girls came running
out on the stage. They wore brilliant kimonos, red and blue and white, beautifully
embroidered with birds and flowers, and on their feet were white-cotton tabi or foot-mittens with a separate "thumb" to accommodate the
great toe, and zori,
or light straw sandals.
Golden masks covered the upper part of their faces, and their hair was hidden
by voluminous glossy-black wigs arranged in elaborate Japanese coiffures and
thickly studded with ornamental hairpins. On their brightly rouged lips were
fixed, unnatural smiles.
Running
to the very edge of the platform, with exaggeratedly short steps, they slipped
their sandals off and dropped to their knees, lowering their foreheads to the
floor in greeting to the guests; then, rising, drew up in rank before the
musician, tittering with a loud, forced affectation of coy gayety and hiding
their faces behind the flowing sleeves of their kimonos, as though in
mock-modesty.
Again
the master clapped his hands, the musician began a titillating tune on her
banjo, and the dance was on. More like a series of postures than a dance it
was, ritualistically slow and accompanied by much
waving of hands and fluttering of fans.
The
master of ceremonies began crooning a low, singsong tune in time with the plink-plink of the banjo. "Chorikina—chonJdna,'' he chanted; then with a "slapping clap
of his hands:
-HoiF
Dance
and music came to a frozen stop. The four girls held the posture they had when
the call came, assuming the strained, unreal appearance of a motion picture
when the film catches in the projecting reel.
For
a moment there was a breathless silence, then a delighted roar from the
audience; for the fourth girl, caught with one foot and hand upraised, could
not maintain the pose. Vainly she strove to remain stone-still, but despite her
efforts her lifted foot descended ever so slightly.
A
guttural command from the show-master, and she paid the forfeit, unfastening
her girdle and dropping it to the floor.
A wave of red mantled her throat and face to
the very rim of her golden mask as she submitted, but the forced, unnatural
smile never left her painted lips as the music and dance began afresh at the
master's signal.
"Hoir Again the strident call, again the frozen
dance, again a girl lost and discarded a garment.
On and on the bestial performance went,
interminably, it seemed to me, but actually only a few minutes were required
for the poor, bewildered girls, half fainting with shame and fear of torture,
to lose call after call until at last they danced only in their cotton tabi, and even these were discarded before the audience would cry enough and
the master release them from their ordeal.
Gathering
up their fallen clothes, sobbing through lips which still fought valiantly to
retain their constrained smiles, the poor creatures advanced once more to the
platform's edge, once more knelt and touched their brows to the floor, then ran
from the stage, only the fear of punishment holding their little baked feet to
the short, sliding steps of their artificial run rather than a mad dash for
sanctuary from the burning gaze and obscene calls of the onlookers.
"Dieu
de Dieu," de
Gran din fumed, "will not the troopers ever come?
Must more of this shameless business go on?"
A
moment later the showman was speaking again? "Let us now give undivided
attention to the next number of our program," he was announcing suavely.
Something
white hurtled through the archway behind him, and a girl clothed only in
strings of glittering rhinestones about throat, wrists, waist and ankles was
fairly flung out upon the stage, where she cowered in a perfect palsy of
terror. Her hands were fettered behind her by a six-inch chain attached to
heavy golden bracelets, and an odd contrivance, something like a bit, was
fastened between her lips by a harness fitted over her head, making articulate
outcry impossible. Behind her, strutting with all the majesty of a turkey-cock,
came a man in the costume of a South American vaquero—loose, baggy trousers, wide, nail-studded belt,
patent leather boots and broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat of black felt. In his
hand was a coiled whip of woven leather thongs—the bull-whip of the Argentine
pampas.
"Good and the
devil!" swore de Grandin, his teeth 97 fairly chattering in rage. "I
know it; it is the whipping dance—he will beat her to insensibility—I have seen
such shows in Buenos Aires, Friend Trowbridge, but may Satan toast me in his
fires if I witness it again. Come, my friend, it is time we taught these swine
a lesson. Do you stand firm and beat back any who attempt to pass. Me, I go
into action!"
Like
some ponderous engine of olden times he strode forward, the joints of his armor
creaking with unwonted use.
For
a moment guests and servants were demoralized by the apparition descending the
stairs, for it was as if a chair or sofa had suddenly come to life and taken
the field against them.
"Here, wash all thish, wash all
this?" demanded a maudlin young man with drunken truculence as he
swaggered forward to bar the Frenchman's way, reaching for his hip pocket as he
spoke.
De
Grandin drew back his left arm, doubled his iron-clad fingers into a ball and
dashed his mailed fist into the fellow's face.
The drunken rake went down with a scream,
spewing blood and teeth from his crushed mouth.
"Awai, a bhut*T cried one of the servants in terror, and
another took up the cry: "A bhut! a bhut!"
Two of the men seized long-shafted halberds
from an ornamental stand of arms and advanced on the little Frenchman, one on
each side.
Clang! The iron points of their weapons rang against his visor-bars, but the
fine-tempered, hand-wrought steel that had withstood thrust of lance and glaive
and flying cloth-yard arrow when Henry of England led his hosts to victory at
Agincourt held firm, and de Grandin hardly wavered in his stride.
Then,
with halberd and knife and wicked, razor-edged scimitar, they were on him like
a pack of hounds seeking to drag down a stag.
De Grandin strode forward, striking left and
right with mailed fists, crushing a nose here, battering a
•Demon.
mouth there,
or smashing jaw-bones with the iron-shod knuckles of his flailing hands.
My
breath came fast and faster as I watched the struggle, but suddenly I gave a
shout of warning. Two of the Hindus had snatched a silken curtain from a
doorway and rushed de Grandin from behind. In an instant the fluttering drapery
fell over his head, shutting out sight and cumbering his arms in its clinging
folds. In another moment he lay on his back, half a dozen screaming Indians
pinioning his arms and legs.
I
rushed forward to his rescue, but my movement was a moment too late. From the
front door and the back there came a sudden, mighty clamor. The thud of
gun-butts and riot sticks on the panels and hoarse commands to open in the
law's name announced the troopers had arrived at last.
Crashl
The front door splintered
inward and four determined men in the livery of the State Constabulary rushed
into the hall.
A
moment the Hindus stood at bay; then, with waving swords and brandishing pikes
they charged the officers.
They were ten to four, but odds were not with
numbers, for even as they sprang to the attack there sounded the murderous r-r-r-rat-tat-tat of an automatic rifle, and the rank of
yelling savages wavered like growing wheat before a gust of summer wind, then
went down screaming, while the acrid, bitter fumes of smokeless powder stung
our nostrils.
"Norn
dun pore, mon lieutenant, you came not a moment too soon to complete a
perfect night's work," de Grandin complimented as we prepared to set out
for home. "Ten tiny seconds more and you should have found nothing but the
deceased corpse of Jules de Grandin to rescue, I fear."
From the secret closets of the house the
girls' clothing had been rescued, wire-clippers in willing hands had cut away
the degrading golden masks from the captives' faces, and Ewell Eaton, the three
sorority sisters and the poor little shop-girl whose disappearances had caused
such consternation to their families were ready to ride back to Harrisonville,
two in the troopers' side-cars, the rest in hastily improvised saddles behind
the constables on their motorcycles.
"We
did make monkeys out of 'em, at that," the young officer grinned. "It
was worth the price of admission to see those guys in their dress suits trying
to bluff us off, then whining like spanked kids when I
told 'em it would be six months in the work-house for theirs. Gosh, won't the
papers make hash of their
reputations before this
business is over?"
"Undoubtlessly,"
de Grandin assented. "It is to be deplored that we may not lawfully make
hash of their so foul bodies, as well. Me, I should enormously enjoy dissecting
them without previous anesthesia. However, in the meantime—"
He drew the young officer aside with a
confidential hand upon his elbow, and a brief, whispered colloquy followed. Two
minutes later he rejoined me, a satisfied twinkle-in his eye, the scent of
raw, new whisky on his breath.
"Barbe
dun chameau, he
is a most discerning young man, that one," he confided, as he wiped his
lips with lavender-bordered silk handkerchief.
The Jest of Warburg Tantavul
Warburg
Tantavul was dying. Little more than skin and bones, he lay propped up with
pillows in the big sleigh bed and smiled as though he found the thought of
dissolution faintly amusing.
Even
in comparatively good health the man was never prepossessing. Now, wasted with
disease, that smile of self-sufficient satisfaction on his wrinkled face, he
was nothing less than hideous. The eyes, which nature had given him, were
small, deep-set and ruthless. The mouth, which his own thoughts had fashioned
through the years, was wide and thin-lipped, almost colorless, and even in
repose was tightly drawn against his small and curiously perfect teeth. Now, as
he smiled, a flickering light, lambent as the quick reflection of an unseen
flame, flared in his yellowish eyes, and a hard white line of teeth showed on
his lower lip, as if he bit it to hold back a chuckle.
"You're
still determined that you'll marry Arabella?" he asked his son, fixing his
sardonic, mocking smile on the young man.
"Yes, Father, but-"
"No
buts, my boy"—this time the chuckle came, low and muted, but at the same
time glassy-hard—"no buts. I've told you I'm against it, and you'll rue it
to your dying day if you should marry her; but"—he paused, and breath
rasped in his wizened throat—"but go ahead and marry her, if your heart's
set on it. I've said my say and warned you—heh, boy, never say your poor old
father didn't warn you!"
He lay back on his piled-up pillows for a
moment, swallowing convulsively, as if to force the fleeting
life-breath back, then, abruptly: "Get out,"
he ordered. "Get out and stay out, you poor fool; but remember what I've
said."
"Father,"
young Tantavul began, stepping toward the bed, but the look of sudden
concentrated fury in the old man's tawny eyes halted him in midstride.
"Get—out—I—said,"
his father snarled, then, as the door closed softly on his son:
"Nurse—hand—me—that—picture."
His breath was coming slowly, now, in shallow labored gasps, but his withered
fingers writhed in a gesture of command, pointing to the silver-framed
photograph of a woman which stood upon a little table in the bedroom
win-dowbay.
He clutched the portrait as if it were some
precious relic, and for a minute let his eyes rove over it. "Lucy,"
he whispered hoarsely, and now his words were thick and indistinct, "Lucy,
they'll be married, 'spite of all that I have said. They'll be married, Lucy,
d'ye hear?" Thin and high-pitched as a child's,
his voice rose to a piping treble as he grasped the picture's silver frame and
held it level with his face. "They'll be married, Lucy dear, and they'll
have—"
Abruptly as a penny whistle's note is stilled
when no more air is blown in it, old TantavuTs cry hushed. The picture, still
grasped in his hands, fell to the tufted coverlet, the man's lean jaw relaxed
and he slumped back on his pillows with a shadow of the mocking smile still in
his glazing eyes.
Etiquette
requires that the nurse await the doctor's confirmation at such times, so,
obedient to professional dictates, Miss Williamson stood by the bed until I
felt the dead man's pulse and nodded; then with the skill of years of practice
she began her offices, bandaging the wrists and jaws and ankles that the body
might be ready when the representative of Martin's Funeral Home came for it.
My friend
de Grandin was annoyed. Arms akimbo, knuckles on his hips, his black-silk
kimono draped round him like a mourning garment, he voiced his
plaint in
no uncertain terms. In fifteen little so small minutes he must leave for the theatre,
and that son and grandson of a filthy swine who was the florist had not
delivered his gardenia. And was it not a fact that he could not go forth
without a fresh gardenia for his lapel? But certainly.
Why did that sale
chameau procrastinate?
Why did he delay delivering that unmentionable flower till this unspeakable
time of night? He was Jules de Grandin, he, and not to be oppressed by any
species of a goat who called himself a florist. But no.
It must not be. It should not be, by blue! He would—
"Axin'
yer pardon, sir," Nora McGinnis broke in from the study door,
"there's a Miss an' Mr. Tantavul to see ye, an'—"
"Bid
them be gone, ma
charmeuse. Request
that they jump in the bay—Grand Dfew"—he
cut his oratory short—"les
enfants dans le hoisr
Truly, there was something reminiscent of the
Babes in the AVood in the couple who had followed Nora to the study door.
Dennis Tantavul looked even younger and more boyish than T remembered him, and
the girl beside him was so childish in appearance that I felt a quick,
instinctive pity for her. Plainly they were frightened, too, for they clung
hand to hand like frightened children going past a graveyard, and in their eyes
was that look of sick terror I had seen so often when the X-ray and blood test
confirmed preliminary diagnosis of carcinoma.
"Monsieur, Mademoiselle!" The
little Frenchman gathered his kimono and his dignity about him in a single
sweeping gesture as he struck his heels together and bowed stiffly from the
hips. "I apologize for my unseemly words. Were it not that I have been
subjected to a terrible, calamitous misfortune, I should not so far have
forgotten myself—"
The girl's quick smile cut through his
apology. "We understand," she reassured. "We've been through
trouble, too, and have come to Dr. Trowbridge—"
"Ah, then I have permission to
withdraw?" he 103 bowed again and turned upon his heel, but I called him
back.
"Perhaps you can assist us," I
remarked as I introduced the callers.
"The
honor is entirely mine, Mademoiselle," he told her as he raised her
fingers to his hps. "You and Monsieur your brother—*
"He's
not my brother," she corrected. "We're cousins. That's why we've
called on Dr. Trowbridge."
De
Grandin tweaked the already needle-sharp points of his small blond mustache. "Vardormez-moif* he begged. "I have resided in your country but a little time; perhaps I do not
understand the language fluently. It is because you and Monsieur are cousins
that you come to see the doctor? Me, I am dull and stupid like a pig; I fear I
do not comprehend."
Dennis Tantavul replied: "It's not
because of the relationship, Doctor—not entirely, at any rate, but—"
He
turned to me: "You were at my father's bedside when he died; you remember
what he said about marrying Arabella?"
I nodded.
"There
was something—some ghastly, hidden threat concealed in his warning, Doctor. It
seemed as if he jeered at me—dared me to marry her, yet—"
"Was there some provision in his
will?" I asked.
"Yes,
sir," the young man answered. "Here it is." From his pocket he
produced a folded parchment, opened it and indicated a paragraph:
"To
my son Dennis Tantavul I give, devise and bequeath all my property of every
kind and sort, real, personal and mixed, of which I may die seized and
possessed, or to which I may be entitled, in the event of his marrying
Arabella Tantavul, but should he not marry the said Arabella Tantavul, then it
is my will that he receive only one half of my estate, and that the residue
thereof go to the said Arabella Tantavul, who has made her home with me since
childhood and occupied the relationship of daughter to me."
"Hm," I returned the document,
"this looks as if he really wanted you to marry your cousin, even
though-"
"And see here, sir," Dennis
interrupted, "here's an envelope we found in Father's papers."
Sealed
with red wax, the packet of heavy, opaque parchment was addressed:
"To my children, Dennis and Arabella
Tantavul, to be opened by them upon the occasion of the birth of their first
child."
De
Grandin's small blue eyes were snapping with the flickering light they showed
when he was interested. "Monsieur Dennis," he took the thick
envelope from the caller, "Dr. Trowbridge has told me something of your
father's death-bed scene. There is a mystery about this business. My suggestion
is you read the message now—"
"No, sir. I won't do that. My father didn't love me—sometimes I think he hated
me—but I never disobeyed a wish that he expressed, and I don't feel at liberty
to do so now. It would be like breaking faith with the dead. But"—he smiled
a trifle shamefacedly—"Father's lawyer Mr. Bainbridge is out of town on
business, and it will be his duty to probate the will. In the meantime Yd feel better if the will and this envelope were in
other hands than mine. So we came to Dr. Trowbridge to ask him to take charge
of them till Mr. Bainbridge gets back, meanwhile—"
"Yes,
Monsieur, meanwhile?" de Grandin prompted as the young man paused.
"You
know human nature, Doctor," Dennis turned to me; "no one can see
farther into hidden meanings than the man who sees humanity with its mask off,
the way a doctor does. D'ye think Father might have been delirious when he
warned me not to marry Arabella, or—" His voice trailed off, but his
troubled eyes were eloquent.
"H'm,"
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, "I can't see any reason for
hesitating, Dennis. That bequest of all your father's
property in the event you marry Arabella seems to indicate his true
feelings."
I
tried to make my words convincing, but the memory of old Tantavul's dying
words dinned in my ears. There had been something gloating in his voice as he
told the picture that his son and niece would marry.
De Grandin caught the hint of hesitation in
my tone. "Monsieur," he asked Dennis, "will not you tell us of
the antecedents of your father's warning? Dr. Trowbridge is perhaps too near to
see the situation clearly. Me, I have no knowledge of your father or your
family. You and Mademoiselle are strangely like. The will describes her as
having lived with you since childhood. Will you kindly tell us how it came
about?"
The
Tantavuls were, as he said, strangely similar. Anyone might easily have taken
them for twins. Like as two plaster portraits from the same mold were their
small straight noses, sensitive mouths, curling pale-gold hair.
Now, once more hand in hand, they sat before
us on the sofa, and as Dennis spoke I saw the frightened, haunted look creep
back into their eyes.
"Do
you remember us as children, Doctor?" he asked me.
"Yes, it must have been some twenty
years ago they called me out to see you youngsters. You'd just moved gossip
about the strange gentleman from the West into the old Stephens house, and
there was a deal of with his two small children and Chinese cook, who greeted
all the neighbors' overtures with churlish rebuffs and never spoke to
anyone."
"What did you think of
us, sir?"
"H'm;
I thought you and your sister—as I thought her then—had as fine a case of
measles as I'd ever seen."
"How old were we then, do you
remember?"
"Oh,
you were something like three; the little girl was half your age, I'd
guess."
"Do you recall the
next time you saw us?"
"Yes, you were somewhat older then;
eight or ten, I'd say. That time it was the mumps. You were queer, quiet little
shavers. I remember asking if you thought you'd like a pickle, and you said,
*No, thank you, sir, it hurts.'"
"It
did, too, sir. Every day Father made us eat one; stood over us with a whip till
we'd chewed the last morsel."
The young folks nodded solemnly as Dennis answered,
"Yes, sir; every day. He said he wanted to check up on the progress we
were making."
For
a moment he was silent, then: "Dr. Trowbridge, if anyone treated you with
studied cruelty all your life—if you'd never had a kind word or gracious act
from that person in all your memory, then suddenly that person offered you a
favor—made it possible for you to gratify your dearest wish, and threatened to
penalize you if you failed to do so, wouldn't you be suspicious? Wouldn't you
suspect some sort of dreadful practical joke?"
"I don't think I quite
understand."
"Then
listen: in all my life I can't remember ever having seen my father smile, not
really smile with friendliness, humor or affection, I mean. My life—and
Arabella's, too—was one long persecution at his hands. I was two years or so
old when we came to Harrison-ville, I believe, but I still have vague
recollections of our Western home, of a house set high on a hill overlooking
the ocean, and a wall with climbing vines and purple flowers on it, and a
pretty lady who would take me in her arms and cuddle me against her breast and
feed me ice cream from a spoon, sometimes. I have a sort of recollection of a
little baby sister in that house, too, but these things are so far back in babyhood
that possibly they were no more than childish fancies which I built up for
myself and which I loved so dearly and so secretly they finally came to have a
kind of reality for me.
"My real memories, the things I can
recall with certainty, begin with a hurried train trip through hot, dry,
uncomfortable country with my father and a strangely silent Chinese servant and
a little girl they told me was my cousin Arabella.
"Father treated me and Arabella with
impartial harshness. We were beaten for the slightest fault, and we had faults
a-plenty. If we sat quietly we were accused of sulking and asked why we didn't
go and play. If we played and shouted we were whipped for being noisy little
brats.
"As we weren't allowed to associate with
any of the neighbors' children we made up our own games. I'd be Geraint and
Arabella would be Enid of the dove-white feet, or perhaps Yd be King Arthur in the Castle Perilous, and
she'd be the kind Lady of the Lake who gave him back his magic sword. And
though we never mentioned it, both of us knew that whatever the adventure was,
the false knight or giant I contended with was really my father. But when actual
trouble came I wasn't an heroic figure.
"I
must have been twelve or thirteen when I had my last thrashing. A little brook
ran through the lower part of our land, and the former owners had widened it
into a lily-pond. The flowers had died out years before, but the outlines of
the pool remained, and it was our favorite summer nlay place. We taught
ourselves to swim—not very well, of course, but well enough—and as we had no
bathing suits we used to go in in our underwear. When we'd finished swimming
we'd lie in the sun until our underthings were dry, then
slip into our outer clothing. One afternoon as we were splashing in the water,
happy as a pair of baby otters, and nearer to shouting with laughter than we'd
ever been before, I think, my father suddenly appeared on the bank.
"'Come out o' there!' he shouted to me,
and there was a kind of sharp, dry hardness in his voice I'd never heard before. "So this is how you spend your time?' he asked as I
climbed up the bank. In spite of all I've done to keep you decent, you do a
thing like this!'
" *Why, Father, we were only swimming—' I began,
but he struck me on the mouth.
" 'Shut up, you little rake!' he roared. 'Til teach you!' He cut a willow
switch and thrust my head between his knees; then while he held me tight as in
a vice he flogged me with the willow till the blood came through my sldn and stained
my soaking cotton shorts. Then he kicked me back into the pool as a heartless
master might a beaten dog.
"As
I said, I wasn't an heroic figure. It was Arabella who
came to my rescue. She helped me up the slippery l?ank
and took me in her arms. Toor Dennie,' she said. Toor, poor Dennie. It was my
fault, Dennie, dear, for letting you take me into the water!' Then she kissed
me—the first time anyone had kissed me since the pretty lady of my
half-remembered dreams'. "We'll be married on the very day that Uncle Warburg
dies,' she promised, 'and Til be so sweet and good to you, and you'll love me
so dearly that we'll both forget these dreadful days.'
"We
thought my father'd gone, but he must have stayed to see what we would say, for
as Arabella finished he stepped from behind a rhododendron bush,
and for the first time I heard him laugh. Toull be married, will you?* he
asked. That would be a good joke—the best one of all. All right, go ahead—see
what it gets you.'
"That was the last time he ever actually
struck me, but from that time on he seemed to go out of his way to invent
mental tortures for us. We weren't allowed to go to school, but he had a tutor,
a little rat-faced man named Ericson, come in to give us lessons, and in the
evening he'd take the book and make us stand before him and recite. If either
of us failed a problem in arithmetic or couldn't conjugate a French or Latin
verb he'd wither us with sarcasm, and always as a finish to his diatribe he'd
jeer at us about our wish to be married, and threaten us with something
dreadful if we ever did it.
"So,
Dr. Trowbridge, you see why I'm suspicious. It seems almost as if this
provision in the will is part of some horrible practical joke my father
prepared deliberately—as if he's waiting to laugh at us from the grave."
"I can understand your feelings,
boy," I answered, "but-"
"'But'
be damned and roasted on the hottest griddle in hell's kitchen!" Jules de
Grandin interrupted. "The wicked dead one's funeral is at 2 tomorrow afternoon, nest-ce-pas?
"Trds bien. At 8 tomorrow evening—or earlier, if it will be convenient—you shall be
married. I shall esteem it a favor if you permit that I be best man; Dr.
Trowbridge will give the bride awav, and we shall have a merry time, by blue!
You shall go upon a gorgeous honeymoon and learn how sweet the ioys of love
can be—sweeter for having been so long denied! And in the meantime we shall
keep the papers safely till your lawyer returns.
"You
fear the so unpleasant jest? Mais non. T think the jest is on the other foot, my friends, and the
laugh on the other face!"
Warburg
Tantavul was neither widelv known nor popular, but the solitude in which he had
lived had invested him with mystery; now the bars of reticence were down and
the walls of isolation broken, upward of a hundred neighbors, mostly women,
gathered in the Martin funeral chapel as the services began. The afternoon sun
beat softly through the stained glass windows and glinted on the polished
mahogany of the casket. Here and there it touched upon bright spots of color
that marked a woman's hat or a man's tie. The solemn hush was broken by
occasional whispers: "What'd he die of? Did he leave much? Were the two
young folks his only heirs?"
Then the burial office: "Lord, Thou hast
been our refuge from one generation to another ... for a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday ... Oh teach us to number our days that we
may apply our hearts unto wisdom ..."
As
the final Amen sounded one of Mr. Martin's frock-coated young men glided
forward, paused beside the casket, and made the stereotyped an-
nouncement:
"Those who wish to say good-bye to Mr. Tantavul may do so at this
time."
The
grisly rite of the passing by the bier dragged on. I would have left the place;
I had no wish to look upon the man's dead face and folded hands; but de Grandin
took me firmly by the elbow, held me till the final curiosity-impelled female
had filed past the body, then steered me quickly
toward the casket.
He paused a moment at the bier, and it seemed
to me there was a hint of irony in the smile that touched the corners of his
mouth as he leant forward. "Eh bien,
my old one; we know a
secret, thou and I, ríest-ce-pas?"
he asked the silent form
before us.
I
swallowed back an exclamation of dismay. Perhaps it was a trick of the
uncertain light, perhaps one of those ghastly, inexplicable things which every
doctor and embalmer meets with sometimes in his practice—the effect of
desiccation from formaldehyde, the pressure of some tissue gas within the body,
or something of the sort—at any rate, as Jules de Grandin spoke the corpse's
upper lids drew back the fraction of an inch, revealing slits of yellow eye
which seemed to glare at us with mingled hate and fury.
"Good
heavens; come away!" I begged. "It seemed as if he looked at us, de Grandin!"
"Et puis—and if he did? I damn think I can trade him look
for look, my friend. He was clever, that one, I admit it; but do not be
mistaken, Jules de Grandin is nobody's imbecile."
The wedding took place in the rectory of St.
Chry-sostom's. Robed in stole and surplice, Dr. Bentley glanced benignly from
Dennis to Arabella, then to de Grandin and me as he began: "Dearly
beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of
this company to join together this man and this woman in holy
matrimony...." His round and ruddy face grew slightly stem as he
admonished, "If any man can show just cause why they should not lawfully
be joined together, let him now speak or else hereafter for ever hold his
peace." He paused the customary short, dramatic moment, 111 and I thought
I saw a hard, grim look spread on de Grandin's face. Very faint and far-off
seeming, so faint that we could scarcely hear it, but gaining steadily in
strength, there came a high, thin, screaming sound.
Curiously, it seemed to me to resemble the long-drawn, wailing shriek of a
freight train's whistle heard miles away upon a still and sultry summer night,
weird, wavering and ghastly. Now it seemed to grow in shrillness, though its
volume was no greater.
I saw a look of haunted fright leap into
Arabella's eyes, saw Dennis' pale face go paler as the strident whistle sounded
shriller and more shrill; then, as it seemed I could endure the stabbing of
that needle sound no longer, it ceased abruptly, giving way to blessed,
comforting silence. But through the silence came a burst of chuckling laughter,
half breathless, half hysterical, wholly devilish: Huh—hu-u-uh—hu-u-u-uh! the final syllable drawn out until it seemed almost
a groan.
The wind, Monsieur le Cure"; it was nothing but the wind," de Grandin
told the clergyman sharply. "Proceed to marry them, if you will be so
land."
"Wind?" Dr. Bentley echoed. T could have sworn I
heard somebody laugh, but—**
"It
is the wind, Monsieur; it plays strange tricks at times," the little
Frenchman insisted, his small blue eyes as hard as frozen iron. "Proceed,
if you will be so kind. We wait on you."
"Forasmuch as Dennis and Arabella have
consented
to be joined together in holy wedlock ...
I pronounce
them man and wife," concluded Dr. Bentley, and de
Grandin, ever gallant, kissed the bride upon the lips,
and before we could restrain him, planted kisses on
both Dennis' cheeks. '
"Cordieu,
I thought that we might
have the trouble, for a time," he told me as we left the rectory.
'What
was that awful shrieking noise we heard?" I
asked.
"It was the wind, my friend," he
answered in a hard, flat, tone-less voice. The ten times damned, but wholly
ineffectual wind."
"So,
then, little sinner, weep and wail for the burden of mortality you have
assumed. Weep, wail, cry and breathe, my small and wrinkled onel Ha, you will
not? Pardieu, I say you shall I"
Gently,
but smartly, he spanked the small red infant's small red posterior with the
end of a towel wrung out in hot water, and as the smacking impact sounded the
tiny toothless mouth opened and a thin, high, piping squall of protest sounded.
"Ah, that is better, mon petit ami," he chuckled. "One cannot learn too soon that one must do as one is
told, not as one wishes, in this world which you have just entered. Look to
him, Mademoiselle,'' he passed the wriggling, bawling morsel of humanity to the
nurse and turned to me as I bent over the table where Arabella lay. "How
does the little mother, Friend Trowbridge?" he asked.
"ITm'mp," I answered
noncommittally. "Bear a hand, here, will you? The perineum's pretty badly
torn—have to do a quick repair fob . .."
"But in the morning she will have
forgotten all the pain," laughed de Grandin as Arabella, swathed in
blankets, was trundled from the delivery room. "She will gaze upon the
little monkey-thing which I just caused to breathe the breath of life and vow
it is the loveliest of all God's lovely creatures. She will hold it at her
tender breast and smile on it, she will—SacrS nom dun rat vert, what is that?"
From the nursery where, ensconced in wire
trays, a score of newborn fragments of humanity slept or squalled, there came a
sudden frightened scream—a woman's cry of terror.
We
raced along the corridor, reached the glass-walled room and thrust the door
back, taking care to open it no wider than was necessary, lest a draft disturb
the carefully conditioned air of the place.
Backed against the farther wall, her face
gone gray with fright, the nurse in charge was staring at the skylight with
terror-widened eyes, and even as we entered she opened her lips to emit
another scream.
"Desist, ma bonne, you are disturbing your small 113
charges!" de Grandin seized the horrified girl's shoulder and
administered a shake. Then: "What is it, Mademoiselle?" he whispered.
"Do not be afraid to speak; we shall respect your confidence—but speak
softly."
"It—it was up there!" she pointed
with a shaking finger toward the black square of the skylight. "They'd
just brought Baby Tantavul in, and I had laid him in his crib when I thought I
heard somebody laughing. "Oh"—she shuddered
at the recollection—"it was awful! not really a
laugh, but something more like a long-drawn-out hysterical groan. Did you ever
hear a child tickled to exhaustion—you know how he moans and gasps for breath,
and laughs, all at once? I think the fiends in hell must laugh like that!"
"Yes, yes, we understand," de
Grandin nodded, "but tell us what occurred next."
T
looked around the nursery, but I was all alone here with the babies. Then it
came again, louder, this time, and seemingly right above me. I looked up at the
skylight, and—there it was!"
"It was a face, sir—just a face, with no
body to it, and it seemed to float above the glass, then dip down to it, like a
child's balloon drifting in the wind, and it looked right past me, down at Baby
Tantavul, and laughed again."
"A face, you say,
Mademoiselle—"
"Yes, sir, yes! The awfullest face Tve ever seen. It was
thin and wrinkled—all shriveled like a monkey— and as it looked at Baby
Tantavul its eyes stretched open till their whites glared all around the
irises, and the mouth opened, not widely, but as if it were chewing something
it relished—and it gave that dreadful, cackling, jubilating laugh again. That's
it! I couldn't think before, but it seemed as if that bodiless head were
laughing with a sort of evil triumph, Dr. de Grandin!"
"H'm,"
he tweaked his tightly waxed mustache, "I should not wonder if it did,
Mademoiselle." To me he whispered, "Stay with her, if you will, my
friend, 111 see the supervisor and have her send another nurse to keep her company.
I shall request a special watch for the small Tantavul. At present I do not
think the danger is great, but mice do not play where cats are wakeful."
"Isn't
he just lovely?" Arabella looked up from the small bald head that rested
on her breast, and ecstacy was in her eyes. "I don't believe I ever saw so
beautiful a baby!"
"Tiens,
Madame, his voice is
excellent, at any rate," de Grandin answered with a grin, "and from
what one may observe his appetite is excellent, as well."
Arabella
smiled and patted the small creature's back. "You know, I never had a doll
in my life," she confided. "Now I've got this dear little mite, and
I'm going to be so happy with him. Oh, I wish Uncle Warburg were alive. I know
this darling baby would soften even his hard heart.
"But
I mustn't say such things about him, must I? He really wanted me to marry
Dennis, didn't he? His will proved that. You think he wanted us to marry,
Doctor?"
"I
am persuaded that he did, Madame. Your marriage was his dearest wish, his
fondest hope," the Frenchman answered solemnly.
"I
felt that way, too. He was harsh and cruel to us when we were growing up, and
kept his stonyhearted attitude to the end, but underneath it all there must
have been some hidden stratum of kindness, some lingering affection for Dennis
and me, or he'd never have put that clause in his will—"
"Nor have left this memorandum for
you," de Grandin interrupted, drawing from an inner pocket the parchment
envelope Dennis had entrusted to him the day before his father's funeral.
She started back as if he menaced her with a
live scorpion, and instinctively her arms closed protectively around the baby
at her bosom. "The—that—letter?" she faltered, her breath coming in
short, smothered gasps. Td forgotten all about it.
Oh, Dr. de
Grandin, burn it. Don't let me see what's in it. I'm
afraid!"
It was a bright May morning, without
sufficient breeze to stir the leaflets on the maple trees outside the window,
but as de Grandin held the letter out I thought I heard a sudden sweep of wind
around the angle of the hospital, not loud, but shrewd and keen, like wind
among the graveyard evergreens in autumn, and, curiously, there seemed a note
of soft malicious laughter mingled with it
The
little Frenchman heard it, too, and for an instant he looked toward the
window, and I thought I saw the flicker of an ugly sneer take form beneath the
waxed ends of his mustache.
"Open
it, Madame," he bade. "It is for you and Monsieur Dennis, and the
little Monsieur Bébé here."
"I-I daren't-"
"Tenez, then Jules de Grandin doesl" With his penknife he slit the heavy
envelope, pressed suddenly against its ends so that its sides bulged, and
dumped its contents on the counterpane. Ten fifty-dollar bills dropped on the
coverlet. And nothing else.
"Five hundred
dollars!"
Arabella gasped. "Why—"
"A
birthday gift for petit
Monsieur Bébé, one surmises," laughed de Grandin. "Eh bien, the old one had a sense of humor underneath his ugly outward shell, it
seems. He kept you on the tenterhooks lest the message in this envelope contained
dire things, while all the time it was a present of congratulation."
"But
such a gift from Uncle Warburg—I can't understand it!"
"Perhaps that is as well, too, Madame.
Be happy in the gift and give your ancient uncle credit for at least one act of
kindness. Au 'voir."
"Hanged
if I can understand it, either," I confessed as we left the hospital.
"If that old curmudgeon had left a message berating them for fools for
having offspring, or even a new will that disinherited them both, it would
have been in character, but such a gift— well, I'm surprised."
Amazingly, he halted in midstep and laughed
until the tears rolled down his face. "You are surprised!" he told me
when he managed to regain his breath, "Cordieu, my
friend, I do not think that you are half as much surprised as Monsieur Warburg
Tantavul!"
Dennis
Tantavul regarded me with misery-haunted eyes. "I fust
can't understand it," he admitted. "It's all so sudden, so
utterly—"
"Pardonnez-moi"
de Grandin interrupted from
the door of the consulting room, "I could not help but hear your voice,
and if it is not an intrusion—"
"Not
at all, sir," the young man answered. "I'd like the benefit of your
advice. It's Arabella, and I'm terribly afraid she's—"
"Non, do
not try it, mon
ami" de
Grandin warned. "Do you give us the symptoms, let us make the diagnosis.
He who acts as his own doctor has a fool for a patient, you know."
"Well,
then, here are the factsT this morning Arabella woke me up, crying as if her
heart would break. I asked her what the trouble was, and she looked at me as if
I were a stranger—no, not exactly that, rather as if I were some dreadful thing
she'd suddenly found at her side. Her eyes were positively round with horror,
and when I tried to take her in my arms to comfort her she shrank away as if I
were infected with the plague.
"'Oh, Dennie, don't!' she begged and
positively cringed away from me. Then she sprang out of bed and drew her kimono
around her as if she were ashamed to have me see her in her pajamas, and ran
out of the room.
"Presently I heard her crying in the
nursery, and when "( followed her in there—" He paused and tears came
to his eyes. "She was standing by the crib where
little Dennis lay, and in her hand she held a long sharp steel letter-opener.
"Poor little mite, poor little flower of unpardonable sin,' she said. "We've got to go, Baby darling; you to limbo, I to
hell—oh, God wouldn't, couldn't
be so cruel as to damn you
for our
sin!—but
well all three suffer torment endlessly, because we didn't know!*
"She
raised the knife to plunge it in tie little fellow's heart, and he stretched
out his hands and laughed and cooed as the sunlight shone on the steel. I was
on her in an instant, wrenching the knife from her with one hand and holding
her against me with the other, but she fought me off.
" 'Don't touch me, Dennie, please, please don't,'
she begged. I know it's mortal sin, but I love you so,
my dear, that I just can't resist you if I let
you put your arms about me.'
"I
tried to kiss her, but she hid her face against my shoulder and moaned as if in
pain when she felt my lips against her neck. Then she went limp in my arms, and
I carried her, unconscious but still moaning pite-ously, into her sitting room
and laid her on the couch. I left Sarah the nurse-maid with her, with strict orders
not to let her leave the room. Can't you come over right away?"
De Grandin's cigarette had burned down till
it threatened his mustache, and in his little round blue eyes there was a look
of murderous rage. "BSter he
murmured savagely. "Sale chameau; species of a stiriking goat! This is his
doing, undoubtlessly. Come, my friends, let us rush, hasten, fly.
I would talk with Madame Arabella."
"Naw,
suh, she'd done gone," the portly nursemaid told us when we asked for
Arabella. "Th' baby started squealin' sumpin awful right after Mistu
Dennis lef, an 'Ah knowed it wuz time fo' his breakfas', so Mis' Arabella wuz
layin' nice an' still on the' sofa, an Ah says ter her, Ah says, *Yuh lay still
dere, honey, whilst Ah goes an' sees after yo' baby;' so Ah goes ter th'
nursery, an' fixes him all up, an' carries him back ter th' settin'-room where
Mis' Arabella wuz, an' she ain't there no more. Naw,
suh."
"I thought I told you—" Dennis
began furiously, but de Grandin laid a hand upon his arm.
"Do not upbraid her, mon ami, she did wisely, 118 though she knew it not; she was with the small one
all the while, so no harm came to him. Was it not better so, after what you
witnessed in the morning?"'
"Ye-es,"
the other grudgingly admitted, "I suppose so. But Arabella-"
"Let us see if we can find a trace of
her," the Frenchman interrupted. "Look carefully, do you miss any of
her clothing?"
Dennis looked about the pretty chintz-hung
room. "Yes," he decided as he finished his inspection, "her
dress was on that lounge and her shoes and stockings on the floor beneath it.
They're all gone."
"So," de Grandin nodded.
"Distracted as she "seemed, it is unlikely she would have stopped to
dress had she not planned on going out. Friend Trowbridge, will you kindly
call police headquarters and inform them of the situation? Ask to have all
exits to the city watched."
As I picked up the telephone he and Dennis
started on a room-by-room inspection of the house.
"Find
anything?" I asked as I hung up the 'phone after talking with the missing persons bureau.
"Corbleu,
but I should damn say
yesl" de Grandin answered as I joined them in the upstairs living room.
"Look yonder, if you please, my friend."
The
room was obviously the intimate apartment of the house. Electric lamps under
painted shades were placed beside deep leather-covered easy chairs,
ivory-enameled bookshelves lined the walls to a height of four feet or so, upon
their tops was a litter of gay, unconsidered trifles—cinnabar cigarette boxes,
bits of hammered brass. Old china, blue and red and purple, glowed mellowly
from open spaces on the shelves, its colors catching up and accenting the muted
blues and reds of antique Hamadan carpet. A Paisley shawl was draped scarfwise
across the baby grand piano in one comer.
Directly
opposite the door a carven crucifix was standing on the bookcase top. It was an
exquisite bit of Italian work, the cross of ebony, the corpus of old ivory, and
so perfectly executed that though it was a scant six inches high, one could
note the tense, tortured muscles of the pendent body, the straining throat
which overfilled with groans of agony, the brow all knotted and bedewed with
the cold sweat of torment. Upon the statue's thorn-crowned head, where it made
a bright iridescent halo, was a band of gem-encrusted platinum, a woman's
diamond-studded wedding ring.
"Helas, it is love's crucifixion!" whispered
Jules de Grandin.
Three months went by, and though the search
kept up unremittingly, no trace of Arabella could be found. Dennis Tantavul
installed a fulltime highly-trained and recommended nurse in his desolate
house, and spent his time haunting police stations and newspaper offices. He
aged a decade in the ninety days since Arabella left; his shoulders stooped,
his footsteps lagged, and a look of constant misery lay in his eyes. He was a
prematurely old and broken man.
"It's
the most uncanny thing I ever saw," I told de
Grandin as we walked through West Forty-second Street toward the West Shore
Ferry. We had gone over to New York for some surgical supplies, and I do not
drive my car in the metropolis. Truck drivers there are far too careless and
repair bills for wrecked mudguards far too high. "How a full-grown woman
would evaporate this way is something I can't understand. Of course, she may
have done away with herself, dropped off a ferry, or—"
"S-s-st"
his sibilated admonition
cut me short. "That woman there, my friend, observe her, if you please."
He nodded toward a female figure twenty feet or so ahead of us.
I looked, and wondered at his sudden interest
at the draggled hussy. She was dressed in tawdry finery much the worse for
wear. The sleazy silken skirt was much too tight, the cheap fur jaquette far
too short and snug, and the high heels of her satin shoes were shockingly run
over. Makeup was fairly plastered on her cheeks and lips and eyes, and short
black hair bristled untidily beneath the brim of her abbreviated
hat. Written unmistakably upon her was the
nature of her calling, the oldest and least honorable profession known to
womanhood.
"Well,"
I answered tartly, "what possible interest can you have in a—"
"Do
not walk so fast,** he whispered as his fingers closed
upon my arm, "and do not raise your voice. I would that we should follow
her, but I do not wish that she should know."
The
neighborhood was far from savory, and I felt uncomfortably conspicuous as we
turned from Forty-second Street into Eleventh Avenue
in the wake of the young strumpet, followed her provocatively swaying hips
down two malodorous blocks, finally pausing as she slipped furtively into the
doorway of a filthy, unkempt "rooming house."
We
trailed her through a dimly lighted barren hall and up a flight of shadowy
stairs, then up two further flights until we reached a sort of oblong foyer
bounded on one end by the stair-well, on the farther extremity by a barred
and very dirty window, and on each side by sagging, paint-blistered doors. On
each of these was pinned a card, handwritten with the many flourishes dear to
the chirography of the professional card-writer who still does business in the
poorer quarters of our great cities. The air was heavy with the odor of cheap
whiskey, bacon rind and fried onions.
We made a hasty circuit of the hall, studying
the cardboard labels. On the farthest door the notice read Miss SiegUnde.
"Mon
Dieu," he
exclaimed as he read it, "c'est
le mot propter
"Eh?" I returned.
"Sieglinde, do not you recall her?"
"No-o,
can't say I do. The only Sieglinde I remember is the character in Wagner's Die Walkure who unwittingly became her brother's
paramour and bore him a son—"
"Précisément.
Let us enter, if you please."
Without 121
pausing to knock he turned the handle of the door and stepped into the squalid
room.
The
woman sat upon the unkempt bed, her hat pushed back from her brow. In one hand
she held a cracked teacup, with the other she poised a
whiskey bottle over it. She had kicked her scuffed and broken shoes off; we saw
that she was stockingless, and her bare feet were dark with long-accumulated
dirt and black-nailed as a miner's hands. "Get out!" she ordered
thickly. "Get out o' here, I ain't receivin'—" a gasp broke her
utterance, and she turned her head away quickly. Then: "Get out o' here,
you lousy bums!" she screamed. "Who d'ye think
you are, breakin' into a lady's room like this? Get out, or—"
De Grandin eyed her steadily, and as her
strident command wavered: "Madame Arabella, we have come to take you
home," he announced softly.
"Good
God, man, you're crazy!" I exclaimed. "Arabella?
This-"
"Precisely, my old one; this is Madame
Arabella Tantavul whom we have sought these many months in vain." Crossing
the room in two quick strides he seized the cringing woman by the shoulders and
turned her face,up to the light. I looked, and felt a
sudden swift attack of nausea.
He was right. Thin to emaciation, her face
already lined with the deep-bitten scars of evil living, the woman on the bed
was Arabella Tantavul, though the shocking change wrought in her features and
the black dye in her hair had disguised her so effectively that I should not
have known her.
'We have come to take you home, ma pauvre," he repeated. "Your husband—"
"My husband!" her reply was half a
scream. "Dear God, as if I had a husband—"
"And the little one who needs you,"
he continued. "You cannot leave them thus, Madame."
"I can't? Ah, that's where you're wrong,
Doctor, I can never see my baby again, in this world or the next. Please go
away and forget you've seen me, or I shall have to drown mvself—I've tried it
twice already, but the first time I was rescued, and the second time my courage
failed. But if you try to take me back, or if you tell
Dennis you saw me—"
"Tell
me, Madame," he broke in, "was not your flight caused by a visitation
from the dead?"
Her
faded brown eyes—eyes that had been such a startling contrast to her pale-gold
hair—widened. "How did you know?" she whispered.
"Tiens,
one may make surmises. Will
not you tell us just what happened? I think
there is a way out of your difficulties."
"No, no, there isn't; there can't
bel" Her head drooped listlessly. "He planned his work too well; all
that's left for me is death—and damnation afterward."
"But if there were a way—if I could show
it to you?"
"Can you repeal the
laws of God?"
"I
am a very clever person, Madame. Perhaps I can accomplish an evasion, if not an
absolute repeal. Now tell us, how and when did Monsieur your late but not at
all lamented uncle come to you?"
"The night before—before I went away. I woke about midnight, thinking I heard a
cry from Dennie's nursery. When I reached the room where he was sleeping I saw
my uncle's face glaring at me through the window. It seemed to be illuminated
by a sort of inward hellish light, for it stood out against the darkness like a
jack-o'-lantern, and it smiled an awful smile at me. 'Arabella,' it said, and I
could see its thin dead lips writhe back as if all the teeth were burning-hot,
Tve come to tell you that your marriage is a mockery and a lie. The man you
married is your brother, and the child you bore is doubly illegitimate. You
can't continue living with them, Arabella. That would be an even greater sin.
You must leave them right away, or'—once more his lips crept back until his
teeth were bare—'or I shall come to visit you each night, and when the baby has
grown old enough to understand 111 tell
him who his parents really are. Take your choice, my daughter. Leave them and
let me go back to the grave, or stay and see me every night and know that I
will tell your son when he is old enough to understand. If I do it he will
loathe and hate you; curse the day you bore him.'
" 'And you'll promise never to come near Dennis or the baby if I go?* I asked.
"He
promised, and I staggered back to bed, where I fell fainting.
"Next
morning when I wakened I was sure it had been a bad dream, but when I looked at
Dennis and my own reflection in the glass I knew it was no dream, but a
dreadful visitation from the dead.
"Then I went mad. I tried to kill my
baby, and when Dennis stopped me I watched my chance to run away,
came over to New York and took to this." She looked significantly around
the miserable room. "I knew they'd never look for Arabella Tantavul among
the city's whores; I was safer from pursuit right here than if Td been in
Europe or China."
"But, Madame," de Grandin's voice
was jubilant with shocked reproof, "that which you saw was nothing but a
dream; a most unpleasant dream, I grant, but still a dream. Look in my eyes, if
you please!"
She raised her eyes to his, and I saw his
pupils widen as a cat's do in the dark, saw a line of white outline the cornea,
and, responsive to his piercing gaze, beheld her brown eyes set in a fixed
stare, first as if in fright, then with a glaze almost like that of death.
"Attend
me, Madame Arabella," he commanded softly. 'Ton are tired—grand Dieu, how tired you are! You have suffered greatly,
but you are about to rest. Your memory of that night is gone; so is all memory
of the things which have transpired since. You will move and eat and sleep as
you are bidden, but of what takes place around you till I bid you wake you will
retain no recollection. Do you hear me, Madame Arabella?"
"I
hear," she answered softlv in a small tired voice. Trds hon. Lie down, my little poor one. Lie down to rest and dreams of love. Sleep,
rest, dream and forget.
"Will you be good enough to 'phone to
Dr. Wy-ckoff?" he asked me. "We shall place her in his sanitor-ium,
wash this sacrS
dye from her hair and nurse
her back to health; then when all is ready we can bear her home and have her
take up life and love where she left off. No one shall be the wiser. This
chapter of her life is closed and sealed for ever.
"Each day 1*11 call upon her and renew hypnotic treatments that she may simulate the
mild but curable mental case which we shall tell the good Wyckoff she is. When
finally I release her from hypnosis her mind will be entirely cleared of that
bad dream that nearly wrecked her happiness."
Arabella Tantavul lay on the sofa in her
charming boudoir, an orchid negligee about her slender shoulders, an eiderdown
rug tucked round her feet and knees. Her wedding ring was once more on her
finger. Pale with a pallor not to be disguised by the
most skillfully applied cosmetics, and with deep violet crescents underneath
her amber eyes, she lay back listlessly, drinking in the cheerful warmth that
emanated from the fire of apple-logs that snapped and crackled on the hearth.
Two months of rest at Dr. WyckofFs sanitorium had cleansed the marks of
dissipation from her face, and the ministrations of beauticians had restored
the pale-gold luster to her hair, but the list-lessness that followed her
complete breakdown was still upon her like the weakness from a fever.
"I can't remember anything about my
illness, Dr. Trowbridge," she told me with a weary little smile, "but
vaguely I connect it with some dreadful dream I had. And"—she wrinkled her
smooth forehead in an effort at remembering—"I think I had a rather dreadful
dream last night, but—"
"Ah-haF'
de Grandin leant abruptly
forward in his chair. "What was it that you
dreamed, Madame?"
"I—don't—know," she answered
slowly. "Odd, isn't it, how you can remember that a dream was so unpleasant,
yet not recall its details?" Somehow, I connect it with Uncle Warburg;
but—"
"Parbleu,
do you say so? Has he
returned? Ah
bah, he makes me to be so
mad, that one!"
"It is time we went, my friend," de
Grandin told me as the tall clock in the hall beat out its tenth deliberate
stroke; "we have important duties to perform."
"For
goodness' sake," I protested, "at this hour o' night?"
"Precisely. At Monsieur Tantavul's I "shall expect a visitor tonight, and—we
must be ready for him.
"Is
Madame Arabella sleeping?" he asked Dennis as he answered our ring at the
door.
"Like
a baby," answered the young husband. Tve been sitting by her all evening,
and I don't believe she even turned in bed."
"And
you did keep the window closed, as I requested?"
"Yes, sir; closed and
latched."
"Bien. Await
us here, mon
brave; we shall rejoin you
presently."
He
led the way to Arabella's bedroom, removed the wrappings from a bulky parcel he
had lugged from our house, and displayed the object thus disclosed with an air
of inordinate pride. "Behold him," he commanded gleefully. "Is
he not magnificent?"
"Why—what
the devil?—it's nothing but an ordinary window screen," I answered.
"A window screen, I grant, my friend;
but not an ordinary one. Can not you see it is of copper?"
"Well-"
"Parbleu,
but I should say it is
well," he grinned "Observe him, how he works."
From his kit bag he produced a roll of
insulated wire, an electrical transformer, and some tools. Working quickly he
passe-patouted the screen's wooded frame with electrician's tape, then plugged
a wire in a nearby lamp socket, connected it with the transformer, and from
the latter led a double strand of cotton-wrapped wire to the screen. This he
clipped firmly to the copper meshes and led a third strand to the metal grille
of the heat register. Last of all he filled a bulb-syringe with water and
sprayed the screen, repeating the performance till it sparkled like a cobweb in
the morning sun. "And now, Monsieur le Revenant" he chuckled as he finished, "I damn think all is ready for your warm
reception!'"
For
something like an hour we waited, then he tiptoed to
the bed and bent over Arabella.
"Madame!"
The
girl stirred slightly, murmuring some half-audible response, and:
"In
half an hour you will rise," he told her. "You will put your robe on
and stand by the window, but on no account will you go near it or lay hands on
it. Should anyone address you from outside you will reply, but you will not
remember what you say or what is said to you."
He
motioned me to follow, and we left the room, taking station in the hallway just
outside.
How long we waited I have no accurate idea.
Perhaps it was an hour, perhaps less; at any rate the silent vigil seemed
unending, and I raised my hand to stifle back a yawn when:
"Yes, Uncle Warburg, I can hear you,"
we heard Arabella saying softly in the room beyond the door.
We
tiptoed to the entry: Arabella stood before the window, and from beyond it
glared the face of Warburg Tantavul.
It was dead, there
was no doubt about that. In sunken cheek and pinched-in nose and yellowish-gray
skin there showed the evidence of death and early putrefaction, but dead though
it was, it was also animated with a dreadful sort of life. The eyes were
glaring horribly, the lips were red as though they had
been painted with fresh blood.
"You hear me, do you?" it demanded.
"Then listen, girl; you broke your bargain with me, now I'm come to keep
my threat: every time you kiss your husband"—a shriek of bitter laughter
cut his words, and his staring eyes half closed with hellish merriment—"or
the child you love so well, my shadow will be on you. You've kept me out thus
far, but some night m get
in, and—"
The
lean dead jaw dropped, then snapped up as if lifted by
sheer will-power, and the whole expression of the corpse-face changed. Surprise, incredulous delight, anticipation as before a feast were
pictured on it. "Why"—its cachinnating laughter sent a chill up my
spine—"why your window's open! You've changed the screen and I can
enter!*'
Slowly,
like a child's balloon stirred by a vagrant wind, the awful thing moved closer
to the window. Closer to the screen it came, and Arabella gave ground before it
and put up her hands to shield her eyes from the sight of its hellish grin of
triumph.
"Sapristi,"
swore de Grandin softly.
"Come on, my old and evil one, come but a little nearer—"
The
dead thing floated nearer. Now its mocking mouth and shriveled, pointed nose
were almost pressed against the copper meshes of the screen; now they began to
filter through the meshes like a wisp of fog-There was a blinding flash of
blue-white flame, the sputtering gush of fusing metal, a wild, despairing
shriek that ended ere it fairly started in a sob of mortal torment, and the
sharp and acrid odor of burned flesh!
"Arabella—darling—is
she all right?" Dennis Tantavul came charging up the stairs. "I
thought I heard a scream—"
"You did, my friend," de Grandin
answered, "but I do not think that you will hear its repetition unless you
are unfortunate enough to go to hell when you have died."
"What was it?"
"Eh
bien, one who thought
himself a clever jester pressed his jest too far. Meantime, look to Madame your
wife. See how peacefully she lies upon her bed. Her time for evil dreams is
past. Be land to her, mon jeune. Do
not forget, a woman loves to have a lover, even though he is her husband."
He bent and kissed the sleeping girl upon the brow. aAu 'voir, my little lovely one," he murmured.
Then, to me:
"Come,
Trowbridge, my good friend. Our work is finished here. Let us leave them to
their happiness."
An
hour later in the study he faced me across the fire. "Perhaps you'll deign
to tell me what it's all about now?" I asked sarcastically.
"Perhaps
I shall," he answered with a grin. "You will recall that this
annoying Monsieur Who Was Dead Yet Not Dead, appeared
and grinned most horrifyingly through windows several times? Always from the
outside, please remember. At the hospital, where he nearly caused the guarde-malade to have a fit, he laughed and mouthed at her
through the glass skylight. When he first appeared and threatened Madame
Arabella he spoke to her through the window—"
"But her window was open," I
protested.
"Yes,
but screened," he answered with a smile. "Screened
with iron wire, if you please."
"What
difference did that make? Tonight I saw him almost force his features
through—"
"A
copper screen," he supplied. "Tonight the screen was copper; me, I
saw to that."
Then, seeing my bewilderment: "Iron is
the most earthy of all metals," he explained.
"It and its derivative, steel, are so instinct with the earth's essence
that creatures of the spirit cannot stand its nearness. The legends tell us
that when Solomon's Temple was constructed no tool of iron was employed,
because even the friendly jinn whose
help he had enlisted could not perform their tasks in close proximity to iron.
The witch can be detected by the pricking of an iron pin—never by a pin of
brass.
"Very well. When first I thought about the evil dead
one's reappearances I noted that each time he stared outside the window. Glass,
apparently, he could not pass—and glass contains a modicum of iron. Iron
window-wire stopped him. Tie are not a true ghost,
then,' I inform me. They are things of spirit only, they are thoughts made
manifest. This one is a thing of hate, but also of some physical material as
well; he is composed in part of emanations from the body which lies putrefying
in the grave. Voilá,
if he have physical
properties he can be destroyed by physical means/
"And
so I set my trap. I procured a screen of copper through which he could effect an entrance, but I charged it with electricity. I
increased the potential of the current with a step-up transformer to make assurance
doubly sure, and then I waited for him like the spider for the fly, waited for
him to come through that charged screen and electrocute himself. Yes, certainly."
"But is he really
destroyed?" I asked dubiously.
"As the candle-flame when one has blown it out. He was—how do you say it?—short-circuited.
No malefactor in the chair of execution ever died more thoroughly than that
one, I assure you."
"It
seems queer, though, that he should come back from the grave to haunt those poor
kids and break up their marriage when he reaDy wanted it," I murmured
wonderingly.
"Wanted it? Yes, as the trapper wants
the bird to step within his snare."
"But he gave them such a handsome
present when little Dennis was born—'"
"La, la, my good, kind, trusting friend, you are naif. The money I gave Madame Arabella was my own. I put it in that
envelope."
"Then what was the
real message?"
"It
was a dreadful thing, my friend; a dreadful, wicked thing. The night that
Monsieur Dennis left that package with me I determined that the old one meant
to do him injury, so I steamed the cover open and read what lay within. It made
plain the things which Dennis thought that he remembered.
"Long,
long ago Monsieur Tantavul lived in San Francisco. His wife was twenty years
his junior, and a pretty, joyous thing she was. She bore him two fine children,
a boy and girl, and on them she bestowed the love which he could not
appreciate. His surliness, his evil temper, his constant fault-finding drove
her to distraction, and finally she sued for divorce.
"But
he forestalled her. He spirited the children away, then told his wife the plan
of his revenge. He would take them to some far off place and bring them up
believing they were cousins. Then when they had attained full growth he would
induce them to marry and keep the secret of their relationship until they had a
child, then break the dreadful truth to them. Thereafter they would live on,
bound together by their fear of censure, or perhaps of criminal prosecution,
but their consciences would cause them endless torment, and the very love they
had for each other would be like fetters forged of white-hot steel, holding
them in odious bondage from which there was no escape. The sight of their
children would be a reproach to them, the mere thought
of love's sweet communion would cause revulsion to the point of nausea.
"When
he had told her this his wife went mad. He thrust her into an asylum and left
her there to die while he came with his babies to New Jersey, where he reared
them together, and by guile and craftiness nurtured their love, knowing that
when finally they married he would have his so vile revenge."
"But,
great heavens, man, they're brother and sister!" I exclaimed in horror.
"Perfectly," he answered coolly.
"They are also man and woman, husband and wife, and father and
mother."
"But—but—" I
stammered, utterly at loss for words.
"But me no buts, good friend. I know what you would say. Their child? Ah bah, did
not the kings of ancient times repeatedly take their own sisters to wife, and
were not their offspring sound and healthy? But certainly.
Did not both Darwin and Wallace fail to find foundation for the doctrine that
cross-breeding between healthy people with clean blood is productive of
inferior progeny? Look at little Monsieur Dennis. Were you not blinded by your
silly, unrealistic training and tradition—did you not know his parents' near
relationship—you would not hesitate to pronounce him an unusually fine,
healthy child.
"Besides,"
he added earnestly, "they love each other, not as brother and sister, but
as man and woman. He is her happiness, she is his, and little Monsieur Dennis
is the happiness of both. Why destroy this joy—le hon Dieu knows they earned it by a joyless
childhood—when I can preserve it for them by simply keeping silent?"
Stealthy Death
1. The Second Murder
"Parade—rest] Sound off!" Playing in quick time, the academy band marched across
the field, executed a perfect countermarch and returned to its post at the
right of the ordered ranks of cadets. As the bandsmen came to a halt the
trumpets of the drum corps, gay with fringed tabards, tolled forth the slow,
appealing notes of retreat, and: "Battalion—'tention! Present— armsF came the adjutant's command as The Star-Spangled Banner sounded and the national color floated slowly from its masthead.
Jules de Grandin's white-chamois gloved right
hand cupped itself before his right ear in a perfect French army salute, his
narrow, womanish shoulders squared back and his little, pointed chin thrust up
and forward as the evening sun picked half a thousand answering beams from
the burnished bayonets on the presented rifles. "ParfaH, exquls; magnijiquer he applauded. "Cest trds beau, that, my friend. You have
here a fine aggregation of young men. Certainly.''
I
nodded absently. My thoughts were not on the stirring spectacle of the parade,
nor upon the excellence of Westover Military Academy's student body. I was
dreading the ordeal which lay before me when, the parade dismissed, I must tell
Harold Pancoast of his father's awful death. "Hell take
it better than you, Doctor Trowbridge!'' the widow had whispered between
tremulous lips, and:
"Poor
boy, this is tragic!" the headmaster had told me deprecatingly.
"Won't you wait till after parade,
Doctor? Pancoast is Battalion Adjutant, and I think
it would be kinder to let him complete his duties at parade before we break the
news."
"Confound itl" I complained
bitterly more than
once; "why did they have to give me this job? The
family lawyer, or------ "
"Mais
non, my friend," de Grandin comforted. "It is the way of life. We
are born in others' pain; we perish in our own, and between beginning and end stands the physician. We help them into the world, we watch
beside their sickbeds, we make their exits into immortality as painless as
possible—at the last we stay to comfort those who remain. These are the obligations
of our trade." He sighed. "It is, hSlas, too true. Had kindly heaven given me a son I should have sternly forbid
him to study medicine—and I should most assuredly have cracked his neck had he
done otherwise!"
The
last gold rays of the dying October sun were slanting through the red and
russet leaves of the tree-lined avenue leading to the administration building
as we waited in the headmaster's office for young Pancoast. At last he came,
sauntering easily along the red-brick walk, plainly in no haste to answer the
official summons, laughing as only carefree youth can laugh, and looking with
more than friendly regard into the face of his companion. Indeed, she was a
sight to brighten any eye. A wistful, seeking look was on her features, her
fine dark hair lay round her delicate, pale face like a somber nimbus, and the
Chinese coat of quilted black satin she wore against the evening chill was
lined and collared with soft orange-pink which set off her brunette pallor to
perfection. "Parbleu,
he chooses nicely, that
one," de Grandin approved as the lad bade his companion adieu with a
smart military salute and turned to mount the steps to the headmaster's
sanctum.
I drew a deep breath and braced myself, but I
might have known the boy would take the blow like the gentleman he was.
"Dead—my Dad?"
he murmured slowly, unbelievingly as I concluded my evil tidings. "How? When?"
"Last
night, mon pauvre," de Grandin took the conversation from me.
"Just when, we do not know, but that he met his death by foul play there
is no room for doubting. The steel of the assassin struck him from behind—a
sneaking, cowardly blow, but a mighty one, mon brave—so that he died instantly, without pain or struggle. It is for us—you
and us—to find the one responsible and give him up to justice. Yes. Certainly. You accept the challenge? Good! Bravely spoken,
like the soldier and the gentleman you are; I do salute you—" He drew
himself to rigid attention, raising his hand with precise military courtesy.
Admiringly, I saw the Gallic subtlety with
which he had addressed the lad. Had I been telling him, I should have minimized
the tragic aspects of his fathers death as much as
possible. The Frenchman, on the contrary, had thrown them brutally before the
boy, and then, with sure psychology, diverted thoughts of grief and horror by
holding out the lure of vengeance.
"You're right!" the youngster
answered, his chin thrust forth belligerently. "I don't know who'd want to
harm my Dad—he never hurt a fly that didn't bite him first—but when we find the
one who did it, we— by God, sir, well hang him high as Haman!"
Arrangements
were quickly made. Indefinite leave was granted Harold, and I parked my car
before his dormitory while he completed hurried packing for the journey to bis desolated home.
"Strikes
me he's taking an unconscionable time to stuff his bags," I grumbled when
we had waited upward of an hour. "Perhaps he's broken down, de Grandin—
I've seen sturdier lads than he collapse like deflated balloons in similar
circumstances—will you excuse me while I run in and see if he's all
right?"
The
little Frenchman nodded and I hastened to the upper-story room young Pancoast
shared with a classmate.
"Pancoast? No, sir," his roommate replied to my hurried inquiry. "He
came in about an hour ago and told me his trouble, then stuffed his gear into
his kit bag there"—he indicated the great pigskin valise resting in a
corner of the room—"and said he had to see someone before he left for
home. I thought perhaps he'd decided to go on without his grip and would send
for it later. Terrible thing, his father's death, wasn't it, sir?"
"Quite," I answered. "You've
no idea where he went, or why, I suppose?"
The lad colored slightly. "I------------ " he began, then
stopped,
embarrassed.
"Out with it!" I ordered curtly. "His mother's on the
verge of collapse at home, and he's needed there. It's the better part of three
hours' steady drive, too."
"I'm
not sure, sir," the cadet answered, evidently of divided mind whether to
hold fast the confidence imposed in him or break the school's unwritten law in
deference to the emergency; "I'm not certain where he went, but—well, he's been pretty
spoony on a femme
ever since the semester
started, and—maybe— he ran over to say good-bye. But it shouldn't take him this
long, and—"
"All right," I broke in brusquely,
"never mind the details. Where's this young woman likely to be found?
We're in a hurry, son." I bent and seized the waiting kit-bag as I spoke,
then paused significantly at the door.
"I haven't her address, sir," the
lad replied, "Panny never mentioned it to me, but you'll be likely to find
him down in Rogation Walk—that's the little lane south of the campus by the old
Military Road, you know—they usually meet there between retreat and
tattoo."
"Very well, 1*11 hunt him there," I
answered. "Thanks for the information. Good-night."
Harold
Pancoast lay as he had fallen, his uniform cap, top down, on the bricks of the
shaded walk, the black-braided collar and gray shoulders of his blouse
stained rusty
red. Transversely across the back of his head, where hair-line joined the neck,
gaped a long incised wound from which blood, already beginning to congeal, was
welling freely, and in which there showed a trace of the grayish-white of
cerebro-spinal fluid. His hands were stretched above him and clenched
convulsively. The blow which struck him down must have been a brutally powerful
one, delivered with some sharp, heavy instrument and wielded with monstrous
force, for it had hacked its way half through the atlas of his spine and,
glancing upward, cut deeply in the lower occiput. No need to ask if he were
dead; the guillotine could scarcely have worked with more efficiency upon the
poor lad's neck.
As I
gazed at him in horror another horror crept over me. Though I had not inspected
his father's injuries, Pamell, the coroner's physician, had described them
with the ghoulish gusto of his trade, and there before me on the son lay the
very reproduction of the wound which cost the father's life not twenty hours earlier!
"Good
heavens!" I gasped, and my pounding heartbeats almost stopped my breath.
"This is devilish!"
I
turned and raced along the quiet, tree-rimmed walk in search of Jules de
Grandin.
2. The
Third Murder
"Sure,
Doctor de Grandin, sor, 'tis th' divil's own puzzle
we've got here, an' no mistake," confided Detective Sergeant Jeremiah
Costello as he knocked an inch of ash from his cigar and turned worried blue
eyes on the diminutive Frenchman. "First off, we've got th' murther o'
this here now Misther Pancoast—an' th' devil's own murther it were, too,
sor—an' now we've got th' case of his kid to consider; though, th' blessed
saints be praised, that case
is what ye might call academic, since it happened outside me jurisdiction entirely,
an" catchin' o' th' scoundrel as done it is none o' me official business,
unless, belike—"
Jules
de Grandin nodded shortly. 'It is very exceedingly belike, indeed, my
friend,*" he interrupted. "Consider, if you
please. What are the facts?" He raised his small left hand and spread the
fingers fanwise, then counted on them in succession. "First we have this
Monsieur Pancoast the elder, a fine and honest gentleman, if all reports be
true. Very good. Night before last he leaves the
dinner table for a meeting of his lodge, and drives off in his motor car. He
shows no sign of worriment at the meeting; he is his usual smiling self. Very well. Precisely at eleven o'clock he leaves, for they
have worked the third degree, and food is being served, but he is on a diet and
can not stay to eat. That is too bad. Two fellow members see him enter his
sedan and drive away toward home. What happens afterward we do not surely know;
but in the morning he is found beside the door of his garage, face downward on
the ground, and weltering in blood. His neck is
chopped across the back, his spine is all but severed and the instrument of
death has cloven through his skull and struck the corpus dentatum of his brain."
He nodded solemnly. "*Why has this thing
been done?* I ask. To find the criminal in this case means we must find the
motive, but where can it be found? We can not say. This Monsieur Pancoast is a
most estimable citizen, a member of the church and of the Rotary Club, a bank
director, a one-time city councilman. Yet he is dead—murdered. The case is
veiled in mystery.
"Eh blen, if the father's case is obscure, what shall
we think of the son's? A fine young man, who had harmed no one,
and whom no one could reasonably wish to harm. Yet he, too, is
dead—murdered—and murdered with the same strange technique as that which killed
his father.
"Attend mef You, Sergent, have seen much killing, both in war and
peace; Trowbridge, my friend, you are a surgeon and anatomist; can either of
you match the wounds which slew these poor ones in all of your
experience?"
I
shook my head. "Not I," I answered. "I can understand how a
blow might be delivered in such a way as to cut the tip of the spine, or how
the base of the skull could be cut through, but these wounds are beyond me.
Parnell described Pancoast's injuries to me, and it seems they were identical
with Harold's. His opinion was that no such upward-slanting blow could have
been struck unless the victim lay prone, and even then the weapon used would
have to be curved, like a carpenter's adz, for instance, to permit the course
these incisions followed."
"Ah
hah, Parnell, he is an old
woman in trousers!" de Grandin shot back. "Better would he exercise
such talents as he has in a butcher shop, I think. Consider him: he says the
victim must be prone. Grand
dieu des cochons! Did
we not examine the poor petit
Monsieur? But certainly. And did we not find him stretched face downward on the earth? Yes,
again. But with his tight-clenched hands above his head, as though he clutched
at nothing while he fell? Of course. His attitude was
one of having fallen, and he who lies upon the earth must find it impossible to
fall. Voild, he was killed standing; for had he lain flat
upon the ground when he was struck, he must inevitably have writhed in reflex
death-agony when that blow shore through his spine and skull; but standing he
would have made a single wild clutch for support, then stiffened as he fell
upon his face. His nerves and muscles were disposed to hold him upright, and
when death comes from sudden wounding of the brain, reaction of rigidity is
almost instant. You have seen it, Sergent; so
have I. A soldier in the charge, by example, is drilled through the head by a
rifle ball. He staggers on a step or two, perhaps, and then he falls, or it is
better to say he topples forward, stiff and straight as though at attention,
and hours afterward his poor, dead hands still grasp his musket tightly. But if
that same man lies on the earth when he meets death that way, the chances are
nine hundred in a thousand that he will twist and writhe, at least in one final
spasm, before he stiffens. But certainly. It is for
that reason that the condemned one is strapped tight to the cradle of the
guillotine. If he were not, the reflex nervous action consequent upon
decapitation— which is no more than a sudden injury to the spine, my
friends—would surely cause him to roll sidewise on the scaffold floor, and that
would rob the execution of its dignity. Yes, it is undoubtlessly so."
"Well,
be gob, sor, ye're maldn' th' dose harder to take than ever," Costello
muttered. "First ye tell us that th' same felly Idlt th' both o' them;
then ye demonstrate beyant th' shadder o' a doubt that no one livin' could 'a' struck
th' blows as kilt
'em. What's th' answer, if anny?"
"Hélas, as yet there is none," de Grandin returned. "Tomorrow, when the funeral has been held, I shall
investigate, and probably I shall be wiser when I finish. Until that time we
only know that some one for some motive as yet unguessed has done away with son
and father, and from the difficult technique of both the murders, I am most
confident it was the same assassin who perpetrated them. As for the motive—"
"That's just it, sor," Costello
interrupted "There ain't none."
"Précisément, mon vieux, as I was saying, this seeming absence of motive
may prove most helpful to us in our researches. It is better to be lost in the
midst of impenetrable night than to be witch-led by will-o'-the-wisps. So in this case. With no false leads, we commence from the
beginning—start from scratch, as your athletes say. Yes, it is better so."
"Ye—ye mean to say because there's
nayther hide nor hair o' motive, nor rime nor reason
to these here killins',
th' case is easier?"
Costello demanded.
"You have removed the words from my
lips, mon
brave."
"Glory be to
God-'tisn't Jerry Costello who'd like to see what ye'd be afther callin' a
har-rd case, then!" the Irishman exclaimed.
The
little Frenchman grinned delightedly. "Forgive me if I seem to jerk your
leg, my old one," he apolo-ized. "Let us gather here tomorrow at this
time, and we shall talk more straightly to the point, for we shall then know
what we know not now."
"Be
gob, 'tis meself that's hopin' so," Costello responded with none too much
optimism in his tone.
A motorcade of black and shining limousines was
ranked beneath the Lombardy poplars which stood before the Pancoast house.
Frock-coated gentlemen and ladies in subdued attire ascended the front steps, late floral deliveries were unostentatiously shunted
to the kitchen door and signed for by a black-coated, gray-gloved gentleman.
The air in the big drawing-room was heavy with the scent of carnations and tuberoses.
"Good
afternoon, Doctor Trowbridge; how are you, Doctor de Grandin?" Coroner
Martin, officiating in his private capacity of funeral director, met us in the
hall. "There are two seats over by that window," he added in an
undertone. "Take my advice and get them while you can, the air in here is
thick enough to choke you."
"Bien merci," de Grandin murmured, treading an assortment
of outstretched feet as he wove his way between the rows of folding chairs to
the vacant seats beside the window. Arrived, he perched on the extreme forward
rim of the chair, his silk hat held tenderly with both hands on his knees, his
little, round blue eyes fixed unwinkingly upon the twin caskets of polished,
mahogany, as though he would drag their secrets from them by very force of will.
The funeral rites began. The clergyman, a man
in early middle life who liked to think that Beecher's mantle had fallen on
him, was more than generous with his words. Unrelated and entirely inapposite
excerpts from Scripture were sandwiched between readings from the poets, his
voice broke and quavered artistically as he spoke feelingly of "these our dear departed brethren;" when the time came
for final prayer I was on the verge of sleep.
"Capote
dune anguille," de Gran din murmured angrily, "does he take the good God for a fool?
Must he be telling him these poor ones met their deaths by murder? Does le bon Dieu not yet know what every one in Harrisonville
already knows by heart? Bid him say 'Amen and cease, Friend Trowbridge; my neck
is breaking; I can no longer bow my head!"
"S-s-s-shT
I ordered in a venomous
whisper, reinforcing my order with a sharp dig of my elbow in his ribs. "Be quiet; you're irreverentl"
"Mordieu, I am worse; I am impatient," he breathed
in my ear, and raised his head to cast a look of far from friendly import on
the praying divine.
"Ah?"
I heard him breathe between
his teeth. "A-a-ah?" Abruptly
he bowed his head again, but I could see his sidelong glance was fixed on
someone seated by the farther window.
When the interminable service was at length
concluded and the guests had filed out, de Grandin made excuse to stay. The
motor cars had left, and only one or two assistants of the mortician remained
to set the funeral room in order, but still he lingered in the hall. "This
cabinet, my friend," he drew me toward an elaborate piece of furniture
finished in vermilion lacquer and golf-leaf, "is it not a thing of
beauty? And this"—he pointed to another piece of richly inlaid brass and
tortoise-shell—"surely this is a work of art."
I
shrugged impatiently. "Do you think it good taste to take inventory of the
furniture at such a time?" I asked acidly.
"One
wonders how they came here, and when," he answered, ignoring my remark;
then, as a servant hurried by with brush and dustpan, "Can you tell me
whence these came?" he asked.
The maid, a woman well past middle life, gave
him a look which would have withered any one but Jules de Grandin, but he met
her frown with a smile of such frank artlessness that she relented despite herself.
"Yes, sir," she returned. "Mr.
Carlin—Mr. Pancoast, sir—God rest him!—brought them home with him when he
returned from India. We used to have a ruck of such-like things, but he sold
most all of 'em; these two are all that's left."
"Indeed,
then Monsieur Pancoast was once a traveler?"
"Well,
I don't rightly know about that, sir. I only know the talk around the house;
you see, I've only been here twenty years, and he came back long before that.
It's only what Mrs. Hussy—she used to cook here, and had worked for the family
long before I came—it's only what she told me that I know for certain, sir,
and even that's just hearsay."
"Bien,
quite so, exactement," he answered thoughtfully and slipped a
folded bill into her hand, "And can you by some happy chance tell one
where he may find this queen among cooks, this peerless Madame Huss£?"
"Yes, sir, that I can; she's living at the Bellefield Home. She bought an an-uty and—"
"A which?" de
Grandin asked.
"An an-uty—a steady income, sir. She bought it when she left service
and went to live at the home. She's past eighty years old, and—"
"Parbleu,
then we must hurry if we
wish to speak with her!" de Grandin interrupted with a bow. "I thank
you for the information.
"Expect me when I return, my
friend," he told me as we reached the street. "I may be early or I
may be late; that depends entirely upon this Madame Hussy's powers as a
conversationist At any rate, it would be wiser if you
did not wait for me at dinner."
It
was fortunate we did not wait on him, for nine o'clock
had struck and dinner was long over when he came bursting in the door, his
little round blue eyes alight with excitement, a smile of satisfaction on his
lips. "Has the good Costello yet arrived?" he asked as he looked
hastily around the study as though he halfsuspected the great Irishman might
be hidden beneath the couch or desk.
"Not
yet," I answered, but—" The ringing of the doorbell cut me short, and
the big detective entered. A parenthesis of worry-wrinkles lay between his
brows, and the look he gave de Grandin was almost one of appeal.
"Well,
Doctor de Grandin, sor" he remarked, brightening as he noted the little
Frenchman's expression, "what's in th' news-bag?
There's sumpin' up yer sleeve beside yer elbow, I can see it be th* look o' ye."
"You
have right, my friend," de Grandin answered. "Did not I tell you that
the absence of a motive was a cheerful sign for us? But yes. Attend me!
"At Monsieur Pancoast's late abode this
afternoon I chanced to spy two objects of vertu the like of which we do not ordinarily find outside of museums. Jules de
Grandin, he has traveled much, and what he knows he knows. The importation of
such things is rare, for they are worth their weight in gold and—a thousand
pardons if I give offense—Americans as a class are not yet educated to their
beauty. Only those who have lived long in the East appreciate them, and few
have brought them home. Therefore I asked a most excellently garrulous
maidservant who was passing if she could tell me whence they came, and though
she knew but little she gave to me the clue for which I searched, for she said
first that Monsieur Pan-coast brought them from India—which was not so— and
that she had heard as much from a former cook which was indubitably true.
"Alors, to Bellefield I did go to interview this
Madame Husse who had once been cook for Monsieur Pancoast, and she did tell me
much. Mais oui, she told me a very great deal, indeed.
"She
told me, by example, that he had studied for the
ministry as a young man, and had gone to preach the Gospel in Burma. She had
known him from a lad, and much surprised she was when he decided on the
missioner's vocation, for he had been a—how do you
Say?
a gay dog?—among the ladies, and such behavior as his
and the minister's black coat did not seem to her in harmony.
"Eh
bien, there is no Sinner so
benighted he can not see the light if he will but look toward it, and so it was
with this one. Young Pancoast assumed the ministry and off he went to battle
with the Evil One and teach the heathen to wear
clothes.
"Now what transpired in the East she
does not know; but that he returned home again and not with empty pockets, she
knows full well, for great was the surprise of every one when the erstwhile
poor clergyman returned and set himself up in business. And he did prosper
mightily. Tiens,
it was the wonder of the
city how eveiything he touched seemed transmuted into gold. Yes. And then,
though well along in years for marrying, he wedded Mademoiselle Griggsby, whose
father was most wealthy and whose social standing was
above reproach. By her Jie had one son, whose name was Harold. Does not an explanation,
or at least a theory, jump to your eye?"
"Because
he married Griggsby's daughter an' had a son named Harold?" Costello asked
with heavy sarcasm. "Well, no sor; I can't say as how me eye is troubled
with anny explanation jumpin' in it yet awhile."
"Zfrf,
it is permissible to be stupid, but you abuse the privilege!" the little
Frenchman snapped. "You know something of the East, I take it? Monsieur
Kipling has neatly phrased it!
..
Somewheres East of Suez, Where the best is like the worst, And there ain't no
Ten Commandments—'
"Ah? You begin to perceive? In that
sun-flogged land of Burma the best is like
the worst, or becomes so shortly after arrival. The white man's morale—and
morals—break down, the saint becomes a sinner overnight.
The native men are worse than despicable, the native women—eh bien, who suffers hunger in an orchard or dies of
thirst amid running brooks, my friends? Yes, strange things happen in the East.
The laws of man may be enforced, but those of God are flouted. The man who is
respectable at home has no shame in betraying any woman whose skin bears the
sun's kissmarks or at turning any shabby deal which lines his purse with gold
and takes him home again in affluence. No. And Pencoast quit the ministry in Burma. A Latin or a Greek or Anglican priest may not
quit his holy orders unless he is ecclesiastically unfrocked, but clergymen of
the Protestant sects may lay their office down as lightly as a businessman
resigning his position. Pancoast did. He said as much to Madame Husse when
once he had a bursting-out of confidence. Remember, she had known him from a
little lad.
"Now, what have you to
say?"
"Well, sor," Costello answered
slowly, "I know ye're
speakin' truth about th' East. I served me time in th'
Philippines, an' seen many a man go soft in morals
underneath that sun, which ain't so different from th'
sun in Burma. I'm afther thinkin', but--------- "
"There
is a friend of Monsieur Pancoast, a boyhood chum, who went in business with him
after his return,'' de Grandin broke in. "By good chance it may be that
you know him; his name is Dalky, and he was associated with Pancoast until some
ten years since, when they had a quarrel and dissolved their partnership. This
Monsieur Dalky, perhaps, can be of ser—*
The strident ringing of the telephone cut
through his narrative.
"It's you they want," I told
Costello, handing him the instrument.
"Hullo?
Sure—been here fer—Howly Mither, is it so? I'll be right over!"
He clashed the monophone into its hooks and
turned on us with blazing eyes.
"Gentlemen," he announced,
"here's wor-rk fer us, an' no time to delay. Whilst we've been settin'
here like three dam' fools, talkin' o' this an' that, there's murther bein'
done. 'Tis Missis Pancoast. They got
her.
Th" Lord help us—they've wiped out the whole
family, sors, right beneath our very nosesl"
3. The
Message on the Card
The
servant we had talked with after the funeral met us in the hall when we reached
the Pancoast home. "No, sir,*' she answered Costello's inquiries, "I
can't tell you much about it. Mrs. Pancoast came back from the cemet'ry in a
terrible state—not crying nor taking on, but sort o' all frozen up inside, you
know. I didn't hear her speak a word, except once. She'd gone into her bow-duer
upstairs and laid down on the couch, and along about four o'clock I thought
maybe a cup o' tea might help her some, so I went up with it She'd got up, and
was standing looking at a picture o" Mr. Harold in his uniform that hung
on the wall—an almost life-sized portrait it is. Just as I
come into the room—I didn't knock, for I didn't want to disturb her if she was
sleeping—she said, 'O, my baby; my beloved baby boy!' Just that and nothing else, sir. No crying or anything, you
understand. Then she turned and seen me standing there with the tea, and said,
Thank you, Jane, put it on the table, please,' and went back and lay down on
the couch. She was calm and collected as she always was, but I could see the
heart of her was breaking inside her breast, all the same.
"She didn't come down to supper, of
course, so I took some toast and eggs up to her. The tea I'd brought earlier
was standing stone-cold on the table, sir; she hadn't poured a drop of it. When
I went in she thanked me for the supper and had me set it on the table, and I
left.
"It
was something after nine o'clock, maybe, when the young woman called."
"Eh? A young woman?
Do you tell me? This is of interest. Describe her, if you please," de
Grandin ordered.
"I
can't say as I can, sir," the woman answered. 147
"She
wasn't very tall, and "she wasn't exactly what you'd call short, either.
She was just medium, not tall nor short, thin nor fat. Her hair, as far as I
could see, was dark, and her face was rather pale. I guess you'd call her
pretty, though there was a sort o' queer, goggle-eyed expression to her that
made me think-well, sir, you know how young folks are these days, what with
Prohibition and cocktail parties and all—if Td smelled anything, I'd have said
she'd been drinking too much, but there wasn't any odor of alcohol about her,
though she did have some kind o' strong, sweet perfume. She asked to see Mrs.
Pancoast, and when I said I didn't think she could be seen, she said it was
most urgent; that Mrs. Pancoast would surely see her if I'd take her card up.
So she handed me a little note in an envelope—not just a visiting-card, sir—and
I took it up, though I didn't feel right about doing it.
"Mrs. Pancoast didn't want to be
bothered at first; told me to send the young lady away, but when she read what
was written on the card her whole manner changed. She seemed all nervous and
excited-like, right away, and told me to show the visitor right up.
"They stayed there talking about fifteen
minutes, I
should judge; then the two of 'em came down, the
young lady still blear-eyed and sort o' dazed-looking
and Mrs. Pancoast in an awful hurry. She was more
excited than I'd ever seen her in all the twenty years
I've worked here. It seemed to me like she was all
trembly and twitching-like, sir. They got into the taxi,
and---- "
"Oh ho, there wuz a taxi, wuz
there?"
Costello interrupted.
"Why, yes, sir; didn't I say the young
lady came in a taxi?"
"Ye did not; an' ye're neglecting to
tell whether 'twas th' same one she came in that took
them off, but—"
"Yes, sir, it was. She kept it waiting,
sir." "Oh, did she, now? I don't suppose ye noted its 'umber?"
"No, sir, I didn't; but-------- "
"Or what kind it
wuz—yellow, blue or—*"
Tm
not exactly certain it was a taxi, sir, now I come to think of it. It
was sort o' dark-colored, and—"
"An'
had four wheels wid rubber tires on each o' em, I suppose? Ye're bein' mighty
helpful to us, so ye are, I must say. Now git on wid it.
What happened next?"
"Nothing
happened, sir. They drove off, and I went on about my work. First I tidied up
the bow-duer and took away the supper tray—Mrs. Pancoast hadn't touched a
bite—then I came downstairs and—"
"Howly St. Bridget! Will
ye be gittin' on wid
it?" Costello almost roared. "Well admit fer th' sake o' ar-gyment
that ye done yer duties and done 'em noble, but what we're afther tryin' to
find out, if ye'd please be so land as to tell us, is when ye first found out
Mrs. Pancoast had been kilt, and how ye found it out."
The woman's eyes snapped angrily. "I was
coming to that," she answered tartly. Td come down to the basement to wash
the supper things from Mrs. Pan-coast's tray, when I heard a ringing at the
lower front door—the, tradesmen's door, you know. I went to answer it, for
Cook had gone, and—oh, Mary, Mother! It was terrible!
"She lay there,
gentlemen, head-foremost down the three steps that leads to the gate under the
porch stairs, and blood was running all over the steps. I almost fainted, but
luckily I remembered to call the coroner to come and take it—her, I mean—away.
Oh, I'll never, never be able to go up those service steps again!"
"Ten thousand small and annoying active
little blue devils!" de Grandin swore. "Do you tell me they took her
away—removed the body before we had a chance to view it?"
"Yes, sir; of course. I knew the proper thing to do was not to
touch it—her, I mean—until the coroner had come, so I 'phoned him right away
and—"
"Oh, ye did, clid ye?" Costello
broke in. "I don't sup-149 pose ye ever heard that th'
city pays policemen to catch those that commits murther? Ye called th' coroner and had him spoil what little clues we might o'
found, an'—"
The
goaded woman turned on him in fury. "The city may pay police to catch
murderers," she blazed, "but if it does it's wasting its money on the
likes o' you! Do you know who killed Mr. Carlin? No! Do you know who killed Mr.
Harold? No! Will you find out who murdered poor, innocent Mrs. Pancoast? Don't
make me laugh! You couldn't catch cold on a rainy day, let alone catch a
sneaking murderer like the one which did these killings! You
and your talk o' spoiled clues!" She tossed her head disdainfully.
"Was I to leave the poor lady's remains laying by
her own front door while you looked round for fingerprints and the like o'
that? Not for all the police in Harrison-ville would I—"
"Tiens, my friend, this is interesting, but not instructive.
There is little to be gained from calling hard names, and time presses. Had you
first notified the police, Mademoiselle, you
would have rendered apprehension of the miscreants more certain, but as it is
we must make the best of what we have to work with. No amount of weeping will
restore spilled milk."
To Costello he added? "Let us inspect
Madame Pancoast"s boudoir. Perhaps we shall find something."
A
bright fire burned behind the brass fender in the cheerful apartment Maria
Pancoast had quit to go to her death an hour earlier; pictures, mostly family
portraits, adorned the walls, the windows were gay with bright-figured chintz.
A glance at the mahogany table revealed nothing. The gaily painted wastebasket
contained only a few stray wisps of crumpled notepaper; the Colonial
escritoire which stood between the windows was kept with spinsterish neatness;
nothing like a hastily opened note or visiting-card showed on its fresh green
blotter. "Voila,
my friends, I think I have
it!" de Grandin 150 cried, peering into the bed of glowing coke as he
crouched on hands and knees before the fireplace. "It is burned,
but—careful, very careful, my friend, a strong breath may destroy it!" He
motioned Costello back, took up the brazen fire-tongs and, gently as a chemist
might handle an explosive mixture, lifted a tiny curl of crackling gray-black
ash from the blue flames. "Trie Dieu she
wrote in ink!" he muttered as he bore his find to the table and laid it
tenderly upon the sheet of clean white paper Costello spread before him.
The
parchment shades were stripped from the lamps and at Costello's order Jane, the
maid, ran to the dining-room to fetch stronger electric bulbs. Meanwhile de
Grandin reached into his waistcoat pocket and took out a pair of delicate steel
tweezers and a collapsible-framed jewelers loop which
he inserted in his right eye.
Carefully,
almost without breathing, lest the gentle current of air from lips or nostrils
destroy the carbonized cardboard, he turned the blackened relic underneath
the lens of his glass.
"M—i—s—s— A—I—I,"
he spelled out slowly, then fell to studying the cone of blackened paper intently
again. "No use, my friends, the printing is effaced by the fire beyond
that part," he told us. "Now for the message on the
card. If she used ink all is well, for the metallic pigment in it will
have withstood the heat. If she wrote in pencil—we are luckless, I fear. Let us
see."
For several minutes he turned the little cone
of ash beneath the lights, then with a shrug of impatience laid it on the
paper, and holding one end in a gentle, steady grip with the tweezers, dipped
his fingers in a tumbler and let fall a drop of water on the charred
pasteboard. The burned paper trembled like a living thing in torture as the
liquid touched it, and a tiny crackling rose from it. But after a moment the
moisture seemed to spread through the burned fiber, rendering it a thought
less brittle. Twice more he repeated the experiment, each time increasing the
pressure of his tweezers. At length he succeeded in prying the cone of
heat-contorted paper partly open.
"Ah?" he exclaimed exultantly. "It was prepared beforehand. See, she did
use ink—thanks be to God!"
Again he studied the charred pasteboard and
spelled out slowly: "Ip—ho—ban—so—"
"Name
of a name; it is plain as any flagpole!" he cried. "In vain is the
evidence of crime burned, my friends. We have them, we
know the bait by which they lured poor Madame Pancoast to her death! You
see?" He turned bright eyes on Costello and me in turn.
"Not I," I
answered.
"Nor I," the Irishman confessed.
"Mordieu,
must I then teach school to
you great stupid-heads?" he asked. "Consider:
"A
young woman comes to see poor Madame Pan-coast, scarcely four hours after she
has laid away all that remained to her of son and husband. Would Madame be likely to see a stranger in such circumstances? Mademoiselle Jane,
the maid, thought not, and she was undoubtlessly right But Madame Pan-coast saw
this visitor. For why? Because of
something written on a card. Now, what could move a woman with a
shattered heart to see an unknown visitor-more, to go away with her, seemingly
in a fever of impatience? The answer leaps to the eye. Certainly.
It is this: Fill in the missing letters of these words, and though they make
but fragments of a sentence, they speak to us in trumpet-tones. Four parts of
words we have, the first of which is 'lp.' Add
two letters to it, and we have 'help' Nest-ce-pas? But certainly. Perform the same office for the other three
and we have this portion of the message: 'help—who—husbandr-son.' What more is needed? Tonight came one who promised—in writing, grdce d Dieu—to help the stricken wife and mother bring to
justice the slayer of her husband and her son! Is it to be wondered that she
went with her? Fardieu,
though she had known for
certainty that the path led to the death she met tonight, she would have gone.
Yes.
"Madame
Pancoast"—he wheeled and faced a portrait of the murdered woman which
hung upon the wall and brought his hand up in salute—"your sacrifice
shall not be in vain. Although they know it not, these vile miscreants who
lured you to your death have paved the way for Jules de Grandin to seek them
out. I swear it!"
To us he ordered
peremptorily: "Come, let us go!"
"Where?" Costello and I demanded in chorus.
"To Monsieur Dalky's, of course. I think that he can do us a favor. I know we
can do him one, if it be not already too late. Allez-vous-enl"
4. The
Warning
No, sir, Mr. Dalky's not in," the butler
answered de
Grandin's impatient inquiry. "He went out about fif-
teen or twenty minutes ago, and--------
"Really,
I couldn't say, sir," the man's manner was eloquent of outraged dignity as
de Grandin demanded his employer's destination. "Mr. Dalky was not
accustomed to tell me where he intended—"
"Dix
mille moustiques, what
do we care of his customs?" the Frenchman cut
in. "This is of importance. We must know whither he went at once, right
away—"
"I really couldn't say, sir," the
butler returned im-perturbably, and swung the door to.
"Listen
here, young felly," Costello inserted the broad toe of his boot in the
rapidly diminishing space between door and jamb and brought his broad shoulder
against the panels, "d'ye see this?" He turned back the lapel of his
jacket, displaying his badge. "Yell tell us where Dalky went, an' tell it
quick, or else—"
Statement of the alternative was unnecessary.
"Til ask Mrs. Dalky, sir," the man began, but:
"Ye'll
not," Costello denied. "Ye'll take us to her, an' we'll do our own
askin', savvy?" The butler led us to the room where Mrs. Dalky sat beneath
a reading-lamp conning the current issue of The New 'Yorker.
"A thousand pardons, Madame," de Grandin apologized, "but we come in
greatest haste to consult Monsieur your
husband. It is in relation to the so strange deaths of Monsieur Pancoast
and—"
"Mr.
Pancoast!" Mrs. Dalky dropped her magazine and her air of slight hauteur
at once. "Why, that's what Herbert went to see about"
"Ten
thousand crazy monkeys!" de Grandin swore beneath his breath, then, aloud:
"When? Where, if you please? It is important!"
"We
were sitting here reading," the lady replied, "when the telephone
rang. Some one wanted to speak with Mr. Dalky privately, concerning the murder
of Mr. Pancoast and his son. It seemed, from what I overheard, that this person
had stumbled on the information accidentally and wanted to consult my husband
about one or two phases of the case before they went to the police. Mr. Dalky
wanted him to come here, but he said they must act at once if they were to
catch the murderers, so he would meet my husband at Tunlaw and Emerson Streets
in twenty minutes, then they could go directly to police headquarters,
and—"
"Your pardon, Madame, we must go!" de Grandin almost shouted,
and seizing Costello with one hand and me with the other, he fairly dragged us
from the room,
"Rush, hasten, fly, my friend!" he
bade me. "We have perhaps five little minutes of grace. Let us make the
most of it. To those Tunlaw and Emerson Streets, with all
celerity, if you please!"
The
gleaming, baleful eyes of a city ambulance's red-lensed headlights bore down
upon us from the opposite direction as we raced to the designated corner, and
the r-r-r-rangl of its gong warned traffic from the road. A
crowd had already begun to congregate at the curb, staring with hang-jawed
wonder at something on the sidewalk.
"Jeez, Sergeant," exclaimed the
patrolman who stood guard above the still figure lying on the concrete,
"I never seen nothing like it. Talk about puttin' 'em on th' spotl Lookit this!" He put back the improvised
shroud covering Dalky's features, and I went sick at the sight. The left side
of the man s head, from brow to hair-line, was scooped away, like an apple
bitten into, and from the awful, gaping wound flowed mingled blood and brain.
"No need for you here, Doc," the officer added to the ambulance
surgeon as the vehicle clanged to a halt and the white-jacketed intern elbowed
his way through the crowd. "What this pore sucker needs is th' morgue wagon."
"How'd it happen?" Costello asked.
"Well,
sir, it was all so sudden I can't righdy tell you," the patrolman
answered. "I seen this here bird standin' on th' corner, kind o' lookin'
round an' pullin' out his watch every once in a while, like he had a heavy date
with some one, when all of a sudden a car comes rushin' round th' corner, goin
like th' hammers o' hell, an' before I knew it, it's swung up that way through
Emerson Street, and this pore feller's layin* on th' sidewalk with half his
face missin'." He passed a hand meditatively across his hard-shaven chin,
"It musta been th' car hit 'im," he added, "though I can't see
how it could 'a' cut him up that way, but Yd 'el swore I seen sumpin' sort o' jump out o' th'
winder at him as th' automobile dashed past, just th' same. I suppose I'm all
wet, but—"
"By no means, mon vieux," de Grandin interrupted. "What was it you
saw flash from the passing car, if you please?"
"That's hard to say, sir," the
officer responded. *T can say what it looked like,
though."
"Tres
bien. Say on; we are all attention."
"Well,
sir, don't think I'm a nut; but it looked like
a sad-iron hitched onto a length o' clothesline. Yd 'a' swore some one inside th' car flung th' iron out th' winder, mashed
th' pore chap in th' face with it, an' yanked it back—all in one motion, like.
Course, it couldn't 'a' been, but—"
"What kind o' car wuz
it?" demanded Costello.
"Looked like a taxi, sir. One o' them
new, shiny
black ones with a band o' red an gold checkers run-
nin' round the tonneau, you know. It had more speed
than any taxi I ever saw, an' it got clear away before
I got a good look at it, for I was all taken up with this
pore man, but------- "
"All
right, turn in your report when th' coroner*s car
comes for him," Costello ordered. "Annything ye'd like to ask, Doctor
de Grandin?"
"I
think not," the Frenchman answered. "But, if you please, I should
like to have you put a guard in Mrs. Dalky's house. In no circumstances is any
one not known to the servants to be allowed to see her, and no telephone calls
whatever are to be put through to her. You will do this?"
"H'm,
I'll try, sor. If th' lady objects, o' course, there's
nothin' we can do, for she's not accused o' crime, an' we can't isolate her
that way agin' her will; but 111 see
what we can do.
"This
burns me up," he added dismally. "Here this felly, whoever he is,
goes an' pulls another murther off, right while we're lookin' at 'im, ye might
say. It's monkeys he's makin' out o' us, nothin'
less!"
"By
no means," de Grandin denied. "True, he has accomplished his will,
but for the purpose of his final apprehension, it is best that he seems to have
the game entirely his own way. Our seeming inability to cope with him will make
him bold, and boldness is akin to foolishness in a criminal. Consider: we were
at fault concerning Monsieur Pancoast's murder; the murder of his son likewise
gave us naught to go upon; almost while we watched he lured poor Madame
Pan-coast from her house and slew her, and as far as he can know, we know no
more about the bait he used in her case than we knew of the other killings. Now
comes Monsieur Dalky. The game seems all too easy; he
thinks that he can loll at will and pass among us unsuspected and unmolested.
Assuredly he will try that trick again, and when he does—parbleu, the strongest pitcher comes to grief if it be
taken to the well too often! Yes."
"What made ye think that Dalky'd be th* next to go?" Costello asked as we drove slowly
through the quiet street to notify the widow.
"A little by-play which I chanced to
notice at the funeral this afternoon," de Grandin answered. "It happened
that I raised my head while the good clergyman was broadcasting endlessly, and
as I did so I perceived a hand reach through the open window and drop a wad of
paper at Monsieur Dalky's feet. He did not seem to notice it at first, and when
he did he thrust it unread into his waistcoat pocket.
"There I was negligent, I grant you. I
should have followed him and asked to see the contents of the note—for a note
of some kind it was undoubtlessly. Why else should it have been dropped before
him while he was at the funeral of his one-time partner? But I did not follow
my intention. Although the incident intrigued me, I had more pressing business
to attend to in searching out Monsieur Pancoast's antecedents that we might
find some motive for his murder. It was not till I had interviewed Madame
Huss6 at the Bellefield Home that I learned of the former partnership between
Pancoast and Dalky, and even then I did not greatly apprehend the danger to the
latter; for though he was associated with the murdered man, he, at least, had
never traveled to the East. But when the vengeful one slew Madame Pan-coast,
who was most surely innocent of any wrong, my fears for Monsieur Dalky were
roused, and so we hastened to his house—too late, hSlds."
We drove in silence a few moments, then!
"What we have seen tonight confirms my suspicions almost certainly,"
he stated.
"Umphl" grunted Costello.
"Precisely, exactly,
quite so. The
chenay throwing-knife, do you know him?" "Can't say
I do."
"Very good. I do. On more than one occasion I had dodged
him, and he requires artful dodging, I assure you. Yes. Couteau de table du
diable—the devil's table knife—he has been called, and
rightly so. Something lilce the bolo of your Filipinos it is, but with a
curved blade, a blade not curved like a saber, but bent lengthwise, the point
toward the hilt, so that the steel describes an arc. Sharpened on both edges
like a razor—five inches across its widest part, weighted at the handle, it is
the weapon of the devil—or of Dakaits, who
are the foul fiend's half-brothers. They fling it with lightning speed and such
force that it will sheer through iron—or one's skull. Then with a thin, tough
cord of gut they pull it back again. Yes, it is true. Very
well. Such a blade, Friend Trowbridge, hurled at a man's back would cut
his spine and also cleave his lower skull. You apprehend me?" "You
mean it was a knife like that—" "Précisément.
No less. I did not at first
identify it by the wound it made on the poor Pancoasts, but when I saw the so
unfortunate Monsieur Dalky's cloven face, my memory bridged the gulf of years
and bore me back to Burma—and the throwing-knives. With Pancoast's history in
our minds, with these knife wounds to bear it out, the conclusion is obvious.
The Oriental mind is flexible, but it is also conservative. Having started on a
course of action, it will carry it through without the slightest deviation. I
think we shall soon lay this miscreant by the heels, my friends." "How?" Costello asked.
"Attend
me carefully, and you shall see. Jules de
Crandin has sworn an oath
to poor, dead Madame Pancoast, and Jules de
Crandin is no oath-breaker.
By no means. No."
The
shock was almost more than Mrs. Dalky could bear. Both de Grandin and I were busy for upward of an hour with sedatives and
soothing words. Meanwhile her condition simplified the Frenchman's program,
for a policewoman who also held a nurse's license was installed beside her bed
with orders to turn away all callers, and a plain-clothes man was posted in the
hall.
"And
now, mon vieux" de
Grandin told
the butler, "you will please get me at once the formal coat and waistcoat
Monsieur Dalky wore to the Pancoast funeral this afternoon. Hasten; my time is
short, and my temper shorter!"
Feverishly he turned the dead man's pockets
out. In the lower left waistcoat pocket was a tiny wad of crumpled ricepaper,
the kind of thin, gray-white stuff which Eastern merchandise is wrapped in.
Across it, roughly scrawled in red was the grotesque figure of a pointing man, a queer-looking figure in tight trousers and a conical cap, pointing with
clenched fists at a row of smaller figurines. Obviously three of
the smaller characters were men, their bifurcated garments proclaimed as much.
Two more, judging by the crudely pictured skirts, were women. Two of the male
figures had toppled over, the third and the two women stood erect
"Ha, the implication here is plain. You see
it?" de Grandin asked excitedly. "It was a warning, though the poor
Dalky knew it not, apparently. Observe"—he tapped the two prone figures
with his finger tip—"here lie the Pancoasts, père et fils. There, ready for the sacrifice is Madame
Pancoast, and here is Monsieur Dalky, the sole remaining man. The last one in
the group, the final woman, is who? Who but Madame Dalky, my friends? All, all
are designed to die, and two are already dead, according to this drawing. Yes."
He glared across the room as though in challenge to an invisible personage. "Ha, Monsieur Murderer, you may propose, but Jules
de Grandin will dispose of this case and of you. I damn think I shall take you
in your own trap and call your vengeance down on your own head. May Satan serve
me stewed with parsley if I do not so!"
5. Aixura
"Sure
it was an elegant job Coroner Martin did on Misther Dalky," Sergeant
Costello commented as he
159
stretched his
feet to the fire of birch logs crackling on my study hearth and drew
appreciatively at the cigar de Grandin gave him. "Were ye rnmdin' th' way
he'd patched th' pore gentleman's face up so ye'd
never notice how th' haythen murtherer done 'im in, Doctor Trowbridge,
sor?"
I
nodded. "Martin's a clever man at demisurgery," I answered, "one
of the best I've ever seen, and—"
"Excuse
me, sor," Nora McGinnis, who is nominally my cook and household factotum,
but who actually rules both my house and me with a hand of iron, appeared in
the study doorway, "there's a lady in th'
consultin'-room askin' to see Doctor de Grandin.''
"Me?" the Frenchman asked.
"You are sure? I do
not practice medicine here; it must be Doctor Trow-
bridge whom she------ "
"Th'
divil a bit," Nora contradicted. "Sure, she's askin' fer the little
gentleman wid light hair an' a waxed mustache, an' Doctor Trowbridge has
nayther light nor anny other kind o' hair, nor does he
wax his mustache."
"You win, ma belle, certainly it is I," de Grandin answered
with a laugh and rose to follow her.
A
moment later he rejoined us, walking softly as a cat, his little round blue
eyes alight with excitement. "Trowbridge, Costello, my friends," he
whispered almost soundlessly, "come; come quietly, comme une souris, and see who is within. Adhere your ears to
the keyhole, my friends, and likewise your eyes; I would that you should hear,
as well as seel" He turned and left us and, as quiedy as we could, we
followed through the passage.
The writing-lamp burned on my office desk,
its emerald shade picking out a spot of glowing green in the shadows of the
room, and de Grandin moved it deftly so that its light fell full upon the
visitor, yet left his face in dusk. At the door between the surgery and
consulting-room we paused and watched the tableau. Despite myself I started as
my eyes rested on the face turned toward the Frenchman.
Devoid of rouge or natural coloring, save for
the 160 glowing carmine of the painted lips, the face was pale as death's own
self and the texture of the fine white skin seemed more that of a Dresden blond
than a brunette, although the hair beneath the modishly small hat was almost
basalt-black. The nose was delicate, with slender nostrils that seemed to
palpitate above the crimson hps. The face possessed a strange, compelling
charm, its ivory pallor enhanced by the shadow of the long, silken lashes that
lay against the cheeks, half-veiling, half-revealing purple eyes which slanted
downward at the outer corners, giving the countenance a quaint, pathetic look.
"It's she!" I murmured, forgetting that Costello could not
understand, since he had never looked on her before. But I recognized her
instantly. When first I saw her, she had walked with Harold Pancoast an hour or
less before he met his tragic death.
"It is my uncle, sir," she told de
Grandin as we halted at the door. "He suffers from an obscure disease he
contracted in the Orient years ago. The attacks are more violent at changes of
the season-spring and autumn always affect him—and at present he's suffering
acutely. We've had several doctors already, but none of them seems to
understand the case. Then we heard of you." She folded her slender pale
hands in her lap and looked placidly at him, and it seemed to me there was an
odd expression in her gaze, like that of a person just aroused and still heavy
with sleep, or one suffering from a dose of some narcotic drug.
The little Frenchman twisted the waxed tips
of his diminutive blond mustache, obviously much pleased. "How was it they
bade you come to me, Mademoiselle?'
he asked.
"We heard—my uncle heard, that is—that
you were a great traveler and had studied in the clinics of the East. He
thought if any one could give him relief it would be you." There was a
queer, indefinable quality to her speech, her words were short, close-clipped,
and seemed to stand out individually, as though each were the expression of a
separate thought, and her semivowels and aspirates seemed insufficiently
stressed.
For
a long moment de Grandin studied her, and I thought I saw a look of wondering
speculation in his face as he gazed directly into her luminous dark-blue eyes.
Then: "Very well, Mademoiselle,
I will come," he
assented. "Do but wait a moment while I write out this prescription—"
he took a pad of notepaper from the corner of the blotter and drew it toward
him.
Crash!
The atmosphere seemed
shattered by the detonation and the room was plunged in sudden darkness.
I
leaped forward, but a sharp, warning hiss from de Grandin stopped me in my
tracks, and next instant I felt his little hand against my shoulder, pushing me
insistently back to my hiding-place. Hardly had I regained the shelter of the
door when the lights in the ceiling chandelier snapped on, flooding the room
with brightness. Amazement almost froze me as I looked.
Calm
and unmoved as a graven image the girl sat in her chair, her mild, impersonal
gaze still fixed on Jules de Grandin. No change in expression or attitude had
taken place, though the desk lamp lay shattered on the floor, its shade and
bulbs smashed into a thousand fragments.
"Right
away, MademoiseHe," de Grandin remarked, as though he
also were unaware of any untoward happening. "Come, let us go."
A long, black taxicab, its tonneau banded
with squares of alternate gold and red, stood waiting at the curb before my
door. The engine must have been running all the while, for de Grandin and the
girl had hardly entered before it was away, traveling at a furious pace.
"Howly Moses, Doctor Trowbridge, sor,
cant ye tell me what it's all about?" Costello asked as we reentered the
consulting-room and gazed upon the havoc.
"I'm
afraid not," I returned, "but it looks as though a twenty-dollar lamp
has been ruined, and—" I stopped, gazing at the two white spots upon my
green desk-blotter. One was a woman's visiting-card, engraved in neat block
letters:
Miss Allura
Bata
The
other was a scribbled note from Jules de Grandin:
"Friend Trowbridge:
"In vain is the net spread in the sight
of any bird, and I am not caught napping by their ruse. I think the murderer
suspects I am too hot upon his trail, and has decided
to dispose of me; but his chances of success are small. Await me. I shall
return.
"J.deG."
"Lord knows I hope his confidence is
justified,*' I exclaimed fervently. The thought of my little friend entering
the lair of the pitiless killer appalled me.
"Wurra,
if Yd 'a' known it, he'd never gone off wid her
unless I went along," Costello added. "He's a good little divil,
Doctor Trowbridge, sor, an' if they do 'im injury, HI—"
"Merci, my friend, you are most complimentary,"
de Grandin's laughing voice came from the doorway. "You did think I had
the chance of the sparrow in the cat's mouth, hein? Eh bien, I fear this sparrow proved a highly
indigestible morsel, in that event. Yes.
"If
by any chance you should go to a corner not so far away, my friend, you will
find there a taxicab in a most deplorable state of disrepair. It is not healthy
for the chauffeur to try conclusions with a tree, however powerful his motor
may be. As for that one—" he paused, and there was something more of
grimness than merriment in his smile.
"Where is he?" Costello asked.
"If he tried any
monkey-business----- "
"Tiens, he surely did," de Grandin interrupted,
"but with less success than a monkey would have had, I think. As for his
present whereabouts"—he raised his narrow shoulders in an expressive
shrug—'let us be charitable and say he is in heaven, although I fear that would
be too optimistic. Perhaps I should have waited, but I had but little time to
exercise my judgment, and so I acted quickly. I did not like the way he put
speed to his motor the moment we had entered it, and lis he was increasing the
distance between you and me with each turn of his wheels, I acted on an
impulse and struck him on the head. I struck him very hard, I fear, and struck
him with a blackjack. It seemed to bother him considerably, for he lost control
of his wheel immediately and ran into a tree. The vehicle stopped suddenly, but
he continued on. The windshield intervened, but he continued on his way. Yes.
He was a most unpleasant sight when last I looked at him.
"It
took but half my eye," he continued, "to tell me the fellow was a
foreigner, an Indian or Burmese. The trap was evidently well oiled, but so was
I. Alors, I did escape.
"Eh bien,
they are clever, those
ones. It was a taxi-cab I entered, a new and pretty taxicab with lines of red
and gold squares round its tonneau. The wrecked car from which I crawled a few
minutes later had no such marks. No. By a device easily controlled from the
driver s cab a shutter, varnished black to match the body of the car, could be
instantly raised over the red and golden checkers, thus transforming what was
patently a taxicab into a sumptuous private limousine. Had I not come back, you
might have searched long for the taxi I was last seen in, but your search would
have been in vain. It was a taxi, so the maid thought, which bore poor Madame
Pancoast to her death, and it was a taxi, according to the officer, from which
the death-knife was hurled at Monsieur Dalky, but neither of them could
identify it accurately, and if instant chase had been given in either
instance, the vehicle could have changed its identity almost while the
pursuers watched, and gotten clean away. A clever scheme, riest-ce-pas?"
"Well, sor, HI be—" began Costello.
"Where's the
girl?" I interrupted.
He
looked at us with something like wonder in his eyes. "Do you recall how
she sat stone-still, and seemed to notice not at all when I hurled your
desk-lamp to the floor, and plunged the room in darkness?" he asked
irrelevantly. "You saw that, for all she seemed to notice, nothing had
happened, and that she took up the conversation where we left off when I turned on the lights again?"
"Yes, but where is—"
"Parbleu, you have as yet seen nothing, or at the most,
but very little," he returned. "Come."
The
girl sat calmly on the sofa in the study, her lovely, violet eyes staring with
bovine placidity into the fire.
The little Frenchman tiptoed in and took up
his position before her. "Mademoiselle?" he murmured questioningly.
"Doctor
de Grandin?" she asked, turning her odd, almost sightless gaze on him.
"Yes, Mademoiselle.''
"I've come to see you about my uncle. He
suffers from an obscure disease he contracted in the Orient years ago. The
attacks are most violent at changes of the season—spring and autumn always
affect him—and at present he is suffering acutely. We've had several doctors
already, but none of them seems to understand the case. Then we heard of
you."
Sergeant Costello and I looked at her, then
at each other in mute astonishment. Obviously unaware that she had seen him
before, the girl had stated her errand in the precise words employed in the
consulting-room not half an hour earlier.
The
Frenchman looked at me above her head and his hps formed a single soundless
word: "Morphine."
I regarded him questioningly a moment, and he
repeated the silent disyllable, holding his hand beside his leg and going
through the motion of making an injection at the same time, then glancing
significantly at the girl.
I
nodded understanding^ at last and went to fetch the drug. She seemed not to be
aware of what transpired as I took a fold of skin between my thumb and finger,
pinched it lightly, and thrust the needle in.
"We
heard—my uncle heard, that is—that you were a great traveler and had studied in
the clinics of the East," she was telling de Grandin as I shot the plunger
home, and still repeating her message parrot-wise, word for word as she had
delivered it before, she fell asleep beneath the power of three-quarters of a
grain of alkaloid of somniferum.
6. The Death-Dealer
"And
now, my excellent one," de Grandin told Cos-tello as he and I returned
from putting the unconscious girl to bed, "I would that you telephone
headquarters and have them send us two good men and a chien de police without delay. We shall need them, I damn
think, and that without much waiting, for the spider will be resdess when the
fly comes not, and will undoubtlessly be seeking explanations here."
"Be
dad, sor, if he comes here lookin' for flies hell find a flock o' horseflies, an th* kind that can't be fooled, at thatl" Costello
answered with a grin as he picked up the 'phone.
"Now,
mes amis,
you can not be too
careful," de Grandin warned the two patrolmen who answered Costello's
summons. "This is a vicious one we deal with, and a clever one, as well.
He thinks no more of murder than you or I consider the extermination of a
bothersome gnat, and he is also quick and subtle. Yes. It is late for any one
to call. Should a visitor mount the steps, one of you inquire his business, but
let the other keep well hidden and have his pistol ready. At the first hostile
move you shoot, and shoot to hit. Remember, he has already killed three men and
a defenseless woman. No mercy is deserved by such as he."
The
officers nodded understanding^, and we disposed our forces for defense.
Costello, de Grandin and I were to join the policemen alternately on the
outside watch, relieving each other every hour. The two remaining in the house
were to stay in the room where the girl Allura lay in drugged sleep, for the
Frenchman had a theory the killer would attempt to find her if he managed to
elude the guard outside. "She who was bait for us will now be bait for
him," he stated as he concluded arrangements. "Let us proceed, my friends, and remember what T said, let no false
notions of the preciousness of life delay your hands—he is troubled with no such scruples, I assure you."
Midnight
passed and one o'clock arrived, still no indications of the visitant's
approach. Costello had gone to join the outside guard, I lounged and yawned in
the armchair by the bed where Allura lay, de Grandin lighted cigarette from
cigarette, beat a devil's tattoo on his chair-arm and gazed impatiently at his
watch from time to time.
Tm afraid it's no use, old chap," I told
him. "This fellow probably took fright when his messenger and chauffeur
failed to return—he's very likely putting as much distance between himself and
us as possible this very minute. If—"
Bang! the thunderous detonation drowned my voice as an
explosion, almost under our window, shook the air. I leaped to my feet with a
cry, but:
"Not the window, my
friend—keep away, it is death!" de Grandin warned, seizing me by
the arm and dragging me back. "This way—it is safest!"
As we raced downstairs the sharp, staccato discharge of a revolver
sounded, followed by a mocking laugh. The Frenchman opened the front door, and
dropping to his'hands and knees glanced out into the night. Another pistol
shot, followed by a cry of pain, sounded from the farther end of the yard; then
the deep, ferocious baying of the police dog and a crashing in the
rhododendron bushes told us contact of some sort had been made with the enemy.
"D'je
get hit, Clancy?" called one of the policemen, charging across the lawn.
"Never mind me, git him.r the
other cried, and his mate rushed toward the thicket where the savage dog was
worrying something. A nightstick flashed twice in the rays of a street lamp,
and two dull, heavy thuds told us the locust club struck flesh both times.
"Here
he is, Sergeant!" the patrolman called. "Shall I bring 'im in?"
"Sure,
let's have a look at him," Costello answered. "Are ye hurt bad,
Clancy?"
"Not
much, sir," the other answered. "He flang a knife or sumpin at me,
but Ludendorff jumped *im so quick it spoilt his aim. I could do with a bit o'
bandage, though."
While Costello and the uninjured policeman
dragged the infuriated dog from the unconscious man and prepared to bring him
into the house, de Grandin and I assisted Clancy to the surgery. He was
bleeding profusely from a long, crescent-shaped incised wound in the right
shoulder, but the injury was superficial, and a first-aid pack of boric and
salicvlic acid held in place by a figure-eight bandage quickly reduced the
hemorrhage.
"HI
say he's cute, sir," Clancy commented as de Grandin deftly pinned the
muslin bandage into place. "We none o' us suspected he was anywheres
around—he must 'a' walked on his hands, for he surely didn't make no footsteps
we could hear—when all of a sudden we heard sumpin go bang! alongside th' house, an a flare o' fire like a Fourth
o' July rocket went up. I yanks out me gun an' fires, like you told us, an'
then some one laughs at me, right behind me back, an' sumpin comes whizzin'
through th' air like a little airplane an' I feels me shoulder getting numb an'
blood a-runnin' down me arm.
"Lucky thing for me old Ludendorff was
with me. The son-of-a-gun could make a monkey out o' me, flingin' his contact
bomb past me an' drawin me out in th' open with me
back turned to 'im, so's he could fling his knife into me, but he couldn't fool
th' dawg. No, sir! He smelt th' feller forty feet away
an made
a bee-line for him, draggin' 'im down before
you could say Jack Robinson."
The Frenchman nodded. "You were indeed
most fortunate," he agreed. "In a few minutes the ambulance will
come, and you may go. Meantime—you will?"
Tm
tellin th' cock-eyed world I will!" Officer
Clancy responded as de Grandin moved the brandy bottle and a glass toward him.
"Say, Doc, they can cut me up every night o' th'
week, if I git this kind o' medicine afterwardl"
"Mon
vieux, your comrade waits in the next room," de
Grandin told the other officer. "He is wounded but happy, and I suspect
you would like to join him—" he glanced invitingly through the opened
door, and as the officer beheld the treatment Clancy was taking for his hurt,
he nearly overset the furniture in hasty exit.
"Now,
my friends—to business," the Frenchman cried as he closed the surgery door
on the policemen and turned to eye our prisoner.
I
held a bottle of sal volatile under the man's nose, and in a moment a twitching
of the nostrils and fluttering of lids told us he was coming round. He
clutched both chair-arms and half heaved himself upright, but:
"Slowly,
my friend; when your time comes to depart, you will not go alone," de
Grandin ordered, digging the muzzle of his pistol into the captive's ribs.
"Be seated, rest yourself, and give us information which we much desire,
if you please."
"Yes,
an' remember annything ye say may be used agin ye at yer trial," Costello
added officially.
"Pains
of a dyspeptic Billy-goatl Must you always spoil things?" de Grandin snapped,
but:
"It's
quite all right, sir, the game seems played, and I appear to have lost,"
the prisoner interrupted. "What is it you would like to know?"
He
was a queer figure, one of the queerest I had ever seen. A greatcoat of
plum-colored cloth, collared and cuffed with kolinsky, covered him from throat
to knees, and beneath the garment his massive legs, arrayed in light gray
trousers, stuck forward woodenly, as though his joints were stiff. He was big,
huge; wide of shoulder, deep of chest and almost obscenely gross of abdomen.
His head was oversized, even for his great body, and nearly round, with
out-jutting, saillike ears. Somehow, his face reminded me of one of those old
Japanese terror-masks, mahogany-colored, mustached with badger hair, and
snarling malignantly. A stubble of short, gray hair
covered his scalp, the fierce gray mustache above his mouth was stiff as
bristles from a scrubbing-brush, and the smile he turned on Jules de Grandin
was frozen cruelty warmed by no slightest touch of human pity, while terrible,
malignant keenness lurked in his narrow, onyx-black eyes. A single glance at
him convinced me that the rutnless murderer of four innocent people was before
us, and that his trail of murder would be ended only with his further inability
to kill. He waved a hand, loosely, wagging it from the wrist as though it were
attached to his forearm by a well-oiled hinge, and I caught the gleam of a
magnificent octagonal emerald—a gem worth an emperor's ransom—on his right
forefinger. "What was it you wished to know?" he repeated. Then:
"May I smoke?"
The
Frenchman nodded assent, but kept the prisoner covered with his weapon until
sure he meant to draw nothing more deadly than a silver cigarette case from his
pocket.
"Begin at the beginning, if you please, Monsieur," 'he bade. "We know how you did slay
Monsieur Pan-coast and his poor son, and how you murdered his defenseless
widow, also the poor Monsieur Dalky, but why, we
ask to know. For why should four people you had never seen be victims of your lust
for killing? Speak quickly; we have not long to wait."
The
prisoner smiled, and once again I felt the chills run down my back at sight of
the grimace.
"East is East and West is West,
And never the twain shall
meet." he quoted ironically. "I suppose it*s no use attempting to
make you share my point of view?"
That
depends on what your viewpoint is," de Grandin answered. "You killed
them—why?"
"Because they deserved it, richly,"
the other returned calmly. "Listen" to this charming little story,
if you can spare the tune?
T was born in Mangadone. My father was a chetty—they call them banla
in India. A money-lender—usurer—in fact. You know the breed; unsavory
lot they are, extracting thirty and forty per cent on loans and keeping whole
generations in their debt Yes, my father was one of them.
"He
was Indian by birth, but took up trade in Burma, and flourished at it like the
proverbial green bay tree. His ideas for me, though, were different from the
usual Indian's. He wanted me to be a hurra sahib—a. 'somebody,'
as you say. So when the time came he packed me off to
England and college to study Shakespeare and the musical glasses, but particularly
law and finance. I came back a licensed barrister and with a master's degree
in economics.
"But"—again
his evil smile moved across his features—T came back to a desolated home, as
well. My father had a daughter by a second wife, a lovely little thing called
Mumtaj, meaning moonflower. He cherished her, was rather more fond of her than
the average benighted Indian is of his girl-children, and because of the
wealth he had amassed, looked forward to a brilliant match for her.
" "Man proposes but God disposes,* it has been said, you know. In this case
it was the White Man's God, through one of his-accredited ministers, who
disposed. In the local American mission was an earnest young sahib known as the Reverend Carlin Pancoast, a personable young man who
wrestled mightily with Satan, and made astonishing progress at it. My father was
liberal-minded; he saw much good in the ways of the sahihlog, believing that our ancient customs were
outmoded; so it was not difficult to induce him to send my little sister
Moonflower to the mission school.
"But though he was progressive, my
father still adhered to some of the old ways. For instance, he kept the bulk
of his wealth in precious metals and jewels, and much of it in gold and silver
currency—this last was necessary in order to have ready cash for borrowers,
you see. So it was not very difficult for Pancoast Thakin and my sister to lay hands on gold and jewels amounting to three lakhs
of rupees—about a hundred thousand dollars—quite a respectable little sum, and
virtually every farthing my father had.
"They fled to 'China, "cross the
bay," where no one was too inquisitive and British extradition would not
reach, except in the larger cities. Then they went inland and to the sea by
boat. At Shanghai they parted. It was impossible for a sahib, especially an American preacher-sanib, to take a black girl home with
him as wife. But it was not at all embarrassing for him to take home her
fathers money, which she had stolen for him, plus my sister's purchase price.
"What? Oh, dear me, yes. He sold her.
She was 'damaged goods,' of course, but proprietors of the floating brothels
that ply the China coasts and rivers aren't over-particular concerning the kind
of woman-flesh they buy, provided the price is low enough. So the Reverend
Pancoast Sahib
was rid of an embarrassing
incumbrance, and in a little cash to boot by the deal. Shrewd
businessmen, these Yankees.
"My father was all for prosecuting in
the sahibs' way, but I had other plans. A few odd bits of
precious metals were dug up here and there—literally dug up, gentlemen, for
Mother Earth is Mother India's most common safe deposit vault—and with these
we began our business life all over again. I profited by what Td learned in
England, and we prospered from the start. In fifteen years we were far
wealthier than when the Reverend Carlin Pancoast eloped with my father's
daughter and fortune.
"But as the Chinese say, 'we had lost
face'—the memory of the insult put on us by the missionary still rankled, and I
began to train myself to wipe it out. From fakirs I learned the arts of
hypnotism and jugglery, and from Dakaits whom
I hired at fabulous prices I acquired perfect skill at handling the
throwing-knife. Indeed, there was hardly a budmash in all lower Burma more expert in the
murderers trade than I when I had completed my training.
"Then I came here. Before the bloody
altar of Durga—you know her as Kali, goddess of the thags—I took an oath that Pancoast and all his
tribe should perish at my hands, and that every one who had profited by what he
stole from my father should also die.
"And—I
can't expect you to appreciate this subtlety—I brought along a very useful
tool in addition to my knives. I called her Allura. Not bad, eh? She certainly
possessed allure, if nothing else.
"I
found her in a London slum, a miserable, undernourished brat without known
father and with a gin-soaked female swine for mother. I bought her for thirty
shillings, and could have had her for half that, except it pleased me to make
sure her dam would drink herself to death, and so I gave her more cash than she
had ever seen at one time for the child.
"I almost repented of my bargain at
first, for the child, though beautiful according to Western standards, was
very meagerly endowed with brains, almost a half-wit, m fact. But afterward I
thanked whatever gods may be that it was so.
"Her
simplicity adapted her ideally to my plan, and I began to practise
systematically to kill what little mind she had, substituting my own will for
it. The scheme worked perfectly. Before she had reached her twelfth year she
was nothing but a living robot—a mechanism with no mind at all, but perfectly
responsive to my lightest wish. With only animal instinct to guide her to the
simplest vital acts, she would perform any task I set her to, provided I
explained in detail just what she was to do. I've sent her on a
five-hundred-mile journey, had her buy a particular article in a particular
shop, and return with it, as if she were an intelligent being; then, when the
task was done, she lapsed once more into idiocy, for she has become
a
mere idiot whenever the support of my will is withdrawn.
It
was rare sport to send her to be made love to by Pancoast's cub. The silly
moon-calf fell heels over head in love with her at sight, and every day I made her rehearse everything he said—she did it with the fidelity of a
gramophone—and told her what to say and do at their next meeting. When I had
disposed of his father I had Allura bring the son to a secluded part of the
campus and—how is it you say in French, Doctor de
Grandin? Ah, yes, there I administered the coup de grace. It was really droll. She didn't even notice
when I cut him down, just stood there, looking at the spot where he had stood,
and saying, Toor Harold; dear Harold; I'm so sorry, dearl'
"She
was useful in getting Pancoast's widow out of the house and into my reach, too.
"Dalky I handled on my own, using the
telephone in approved American fashion to 'put him on the spot,' as your
gangsters so quaintly phrase it.
"Your
activities were becoming annoying, though, Doctor de Grandin, so I reluctantly
decided to eliminate you. Tell me, how did you suspect my trap? Did Allura
fail? She never did before."
"I fear you underestimated my ability to
grasp the Oriental viewpoint, my friend," de Grandin answered dryly.
"Besides, although it had been burned, I rescued Mademoiselle Allura's
card from Madame Pan-coast's fire, and read the message on it That, and the warning we found in Monsieur Dalky's waistcoat
pocket—I saw it thrown through the window to him at the Pancoast funeral—these
gave me the necessary clues. Now, if you have no more to say, let us be going.
The Harrisonville gendarmerie
will be delighted to
provide you entertainment, I assure you."
"A
final cigarette?" the prisoner asked, selecting one of the long,
ivory-tipped paper tubes from his case with nice precision.
"Mais oui, of course," de Grandin agreed, and held
his flaming lighter forward.
"I
fear you do underestimate the Oriental mind, af-174 ter
all, de Grandin," the prisoner laughed, and thrust half the cigarette into
his mouth, then bit it viciously. "MiUe diables, he has tricked us!" the Frenchman cried as a strong odor of peach
kernels flooded the atmosphere and the captive lurched forward spasmodically,
then fell back in his chair with gaping mouth and staring, death-glazed eyes.
"He was clever, that one. All camouflaged within his cigarette he had a
sac of hydrocyanic acid. Less than one grain produces almost instant death; he
had at least ten times that amount ready for emergency.
"Eh bien, my friend," he turned to Costello with a
philosophical shrug, "it will save the state the expense of a trial and of
electric current to put him to death. Perhaps it is better so. Who knows?"
"What about the girl,
Allura?" I asked.
He
pondered a moment, then: T hope he was mistaken," he returned. "If
she could be made intelligent by hypnotism, as he said, there is a chance her
seeming idiocy may be entirely cured by psychotherapy. It is worth the
trial, at all events. Tomorrow we shall begin experiments.
"Meantime, I go."
"Where?" Costello and I asked together.
"Where?" he echoed, as though surprised at our stupidity. "Where but to see if those so thirsty
gende-men of the police have left one drink of brandy in the bottle for Jules de
Grandin, pardieur
A Gamble in Souls
We
crossed tie big, cement-floored room with its high-set, steel-barred windows
and whitewashed walls, and paused before the heavy iron grille stopping the
entrance to a narrow, tunnel-like corridor. Our guide cast a sidelong,
half-apologetic look in our direction. "Visitors aren't—er—usually
permitted past this point,'' he told us. "This is
the 'jumping-off place,' you know, and the fellows in there aren't ordinary
convicts, so——"
"Perfectly, Monsieur," Jules de Grandin's voice was
muted to a whisper in deference to our surroundings,
but had lost none of its authoritativeness with
lessened volume. "One understands; but you will re-
call that we are not ordinary visitors. Me, I have cre-
dentials from the Service
Sûreté, and in addition the
note from Monsieur le Gouverneur, does it not
say------ "
"Quite
so," the warden's secretary assented hastily. Distinguished foreign
criminologists with credentials from the French Secret Police and letters of
introduction from the governor of the state were not to be barred from the
penitentiary's anteroom of death, however irregular their presence might be.
"Open the gate, Casey," he ordered the uniformed guardian of the
grille, standing aside politely to permit us to precede him.
The
death house was L-shaped, the long bar consisting of a one-story corridor some
sixteen feet in width, its south wall taken up by a row of ten cells, each
separated from its neighbor by a twelve-inch brick wall and from the passageway
by steel cage
doors. Through these the inmates looked upon a blank, bleak whitewashed wall of brick, pierced
at intervals by small, barred windows set so high that even the pale north
light could not strike direcdy into the cells. Each few feet, almost as
immobile as sentries on fixed post, blue-uniformed guards backed against the
northern wall, somnolent eyes checking every movement of the men caged in the
little cells which fined the south wall. Straight before us at the passage end,
terrifying in its very commonplaceness, was a solid
metal door, wide enough for three to pass abreast, grained and painted in
imitation of golden oak. Silence, proclaimed the legend on its lintel. This was the "one-way door"
leading to the execution chamber which, with the autopsy room immediately
adjoining, formed the foot-bar of the building's L. The air was heavy with the
scent peculiar to inefficient plumbing, poor ventilation and the stale smoke
of cigarettes. The place seemed shadowed by the vulture-wings of hopelessness.
We
paused to gaze upon the threshold, nostrils stinging with the acrid efHuvium of
caged humanity, ears fairly aching with the heaviness of silence which weighed
upon the confined air. "Oh, my dear, my darling"—it was a woman's
sob-strangled voice which came to us from the gateway of the farthest
cell—"I just found out: I—I never knew, my dear, until last night, when he
told me. Oh, what shall I do? I—IT1 go to the governor—tell him everything!
Surely, surely, hell—"
The
man's low-voiced reply cut in: "No use, my dear; there's nothing but your
word, you know, and Larry has only to deny it. No use; no usel" He bowed
his head against the grating of his cell a moment; then, huskily: "This
makes it easier though, Beth dear; it's been the thought that you didn't know,
and never could, that hurt, hurt more than my brothers perfidy, even. Oh, my
dear, I—"
"I love you, Lonny," came the woman's hoarse avowal. "Will it help you to
know that—to hear it from my hps?"
"Help?" A seraphic smile lighted up the tired, lined
face behind the bars. "Help? Oh, my darling, when
I walk that little way tomorrow night HI feel your
love surrounding me; feel the pressure of your hand in mine to give me courage
at the end—" He broke off shortly, sobs knotting in his throat, but
through his eyes looked such love and adoration that it brought the tears
unbidden to my lids and raised a great lump in my throat.
He
reached his long, artistically fine hands across the little space which
separated his cell door from the screen of strong steel mesh which guards had
set between him and the woman, and she pressed her palms against the wire from
her side. A moment they stood thus; then:
"Please,, pleaser
she turned beseechingly to
the man in blue who occupied a chair behind her. "Oh, please take the
screen away a moment I—I want so to kiss him good-byel"
The man looked undecided for a moment, then,
sudden resolution forming in his immobile face, put
forth his hand to move the wire netting.
"Here!"
began our guide, but the word was never finished, for quicker than a striking
snake, de Gran-din's slim, white hand shot out, seized him by the neck
immediately below the medulla
oblongata, exerting
sudden steel-tight pressure so that the hail stopped abruptly on a strangled,
inarticulate syllable and the man's mouth hung open, round and empty as the
entrance to a cave. "Monsieur,"
the little Frenchman
promised in an almost soundless whisper, "if you bid him stop I shall most
surely kill you." He relaxed the pressure momentarily, and:
"It's against the regulations!" our
guide expostu-
lated softly. "He knows he's not allowed to--------- "
"Nevertheless,"
de Grandin interrupted, "the screen shall be removed, Monsieur. Name of a little blue man, would you deny
them one last kiss—when he stands upon death's
door-sill? But no!"
The
screen had been removed, and, although the steel bars intervened, the man and
woman clung and kissed, arms circled round each other, lips and hearts together
in a final, long farewell. "Now," gasped the prisoner, releasing the
woman's Hps from his for an instant, "one long, long kiss, my dearest dear,
and then good-bye. I'll close my eyes and stop my ears so I can't hear you
leaving, and when I open them again, you'll be gone, but 111 have the memory of your hps on mine when—when—" He faltered, but:
"My
dear; my dearV the woman moaned, and stopped his mouth with
burning kisses.
"Parbleu,
it is sacrilege that we
should look at them—about face!" whispered Jules de Grandin, and swung himself about so that his back was to the cells. Obedient to
his hands upon our elbows, the warden's secretary and I turned, too, and stood
thus till the soft tap-tap of the woman's heels informed us she had left the
death house.
We
followed slowly, but ere we left the place of the condemned I cast a last look
at the prisoner. He was seated at the little table which, with a cot and chair,
constituted the sole furniture of his cell. He sat with head bowed, elbow on
knee, knuckles pressed against his lips, not crying, but staring dry-eyed
straight ahead, as though he could already vision the long vistas of eternity
into which the state would hurl him the next night
A long line of men in prison uniform marched
through the corridor as we reentered the main building of the penitentiary.
Each bore an empty tin cup in one hand, an empty tin plate in the other. They
were going to their evening meal.
"Would you care to see 'em eat?"
the warden's secretary asked as the files parted at the guard's hoarse
"Gangway!" and we walked between the rows of men.
"Mais non,"
de Grandin answered.
"Me, I, too, desire to eat tonight and the spectacle of men eating like
caged brutes would of a certainty destroy my appetite. Thank you for showing
us about, Monsieur,
and please, I beg, do not
report the guard's infraction of the regulations in taking down that screen. It
was a work of mercy, no less, my friend!"
The
miles clicked swiftly off on my speedometer as we drove along the homeward
road. De Grandin was for the most part sunk in moody silence, lighting one
evil-smelling French cigarette from the glowing stump of another, occasionally
indulging in some half-articulate bit of highly individualized profanity; once
or twice he whipped the handkerchief from his left cuff and wiped his eyes
half-furrively. As we neared the outskirts of Harrisonville he turned to me,
small eyes blazing, thin lips retracted from small, even teeth.
"Hell and furies, and ten million small
blue devils in the bargain, Friend Trowbridge," he exclaimed, "why
must it be? Is there no way that human justice can be vindicated without the
punishment descending on the innocent no less than on the guilty? Me, I damn
think—" He turned away for a moment, and:
"Mordieu, my friend, be careful!" he clutched excitedly
at my elbow with his left hand, while with the other he pointed dramatically
toward the figure which suddenly emerged from the shadowy evergreens bordering
the road and flitted like a windblown leaf across the spot of luminance cast
by my headlights.
"Cordieu,
she will not die of
senility if she persists in such a way of walking—" he continued, then interrupted
himself with a shout as he flung both feet over the side of the car and rushed
down the road to grapple with the woman whose sudden appearance had almost sent
us skidding into the wayside ditch.
Nor
was his intervention a split-second too soon; for even as he reached her side
the mysterious woman had run to the center of the highway bridge and was
drawing herself up, preparatory to leaping over the parapet to the ^rushing
stream which foamed among a bed of jagged rocks some fifty feet below.
"Stop
it, Mademoiselle! Desist!" he ordered sharply, seizing her
shoulders in his small, strong hands and dragging her back from her perilous
perch by main force.
She
fought like a cornered wildcat. "Let me go!" she raged, struggling in
the little Frenchman's embrace, then, finding her efforts to break loose of no
avail, writhed suddenly around and clawed at his cheeks with
desperation-strengthened fingers. "Let me go; I want to die; I must die; I
will die, I tell you! Let me go!"
De Grandin shifted his grip from her
shoulders to her wrists and shook her roughly, as a terrier might shake a rat.
"Silence, Mademoiselle;
be still!" he ordered
curtly. "Cease this business of the monkey at once, or pardieiT—he administered another vigorous
shake—"I shall be forced to tie you!"
I added my efforts to his, grasping the
struggling woman by the elbows and forcing her into the twin shafts of light
thrown by the car's driving-lamps.
Stooping,
the Frenchman retrieved her hat and placed it on her dark head at a decidedly
rakish angle, then regarded her speculatively a moment. "Will you promise
to restrain yourself if we release you, Mademoiselle?*' he
asked after a few seconds' silent scrutiny.
The girl—she was little more—regarded us
sullenly a moment, then burst into a sharp, cachinnating laugh. "You've
just postponed it for a while," she answered with a shrug of her narrow
shoulders. 'Til kill myself as soon as you leave me, anyway. You might as well
have saved yourselves the trouble."
"U'm?" de Grandin murmured. "Exactly,
precisely, quite so, Mademoiselle. I had that very thought in mind, and it is for that reason that we shall
not leave you for a little so small moment. Pains of a dyspeptic pig, are we
then murderers? But of course not. Tell us where you
live, and we shall do ourselves the honor of escorting you there."
She
faced us with quivering nostrils and heaving, tumultuous bosom, anger flashing
from her eyes, a diatribe of invective seemingly ready to spill from her
parted lips. She had a rather pretty, high-bred face; unnaturally large, dark
eyes, seeming larger because of the violet half-moons under them; death-pale
skin contrasting sharply with the little tendrils of dark, curling hair which
hung about her cheeks beneath the rim of her wide leghorn hat. There was
something vaguely familiar about her features, about the soft, throaty
contralto of her voice, about the way she moved her
hands to emphasize her words. I drew my brows together in an effort at
remembrance, even as de Grandin spoke.
"Mademoiselle,"
he told her with a bow,
"you are too beautiful to die, accordingly—ah, parbleu, I know you nowl
"It
is the lady of the prison, my good Trowbridge!" He turned to me, wonder
and compassion struggling for the mastery of his face. "But
certainly." To her:' "Your change of dress deceived me at the first, ma pauvre."
He drew away a pace, regarding her intently.
T
take back my remark," he admitted slowly.
"You have
an excellent reason for desiring to be rid of this cruel
world of men and man-made justice, Mademoiselle,
nor am I any stupid,
moralistic fool who would deny
you such poor consolation as death may bring, but"—
he made a deprecating gesture—"this is not the time
nor the place nor manner, Mademoiselle. It
were a
shame to break your lovely body on those rocks down
there, and—have you thought of this?—there is a poor
one's body to be claimed and given decent burial
when the debts of justice have been paid. Can not
you wait until that has been done, then------------ "
"Justice?" cried the woman in a
shrill, hard voice. "Justice? It's
the most monstrous miscarriage of justice there ever was! It's murder, I tell
you; wilful murder, and—"
"Undoubtlessly,"
he assented in a soothing voice, "but what is one to do? The law's
decree—"
"The
law!" she scoffed. "Here's one time where the strength of sin really
is the law! Law's supposed to punish the guilty and protect the innocent, isn't
it?
Why
doesn't the law let Lonny go, and take that red-handed murderer who did the
killing in his place? Because the law says a wife can't testify against her
husband! Because a perjured villain's testimony has sent a blameless man to
death—that's why!"
De Grandin turned a fleeting glance on me and
made a furtive, hardly noticeable gesture toward the car. "But certainly, Mademoiselle," he nodded, "the laws of men are seldom perfect. Will not you come with us? You shall
tell us your story in detail, and if there is aught that we can do to aid you,
please be assured that we shall do it. At any rate, if you will give
consideration to your plan to kill yourself, and having talked with us still think you wish to die, I promise to assist you, even in
that. We are physicians, and we have easily available some medicines which will
give you swift and painless release, nor need any one be the wiser. You
consent? Good, excellent, bien. If you please, Mademoiselle." He bowed with courtly, Continental courtesy as he assisted her into my
car.
She
sat between us, her hands lying motionless and flaccid, palms upward, in her
lap. There was something monotonous, flat and toneless, in her deep and rather
husky voice as she began her recitation. I had heard women charged with murder
testifying in their own defense in just such voices. Emotion played upon too
harshly and too long results in a sort of anesthesia, and emphasis becomes
impossible.
"My name's Beth Cardener—Elizabeth
Cardener" she began without preliminary. "I am the wife of Lawrence
Cardener, the sculptor. You know him? No? No matter.
"I am twenty-nine years old and have
been married three years. My husband and I have known each other since
childhood. Our families had adjoining houses in the city and adjoining country
places at Seagirt. My husband and I and his twin brother, Alonzo, played
together on the beach and in the ocean in summer and went to school together in
the winter, though the boys were two grades above me, being three years older.
They looked so much alike that no one but their family and I—who was with them
so much that I was almost like a sister—could tell them apart, and Lonny was
always getting into trouble for things which Larry did. Sometimes they'd change
clothes and one would go to call on the girl with whom the other had an
engagement, and no one ever knew the difference. They never fooled me, though;
I could usually tell them by a slight difference in their voices, but if I
weren't quite sure, there was one infallible clue. Lonny had a little scar
behind his left ear. I struck him there with a sand-spade when he was six and I
was three. He and Larry had been teasing me, and I flew into a fury. He
happened to be nearer, and got the blow. I was terribly frightened after I'd
done it, and cried far more than he did. The wound wasn't really serious, but
it left a little, white scar, not more than half-an-inch in length, which never
disappeared. So, when the boys would try to play a joke on me I'd make them let
me turn their ears forward; then I could be certain which was Lonny and which
Larry.
"When the war came and the boys were
seventeen, both were wild to go, but their father wouldn't let them. Finally
Larry ran away and joined the Canadians—they weren't particular in checking up
on ages in Canada those days. Before Larry had been gone three weeks his
brother joined him, and they were both assigned to the same regiment. Larry
was given a lieutenancy shortly after he joined up and Lonny was made a
subaltern before they sailed for France.
"Both
boys were slightly gassed at the second battle of the Marne and were in
recuperation camp until the termination of hostilities. They came back
together, in uniform, of course, in '19, and I was in a perfect frenzy of
hero-worship. I fell madly in love with both of them. Both loved me, too, and
each asked me to marry him. It was hard to choose between them, but Lonny—the
one I'd marked' with my spade when we were ldds—was a little sweeter, a little
gentler than his brother, and finally I accepted him.
Larry
showed no bitterness, and the three of us continued as close, firm friends,
even after the engagement, as we'd been before.
"Lonny
was determined to become a painter, while Larry had ambitions to become a
sculptor, and they went off to Paris for a year
of study, together, as always. We were to be married when they returned, and
Larry was to be best man. We'd hoped to have a June wedding, but the boys'
studies kept them abroad till mid-August, so we decided to postpone it till
Thanksgiving Day, and both the boys came down to Seagirt to spend the remainder
of the season.
"There
was a girl named Charlotte Dey stopping at a neighbor's house, a lovely creature, exquisitely made, with red-gold
hair and topaz eyes and skin as white as milk. Larry seemed quite taken with
her, and she with him, and Lonny and I began to think that he'd found
consolation there. We even wished in that romantic way young lovers have that
Larry'd hurry up and pop the question so we could have a double wedding in
November.
"You
remember I told you our houses stood beside each other? We'd always been so
intimate that I'd been like a member of the Cardener family, even before I was
engaged to Lonny. We never thought of knocking on each other's doors, and if I
wanted anything from the Cardeners or they wanted anything from our house, we
were as apt to enter through one of, the
French windows opening on the verandas as we were to go through the front door.
"One
evening, after Lonny and I had said goodnight, I happened to remember that I'd
left a book in the Cardener library, and I especially wanted that book early
next morning; for it had a recipe for sally lunn in it, and I wanted to get up
early and make some as a surprise for Lonny next morning at breakfast. So I
just ran across the intervening lawn and up the veranda steps, intent on going
through the library window, getting the book and going back to bed without
saying anything to anybody. I'd just mounted the steps and started down the
porch toward the library when Lonny loomed up in front of me. He'd slipped on
his pajamas and beach robe, and had been sitting on a porch rocker. 'Beth!' he
exclaimed in a sort of nervous, almost frightened way.
" Why,
yes, it's I,' I answered, putting my hand in his and continuing to walk toward
the library window.
'"You
mustn't come any farther,' he suddenly told me, dragging me to a stop by the
hand which he'd been holding. *You must go back, Beth.'
*"Why, Lonny!' I exclaimed in amazement. Being told I
couldn't go and come at will in the Cardener house was like being slapped in
the face.
*"You must go back, please,' he answered
in a sort of embarrassed, stubborn way. "Please, Beth; I can't explain, dear;
but please go, quickly.'
There
was nothing else to do, so I went. I couldn't speak, and I didn't want him to
see me crying and know how much he'd hurt me.
"I
didn't go back to my room. Instead I walked across the stretch of lawn behind
the house, down to the beach, and sat there on the sand. It was a bright September
night, and the full moon made it almost light as day; so I couldn't help seeing
what followed. I'd sat there on the beach for fifteen minutes, possibly, when I
happened to look back. The boys' rooms opened on the side veranda and to reach
the library one had to pass them. Part of the porch was full-roofed, and
consequendy in shadow; the remainder was roofed with slats, like a pergola, and
the moon-fight illuminated it almost as brighdy as it did the beach and the
back lawn. As I glanced back across my shoulder I saw two figures emerge from
one of the French windows leading to the boys' rooms; which one I couldn't be
sure, but it looked like Lonny s. One was a man in pajamas and beach robe, the
other was a woman, clothed only in a fight nightdress, kimono and sandals. I
sat there in a sort of stupor, too surprised and horrified to move or make a
sound, and as
I
looked the moonlight glinted on the girl's gold hair. It was Charlotte Dey.
"While
I sat watching them I saw him take her in his arms and kiss her; then she ran
down the steps with a little laugh, calling back across her shoulder, 'See you
in the morning, Lonny,'
" 'Lonny!' I couldn't believe it. There must be some
mistake; the twins were still as like as reflections in a mirror, people were
always mistaking them, but—'See you in the morning, Lonny!' kept dinning in my
brain like the surging of the surf at my feet. The world seemed crumbling into
dust beneath me, while that endless, laughing refrain kept singing in my ears:
'See you in the morning, Lonny.'
"The man on the porch stood looking
after the retreating figure of the girl as she ran across the lawns to the
house where she was stopping, then drew a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from
the pocket of his robe. As he bent to light the cigarette he turned toward the
ocean and saw me sitting on the sand. Next instant he turned and fled, ran
headlong to the window of his room, and disappeared in the darkness.
"What
I had seen made me sick—actually physically sick. I wanted to run into the
house and fling myself across my bed and cry my heart out, but I was too weak
to rise, so I just slumped down on the sand, buried my face in my arms and
began to cry. I didn't know how long I'd been lying there, praying that my
heart actually would break and that I'd never see another sunrise, when I felt
a hand upon my shoulder.
" *Why,
Beth,' somebody said, 'whatever is the matter?0
"It
was one of the boys, which one I couldn't be sure, and he was dressed in
corduroy slacks, a sweater and a cap. The bare-head craze hadn't struck the
country in those days.
" "Who are you?* I sobbed, for my eyes were full
of tears, and I couldn't see very plainly. Ts it Larry, or—'
"'Larry it is, old thing,' he assured me
with a laugh. 'Old Lawrence in the flesh and blood, ready to
do bis Boy Scout's good daily deed by comforting a lady in distress.
I've been taking a little tramp down the beach, looking at the moon and feeling
grand and lonesome and romantic, and I come home to find you crying here, as if
these sands didn't get enough salt water every day. Where's Lonny?*
" *Lonny—'
I began, but he cut in before I had a chance to finish.
""Don't tell me you two've
quarreled! Why, this was to have been his big night—one of his big nights. The
old cuss intimated that he'd be able to bear my absence with true Christian
fortitude this evening, as he had some very special spooning to do; so I sought
consolation of the Titian-haired Charlotte, only to be told that she, too, had
a heavy date. Ergo,
as we used to say at
college, here is Lawrence by his lone, after walking over ten miles of beach
and looking over several thousand miles of ocean. Want to go for a swim before
you turn in? Go get your bathing-clothes; 111 be" with
you in a jiff.' He turned to run toward the house, but I called him
back.
"Tarry,'
I asked, you're sure Lonny hinted that he'd like to be alone tonight?'
"'Certain sure; honest true, black and
blue, cross my heart and hope to die!' he answered. 'The
old duffer almost threw me out bodily, he was so anxious to see me go.'
"'And
Charlotte,' I persisted, 'did she say what— with whom—her engagement for this
evening was?*
""Why,
no,' he answered. 'I say, see here, old girl, you're
not getting green-eyed, are you? Why, you know there's only one woman in the
world for Lonny, and—'
"
'Is
there?' I interrupted grimly.
" Til say there is, and you're It, spelled with a
capital I, just as Charlotte is the one for me. Have I your blessing when I
ask her to be Mrs. Lawrence Cardener tomorrow, Beth? Yd have done it tonight, if she hadn't put me off.'
"I
couldn't stand it. Lonny had betrayed us both, made a mockery of the love I'd
given him and debauched the girl his brother loved. Before I realized it, Td
sobbed the whole tale out on Larry's shoulder, and before I was through we were
holding each other like a pair of lost babes in the wood, and Larry was crying
as hard as I.
"He
was the first to recover his poise. *No use crying over a tin of spoiled
beans, as we used to say in the army,' he told me. 'He and Charlotte can have
each other, if they want. I'm through with her, and him, too, the two-faced,
double-crossing swinel Keep your tail up, old girl, don't let him know you know
how much he's hurt you; don't let him know you know about it at all; just give
him back his ring and let him go his way without an explanation.'
"
"Will
you take the ring back to him now?' I asked.
"'Surest
thing,' he promised, *but don't ask me to make explanations; I'm digging out
tomorrow. Off to Paris the day after. Good-bye, old dear,
and—better luck next time.'
"I
was up early next morning, too. By sunrise I was back in Harrisonville,
breaking every speed regulation on the books on the drive up from Seagirt. By
noon I had my application filed for a passport; three days later I sailed for
England on the Vauban.
"An
aunt of mine was married to a London barrister and I stopped with her a while.
Lonny wrote me every day, at first, but I sent his letters back unopened.
Finally he came to see me, but I wouldn't meet him. He came back twice, but
before he could call the third time I packed and rushed off to the country.
"Larry wrote me frequently, and from him
I learned that Lonny had joined the Spanish Foreign Legion which was fighting
the Riffs, later that he had been discharged and was making quite a name for
himself as a painter of Oriental landscapes. He did some quite good portraits,
too, and was almost famous when I came back to America after being four years
abroad. Lonny tried to see me, but I managed to avoid him, except at parties
when there were others about, and finally he stopped annoying me.
"Three
years ago I was married to Larry Cardener, but Lonny wasn't our best man.
Indeed, we had a very quiet wedding, timed to take place while he was away.
"Larry
seemed to have forgotten all his rancor against Lonny, and Lonny was at our
house a great deal. I avoided him at first, but gradually his old sweetness and
gentleness won me back, and though I could never quite forget his perfidy to
me, somehow, I think that I forgave him.''
"He
was a changed man, Madame?"
de Grandin asked sofdy as
the woman halted in her narrative and sat passively, staring sightlessly ahead,
hands folded motionless in her lap.
"No,"
she answered in that oddly uninflected tone, "he was less changed than
Larry. A little older, a little more serious, perhaps, but still the same sweet,
ingenuous lad I'd known and loved so long ago. Larry had become quite
gray—early grayness runs in the Cardener family—while Lonny had only a single
gray streak running backward from his forehead where a Riff saber had slashed
his scalp. He'd picked up an odd trick, too, of brushing his mustache ever so
lighdy with his bent forefinger when he was puzzled. He explained this by the
fact that most of the officers in the Spanish Legion wore full mustaches,
different from the close-cropped ones affected by the British, and that he'd
followed the custom, but never got quite used to the extra hair on his face.
Now, though he'd gone back to the clipped mustache of his young manhood, the
Legion mannerism persisted. I can see him now when he and Larry were having an
argument over some point of art technique and Larry got the best of it—he was
always cleverer than Lonny— how he'd raise his bent finger and brush first one
side of his mustache, then the other."
"U'm," de
Grandin commented, and as he did so, unconsciously raised his hand to tweak the
needle-pointed ends of his own trimly waxed wheat-blond mustache. "One
quite understands, Madame.
Anc
then?"
"Larry had done well with his art,"
she answered.
"He'd had some fine commissions and executed all
successfully, but somehow he seemed changing. For
one thing, since prohibition, he'd taken to drinking
rather heavily—said he had to do it entertaining
business prospects, though that was no excuse for his
consuming a bottle of port and half a pint of whisky
nearly every evening after dinner-------- "
"Quel
magnifique!" de Grandin broke in softly, then: "Pray proceed,
Madame."
"He was living beyond our means, too. As
soon as he began to be successful he discarded the studio at the house and
rented a pretentious one downtown. Often he spent the night there, and though I
didn't actually know it for a fact, I understood he often gave elaborate
parties there at night; parties which cost a lot more than we could afford.
T never understood it, for Larry didn't take
me into his confidence at all, but early this spring he seemed desperately in
need of money. He tried to borrow everywhere, but no one would lend to him; finally
he went to his father.
"Mr.
Cardener was a queer man, easygoing in most ways, but very hard in others. He
absolutely refused to lend Larry a cent, but offered to advance him what he
needed on his share of his inheritance. He'd made a will in which the boys were
co-legatees, each to have one-half the estate, you see. Larry accepted eagerly,
then went back for several more advances, until his
share was almost dissipated. Then—" she paused, not in a fit of weeping,
not even with a sob, but rather as though she had come to an impasse.
"Yes, Madame; then?" de Grandin prompted softly.
"Then
came the scandal. Mr. Cardener was found
dead—murdered—in his library one morning, slashed and cut almost to ribbons
with a painter's palette knife. The second man, who answered the door the night
before they found him, was a new servant, but he had seen Larry several times
and Lonny once. He testified that Lonny came to the house about ten o'clock,
quarreled violently with his father, and left in a rage twenty minutes or half
an hour later. He identified Lonny positively by the gray streak in his hair,
which was otherwise dark brown, and by the fact that he brushed his mustache
nervously with the knuckle of his right forefinger, both when he demanded to
see his father and when he left. After Lonny'd gone, the servant went to the
library, but found the door locked and received no answer to his rapping. He
thought Mr. Cardener was in a rage, as he had been on several occasions when
Larry had called; so he made no attempt to break into the room. But next
morning when they found Mr. Cardener hadn't slept in his bed and the library
door was still locked, they broke in, and found him murdered.'*
"Urn?"
de Grandin murmured noncommittally, "And were there further clues, Madame?"
"Yes, unfortunately. On the library table, so plainly marked in
blood that it could not be mistaken, was the print of Lonny's whole left hand.
Not just a fingerprint, but the entire palm and fingers. Also, on the palette knife
with which the killing had been done, they found Lonny's fingerprints.''
"ITm,"
repeated Jules de Grandin. "He was at pains to put the noose around his
neck, this one."
"So it seemed," agreed our
passenger. "Lonny denied being at his father's house that night, or any
night within a month, but there was no way he could prove an alibi. He lived
alone, having his studio in his house, and his servants, a man and
wife, went home every night after dinner. They weren't there the night of the
murder, of course. Then there was that handprint and those finger-marks upon
the knife."
"Eh
bien, Madame," de Grandin answered, "that
is the hardest nut of all to crack, the deepest river of them all to ford.
Human witnesses may he, human memories may fail, or be woefully inexact, but
fingerprints—handprints? No, it is not so. Me, I was too many years associated
with the Service
Sûreté not to learn as much. What laymen commonly
deride as circumstantial evidence is the best evidence of them all I would
rather base a case on it than on the testimony of a hundred human witnesses,
all of whom might be either honestly mistaken or most unmitigated liars. If you
can but explain away—"
"I
can" the girl broke in with her first show of animation.
"Listen: Last year, six months before the murder, three months before
Larry made bis first request for funds from his father, he began making a
collection of casts of famous hands as a hobby. When he told Lonny he wanted to
include his among them, Lonny nearly went into hysterics at the idea. But he
consented to let Larry take a cast. I don't Jcaow much about such things, but
isn't-it customary to take such impressions directly in plaster of Paris?"
"Plaster of Paris? But certainly," the Frenchman answered with a puzzled frown.
"Why is it that you ask?"
"Because Larry took the impression of
his brother's hands in gelatin."
"Grand Dieu des artichautsr exclaimed de Gran-din.
"In gelatine? Oh, never-to-be-sufficiently-anathe-matized treachery! One begins to see
the glimmer of a little so small gleam of fight in this dark case, Madame. Say on. I shake, parbleu, I quiver with attention!"
For the first time she looked directly at
him, nodding, her small head. "At the trial Larry admitted that he'd had
advances from his father, but declared he'd gotten them for Lonny. He proved
it, too."
"Proved
it?" de Grandin echoed. "How do you mean, Madame?"
"Just what I say. The canceled checks were shown in court by
Mr. Cardener's executor, and every one of them had been endorsed and cashed by
Lonny. Lonny swore Larry asked him to cash them for him so that no one could
trace the money, because he was afraid of attachment proceedings, but Larry
denied this under oath and offered his bank books in substantiation of his
claim. None of them showed deposits of any such amounts as he'd had from his
father."
De
Grandin clenched his little hands to fists and beat the knuckles against his
temples. "Mon
Dieu," he
moaned, "this case will be the death of me, Madame. See if I apprehend you rightly:
"It
appeared to those who sat in court"—he checked the items off upon his
fingers—"that Monsieur Lawrence, at the risk of incurring paternal displeasure,
secured loan after loan on his inheritance, ostensibly for himself, but
actually for his brother. He proves he turned his fathers
loans intact over to Monsieur Alonzo. His brother says he cashed the checks and
gave the cash back. This is denied. Furthermore, proof, or rather lack of
proof, that the brother ever banked such sums is offered. Sitting as we do
behind the scenes, we may suspect that Monsieur Lawrence is indulging in
double-dealing; but did we sit out in the theater as did that judge and jury,
should we not have been fooled, as well? I think so. What makes you sure that
they were wrong and we are right, Madame? I do
not cast aspersion on your intuition; I merely ask to know."
"I have proof," she answered
levelly. "When Lonny had been sentenced and the governor refused to intervene,
even to commute his sentence to life imprisonment, it seemed to me that Yd go wild. All these years I'd thought I hated Lonny for what he did that
night so long ago; when I finally brought myself to see and talk with him, I
thought the hatred had lulled to mere resentment, passive dislike. I was wrong.
I never hated Lonny; Yd always loved him, only I loved my foolish,
selfish pride more. What if he did— what if he and Charlotte Dey—oh, you
understand! Lots of men—most men, I suppose—have affairs before marriage, and
their wives and the world think nothing of it. Why should I have set myself up
as the exception and demanded greater purity in the man I took to husband than
most wives ask—or get? When I realized there was no hope for Lonny, I was
nearly frantic, and last night after dinner I begged Larry to try to think of
some way we could save him.
"He'd been drinking more than ever
lately; last 195 night he was sottish, beastly. 'Why
should I try to save the poor fool?" he asked. "D'ye think I've been to all the trouble to put him where he is
just to pull him out?* Then, drunkenly, boastfully, he told me everything.
"It wasn't Lonny whom I'd seen with
Charlotte Dey that night at Seagirt It was Larry. When Lonny said good-night to
me and went into the house, he heard Larry and Charlotte in Larry's room, which
was next to his. He knocked upon the door and demanded that Larry take her out
of there at once, even threatening to tell their father if his order weren't
obeyed immediately. Larry tried to argue, but finally agreed, for he seemed
frightened when Lonny threatened to tell Mr. Cardener.
"Lonny, furious with his brother and the
Dey girl, came out on the veranda to see that Charlotte actually left, and was
sitting there when I came up the porch to get the cook-book. He wanted to spare
me the humiliation of seeing Larry that way, and demanded that I go back at
once. The poor lad was so anxious to help me that his manner was unintentionally
rough.
"I'd just been gone a moment when Larry
and Charlotte came out. Larry saw me crying on the sand, and the whole scheme
came to him like an inspiration. 'Call me Lonny!' he whispered to Charlotte as
they said good-night and the spiteful little minx did it. Then he rushed back
to his room, pulled outdoor clothes on over his pajamas and made a circuit of
the house, waiting in the shadows till he saw me bow my head upon my arm, then running noiselessly across the lawn and beach till he
was beside me and ready to play his little comedy.
"He hated Lonny for taking me away from
him, and—you know how the old proverb says those whom we have injured are those
whom we hate most?—his hatred seemed to grow and grow as time went on. Finally
he evolved this scheme to murder Lonny. After he'd made the gelatine mold of
Lonny's hands, he made a rubber casting from it, like a rubber stamp, you know,
and then began importuning his father for money. Each time he'd get a check
he'd have Lonny cash it for him, then put the money in some secret place.
Finally, exactly as he'd planned, his father refused to advance him any more,
and they quarreled. Then, knowing that the butler, who had known them both
since they were little boys, would be away that night, he stained his hair to
imitate Lonny's, called at the house and impersonated his brother. When his father
demanded what he meant by the masquerade, he answered calmly that he'd come to
kill him,v and intended Lonny should be
executed for the crime. He stabbed his father with a palette knife he'd stolen
from Lonny's studio almost a year before, hacked and slashed the body savagely,
and made a careful print of the rubber hand in blood on the library table.
Lonny's left-handed, you know, and it was tie print of his left hand they found
on the table, and the prints of his left fingers which were found marked in
blood upon the handle of the knife.
"Now Larry wins either way. Lonny can't take his legacy under his
father's will, for he's been convicted of murdering him; therefore, he can't
make a will and dispose of his half of the estate. Larry takes Lonny's share as
his father's sole surviving next of kin capable of inheriting, and he's already
got most of his own through the advances he's received and hidden away. A wife
can't testify against her husband in a criminal case; but even if I could
repeat what he's confessed to me in court, who'd believe me? He need only deny
everything, and Td not only be ridiculed for inventing such a fantastic story,
but publicly branded as my brother-in-law's mistress, as well. Larry told me
that last night when I threatened to repeat his story to the governor, and
Lonny agreed with him today. Oh, it's dreadful, ghastly, hideousl An innocent man's going to a shameful death for a crime he
didn't commit, and a perfidious villain who admits the crime goes scot-free,
enjoying his brother's heritage and gloating over his immunity from punishment.
There isn't any God, of course; if there were, He'd never let such things
occur; but' there ought to be a hell, somewhere, where such things can be
adjusted.".
"Madame"
de Grandin returned evenly,
"do not be deceived. God is not made mock of,
even by such scheming, clever rogues as him to whom you're married.
Furthermore, it is possible that we need not wait the flames of hell to furnish
an adjustment of this matter.*
"But what can you or any one do?"
the girl demanded. "No one will believe me; this story is so utterly
bizarre—"
"It is certainly decidedly
unusual," de Grandin answered non-committally.
"Oh? You think that Tve invented it,
too?" she wailed despairingly. "Oh, God, if there is a God, help, please help us in our trouble!"
"Quickly,
Friend Trowbridge," de Grandin cried. "Assist me with her. She has
swooned!"
We
drew up at my door even as he spoke, and, the girl's form trailing between us,
ascended the steps, let ourselves in and hastened to the consulting-room. The
Frenchman eased our light burden down upon the divan while I got sal volatile
and aromatic ammonia.
"Madame"
de Grandin told her when
she had recovered consciousness, "you must let us take you home."
"Home?" she echoed almost vaguely,
as though the word were strange to her. "I haven't any home. The house
where he lives isn't home to me, nor is—*
"Nevertheless,
Madame, it is to that house which you must let us take you.
It would be too much to ask that you dissemble affection for one who did so
vile a thing, but you can at least pretend to be reconciled to making the .best
of your helplessness. Please, Madame, I
beg it of you."
"But
why?" she answered wonderingly. "I only promised to delay my suicide
till Lonny is—till he doesn't need me any more. Must I endure the added torture
of spending my last few hours with him? Must
my agony be intensified by having him gloat over
Lonny's
execution?—oh, hell do it, never doubt that! I know him—"
"Perhaps,
Madame, it may be that you shall see that which will
surprise you before this business is finished," the Frenchman interrupted.
"I can not surely promise anything—that would be too cruel—but be assured
that I shall do my utmost to establish justice in this case. How? I do not
surely know, but I shall try.
"Attend me carefully." He crossed
the office, rummaged in the medicine cabinet a moment, then returned with a
small phial in his hand. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.
"No,"
wonderingly.
"It
is mercuric cyanide, a poison infinitely stronger and more
swift in action than potassium cyanide or mercuric chloride, commonly
called corrosive sublimate. You could not buy it, the law forbids its sale to
laymen, yet here it is. A little so small pinch of this white powder on your
tongue and pouf!
unconsciousness and almost instant death. You want him, hein?"
"Oh,
yes—yes!" she stretched forth eager hands, like a child begging for a
sweetmeat.
"Very good. You shall go home and hide your intentions
as ably as you can. You shall be patient under cruelty; you shall make no
bungling effort to destroy yourself like that we caught you at tonight.
Meanwhile, we shall do what we can for you and Monsieur Lonny. If we fail—Madame, this little bottle shall be yours when you
demand it of me. Do you agree?"
"Yes,"
she responded, then, falteringly, as though assenting to her own execution:
"I'm ready to go any time you wish to take me."
Cardener's
big house was dark when we arrived, but our companion nodded understandingly.
"He's probably in the library," she informed us. "It's at the
back, and you can't see the fights from here. Thank you so much for
what you've done—and
what you've promised. Good-night"
She alighted nimbly and held her hand out in farewell
De
Grandin raised her fingers to his hps, and: "It may well be that we must
see your husband upon business, Madame" he
whispered. "When is he most likely to be found at home?"
"Why,
he'll probably be here till noon tomorrow. He's usually a late riser."
"Bien, Madame, it may be that we shall be forced to put him
to the inconvenience of rising earlier than usual," he answered
enigmatically as he brushed her fingers with his Hps again,
"Now,
what the devil are you up to?" I demanded reproachfully as we drove away.
"You know there's nothing you can do for that poor chap in jail, or for
that woman, either. It was cruel to hold out hope, de Grandin,
Even your promise of the poison is unethical. You're making yourself an
accessory before the fact to homicide by giving her that cyanide, and dragging
me into it, too. We'll be lucky if we see the end of this affair without
landing in prison."
T think not," he denied. "I scarcely know how I shall
go about it, but I propose a gamble in souls, my friend. Perhaps, with Hussein
Obeyid's assistance we may yet win."
^Vho the deuce is Hussein
Obeyid?"
"Another
friend of mine," he answered cryptically. "You have not met him, but
you will. Will you be good enough to drive into East Melton Street? I do not
know the number, but I shall surely recognize the house when we arrive."
East Melton Street was one of those odd,
forgotten backwaters common to all cities where a heterogeneous foreign
population has displaced the ancient "quality" who
once inhabited the brownstone-fronted houses. Italians, Poles, Hungarians, with
a sprinkling of other European miscellany dwelt in Melton Street, each
nationality occupying almost definite portions of the thoroughfare, as though
their territories had been meted out to them. Far toward the water-end, where
rotting
piers projected out into the oily waters of the bay and the far from pleasant
odors of trash-laden barges were wafted landward on every puff of superheated
summer breeze, was the Syrian quarter. Here Greeks, Armenians, Arabians, a
scattering of Persians and a horde of indeterminate mixed-breeds of the Levant
lived in houses which had once been mansions but were now so sunk in disrepair
that the wonder was they had not been condemned long since. Here and there was
a house which seemed relatively untenanted, being occupied by no more than ten
or a dozen families; but for the most part the places swarmed with patendy
unwashed humanity, children whose extreme vocality seemed matched only by their
total unacquaintance with soap and water sharing steps, windows and
iron-slatted fire escapes with slattern women of imposing avoirdupois, arrayed
in soiled white nightgowns and unlaced shoes shockingly run ever at the heels.
De Grandin called a halt before a house set
back in what had been a lawn between a fly-blown restaurant where coatless men
played dominoes and consumed great quantities of heavy, deadly-looking food,
and a "billiard academy" where rat-faced youths in corset-waisted
trousers knocked balls about or perused blatantly colored foreign magazines.
The house before which we drew up was so dark I thought it tenantless at first,
but as we mounted the low step which stood before its door I caught a subdued
gleam of light from its interior. A moment we paused, inhaling the unpleasant
perfume of the dark and squalid street while de Grandin pulled vigorously at
the brass bell-knob set in the stone coping of the doorway.
"It
looks as though nobody's home," I hazarded as he rang and rang again, but:
"Salaam
aleikum," a
soft voice whispered, and the door was opened, not wide, but far enough to
permit our entrance, by a diminutive individual in black satin waistcoat,
loose, bloomer-like trousers and a red tarboosh several sizes too large for
him.
"Aleikum
salaam," de
Grandin answered, returning 201 the salute the other made. "We should like
to see your uncle on important business. Is he to be seen?"
"BissahiF' the other answered in a high-pitched,
squeaking voice, and hurried down the darkened hall toward the rear of the
house.
"Is
your friend his uncle?" I asked curiously, for the fellow was somewhere
between sixty-five and seventy years of age, rather well-advanced to possess an
uncle, it seemed to me.
The little Frenchman chuckled. "By no
means," he assured me. " 'Uncle' is a euphemism
for 'master' with these people, and used in courtesy to servants."
I was about to request further information
when the little old man returned and beckoned us to follow him.
"Salaam, Hussein Obeyid," de Grandin greeted as
we passed through a curtained doorway, "es salaat wes salaam aleik!—Peace be with thee, and the glory!"
A portly, bearded man in flowing robe of
striped linen, red tarboosh and red Morocco slippers rose from his seat beside
the window, touching forehead, lips and breast with a quick gesture as he
crossed the room to take de Grandin's outstretched hand. This, I learned as the
Frenchman introduced us formally, was Doctor Hussein Obeyid, "one of the
world's ten greatest philosophers," and a very special friend of Jules de
Grandin's. Doctor Obeyid was a big man, not only stout, but tall and strongly
built, with massive, finely-chiseled features and a curling, square-cut beard
of black which gave him somewhat the appearance of an Assyrian andro-sphinx.
The
room in which we sat was as remarkable in appearance as its owner. It was
thirty feet, at least, in length, being composed of the former front and back
"parlors" of the old house, the partitions having been knocked out.
Casement windows, glazed with richly painted glass, opened on a small back yard
charmingly planted with grass and flowering shrubs; three electric fans kept
the air pleasantly in motion. Persian rugs were on the polished floor and the
place was dimly lighted by two lamps with pierced brass shades of Turkish
fashion. The furniture was an odd conglomeration, lacquered Chinese pieces
mingling with Eastern ottomans like enormously overgrown boudoir cushions, with
here and there a bit of Indian cane-ware. Upon a stand was an aquarium in which
swam several goldfish of the most gorgeous coloring I had ever seen, while near
the opened windows stood what looked like an ancient refectory table with bits
of chemical apparatus scattered over it. The walls were lined from floor to
ceiling with bookcases laden with volumes in unfamiliar bindings and glassed-in
cabinets in which was ranged a.miscellany of unusual objects—mummified heads,
hands and feet, bits of clay inscribed with cuneiform characters, odd weapons
and utensils of ancient make, fit to be included in the exhibitions of our
best museums. A human skeleton, completely articulated, leered at us from a
corner of the room. Such was the rest room and workshop of Doctor Hussein
Obeyid, "one of the world's ten greatest philosophers.'*
De
Grandin lost no time in coming to the point. Briefly he narrated Beth
Cardener's story, beginning with our first glimpse of her in the penitentiary
and ending with our leaving her upon her doorstep. "Once, years ago, my
friend," he finished, "on the ancient Djebel Druse—the stronghold of
that strange and mystic people who acknowledge neither Turk nor Frenchman as
their overlord—I saw you work a miracle. Do you recall? A prisoner had been
taken, and—"
"I recall perfectly," our host cut
in, his deep voice fairly booming through the room. "Yes, I well remember
it. But it is not well to do such things promiscuously, my litde one. The
Ineffable One has His own plans for our goings and our comings; to gamble in
men's souls is not a game which men should play at."
"Misdre
de DieuT de
Grandin cried, "this is no petty game I ask that
you should play, mon
vieux. Madame Cardener? Her
plight is pitiful, I grant; but women's hearts have broken in the past, and
they will break till time shall be no more. No, it is not for her I ask this
thing, but for the sake of justice. Shal ninety-rnillion-times-damned perfidy vaunt itself in pride at the expense of innocence?
Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,' truly; but consider: does He
not ever act through human agencies when He performs his miracles? Damn yes. If
there were any way this poor one's innocence could be established, even after
death, I should not be here; but as it is he is enmeshed in webs of treachery.
No sixty-times-accursed 'reasonable' man could be convinced he did not do that
murder, and the so puerile Anglo-Saxon law of which the British and Americans
prate so boastfully has its hard rules of evidence which for ever bar the truth
from being spoken. This monstrous-great injustice must not—can not—be allowed,
my friend."
Doctor
Obeyid stroked his black beard thoughtfully, "I hesitate to do it,"
he replied, "but for you, my little birdling, and for justice, I shall
try."
"Triomphe!"
de Grandin cried, rising
from his chair and bounding across the room to seize the other in his arms and
kiss him on both cheeks. "Ha, Satan,
thou art stalemated; tomorrow we shall make a monkey of your plans and of the
plans of that so evil man who did your work, by damn!" Abruptly he
sobered. "You will go with us tomorrow morning?" he demanded.
Doctor
Obeyid inclined his head in acquiescence. "Tomorrow morning," he
replied.
Then
the diminutive, wrinkle-bitten "nephew" who performed the doctor's
household tasks appeared with sweet, black coffee and execrable little tarts
compounded of pistachio nuts, chopped dates and melted honey, and we drank and
ate and smoked long, amber-scented cigarettes until the tower-clock of the
nearby Syrian Catholic church beat out the quarter-hour after midnight.
It
was shortly after ten o'clock next morning when we called at Cardener's. Doctor
Obeyid, looking more imposing, if possible, in a suit of silver-gray corduroy
and a wide-brimmed black-felt hat than he had in
Eastern
robes, towered a full head above de Grandin and six
inches over me as he stood between us and beat a soft tattoo on the porch floor
with the ferule of his ivory-headed cane. It was a most remarkable piece of
personal adornment, that cane. Longer by a half-foot
than the usual walking-stick, it was more like the exaggerated staffs borne by
gentiemen of the late Georgian period than any modem cane, and its carven ivory
top was made to simulate a serpent's head, scales being reproduced with
startling fidelity to life, and little beads of some green-colored stone-jade,
I thought—being inlaid for the eyes. The wood of the staff was a land which I
could not classify. It was a vague, indefinite color, something between an
olive-green and granite-gray, and overlaid with little intersecting lines which
might have been in imitation of a reptile's scales or might have been a part of
the strange wood's odd grain.
"We should like to see Monsieur Cardener—" began de Grandin, but for once he
failed to keep control of the situation.
"Tell
him Doctor Obeyid desires to talk with him," broke in our companion, in
his deep, commanding voice. "At once, please."
"He's at breakfast now, sir," the
servant answered. "If youll step into the drawing-room and—"
"At
once," Hussein Obeyid repeated, not with emphasis, but rather inexorably,
as one long used to having his orders obeyed immediately and without question.
"Yes, sir," the butler returned,
and led us toward the rear of the house.
Striped
awnings kept the late summer sun from the breakfast room's open windows where a
double row of scarlet geranium-tops stood nodding in the breeze. At the end of
the polished mahogany table in the center of the room a man sat facing us, and
it needed no second glance to tell us he was Lawrence Cardener. Line for fine
and feature for feature, his face was the duplicate of that of the prisoned man
whom we had seen the day before. Even the fact that his upper
hp was adorned by a close-cropped mustache, while the prisoner was
smooth-shaven, and his hair was iron-gray, while the convict's close-clipped
hair was brown, did not affect the marked resemblance to any degree.
"What the dev—" he began as the servant ushered us into the room, but
Doctor Obeyid cut his protest short
"We are here to talk about your brother,''
he announced.
"Ah?" An ugly, sneering smile
gathered at the cor-
ners of Cardener's mouth. "You are, eh? Well?" He
pushed the blue-willow club plate laden with mutton
chops and scrambled eggs away from him and picked
up a slice of buttered toast. "Get on with it," he or-
dered. "You wished to talk about my brother------------ "
"And
you," Doctor Obeyid supplied. "It is not too late for you to make
amends."
"Amends?"
the other echoed, amusement showing in his eyes as he dropped a lump of sugar
into his well-creamed coffee and stirred it with his spoon.
"Amends," repeated Obeyid.
"You still may go be-
fore the governor, and------- "
"Oh, so that's it, eh? My precious wife's been talk-
ing to you? Poor dear, she's a little touched, you
know"—he tapped himself upon the temple signifi-
cantly—"used to be fearfully stuck on Lonny, in the
old days, and------ "
"My friend," Obeyid broke in,
"it is of your immortal soul that we must talk, not of your wife. Is it
possible that you will let another bear the stigma of your guilt? Your soul—"
Cardener laughed shortly. "My soul, is it?" he answered. "Don't bother about my soul. If you're so much interested in souls, you'd better skip down to
Trenton and talk to Lonny. He's got one now, but he won't have it long. Tonight
they're going to—" his voice
trailed off to nothingness and his eyes widened as he slowly and deliberately
put his spoon down in its saucer. Not fear, but something like a compound of
despair and resignation showed in his face as he stared in fascination at
Hussein Obeyid.
I turned
to glance at our companion, and a startled exclamation leaped involuntarily to
my lips. The big, Semitic-featured face had undergone a startling transformation.
The complexion had altered from swarthy tan to pasty gray, the eyes had started
from their sockets, white, globular, expressionless as peeled onions. I had
seen such horrible protrusion of the optics in corpses far gone in putrefaction
when tissue-gas was bloating features out of human semblance, but never had I
seen a thing like this in a living countenance. Doctor Obeyid's lips were
moving, but what he said I could not understand. It was a low, monotonous,
sing-song chant in some harsh and guttural language, rising and falling
alternately with a majesty and power like the surging of a wind-swept sea upon
the sands.
How long he chanted I have no idea. It might
have been a minute, it might have been an hour, for
the clock of eternity seemed stopped as the sonorous voice boomed out the
harsh, compelling syllables. But finally it was finished, and I felt de
Grandin's hand upon my arm.
"Come
away, my friend," he whispered in an awestruck tone. "The cards are
dealt and on the table. The first part of our game of souls is started. Prie Dieu that we shall win!"
Alonzo
Cardener was sitting at the little table in his cell, not playing cards,
although a pack rested beside the Bible on the clean-scrubbed wood, but merely
sitting as though lost in thought, his elbow on his knee, head propped upon
his hand. He did not look up as we came abreast of him, but just sat there,
staring straight ahead.
"Monsieur"
de Grandin hailed.
"Monsieur Lonnyl" The prisoner looked up,,
but there was no change of expression in his dull and apathetic face. "We
are come from her, from Madame Beth," the Frenchman added softly.
The
change which overspread the prisoner's face was like a miracle. It was young again, and bright with eagerness, like a lad in love when
some one brings him tidings of his sweetheart. "You've come from
her?" he asked incredulously. "Tell me, is she well? Is she—"
"She is well, mon pauvre, and happier, since she has told her story to
us. We came upon her yesternight by chance, and she has told us all. Now, she
asks that we should come to you and bid you be of cheer."
Cardener laughed shortly, with harsh
mirthlessness. "Rather difficult, that, for a man in my position," he
rejoined, "but—"
"My brother," Doctor Obeyid's deep
voice, lowered to a whisper, but still powerful as the muted rumbling of an
organ's bass, broke in upon his bitter speech, "you must not despair. Are
you afraid to die?"
"Die?" A spasm as of pain twitched
across the con-
vict's face. "No, sir; I don't think so. I've faced death
many times before, and never was afraid of it; but
leaving Beth, now, when I've just found her again, is
what hurts most. It's impossible, of course, but if I
could only see her once again-------- "
"You
shall," Hussein Obeyid promised. "Little brother, be confident. That
door through which you go tonight is the entrance to reunion with the one you
love. It is the portal to a new and larger life, and beyond it'waits your
loved one."
Gray-faced horror spread across the
prisoner's countenance. "You—you mean she is already dead?" he
faltered. "Oh, Beth, my girl; my dear, my dearest dear—"
"She is not dead; she is alive and well,
and waiting for you," Obeyid's deep, compelling voice cut in. "Just
beyond that door she waits, my little one. Keep up your courage; you shall
surely find her there."
"Oh?"
Light seemed to dawn upon the prisoner. "You mean that she'll destroy
herself to be with me. No—no; she
mustn't do itl Suicide's a sin, a deadly sin. I'm going innocent to death; God
will judge my inno-
cence,
for He knows all, but if she were to kill herself perhaps we should be
separated for ever. Tell her that she mustn't do it; tell her that I beg that
she will live until her time has come, and that shell not forget me while she's
waiting; for 111 be waiting, too."
"Look
at me," commanded Obeyid suddenly, so suddenly that the frantic man forgot
his fears and stopped his protestations short to look with wonder-widened eyes
at Hussein Obeyid.
The Oriental raised his staff and held it
toward the
wire screen the guards had placed before the cell.
And as he held it out, it
moved. Before our eyes that
staff of carven wood and ivory became a living, mov-
ing thing, twining itself about the doctor's wrist, rear-
ing its head and darting forth its bifurcated tongue.
"Bismillah al-rahman
al-rahim—in
the name of God,
the Merciful, the Compassionate--------- "
murmured Hus-
sein Obeyid, then launched into a low-voiced, vi-
brant cantillation while the vivified staff writhed and
turned its scaly head in cadence to the chant. He did
not distort his features as when he cast a spell upon
the prisoner's brother; but his face was pale as chis-
eled marble, and down his high, wide, sloping fore-
head ran rivulets of sweat as he put the whole force
of his soul and mighty body behind the invocation
which he chanted.
The look upon the convict's face was
mystifying. Twin fires, as of a fever, burned in the depths of his cavernous
eyes and his features writhed and twisted .as though his soul were racked by
the travail of spiritual childbirth. "Beth!" he whispered hoarsely.
"Beth!"
I
turned apprehensively toward the prison guard who sat immediately behind us.
That he had not cried out at the animation of Obeyid's staff and the low-toned
invocation of the Oriental ere this surprised me. What I saw surprised me more.
The man lounged in his chair, his features dull and disinterested, a look of utter boredom on his face. He saw nothing, heard
nothing, noticed nothing!
"...
until tonight, then, little brother," Hussein 209
Obeyid
was saying softly. "Remember, and be brave. She will be awaiting
you."
"Come,"
ordered Jules de Grandin, tugging at my sleeve. "The dice are cast. We
must wait to read the spots before we can know surely whether we have won."
They
led him in to die at twenty minutes after ten. Permission to attend the execution had been difficult to get; but Jules de
Grandin with his tireless energy and infinite resource had obtained it. Hussein Obeyid, the little Frenchman and
I accepted seats at the far end of the stiffbacked church-like
pew reserved for witnesses, and I felt a shiver of sick apprehension ripple
down my spine as we took our places. To watch beside the bed of one who dies
when medical science has exhausted its resources is heart-breaking, but to sit and watch a life snuffed out, to
see a strong and healthy
body turned to so much clay
within the twinkling of an eye—that is hoiTifying.
The
executioner, a lean, cadaverous man who somehow reminded me of a disillusioned evangelist, stood in a
tiny alcove to the left of the electric chair, a heavy piece of oaken furniture
raised one low step above the tiled floor of the chamber; the assistant warden
and the prison doctor stood between the chair and entrance to the death-room,
and although this was no novelty to him, I saw the medic finger nervously at
the stethoscope which hung about his neck as though it were a badge of office.
A partly folded screen at the farther corner of the room obscured another
doorway, but as we took our seats I caught a glimpse of a wheeled stretcher
with a cotton sheet lying neady folded on it. Beyond, I knew, waited the
autopsy table and the surgeon's knife when the prison doctor had pronounced the
execution a success.
I
breathed a strangling,
gasping sigh as a single
short, imperative tap sounded on the panels of the painted door which led to
the death chamber.
Silendy,
on well-oiled hinges, the door swung back, and Alonzo Cardener stood in
readiness to meet the great adventure. His cotton shirt was open at the throat,
the right leg of his trousers had been slit up to the knee; as the pitiless
white light struck on his head, I saw a little spot
was shaved upon his scalp. To right and left were
prison guards who held his elbows lightly. Another guard brought up the rear.
The chaplain walked before, his Prayer Book open. ". . . yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me . .
Cardener's eyes were wide and rapt. The
fingers of his right hand closed, not convulsively, but tenderly, as though he
took and held another's hand in his. His Hps moved slightly, and though no
sound came from them, we saw them form a name: "Bethl"
They
led him to the chair, but he did not seem to see it; they had to help him up
the one low step—his last step in the world—or he would have stumbled on it;
for his eyes were gazing down an endless vista where he walked at peace with
his beloved, hand in hand.
But as they snapped the heavy straps about
his waist and wrists and ankles and set the leather helmet on his head, a
sudden change came over him. He struggled fiercely at the bonds which held him
in the chair, and although his face was almost hidden by the deadly headgear
clamped upon his skull, his lips were unobscured, and from them came a wailing
cry of horrified astonishment. "Not mel" he screamed. "Not me—Lonny! Tm—"
Notebook open, and pencil poised, as though
to make a memorandum, the prison doctor stood before the chair. Now, as the
convict screamed in frenzied fear, the pencil tilted forward, as though the
doctor wrote. A sudden, sharp, strange whining sounded,
something throbbed and palpitated agonizingly, like stifled heart-beats. The
ghastly, pleading cry was checked abruptly as the prisoners body started up and
forward, as though it sought to burst the leathern bonds which held it. The
chin and Hps went from pale gray to dusky red, like the face of one who holds
his breath too long. The hands, fluttering futilely a moment since, were taut
and rigid on the chair arms.
A
moment—or eternity!—of this, then the grating jar of metal against metal as the
switch was thrown and the current was shut off. The straining body dropped back
limply in the chair.
Again the doctor's pencil tilted forward,
again the whining whir, and the flaccid body started forward, all but bursting
through the broad, strong straps which harnessed it into the chair. Then
absolute flac-cidity as the current was withdrawn again.
The
doctor put his book and pencil by and stepped up quickly to the chair. Putting
back the prisoner's open shirt—he wore no underehirt—he pressed his stethoscope
against the reddened chest exposed to view, listened silently, then, crisp and
business-like, announced bis verdict:
"I pronounce this man
dead."
White-uniformed
attendants took the limp form from the chair, wrapped it quickly in a sheet and
wheeled it off to the autopsy table.
We
signed the roll of witnesses and hurried from the prison, and:
"Drive, my friend, drive as though the
fiends of fury rode the wind behind us!" ordered Jules de Grandin. "We must arrive at Madame Cardener's without delay. Right
away, immediately; at once!"
Beth
Cardener met us at the door, the pallor of her face intensified by the sable
hue of the black-velvet pajamas which she wore. "It happened at twenty
minutes after ten," she told us as we filed silently into the hall.
De Grandin's small eyes rounded with astonishment
as he looked at her. "Précisément,
Madame," he acknowledged, "but how is it you
know?"
A
puzzled look spread on her face as she replied: "Of course, I couldn't
sleep—who .could, in such circumstances?—and I kept looking at the clock and
saying to myself, "What are they doing to my
poor boy now? Is he still in the same world with me?* when I seemed to hear a
sort of drumming, whirring noise-something like the deafening vibration you
sometimes hear when riding in a motorcar—and then a sudden sharp, agonizing
pain shot through me from my head to feet. It was like fire rushing through my
veins, burning me to ashes as it ran, and everything went red, then inky-black
before my eyes. I felt as if I stifled—no, not that, rather as though every
nerve and muscle in my body were suddenly cramping into knots—and at the same
time there was a terrible sensation of something from inside me being snatched
away in one cruel wrencK, as though my heart were dragged out of my breast with
a pair of dreadful tongs that burned and seared, even as they tore my quivering
body open. If it had lasted, I'd have died, but it left as quickly as it came,
and there I was, faint, weak and numb, but suffering no pain, staggering to
the window and gasping for breath. As I reached the window I looked up, and a
shooting-star fell across the sky. I knew, then; Lonny was no longer in the
same world with me. I was lonely, so utterly, devastatingly lonely, that I
thought my heart would break. I've never had a child, but if I had one, and it
died, I think that I'd feel as I felt the instant that I saw that falling star.
"Then"—she paused, and again that
puzzled, wondering look crept into her eyes—"then something, something
inside me, like a voice heard in a dream, "seemed to say insistently: 'Go
to Larry; go to Larryl'
"I didn't want to go; I didn't want to
see him or be near him—I loathed the very thought of him, but that strange,
compelling voice kept ordering me to go. So I went.
"Larry was sitting in the big chair he
always uses in the library. His head had fallen back, and his hands were
gripping the arms till the finger-tips bit into the upholstery. His mouth was
slightly open and his face was pale as death. I noticed, as I crossed the room,
that his feet were well apart, but both flat to the floor. It was"—her voice sank to a husky,
frightened whisper—"it was as if he were
sitting in the death-chair, and had just been executed!"
"ITm,
and did you touch him, Madame?"
de Gran-din asked.
"Yes,
I did, and his hands were cold—clammy. He was dead. Oh, thank God, he was dead!
He murdered his poor brother, just as surely as he killed his father, but he'll
never live to boast of it. He died, just as Lonny did, in 'the chair,' only it
wasn't human injustice that took his perjured life away; it was the even-handed
judgment of just Heaven, and I'm glad. I'm
glad, do you hear me! I'm glad enough to rush out in the street and tell it to
the world; to shout it from the house-tops!"
De Grandin cast a sidelong glance at Hussein
Obeyid, who nodded silently. "Perfectly, Madame, one understands," the Frenchman
answered. "Will you go with us and show us the body? It would be of
interest—"
"Yes,
yes; I'll show you—I'll be glad to show youl" she broke in shrilly.
"Come; this way, please."
Gray-faced,
hang-jawed, pale and flaccid as only the dead can be, Lawrence Cardener sat
slumped in the big chair beside the book-strewn table. I glanced at him and
nodded briefly. No use to make a further examination. No doctor, soldier or
embalmer need be introduced to death. He knows it at a glance.
But
Hussein Obeyid was not so easily assured. Crossing the room, he bent above the
corpse, staring straight into the glazed and sighdess eyes and murmuring a
sort of chanting invocation. "Bismittah al-rahman al-rahim—in the name of God, the Merciful, the
Compassionate; in the name of the One True God—"
He drew a little packet from his waistcoat pocket, broke the seal which closed
it and dusted a pinch of whitish powder into the palm of his right hand, then
rubbed both hands together quickly, as though laving them with soap. In the
shadow where he stood we saw his hands begin to glow, as though they had been
smeared with phosphorus, but gradually the glow became a quick and flickering
faint-blue
light
which grew and grew in power till it darted wisps of bluish flame from palms
and finger-tips.
He
grasped his serpent-headed staff between his glowing hands, and instantly the
thing became alive, waving slowly to and fro, darting forth its lambent tongue
to touch the dead man's eyes and lips and nostrils. He threw the staff upon
the floor, and instantly it was a thing of wood and ivory once again.
Now he pressed fire-framed hands upon the
corpse's brow, then bent and ran them up and down the length of the slack
limbs, finally poising them above the dead man's omphalos. The flame which flickered from his hands
curved downward like a blue-green waterfall of fire which seemed to be absorbed
by the dead body as water would be soaked in thirsty soil.
And now the flaccid, flabby limbs seemed to
tighten, to stretch out jerkily, uneasily, as though awaking from a long,
uncomfortable sleep. The lolling head began to oscillate upon the neck, the slack jaw
closed, the eyes, a moment since glassy with the vacant stare of death, gave
signs of unmistakable vitality.
A shrill, sharp cry broke from Beth Cardener.
"He's alive," she screamed, horror and heart-sick disappointment in
her voice. "O-oh, he's alive!" She turned reproachful, tear-dimmed
eyes on Hussein Obeyid. "Why did you revive him?" she asked
accusingly. "He might have died, if you hadn't—"
Her
voice broke, smothered in a storm of sobs. Thus far the vibrant hatred of the
murderer and her exultation over the swift retribution which had overtaken him
had kept her nerve from snapping. Now, the realization that the man whose
perfidy had betrayed her trust and her lover's fife was still alive broke down
her resistance, and she fell, half-fainting, on the couch, buried her face in a
pillow and gave herself up bodily to retching lamentation.
"Madame"
de Grandin's voice was
sharp, peremptory; "Madame Beth, come here!"
The woman raised her tear-scarred face and
looked 215 at him in wonder. "Come here, quickly, if you please, and tell
me what it is you see," he ordered again.
She
rose, mechanically, like one who walks in sleep, and approached the
semiconscious man who slouched in the big chair.
"Behold, observe; voiW the Frenchman ordered, leaning down and bending Cardener's left ear forward.
There, plainly marked and unmistakable, imprinted on the skin above the retrahens aurem was a small white cicatrix, a quarter-inch or
so in length.
"Oh?"
It was a strangling, gasping cry, such as a patient undergoing unanesthetized
edentation might give; wonder was in it, and something like fright, as well.
The little Frenchman raised his hand for
silence. "He is coming to, Madame," he
warned in a soft whisper.
Life, indeed, had come back to the shell
above which Doctor Obeyid had chanted. Little by little the dread contours of
death had receded, and as the hands lost their rigor and lay, half open, on the
chair arms, we saw the fingers flexing and extending in an easier, more
lifelike motion.
"Jodo!" whispered Cardener, rolling
his head listlessly from side to side, like one who seeks to rouse himself
from an unpleasant dream.
"JodoF
she repeated in an awed and
breathless whisper. "He never called me that! "Way back, when we were children, Lonny and I
gave each other 'intimate names,' and I never told mine to a soul, not my
parents, nor my husband. How—"
"Jodo—Beth
dear," the half-unconscious man repeated, his fingers searching gropingly
for something. "Are you here? I can't see you, dear, but—"
"Lonnyr Incredulous, unbelieving joy was in the woman's tones, and:
"Beth, Beth dearest!" Cardener started forward, eyes opening and
closing rapidly, as though he had come suddenly from darkness into light.
"Beth, they told me you'd be waiting for me—are you really here?"
"Here!
Yes, my dear, my very dearest; I am here!" she cried, and sank down to her
knees, gathering his head to her bosom and rocking gently back and forth, as
though it were a nursing baby. "Oh, my dear, my dear,
however did you come?"
"I'm dead?" he queried timidly.
"Is this heaven or—"
"Heaven? Yes, if I and all my love can make it so-, my darling!" Beth
Cardener broke in, and stopped his wondering queries with her kisses.
"Now, what the devil does it mean?"
I asked as we drove slowly home after taking Doctor Obeyid to his house in
Melton Street.
Jules
de Grandin raised his elbows, brows and shoulders in a shrug which seemed to
say there are some things even a Frenchman can not understand. "You know
as much as I, my friend," he returned. "You saw it with your own two
eyes. What more is there which I can tell you?"
"A lot of things," I countered.
"You said yourself
that once before you'd seen-------- "
"Assuredly
I had," he acquiesced. "Me, I see many things, but do I know their
meaning? Not always. Par example: I
say to you, 'Friend Trowbridge, I would that you should drive me here or
there,* and though you put your foot on certain things and wiggle certain
others with your hands, I do not know what you are doing, or why you do it. I
only know that the car moves, and that we arrive, at length, where I have
wished to go. You comprehend?"
"No, I don't," I answered testily.
"I'd like to know how it comes that Lawrence Cardener, who, as we know,
was a thorough-going villain, if ever there was one, exchanged, or seemed to
exchange personalities with the brother whom he sent to death in the electric
chair at the very moment of that brother's execution—and how that scar
appeared upon his head. His wife vouched for the fact that it wasn't there
before."
The
little Frenchman twisted the needle-points of 217 his sharply waxed,
wheat-blond mustache until I thought that he would surely prick his finger on
them. "I can not say," he answered
thoughtfully, "because I do not know. The Arabs have a saying that the
soul grows on the body like a flower on the stalk. They may be right. Who
knows? What is the soul? Who knows, again? Is it that vague, indefinite thing
which we call personality? Perhaps.
"Suppose
it is; let us assume the flower-analogy again. Let us assume that, as the
skilful gardener takes the blossom from the living rose and grafts it on the
living dogwood tree, and thereby makes a rose-tree, one skilled in metaphysics
can take the soul from out a body at the instant of dissolution and transplant
it to another body from which the soul has just decamped, and thereby create a
new and different individual, composed of two distinct parts, a soul, or personality,
if you please, and a body, neither of which was originally complementary to the
other. It sounds strange, insane, but so would talk of total anesthesia or
radio have sounded two hundred years ago. As for the scar, that is comparatively
simple. You have seen persons under hypnotism lose every drop of blood from one
arm or hand, or become completely anemic in one side of the face; you know from
medical history, though you may not have seen it, that certain hysterical
religious persons develop what are called stigmata—simulations of the bleeding
wounds of the Savior or the martyred saints. That is mental in inception, but
physical in manifestation, riest-ce-pas? Why,
then, could not an outward and physical sign of personality be transferred as
easily as the inward and spiritual reality? Pardieu, I damn think that it couldl"
"But
will this 'spiritual graft' endure?" I wondered. "Will this
transformation of Larry Cardener into Lonny Cardener last?"
"Le bon Dieu knows," he answered. "Me, I most
greatly hope so. If it does not, I shall have to make my promise good and give
her that mercuric cyanide. Time will tell."
Time
did. A year had passed, and the final summer hop was being given at the
Sedgemoor Country Club. The white walls of the clubhouse shone like an illuminated
monument in the dusky blue of the late September night, lights blazed from
every window and colored globes decorated the overhanging roofs of the broad
verandas which stretched along the front and rear of the building. In the
grounds Chinese lanterns gleamed with rose, blue, violet and jade, rivaling the
brilliance of the summer stars. Jazz blared from the commodious ballroom and
echoed from the big yel-low-and-red striped marquee set up by the first green.
Jules de Grandin and I sat on the front piazza and rocked comfortably in wide
wicker chairs, the icecubes in our tall glasses clinking pleasantly.
"Mordieu,
my friend," the
Frenchman exclaimed enthusiastically, "this what do you call him? zhu-leep?—he is divine; magnificent. He is superb; I would I had a tubful of him in which to drown
my few remaining sorrows!" He sucked appreciatively at the twin straws
thrust between the feathery mint-stalks, then, abruptly: "Mort de ma vie, my friend, look—behold them!" He pointed
up excitedly.
From
where we sat a little balcony projecting from the upper floor was plainly in
our line of vision. As the little Frenchman pointed, I saw a man arrayed in
summer dancing-clothes, step out upon the platform and light a cigarette. As he
snapped his fighter shut, he raised his left hand and brushed his short,
close-cropped mustache with the knuckle of his bent forefinger. He blew a long
cone of gray smoke between his Hps, and turned to some one in the room behind
him. As the light struck on his face, I recognized him. It was Lawrence
Cardener, beyond a doubt, but Lawrence Cardener strangely altered. His hair,
once iron-gray, was now almost uniformly brown, save where a single streak of
white ran, plume-like backward from his forehead.
A
woman joined him on the balcony. She was tall, slender, dark; her little,
piquant face framed in clusters of curling ringlets. Her lips were red and
smiling, her lovely arms and shoulders were exposed by the extreme décolleté of
her white-crepe evening gown. I knew her; Beth Cardener, but a different woman
from the one whose suicide we had balked twelve months before. This Beth was
younger, more girlish in face and carriage, and plainly, she was happy. He
turned and offered her his case, then, as she chose a cigarette, extended his
lighter. She drew the smoke into her lungs, expelled a fine stream from her
mouth, then tossed the cigarette away. As it fell to
earth in a gleaming, fiery arc, the man tossed his out after it and put his
hands upon her shoulders. Her own white hands, fluttering like homing doves,
flew upward, clasped about his neck, and drew his face to hers. Their lips
approached and merged in a long, rapturous kiss.
"Tête bleu, my friend? de Grandin cried, "I damn think I can keep my mercuric cyanide; she has
no use for it, that one!" He rose, a thought
unsteadily, and beckoned me. "Come, let us leave them to each other and
their happiness," he ordered. "Me, I very
greatly desire several more of those so noble mint zhu-leeps. Yes."
Afterword
by Robert Weinberg
Weird
Tales, subtitled "The
Unique Magazine," published during its thirty-plus years a number of
controversial stories. In 1924, publication of "The Loved Dead,"
which contained hints of necrophilia, caused the magazine to be removed from
newstands in several parts of the United States. "The Copper Bowl" in
1928, called "the most gruesome story of torture ever written,"
caused many readers to protest vehemently to the editor. Strangely enough, the
one story with a taboo violated by no other pulp (or for that matter, nearly
any other magazine) of the thirties went virtually unnoted by the readership of
the magazine. That story was "The Jest of Warburg Tanta-vul,"
reprinted in this collection.
In the writer's magazine, Author and Journalist, for October 1934, it was noted "... incest is, to all intents and
purposes, an impossible theme. Offhand, it is faintly conceivable that a
delicate handling of this subject might appear in some of the experimental periodicals,
or even such purveyors of adult literary fare as Harper's, Scribner's, or American Mercury, but in a pulp magazine, neverl Yet the September 1934 issue of Weird Tales, a pulp magazine for popular consumption,
nonchalantly carried a story of out-and-out incest by Seabury Quinn."
While the story received prominent mention in
the author's publication, it created no stir at all in the reader's column of Weird Tales. In fact, not one reader mentioned anything at
all about the incest central to the story. Comments were typical for a de
Grandin adventure: "The plot was closely knit and ran very smoothly .. ."—"the
yarn is told vividly and in a manner that creates an almost tangible atmosphere
of terror ..."—"Seabury Quinns latest fully comes up to his past
excellent efforts." The story tied with a Conan adventure for the most
popular tale in the issue in which it appeared.
In
the last few years, Quinn has come into a good deal of criticism for the Jules
de Grandin series. The main thrust of these attacks was that the stories were
written for money and not artistic achievement alone. Thus, these same critics
argue, the de Grandin stories were inferior to the products of those few
highly-regarded authors who wrote more for artistic merit than for cold cash. While on the surface, a fine sounding argument, the truth is
anything but so simple. Sea-bury Quinn was a professional author. He
wrote to sell, and because of this, he had to write well. For a good part of
his life, a major portion of his income was derived from writing, and he was
easily the most popular writer ever to work for Weird Tales. He was paid at the highest rate that the
magazine could afford, and was constantly being asked by the editor for more.
The possibility of Quinn having a story rejected by Weird Tales was unthinkable. And, while Quinn might not
have proclaimed any artistic aims or achievements, his stories were extremely
important in the development of modern weird fiction.
It
was Quinn who was most responsible for the modernization of the ghost-breaker.
Jules de Grandin was constantly using new and modern techniques to fight
spirits. While the Frenchman was not above using holy water or a crucifix, he
was just as likely to use radium or an electric grid to fight phantoms. The
entire de Grandin series continually presented new ideas on the supernatural.
Also,
Quinn was one of the first, and in Weird Tales and
other pulp magaines of that day, the only writer who had any trace of sex in
his stories. Not only did the characters involved often evidence physical
emotions, but some of Quinn's stories even made mention of topics not normally
associated with pulp literature: "Warburg Tantavul" is concerned with
incest; "The Poltergeist", featured exorcism long before it became
popular, and contained more than a hint of lesbian behavior; and "The
House of Golden Masks" is a fast action story of white slavery and degradation.
Quinn's first and foremost goal, however, was
to entertain, and he succeeded admirably in doing so with the Jules de Grandin
adventures. In this collection, some of de Grandin's most unique cases are
recorded
It was rare that the little Frenchman sought
aid in his fight against the supernatural. Usually, his only assistance came
from his friend, Dr. Trowbridge, and Sergeant Costello of the Harrisonville police.
From time to time, a priest might offer some aid, either spiritual or physical;
in two adventures in this collection, however, de Grandin receives help from
other occultists.
Dr. Wolf is a full-blooded Indian from the
plain states who aided de Grandin in summoning one of his gods to fight the
evil Kali as East meets West in "The Gods of East and West." Dr. Wolf
only appeared in this one story and was rather sketchily described.
A more full-bodied character was Doctor
Hussein Obeyid, "one of the world's ten greatest philosophers" and a
"very special friend of Jules de Grandin "
Though Dr. Obeyid only appeared in the one story, "A Gamble in
Souls," he is presented so vividly by Quinn that his presence dominates
the entire tale. Whenever the mysterious Doctor appears, that scene seems to
crackle with electricity—For a change, even de Grandin
takes a back seat to a master of the most powerful of magic. It was
unfortunate that Quinn did not use Dr. Obeyid in any other de Grandin
adventures since it was this unusual character that makes "A.Gamble in
Souls" one of the very finest of all the de Grandins.
Seabury
Quinn shrugged off criticism of the de Grandin stories during his lifetime from
other writers.
The
fans rarely if ever protested. Like his most famous creation, Seabury Quinn is
only receiving now, the recognition he long deserved as a major force in the
history of weird and fantastic fiction.
THE OCCULT
HERC11E POIROT"
ONLY JULES
de GRANDIN
GOULD HOPE
TO SAVE:
—A houseful of beautiful
young girls forced to wear hideous golden masks while performing unspeakable
acts of degradation for their fiendish master
—A
pair of lovers turned into puppets of evil by a satanic father who reached out for them from beyond the grave
—A woman hellishly attacked
by a dark Oriental spirit that could only be countered by American Indian magic
—The victims of a ghoulish monster from the mysterious Middle East who fed on human blood
and devoured human souls
Jules
de Grandin never faced more horrifying dangers or rose to greater heights of
occult omnipotence than in these and the other chilling cases that comprise his
ultimate casebook of uncanny adventures.
Watch for Jules de Grandin in action again in
other volumes of this great new Popular Library series! THE ADVENTURES OF JULES de GRANDIN THE CASEBOOK OF JULES de GRANDIN THE DEVIL'S BRIDE THE SKELETON CLOSET OF JULES de GRANDIN THE HELLFIRE FILES OF JULES de GRANDIN
P
O P U
I \ R 1 I 1'. R A R
Y
LITHO IN U.S.A.