“Kreuzsakrament!” As de Grandin stepped before me Friedrichsohn launched himself across the table, leaping like a maddened leopard. “You—”
“It is I, indeed, thou very naughty fellow,” de Grandin answered, and as the other clawed at him rose suddenly into the air, as if he were a bouncing ball, brought both feet up at once, and kicked his adversary underneath the chin, hurling him unconscious to the floor. “Tiens, a knowledge of la savate is very useful now and then,” he murmured, as he turned and loosed the strap that bound my arms and transferred it to his fallen foeman. “So, my most unpleasant friend, you will do quite nicely thus,” he said, then turned to me.
“Embrasse moi!” he commanded. “Oh, Trowbridge, cher ami, brave camarade, I had feared this stinking villain had done you an injury. Alors, I find you safe and sound, but”—he grinned as he inspected me—“you would look more better if you had more clothing on!”
“There’s a chest behind you,” I suggested. “Perhaps—”
He was already rummaging in the wardrobe, flinging out a miscellany of garments. “These would be those of Monsieur Southerby”—he tossed a well-cut tweed suit on the floor—“and these a little lady’s”—a woolen traveling-suit with furred collar came to join the man’s clothes. “And this—ah, here they are!” My own clothes came down from the hooks and he thrust them at me.
“Attire yourself, my friend,” he ordered. “I have work elsewhere. If he shows signs of consciousness, knock him on the silly head. I shall return for him anon.”
Hurrying footsteps clattered on the floor outside as I dragged on my clothes. A shout, the echo of a shot. . . .
I flung the door back just in time to see de Grandin lower his pistol as Mishkin staggered toward the front door, raised both arms above his head and crashed sprawling to the floor.
“My excellent de Grandin!” Jules de Grandin told himself. “You never miss, you are incomparable. Parbleu, but I admire you—”
“Look, look!” I shouted. “The lamp—”
Clawing blindly in the agony of death, Mishkin’s hand had knocked one of the red-globed oil lamps from its place before a statuary niche. The lacquer-coated, oil-soaked walls were tinder to the flame, and already fire was running up them like a curtain.
“In there,” I cried. “Southerby and a young girl are locked up there somewhere, and—”
“Hi, Frenchy, where the devil are you?” Hiji’s hail came from the transverse corridor. “Find Trowbridge yet? We’ve got Southerby and a—” He staggered out into the central hall with the still unconscious Southerby held in his arms as if he were a sleeping babe. Behind him came Costello with the girl, who was also sunk deep in anesthesia.
“Whew, it’s gettin’ hotter than Dutch love in here!” the Englishman exclaimed. “We’d best be hookin’ it, eh, what?”
“Indubitably what, my friend,” de Grandin answered. “One moment, if you please.” He dashed into the red room, reappearing in a moment with arms filled with clothes. “These are their proper raiment,” he called, draping the garments over Hiji’s shoulder. “Take them to the garage and bid them dress themselves becomingly for public appearance. Me, I have another task to do. Assist me, if you will, Friend Trowbridge.”
Back in the red-walled room he raised the fallen madman, signing me to help him. “The place will be a furnace in a moment,” he panted, “and me, I am not even one of the so estimable young Hebrews who made mock of Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery wrath. We must hasten if we do not wish to cook!”
He had not exaggerated. The oil-soaked walls and floors were all ablaze; lashing, crackling flames swept up the stairway as if it were a chimney flue.
“Good heavens!” I cried, suddenly remembering. “Up there—he’s got two others locked in cells—”
Down from the upper story, clear and sweet and growing stronger, came a voice, the voice of Viki Boehm:
So stürben wir, um ungetrennt,
Ewig einig ohne end . . .
So should we die, no more to part,
Ever in one endless joy . . .
The mounting notes of a violin accompanied the words of Tristan and Isolde’s plea for death which should unite them in the mystic world beyond life.
“Mon Dieu! Concede misericors, Deus . . .” De Grandin looked up at the fire-choked stairway. “There is no chance of reaching them—”
The crash of breaking timbers drowned his words, and a gust of flame and sparks burst from the stairwell as the draft was forced down by the falling floors. The song had died; only the roar of blazing, oil-soaked wood sounded as we bent our heads against the smoke and staggered toward the door. “It is their funeral pyre—fidelium animae per misericordiam Dei, requiescat in pace!” de Grandin panted. “A-a-ah!”
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you—”
“Bid Hiji or Costello come at once!” he groaned. “I—am—unable—”
“You’re hurt?” I cried solicitously.
“Vite, vite—get one of them!” he choked.
I rushed through the front door and circled around the house toward the garage. “Hiji—Costello!” I shouted. “Come quickly, de Grandin’s hurt—”
“Pardonnez-moi, mon ami, on the contrary I am in the best of health, and as pleased as I can be in all the circumstances.” At my very heels de Grandin stood and grinned at me.
“You got clear? Good!” I exclaimed. Then: “Where’s Friedrichsohn?”
There was no more expression in his small blue eyes than if they had been china eyes in a doll’s face. “He was detained,” he answered in a level voice. “He could not come.”
Suddenly I felt an overmastering weakness. It seemed to me I had not eaten for a year; the cold bit at my bones as if it were a rabid wolf. “What day is it?” I asked.
“You are unpatriotic, my friend. It is the anniversary of the Great Emancipator’s birth. Did not you know?”
“February twelfth? Why, that’s today!”
“Mon Dieu, what did you think it was, tomorrow or yesterday?”
“But—I mean—we left Harrisonville on the morning of the twelfth, and I’ve been in that place at least—”
He glanced down at his wrist watch. “A little over two hours. If we hasten we shall be in time to lunch at Keyport. They have delicious lobster there.”
“But—but—”
“Doctor Trowbridge, Doctor de Grandin, these are Miss Perinchief and Mr. Southerby,” Hiji broke in as he and Costello came from the garage shepherding a most ecstatic-looking pair of youngsters.
“I’ve seen—” I began; then: “I’m very glad to meet you both.” I acknowledged the introduction.
He made me tell him my adventures from the moment I had left him by the brook where Southerby’s car was foundered, listening with tear-filled eyes as I described the loathsome things Friedrichsohn had made of Viki Boehm and her husband, weeping unashamedly when I recounted what I’d overheard while I looked through the trap-door into the room in which young Southerby and Rita Perinchief confessed their love. “And now, in heaven’s name, what were you doing all that time?” I asked.
“When you failed to return we were puzzled. Costello wished to go to the farmhouse and inquire for you, but I would not permit it. One took at that place and I knew it had the smell of fish upon it. So I posted them out by the great tree at the turning of the driveway, where they could be in plain sight while I crept around the house and sought an opening. At the last I had to cut the lock away from the back door, and that took time. I do not doubt the Mishkin rascal watched them from some point of vantage. Bien. While he was thus engaged Jules de Grandin was at work at the back door.
“At last I forced an entrance, tiptoed to the front door and unfastened it, signaling to them that all was well. I was waiting for them when I saw that sale chameau Friedrichsohn come down the stairs with you.
“‘Can this be endured?’ I ask me. ‘Can anyone be permitted to lead my good Friend Trowbridge as if he were a dog upon a leash? Mais non, Jules
de Grandin, you must see to this.’ So I crept up to the room where he had taken you and listened at the keyhole. Voilà tout. The rest you know.”
“No, I don’t,” I denied. “How did Hiji and Costello know where to look for Southerby and Rita?”
“Tiens, they did not know at all, my friend. They came in and looked about, and they espied the Mishkin rogue on guard before their prison door. He ran, and they broke down the door and brought the prisoners out. They should have shot him first. They have no judgment in such matters. Eh bien, I was there. It is perhaps as well. I have had no target practice for a long, long time—”
“Did they find the papers Southerby was carrying?”
“But yes. Friedrichsohn set no value on them. They were in the desk of the room where you first saw him. Hiji has them safely in his pocket.”
“It seems incredible I was in there such a little while,” I mused. “I could have sworn that I was there at least a week—”
“Ah, my friend, time passes slowly in a prison. What you thought was hours’ space as you lay shivering in that cell was really only half an hour or so. Time does not pass at all, it stands entirely still while you are sleeping. They rendered you unconscious with their gas, and woke you in perhaps five minutes. Suggestion did the rest. You thought that you had slept around the clock-dial, and since you could not see the sun, you had no clue to what the hour really was. Sleep and our own imaginings play strange tricks upon us, n’est-ce-pas?”
THE BROILED LIVE LOBSTER was, as he had promised, delicious. Luncheon done, de Grandin, Hiji and Costello marched toward the bar, with me bringing up the rear. Neville Southerby and Rita Perinchief cuddled close together on a settle set before the fireplace in the lounge. As I passed the inglenook in which they snuggled side by side, I heard her: “Honey lamb, I think I know how Robinson Crusoe felt about his island when they’d rescued him. He kept remembering it all his life, and even though he’d undergone a lot of hardships there, he loved it. Somehow, I’ll always feel that way about the place that madman shut us up in. Just suppose they’d never found us . . . suppose we’d stayed there always, just the two of us, being with each other always, looking at each other . . . we might have been changed some by being cooped up, but—”
“Morbleu, my friend, you look as if you’d seen a most unpleasant ghost!” de Grandin told me as I joined them at the bar and reached unsteadily for a drink.
“I have,” I answered with a shudder. “A most unpleasant one.”
Mansions in the Sky
“VRAIMENT,” JULES DE GRANDIN looked up from his reading, parentheses of concentration between his brows. “It is precisely as he says, that Monsieur Kipling.”
“Eh?” I answered, stifling an incipient yawn. It was raining, steadily and coldly, and had been since mid-afternoon. An icy wind soughed through the bare gray trees, and flocks of sparrows huddled shivering in the shelter of the dripping eaves. The study fire was dying, and I was almost waterlogged with sleepiness. “What’s true?” I murmured with scant interest.
“Why, this epigram he makes, my friend:
The sins ye do by two and two
Must be paid for one by one.
“I dare say,” I returned, “but if you don’t mind, I think that I’ll turn in.”
The phone bell rang a short, sharp stuttering warning, first querulously, then insistently, finally with a frantic, drilling clamor. I half decided to ignore it; the night was foul, and I was dog-tired after a long, trying day. But habit overcame my inclination. “Hullo?” I challenged gruffly as I took the instrument from its cradle.
“Doctor Trowbridge, will you come right away, please? It is my niece. She has hurt herself; perhaps she may be dead already—”
“Hold on,” I cut in, “who is this?”
“Kimon Sainpolis, Doctor. It is my niece Stephanola. She is badly hurt.”
“What’s the nature of the injury?” I began, but the sharp click of the phone thrust back into its hooks broke my query off half uttered, and I turned toward the surgery for my first-aid kit with a sigh of exasperation.
De Grandin joined me at the front door, his trench coat belted and his felt hat already turned down in anticipation of the outside rain.
“Where to, mon vieux?” he asked. “May not I go, also? It is dull work, staying by oneself when others are about their business.”
“Of course, glad to have you,” I responded as I climbed into my car and shot the starter. “Kimon Sainpolis, the Greek importer, just called. It seems his niece has met some sort of accident—pretty serious, too, I gathered, for he said she might be dead.”
We turned into the boulevard and headed toward the heights where Sainpolis, grown rich with vending wine in Prohibition days, and richer still since his activities were legalized, had built his big stone mansion.
THE WIND WAS BITTER as a witch’s curse as we began to mount the hill, and by the time we reached our destination there was a glaze of ice across my windshield reminiscent of the frosting on old-fashioned barroom mirrors. It was almost midnight, but every window in the house was bright as we drew up at the curb and hastened up the path of marble tiles that led to the wide porch.
Inside there was the sound of voices speaking in the stage-whisper of ill-suppressed excitement as the butler met us at the door and ushered us across the hill. Somewhere upstairs a woman laughed and wept by turns in the shrill timbre of hysteria.
“Doctor Trowbridge, this is kind of you, indeed,” Sainpolis exclaimed as he rushed down the wide stairs to greet us. “I am almost frantic—Doctor de Grandin!” he acknowledged my introduction with a deep bow, “I am honored that you, the great occultist, have consented to come out with Doctor Trowbridge! My niece—”
“Where is she?” I broke in sharply. Out patient might be dying while we stood there talking.
“Upstairs, sir. She is—oh, but it is terrible! How shall I ever face my brother, her poor father? He sent her to me from the old country when she was only three years old. Now—” He wrung his slender white hands in an agony of despair. “You will help me keep it secret, Doctor?”
“Where is she?” I repeated. “And what’s wrong with her?”
“Ah, yes, of course, Doctor. You must know all—all—if you are to help me. Come.”
Up the thickly carpeted steps we followed him, down a hallway wide enough to have served a hotel, till we paused before a partly-opened door.
“In there!” he whispered as he stood aside and waved dramatically. “You will find her in there, gentlemen.”
De Grandin was before me by the fraction of a step, and as he crossed the threshold he came to a sharp halt, letting his breath out in a low “Ha?”
Before an ormolu-framed cheval glass, like a couturière’s dummy overturned, a girl lay on the slate-gray carpet. The sheer rose chiffon of her evening dress was crumpled round her like the petals of a wilting flower, pale yellow hair like wind-blown floss swirled round her face, a silver brocade evening sandal had slipped off one silk-sheathed foot and lay gaping emptily upon its side.
All this I saw at first glance. My second look showed what de Grandin had seen at first.
Below the golden head, where it rested on the velvet carpet, was a sickening dark-red stain, slowly spreading as the gilt clock on the dressing-table ticked the seconds away nervously.
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “Suicide!”
“Quite yes,” de Grandin nodded. “It was not us, but the funeral director and the coroner Monsieur Sainpolis should have called.”
“But we mustn’t have the coroner!” our host wailed from the doorway. “I appeal to you as doctors to prevent a scandal. I have called you to attend my niece. If she is dead, you can certify—”
“Be quiet, if you please,” de Grandin ordered sharply. “Not one word from you! Answer me: When did this happen?”
“Not fifteen minutes ago,” Sainpolis answered. “We had been to the theatre, Madame Sainpolis, my niece and I. Stephanola had been nervous and upset
all afternoon; during the final intermission she complained of feeling faint and begged us to allow her to come home. We let her go, but before she had been gone five minutes we decided to follow her. Our car drove up just as she dismissed her taxi, and we entered the house not two minutes behind her. We heard her slam her door; before we could get halfway up the stairs we heard a shot. See”—he pointed to the tiny pistol lying by her outstretched hand—“it was with that she did it.”
De Grandin eyed him levelly. “You can assign no reason for this so unfortunate occurrence?”
Sainpolis raised his shoulders in a shrug of eloquent negation. “You know as much as I do, sir. My niece was only twenty-two and was affianced to an estimable young man. As far as I know they had no quarrel.”
“U’m?” de Grandin tweaked his small mustache. “She had shown no signs of melancholy—what of this afternoon?”
Sainpolis looked thoughtful. “I could not call it melancholy,” he replied at length, “but she has certainly been nervous at times. Six months or so ago she lost a pair of gloves. They were practically new, and quite expensive, but it seemed to me she brooded over their loss far more than she should. It was certainly not natural.”
Abruptly he returned to his original theme: “You will help me, gentlemen? You can say it was not suicide—I will say she hurt herself while playing with the toy pistol, and that I summoned you in all haste; you can bear me out in your statements. The disgrace of a suicide in the family will practically ruin me—my brother will declare a feud on me—she will be denied the last rites of the church—”
De Grandin motioned him to silence. “If you are troubled only on those scores, Monsieur, we can certainly assist you,” he answered. “Mademoiselle your niece was rendered melancholy by the loss of her so pretty gloves; she brooded on their loss; alors, she shot herself. Voilà. Sane people do not do such things, and the church will not refuse its comfort to a person who has killed herself while mad. We can give you our opinion that she must have been of unsound mind when she destroyed herself. Do not make yourself uneasy on that account, Monsieur.”
Black Moon Page 23