“She might have given him the money, but herself she denied him, and he took revenge. Only yesterday he notified her that unless she married him forthwith he would denounce her to the police.
“Last night she and her aunt and uncle went to the theatre, to a play called Evil Communications. It is a melodrama dealing with a blackmail plot. In it the heroine who has forsaken her criminal associates and married happily is about to be denounced by one with whom she has been involved in crime. She sees her happiness about to be destroyed, her children branded with her hidden infamy. She kills herself. The suggestion took hold on Mademoiselle Sainpolis. She left the theatre, left her aunt and uncle, hurried home and—tiens, the rest we know. We came, the good Costello came; but she had gone.”
“Bedad,” commented Costello, “I’d like to have ’bout fifteen minutes private conversation wid this Niccolo. Me an’ a two foot length o’ rubber hose.”
SHE WAS VERY LOVELY in her casket. The scars of autopsy had been obliterated by the skill of the embalmers, a gown of white lace—fashioned for her wedding day—enfolded her slim form, a white lace mantilla draped her shining hair; in the slender, oleander-white hands crossed piously upon her virgin bosom a rosary was twined. Our testimony had convinced the priest, and her funeral was held in church with the lovely, long-drawn ceremony of high mass as celebrated by the Greek communion, a choir of forty voices singing a cappella and incense rising in an almost choking cloud of sweetness. Six young girls robed in white and veiled like brides were pallbearers; floral offerings filled two open touring-cars which headed the procession from St. Helena’s to the tiny Greek Orthodox cemetery.
“MISTER STRAPOLI, IF YE plaze, sors,” announced Nora McGinnis shortly after dinner the evening following the funeral. “He says as how he ain’t a patient,” she added rather grimly, for the rule against admitting patients after office was of her own devising, and one she imposed on both my clientele and me with rigorous inflexibility.
The young man who came in a moment later was typical of the city’s café life. His dinner suit was of exaggerated cut, trousers fitted snugly at the waist and hips but bellowing into flowing bottoms at the foot; a purple grosgrain cummerbund was bound so tightly round his waist as to suggest a corset, his double-breasted jacket sloped sharply from the shoulders to the waist, then flared above the hips. Black hair, rather long, was brushed straight back without a part and trained down on his cheeks in long sideburns. The bandoline with which it was dressed gave it a finish flat and shiny as a skullcap of black patent leather. He was the perfect “sheik” type, reminiscent of the days when Valentino and Novarro were the beaux idéals of motion picture lovers. He was lithe and graceful as a panther in his movements, but somehow the impression which he gave was of a panther which has been hunted till the fear of hounds and guns is in its sleek pelt like a barb.
“Doctor de Grandin?” he asked tentatively in a light but musical voice.
“I am he,” de Grandin answered, eyeing him with none too much approval. “What is it that you wish?”
“I am Anthony Strapoli. Stephanola Sainpolis was—we were to have been married.”
The little Frenchman shot me a quick glance as if to warn me, “Silence, my friend, tell him nothing. Let me handle this.” To the young man:
“You have our deepest sympathy, Monsieur. I, who have had the experience, know how the heart bleeds at the thought that we shall not see those we love again—”
“But I have seen her, sir. I saw her last night. That’s why I’ve come to you. They tell me you know all about such things.”
De Grandin’s narrow brows rose slightly. “You imply you saw her in the spirit?”
“No, sir. In the flesh. I swear it!”
For an instant the small Frenchman eyed him narrowly; then: “Say on, Monsieur, I listen.”
The young man dropped into a chair and fixed his large dark eyes upon de Grandin’s small blue ones. “It wasn’t any ghost or spirit I saw, sir,” he announced earnestly. “It was Stephanola, in the very body I have known and loved.
“I lead the band at Casa Ayer, and last night was a special occasion, our first broadcast on a national hook-up, so I couldn’t be away, though it almost broke my heart to go through with it. I played at both the dinner and the supper shows, and it was two o’clock before we were through, almost three when I reached home. I was so tired that I could hardly stand, but when I went to bed I couldn’t sleep; so, sometime between three and four I got up and went to the bathroom for a dose of veronal. I took a stiff shot and was going back to bed when I happened to look into the living-room. Something white was shining there.”
“Shining, Monsieur?” de Grandin repeated in a flat voice.
“Yes, sir. At first I thought it was the moonlight on the polished floor, but when I looked again I saw it was the lower part of a white dress, a woman’s long white gown. I stepped into the room, and there was Stephanola. Don’t look at me like that, sir. I tell you she was there!”
“But certainly,” de Grandin soothed. “Conditions were ideal for the vision. The broken heart, the tired, frayed nerves, the sedative—”
“It wasn’t any vision, as you call it. It was my girl, there in the living, breathing flesh. She stood there in her bridal gown, the one they used to bury her, with the white lace veil across her golden hair, just as I’d hoped to see her at the altar.
“At first I was afraid. Everyone’s afraid of ghosts, even if they’re of the ones they’ve loved; so I began to cross myself, and said, ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son—’
“But before I finished she put her hand out to me. ‘Don’t say it, Tony,’ she begged. ‘If you do I’ll have to go away, and I don’t want to leave you so soon.’
“So there I stopped with my hand in the air, right where I’d touched myself upon the forehead when I began to form the cross, and the invocation half pronounced.
“She stepped toward me, and I saw the motion of her train against the floor, and when the moonlight shone on her she cast a shadow. Ghosts don’t make shadows, so I began to lose my dread of her, and when she put her hand on mine it was cool and soft, just as it always was, not cold and ghostly.
“‘Tony dear,’ she whispered, and I could feet her breath against my cheek, ‘you’ve got to help me. I need your help most dreadfully, my dear. I’m a sinner, Tony, for I took the life that wasn’t mine to take, but there is a way open for me to forgiveness if you’ll help me. Won’t you help me, please, Tony?’
“She looked so beautiful and sorrowful and appealing that before I realized what I did I’d put my arms around her and was drawing her to me. I could feel her in my arms, feel the pressure of her body against mine. It was no ghost I held, but a sweet living girl, the same one I’d embraced a thousand times before.
“She didn’t shrink from me nor hold back when I bent to kiss her, but—I don’t quite know how to say it—something—something I could feel, but couldn’t see, seemed to come into the room just then. I can’t describe it, really. It wasn’t palpable, and yet it was. I couldn’t see nor hear nor feel it, but I knew it was there. A thing invisible and soundless had displaced some of the room’s air—you know how it is when you’re standing in a phone booth and someone else crowds in, but doesn’t touch you? And I had a sense of being watched.”
“Watched? Inimically?” de Grandin prompted as the boy stopped with a puzzled frown.
“No, sir. It was as if someone very sad, but not at all hostile, stared at me with a long, calm look.” His shapely slim hands made a gesture of futility. “It’s just impossible to describe, sir. There was no chill, no fear, no sensation I can name at all, but I suddenly felt she and I were not alone, and kissing her right then would be —well, sort of indecent.
“She stepped back from my arms and put her hands upon my shoulders. ‘Listen, Tony dear,’ she told me, ‘listen carefully; this is terribly important. See.’ From her dress she drew a big red rose and put it in my hand. ‘This is from me, dear,
the only gift that I can give you now. Do you recognize it?’
“I looked, and thought I did. Among the flowers I’d sent for her funeral was a spray of Gloire de Dijon roses, twenty-two of them, one for each year of her life. ‘Keep it, Tony,’ she added, ‘it will help you realize this is not a dream you’re having. Kneel dearest.’
“The veronal had started working by this time and I was getting dizzy. I don’t know whether I knelt purposely or whether I stumbled and fell, but next moment I was on my knees before her and she held her hands against my lips. Somehow that—that presence—which came into the room with her didn’t seem forbidding any more, and I kissed her fingers, starting with the little finger of her right hand, counting off ten kisses, and ending with her left little finger. Then, very gently, she drew her hands from mine and laid them on my eyes.”
The look of simulated interest with which de Grandin had regarded Strapoli gave way to an amiable frown of concentration. “And when she did this you saw something?” he demanded almost sharply.
The young man’s shoulders came up in a puzzled shrug. “Yes, sir, I did, but it didn’t seem to make much sense.”
“Suppose you tell us what you saw, and let us be the judges of its sense or senselessness, Monsieur.”
“At first I saw nothing but indistinguishable blackness, just as you always do when you first close your eyes; then, as the pressure of her fingers on my lids seemed to grow, the black appeared to fade to a dark blue, and soon this was all shot with stars, like the sky on a clear night before the moon has risen. Then slowly, like the fade-in in a motion picture, the image of a house appeared against the sky, not quite shutting out the star-specked heavens, but seemingly imposed on them. It was a big house, something like this, but with more grounds around it, and with evergreens growing by the porch. I saw it plainly, but in miniature, as if it were very far away, or as if I looked at it through the wrong end of an opera glass. There were no lights in any of the windows, but a sort of soft illumination, like moonlight, made it plain as day to me.”
“And what occurred then, if you please? “
“Nothing, sir. I knelt there, looking at that house through my closed eyelids for what seemed several minutes; then I felt the pressure on my lids lighten, and when I opened my eyes I was alone, kneeling in the center of the room with a big red rose in my hand.
“I started to get up, but the veronal had taken hold, and I fell forward in a heap and lay there in a drugged sleep till almost noon today. When I recovered consciousness I’d have thought it all a dream, if it were not for this.” From the breast pocket of his dinner coat he drew a tissue paper parcel, handling it as reverently as if it were a sacred relic.
The soft white wrappings came away, revealing a great red Gloire de Dijon rose, slightly wilted and with several petals coming loose, but still retaining its deep color and breathing forth a rich scent from its golden heart.
“This was still clutched in my hand when I waked,” he told us. “Something, I don’t know what, told me that it was from the spray I’d sent to Stephanola, and as quickly as I could I dressed and hurried to the cemetery. All the floral tributes were in place around her grave or on it, and almost at the mound’s head, where her breast would be, they’d put my spray of roses. I counted every blossom on it. There were twenty-one left.”
Slowly de Grandin poured three drinks, tendering one to our guest, one to me.
“No, thanks,” the young man refused. “Sometimes I drink a little wine. I never touch hard liquor.”
“Mon Dieu, and you have such an amiable face, too!” de Grandin exclaimed in a shocked voice. Then: “Eh bien, whatever else you were last night, you were not drunk when you beheld this vision, mon vieux.”
A reproachful look came into the young man’s dark eyes. “You don’t believe me, sir!” he almost wept.
“Par la barbe d’un bouc vert, I do, my friend,” the little Frenchman answered earnestly, “but there are some features of your vision which daunt me. Precisely, what is it that you would have me do?”
Strapoli smiled sadly. “I think I’ve come to you for moral support more than anything else,” he replied. “Mr. Sainpolis told me you were an expert in the occult, and I’d like to have your opinion—” He paused, swallowed once or twice; then, hurriedly: “Did I do wrong to let the vision stay, or should I have sent it—her—away with an invocation of the Trinity? I went to Father Anastapoul this morning and told him everything, and he tells me I was wrong. He says the living have no right to contacts with the dead except through prayer, and that demons often take the forms of those we loved in life to lure us to damnation.”
“The reverend father has some factual basis for his statement,” de Grandin answered with a thoughtful nod. “It is unfortunately all too true that what we thought the spiritual manifestation of one we loved turns out to be a foul succubus, but I should say the evidence in this particular case seems to point otherwhere. Tell me, Monsieur, what does your own heart say?”
“Why, that I did no wrong, sir. I believe it was Stephanola, not her ghost or spirit, but herself, and that she came to me for help because she loves me, just as I love her. There’s nothing I would not have done for her when she was living; why should I deny her aid, now that she’s dead?”
Tears were streaming down his face, and other tears were glinting on de Grandin’s lashes as he answered, “Why, indeed, my friend? Do not attempt to evoke her as you value your salvation do not seek communication with her through a spiritualistic medium—but if she comes again unbidden, receive her as a lover should. You would not have hurt her living; can you find it in your heart to hurt the helpless dead?”
“WHAT D’YE MAKE OF it?” I asked as the door closed on our visitor. “Did he actually see her, or was it just a tired brain in a tired body, plus a dose of veronal, that gave him an hallucination?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Le bon Dieu knows, not I. There is much truth in that old saying that the wish is father to the thought. Who of us has not heard the voice of one whom he has loved and lost—perhaps beheld him? Such experiences come oftenest when we are in that no man’s land between full consciousness and sleep. It is entirely possible he wished so hard for her that his tired senses heard the pleadings of his heart and vouchsafed him a vision. On the other hand, we have the rose for evidence.”
“Yes, but the rose might have been there all the time,” I argued. “Gloire de Dijons were her favorite flowers; he might possibly have bought one, put it in a vase, and then forgotten it. And as for one blossom being missing from the spray out in the cemetery, the wonder is that there were any left. I noticed how the young men hurried with the flowers following the funeral. If Mr. Martin had caught them he’d have given them a lecture. I’ve often heard him say the floral tributes deserve almost as great care as the body, because they’re tokens of love.”
“An estimable man, that Monsieur Martin,” he returned. “He is a funeral director in a thousand. Come, let us go and drink to him.”
“Bedad, sor, he’s at it again, th’ impident spalpeen!” Sergeant Costello stalked into our breakfast room, his usually florid face gone almost apoplectic with fury.
“Morbleu, do you say so? And who in Satan’s foul name is he, and what has he been at?” de Grandin answered with a grin.
“Why, this here now felly, th’ one that ye were afther readin’ about in Miss Sainpolis’ diary. Bad cess to ’im, wid th’ pore young gur-rl hardly cold in her grave he’s goin’ round burglarizin’ houses an’ lavin’, fingerprints all over th’ place. Ouch, it’s’ th’ brazen one he is! Belike he thinks we didn’t check her fingerprints when we found that she wuz dead, an’ o’ course, he don’t know nothin’ about th’ diary, so he thinks he’s safe as long as—”
“One moment, if you please!” de Grandin shut him off. “Me, I feel the birthpains of an idea stirring in my brain. I have what you call the hunch!” He raised a hand to enjoin silence; then: “Where did he commit this latest outrage?”
“’Twas Misther Westmorsham’s house, out on th’ Bordentown Road, sor. Th’ family wuz to Atlantic City, an’ th’ servants had been given time off. This mornin’ they come back to find th’ house picked clean as a wishbone, wid furs an’ silverware and jools and Lord knows what all carted off.
“An’ how d’ye s’pose he got in? Why, through th’ front door, if ye plaze. Jimmied it and walked right in, as bold as brass. We know he done it sometime between midnight an’ this mornin’, for th’ harness bull on th’ beat tried th’ door at twelve an’ one, an’ agin at half-past three. At half-past six this mornin’ a prowl car passin’ by seen it wide open, an’ when they went in to investigate they found th’ whole place gutted clean as any carcass in a butcher-shop.”
“Parbleu, it strikes a chord, my friends!” de Grandin cried. “Me, I have the idea. Oui-da, ma petite pauvre, I get the message which you sent!”
“Howly Moses, Doctor Trowbridge, sor, d’ye let him sthart his drinkin’ so early in th’ mornin’?” Costello asked me in well-simulated reproach.
“Never mind the ill-timed witticisms, thou great stupid one,” de Grandin shot back. “Come with me, at once, immediately, right away. Take me to this house of Monsieur Westmorsham, let me look at it, and I will show you how to lay this miscreant by the heels. Come, hurry, we waste time!”
THE SUPPER SHOW WAS more than half done when the captain showed us to our table at the Casa Ayer. The slow, deliberately erotic notes of “Mood Indigo” trickled like a spate of hot spiced wine from the battery of saxophones set in the front rank of the orchestra while several young and shapely women cavorted on the dance floor in a flood of purple light.
De Grandin waved the menu card aside. “I have not the hunger,” he announced. “Bring me a dozen lobster sandwiches and a pint of champagne brut, no more.”
I ordered a Welsh rarebit and a mug of ale, and looked around the darkened room. Here and there a man’s shirtfront or a woman’s shoulders gleamed in dim highlight, but for the most part the whole place was steeped in shadow. On the stand before the orchestra I descried our visitor of the night before leading the musicians with the deftness of long practice, his task mechanical as drawing breath.
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