And as we watched the prisoners struggle futilely to bring their dying hands together we saw something flutter feebly in the darkness at the rear of the tomb. Chained like the other two the golden-skinned mulatress lay against the wall, and constantly her head turned from side to side and her emaciated body shook with unremitting spasms.
“Cordieu, but it was monstrous, that!” de Grandin whispered grittily. “Not content with making them die horribly by slow starvation; not content with making it impossible for them so much as to join hands in their extremity, he chained that other poor one with them that they should be denied all privacy, even in the hour of death!”
He struck his hands together sharply. “Monsieur!” he called. “Monsieur Peteros!”
The gruesome scene before us faded as if it had been frescoed on wax melting in quick heat, and through the semi-darkness of the room there swirled a wraithlike cloud of gleaming vapor that hovered like a nimbus above the medium a moment, then, as if he had inhaled it, was absorbed by him. “Eh?” Peteros murmured sleepily. “Did I go into a trance? What did I say?”
“Not a word, Monsieur,” de Grandin told him. “You were as dumb as an infant oyster, but through your help we are much wiser. Yes. Certainly. Stay here and rest, for you must be exhausted. The rest of us have duties to perform. Come, mes amis,” he looked at me and the Jaquays in turn, “let us go to that abominable tomb, that never-to-be-quite-sufficiently-anathematized sepulchre. We are a century and more too late—we cannot rescue them, hèlas, but we can give them what they most desire. Of a surety.”
WITH A CROWBAR WE forced back the rust-bound iron door of the Tofte mausoleum and after standing back a moment for the outer air to enter de Grandin led the way into the tomb, playing the beam of his flashlight before him.
“Voyez! Voilà que!” he ordered as the shifting shaft of light stabbed through the murky darkness. Death lay at our feet. Arranged in orderly array as if they waited articulation by an osteologist were the bones of three skeletons. Dangling from the ring bolts of three stone-sealed crypts to the floor beside the skulls were lengths of rust-bitten iron chain. The disintegration of the prisoners’ upper spinal columns had loosed the loops of iron latched about their throats. We had no difficulty determining their sex. Even if the widely-opened sciatic notches of the pelvic bones and the smoothly curved angular fronto-nasal articulation of the skulls had not denoted the female skeletons to de Grandin’s practiced eye and mine the pitiful relics lying by two of the skulls would have told their story —the amethyst-set gold earrings of the white girl and the patina-encrusted copper loops that once had hung in the mulatress little ears.
The Frenchman stepped back, bowing as if he addressed three living people. “Mes pauvres,” he announced softly, “we are come to give you release from your earth-bound state. Your pleas have been heard; you shall be together in what remains of the flesh. The evil man who boasted of his better, sounder sleep—parbleu, but Jules de Grandin makes a monkey out of him!”
“It is a case for the coroner,” he told us as we walked back to the house. “We need not tell the things that we saw in the bedroom. The circumstances of the disappearance of Madame Tofte and Monsieur Van Brundt as they appear in the historical records, together with the advertisement crafty old Monsieur Jacob broadcast for the return of the poor Celeste, will be sufficient to establish their identity. As to the manner of their death—eh bien, does it not proclaim itself? But certainly.”
He smiled grimly. “And that old hypocrite who lies so snugly in St. Chrysostom’s churchyard—though it is late in overtaking him his sin has found him out at last. The jury of the coroner cannot help but name him as the murderer of those poor ones.”
THE DINNER AT THE Berkeley-York had a huge success. Consommé de tortue vert with sherry, buîtres François with Chablis, truite Margery with Meursault, coq au vin with Nuits St. Georges and finally crêpes Sussettes with cointreau. As the waiter poured the coffee and Chartreuse I fully expected to hear de Grandin purr. “I suppose it’s your theory that the stone and timbers of Tofte House held a certain psychic quality derived from association with the tragedy of Marise Tofte and Merthou Van Brundt, or that these unhappy lovers in the stress of their emotion passed on lasting thought-emanations to their inanimate surroundings?” I asked him. “I’ve heard you say that dreams or visions can be evoked in psychically sensitive persons when they’re permitted to sleep in a room with a chip from a house where some atrocious crime has been committed, or—”
“I would not quite say that,” he interrupted with a smile as he took a morsel of pink peppermint between his teeth and sipped a little black coffee. “This, I think, is what we might call a genuine ghost story, one where the earthbound spirits of the dead, denied the rites of Christian burial, sought constantly for help from the living.
“Consider, if you please: That Madame Marise and Monsieur Merthou were about to elope, accompanied by the slave girl Celeste, we have no doubt at all. Also, after seeing what a bête bas she had for husband one cannot greatly blame her, especially as she was still in love with her cousin who seems to have been a quiet, amiable young man. Yes.
“Next, we know the naughty old Monsieur Jacob laid a trap for them. He pretended to go on a long voyage, gave them barely time to renew love and make plans for eloping then pouf! swooped down on them like a cat on two luckless mice. The sad rest we know also.
“When he had chained them like brute beasts they died all miserably in the tomb, and their poor, starved bodies lay unburied. What then? Year after painful year they sought to tell their plight to those who came to live in that old house, but always they did fail. Those whom they begged for help were frightened and ran off.
“But finally these unhappy cousins who were thwarted in their love were visited by cousins fate had given to each other. And so it came about that we, with Monsieur Peteros’ assistance, found their pitiful remains, had their killer branded as a murderer, and after proper rites laid them in consecrated ground. Yes certainly.”
A grim expression settled on his lips. “That poor Celeste, the slave girl, she gave me some trouble,” he confided.
“How’s that?” asked Georgine Jaquay.
“The sexton of St. Chrysostom’s told me the ground was reserved for the burial of white people exclusively. ‘Monsieur,’ I say to him, ‘this are no woman, but a skeleton I seek to have interred here, and the skeleton of a young girl of color as white as that of a Caucasian. Besides, if you persist in your pig-odious refusal I shall have to tweak your far from handsome nose.’ Tiens, he let us bury her beside those whose death she had shared.”
Georgine Jaquay gave a short neighing laugh, the sort of laugh a person gives to keep from weeping, but in a moment tears glinted on her lashes. “Do you suppose it was because they were cousins, and George and I are cousins, that they finally found peace through us?” she asked.
He raised his narrow shoulders in the sort of shrug no one but a Frenchman can achieve. “Who knows, Madame? It are entirely possible,” he answered. Then with one of his quick elfin grins, “Or possibly it were because you and Monsieur your husband had the good sense to consult Jules de Grandin. He is a very clever fellow, that one.”
Catspaws
WE HAD BEEN LATE leaving the Medical Society meeting and the cold rain of the early evening had changed to a wet, sleet-spurred snow, hag-ridden by a bitter wind, when we came out into the street. At the southern entrance of the Park my car gave a sharp lurch as a report like a bursting electric bulb was followed by an angry hiss and the sound of vicious slapping on the roadway. “Grand Dieu des porc,” asked Jules de Grandin, “what in Satan’s name was that?”
I swerved the car to the curb and shut off my engine. “If you don’t know I haven’t the heart to tell you,” I answered.
He nodded sadly. “One might have guessed as much. And we have no spare tire, naturellement?”
“Naturellement,” I echoed.” Those things are pretty strictly rationed. We just came th
rough a war, or hadn’t you heard?”
“It is the fortune of the dog we have. What should we do?” Then before I could make a sarcastic rejoinder, “One comprehends. It is that we walk?”
“It is,” I assured him as we dived into the Park’s darkness, heads bent against the weather.
The gale clutched at our hats, whipped our sleeves, lashed at our coats; snow gathered on our soles in hard inverted pyramids that made the going doubly hard, now and then a laden tree bough shook its frigid burden down on us.
“Feu noir du diable,” de Grandin cursed as a particularly vicious barrage of wet snow fell on him, “quelle nuit sauvage! If only —morbleu, another luckless pilgrim of the night! Observe her, Friend Trowbridge.”
I followed the direction of his pointing stick and saw a woman—a girl, really—fur-swathed from neck to knees, bareheaded and shod with high-heeled sandals, judging by her awkward gait, struggling with frantic haste over the rough hummocks of frozen slush. As she drew almost abreast of us I realized she was half moaning, half sobbing to herself as she ran.
“Pardonnez-moi, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin touched the brim of his black felt hat, “may we be of service? You seem in trouble—”
“Oh—” she gave a little scream of surprise at his voice. “Oh, yes; yes. You can help me. You can!” Her voice rose to a pitch half an octave below hysteria. “Please help me, I’m—”
“Tiens, you have the nervousness unnecessarily, Mademoiselle. We shall take great pleasure in assisting you. What is it?”
“I—” she gulped sobbingly for breath—“I want to get to a trolley, a taxi, any way to get home in a hurry, please. I—”
“And so do we, ma petite.” he broke in, “but alas, there is no street car, bus or taxi to be had. If you will come with us to the other side of the Park—”
“Oh, no!” she declined fiercely. “Not that way. I’m afraid. Please don’t take me back that way. He’s there!”
“Eh?” he shot back sharply. “And who is ‘he,’ if one may ask?”
“That—that man!” she panted hoarsely, turning to resume her flight. “Oh, sir, please don’t take me back. I’m terribly afraid!” Her teeth began to chatter with mingled chill and fright.
“Be quiet, Mademoiselle!” he ordered. “This will not do. No, not at all. What is your trouble, why do you fear to retrace your steps? Is there anybody there two able-bodied, healthy men cannot protect you from?”
“I—” the girl began again, then seemed to take a grip upon her nerves. “No, of course I’m not afraid while I’m with you. I’ll go.” She swung round, catching step between us.
“I was going home from a party at a friend’s house,” she began, speaking hurriedly. “My—my young man had to catch a midnight train for Philadelphia and couldn’t take me, so I was waiting on the corner for a bus when a man drove by and asked me if I’d like a lift, and—like a fool!—I told him yes. I told him I was going to MacKenzie Boulevard, but he turned into the Park, and when we got down to the bottom of the hill he—oh, I was so terrified! I jumped out and began to run, and—and I’m afraid, sir; I’m terribly afraid of him!”
The light from one of the infrequent roadside lamps fell on de Grandin’s face and showed a look of mingled wonder and amusement. “One understands, but only partly, Mademoiselle. You were a very foolish little person to accept a ride from a stranger. Had you never heard that she who rides must all too often pay her passage? That the young man—one assumes be was young—should have proved a wolf was not astonishing, but you evaded him. He did not harm you. Why, then, are you so distrait, so terrified? Is it that—”
Her frightened exclamation cut through his question as her hands clenched on our arms with fear-strengthened fingers. “See! There are the lights of his car. He’s waiting for me—oh, I’m afraid!”
The Frenchman loosed her clutching fingers gently. “Look to her, Friend Trowbridge. Me, I shall attend to this smasher.” Striding to the car parked at the roadside he addressed its unseen occupant. “Monsieur, this young woman tells us you have affronted her. Me, I do not like that kind of business. Have the goodness to descend Monsieur, and I shall take great pleasure in tweaking your so odious nose.”
No answer was forthcoming and he put a foot upon the running board. “I see you, miscreant. Silence will not give you protection. Descend and defend yourself—” He raised his head level with the face of the man at the car’s steering wheel. There was a rustle of snow-covered sleeve against the casing of the car window, and: “Mordieu, Friend Trowbridge, come and see,” he ordered as he fished into his pocket for his flashlight. “Look at him, if you please—and keep tight hold of the woman!”
I grasped the girl’s wrist and leant forward as the beam of his light pierced the darkness and fell back a step, my fingers tightening on her arm involuntarily.
Bolt-upright at the wheel of the roadster was a heavy-set blond young man, bare-headed, and with the collar of his ulster open at the throat. His left hand wore a heavy glove, I noticed, while his right which rested on the wheel, was bare. His light-blue eyes, probably always prominent were widely opened in an idiotic, fixed stare and fairly popping from his face. His mouth was gaping with a hang-jawed, imbecile expression, the tongue protruding slightly, and the chin resting on the fabric of his turned-back collar.
“Oh,” the girl beside me let out a shrill, squealing scream, “he’s dead!”
“Comme un maquereau,” de Grandin agreed laconically. “Nor did he die from overeating. Regard him, if you please, Friend Trowbridge.” Placing his hand on the young man’s sleek fair hair he moved it with a gentle rotary motion. The head beneath his hand followed its pressure as if it had been fastened to the shoulders by a loose-tensioned spring. “You agree with my diagnosis?” he asked.
“There certainly appears to be a fracture, probably at the third cervical vertebra,” I agreed, “but whether he died as a result of—”
“Perfectly,” he agreed. “The autopsy will disclose that.” Then, to the girl: “Was this why you were so afraid to retrace your steps, Mademoiselle?”
“I didn’t do it—truly I didn’t!” she answered in a thick-tongued voice. “He was alive—alive and laughing, when I ran away. The last thing I heard as I ran was his voice calling, ‘You won’t get far in this storm, sister. Come back when it gets too cold for you.’ Please, you must believe me!”
“H’m,” he snapped his flashlight off and climbed down from the running board. “I do believe you did not do it, Mademoiselle. You have not strength enough. But this is a case for the coroner and the police. We must ask you to accompany us.”
“The police?” her voice was little more than a whisper, but freighted with as much fear as a scream. “Oh—no! You mustn’t have me arrested. I don’t know anything about it—” She choked on her denial and slumped against me, then slid to the snow unconscious.
“The typically feminine escape,” he murmured cynically. “Come, let us take her up, my friend. Here—so.” He grasped my wrists in his hands, forming a chair for the unconscious girl. “We shall bear her easier this way. She is no great weight.”
“That’s why I think she told the truth when she said she didn’t do it,” I replied as we trudged toward the exit of the Park. “She’s a frail little thing who could no more break a man’s neck than I could kick a hippopotamus’s ribs in.”
“True,” he agreed as he eased her dark head on his shoulder. “I think she tells the truth when she denies the actual killing, but someone killed him very thoroughly less than half an hour ago. It may well be that she knows more than she has told, and I propose to find out what she knows before we summon the police. If she is guilty she should suffer; if she is innocent it is our duty to protect her. En tout cas I propose to know the truth.”
FRAIL OR NOT, THE girl’s weight seemed to increase in geometrical progression as we trudged through the sticky snow. By the time we reached the Park gate I was thoroughly exhausted and the blinking lights of the taxi de
Grandin hailed were like a lighthouse to a shipwrecked mariner to me.
We carried her into the house and laid her on the office couch, and while de Grandin poured a dose of aromatic ammonia in one glass and two ounces of sherry in another I unfastened her fur coat and laid it back. “I don’t believe we have a right to do this,” I began. “We’ve no official status, and no legal right to question her—good heavens!”
“Comment?” queried Jules de Grandin.
“Look here,” I ordered. “Her chest—” Beginning just below the inner extremity of her left clavicle and extending downward almost to the upper rondure of her left breast were three paralleling vertical incisions, superficial, little more than scratches, and deeper at beginning than at termination. They were about a half-inch from each other and their lips were roughened, the skin turned back like soil at the lips of a plough-furrow. Blood had run down them and dripped upon the bodice of her low-cut party frock, and the bodice itself had been torn and ripped so that the black lace of the bandeau that confined her rather slender bosom was exposed.
“Morbleu,” de Grandin bent across my shoulder to inspect the scratches, “Chose étrange! If you did not know otherwise what would you say caused those wounds, Friend Trowbridge?”
I shook my head bewilderedly. “It’s past me. If they were smaller I’d say they’d been made by a cat—”
“Tu parles, mon vieux—you have said it. A cat and nothing else it was that made those scores in her so tender flesh, but what a cat! Nom d’un pipe, he must have been an ocelot at least, and yet—
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