“I think not,” the little Frenchman answered, looking up from his task with a quick, friendly smile. “We will join you upstairs anon, mon brave.”
Together we bent above the unconscious girl. Her white back showed a lattice-work of crossed whip-welts, and in several places the skin had ruptured, letting out the blood where the lash-marks crossed. At de Grandin’s mute command I gathered her in my arms and bore her up the stairs to a bedroom, laid her under the covers, then went to help him search the bathroom for boric acid. “It is not much use,” he admitted as we applied the powder to her ugly-looking bruises, “but it must do till we can secure opium wash at your house, my friend.”
Headed by Costello and Renouard the police searched the house from foundation to ridgepole, but no sign of other occupants could be found, and the Sergeant went to the telephone to tell the city morgue of the bodies lying in the basement. “Will ye be afther comin’ along now, sors?” he asked, halting in the doorway to the room where we treated Avis Brindell’s hurts.
“But certainly,” de Grandin agreed, taking a blanket from the bed and wrapping the girl in it. “Will you set us down at Doctor Trowbridge’s, please? We must give this poor one further attention.”
WITH THE GIRL’S INJURED back well rubbed with soothing medicine and carefully bandaged, a powerful hypnotic administered to assure her several hours’ restful sleep, de Grandin and I joined Costello and Renouard in the study.
“She will do nicely,” he pronounced. “By tomorrow morning the hurt will have vanished from her bruises; Christmas night she will assuredly be able to attend her sister’s dinner party, though it will be some time before she may again wear décolleté gowns without some slight embarrassment. However”—he raised eyebrows and shoulders in an expressive shrug—“things might have been much worse, n’est-ce-pas?
“Sergeant, mon brave camarade”—he looked affectionately at Costello—“I would suggest you telephone Monsieur and Madame McDougal and tell them the lost lady has been found.”
He helped himself to a cigar and smoked in thoughtful silence while the big Irishman went to make his report.
“She much resembles her so charming sister, this Madame Avis, does she not?” he asked apropos of nothing as Detective Sergeant Costello rejoined us.
“Yes,” I agreed, “the resemblance is remarkable. Indeed, I never recall seeing three women looking more alike than—”
“Précisément,” he interrupted. “It is there the explanation lies.
“When first the possibilities of this case appealed to me was when Inspector Renouard told Madame McDougal that this Thi-bah, the missing temple-dancer, resembled her,” he added.
“Remember, Friend Trowbridge, Madame’s nerves were all on edge last night because a strange man, a skull-faced Oriental, had accosted her in the streets of Harrisonville? ‘That are outrageous!’ I told me, but I thought no more about it until the good Renouard pops up like a jack-in-the-box from Cambodia and tells us this story of the runaways from the Angkor temple. When he informs Madame McDougal that the missing Thi-bah resembles her, something goes click in this so clever brain of mine—I begin to foresee complications; I also damn suspect why this Oriental with a face like a skeleton’s has taken special note of a strange lady in an American city. Yes; Jules de Grandin is like that.
“Now, as you know, I, too, have sojourned in Cambodia; the secrets of that land are not strange to me. By no means. Of the ways of her people I have inquired deeply, and this I have learned: Should a slave run off from those who own him, or a lady leave her lawful wedded spouse, or the man who claims her without the benefit of clergy, for that matter, the deserted one will seek to find the fugitive, but if he can not do so, he will resort to sympathetic magic to compel the runaway’s return.
“You know how in the ancient days, and more recent times, too, the wizards and the witches were wont to make a waxen image of one whom they desired to be rid of, then place the figurine before the fire so it would slowly melt, and as it melted, the original would slowly pine away and die? Of course. Occasionally they would vary their technique by thrusting pins through the image in a vital spot, and as they did so, the poor unfortunate whose effigy the image was, was seized with insupportable pains in the same region as that through which the pin was thrust.
“It does sound childish, I admit,” he told us with a smile, “but magic is a most real thing, especially if it be believed in, and there is quite reliable evidence that deaths have actually been caused thus.
“Now, the Cambodians have a somewhat similar practise, though it entails double suffering: They procure some person who bears a real or fancied resemblance to the runaway, and thereupon they treat him most discourteously. Sometimes they beat the substitute—that is the usual manner of beginning. If that mild treatment fails they progress to branding with white-hot irons, to cutting off fingers and toes, hands and feet, ears, nose, breast and tongue, with dull knives. Then comes the interesting process of gouging out the eyes with iron hooks, finally complete evisceration while the unfortunate one still lives and breathes.
“Preposterous? Not necessarily. I, myself, have seen Cambodians’ hands wither, as though with leprosy, for no apparent reason, I have seen feet become useless, and seen eyes grow dim and blind. I sought to find some medical explanation and was told there was none. It was simply that some enemy was working sympathetic magic somewhere at a place unknown, and somewhere another poor unfortunate was undergoing excruciating torture that the hated one might also suffer.
“Remember, my friends, the Cambodians believe this to be possible, believe it implicitly; that makes a world of difference. So it was with Thi-bah; she who is now Madame Hildebrand. For all of her short life she had been subject to those monkey-faced priests, she was taught to believe in their fell powers, that they might not be able to do all they claimed had never once been entertained in her thought. Undoubtlessly she had seen such cases in the past, had seen unfortunate women tortured that some fugitive might suffer, had seen other unfortunates grow crippled, despair and die because somewhere an enemy worked magic on them.
“When we heard Mademoiselle Avis had been kidnaped and that she was Madame McDougal’s sister, the reason for the crime at once leaped to my eye. That she bore family resemblance to her sister, who had been said to much resemble Thi-bah, I made no doubt. What the so amiable Doctor Sun would do in the circumstances I also could assume without great trouble. Therefore we set about finding him and finding him in haste, lest harm befall his unfortunate involuntary guest.
“I was on the point of asking Friend Trowbridge to accompany me to Monsieur Hildebrand’s to interview his bride when the young man saved me the trouble by appearing so opportunely. Alors, to his house we went; there we beheld his young and pretty wife, and saw the whip-scars take form upon her back, even as we looked. These scars were psychic force physically manifested, of course, but they were none the less painful for that reason. Also, Mademoiselle Brindell, who served as substitute for her whom Doctor Sun would have liked to torment in person, was no less tortured because she suffered through no fault of hers. There is the answer and the explanation, my friends.”
“But—” I began.
“Excusez-moi,” he broke in, “I must inquire after Madame Hildebrand.
“And she rests easily?” he asked when his connection had been made and Archy had reported favorably. “Très bien—ha, do you tell me so! Excellent, Monsieur, I am most happy.
“Monsieur Archy reports,” he told us as he replaced the receiver in the hook, “that Madame his wife not only rests easily, but that the whip-marks have almost entirely disappeared. A miraculously quick cure for bruises such as we observed this afternoon, n’est-ce-pas, Friend Trowbridge?”
“It certainly is,” I agreed, “but—”
“And the day after tomorrow we dine with Monsieur and Madame McDougal, and the so charming Mademoiselle Avis,” he interrupted. “Sergeant, you must go, too. The party would be dismal without you.
Me, I devoutly hope they have procured a turkey of noble proportions. At present I could eat one as great as an elephant.”
Again he faced us with one of his quick, elfin smiles. “Sergeant, Friend Trowbridge, will you be good enough to excuse Inspecteur Renouard and me for the remainder of the evening?” he asked.
“Come, Renouard, mon petit singe, we must do that which we have not done together since the days of the War.”
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” demanded the Inspector, but the anticipatory gleam in his bright, dark eyes gave me the cue, even before de Grandin answered:
“What? You ask me what? What, indeed, except to get most vilely and abominably drunk, mon copain?”
The Ghost Helper
“NON, MY FRIEND, I mean it,” Jules de Grandin persisted. “You Americans are a gloomy people; even in your pleasures you are melancholy!”
I grinned at him despite myself. The Chez Pantoufle Dorée certainly showed no signs of melancholia which I could see. Waiters scurried here and there between the rows of softly illuminated tables; the air was heavy with the odor of well-cooked food, warm, perfumed woman-flesh and the smoke of excellent tobacco; the muted clatter of china and table silver mingled with the hum of conversation, lilting, flirtatious laughter and the syncopated overtone of the jazz band’s throbbing appeal to elemental passion. “Not much evidence of gloom here, is there?” I queried, attacking the Welsh rabbit the waiter placed before me and decanting a mugful of illegal but most enjoyable ale.
“But yes,” he nodded, “that is what I mean, précisément. Observe these people; they are typical. How is it your popular song says? ‘I Dance With the Tear in My Eye?’ That is it. The gayety is forced, unnatural. They are like a group of pallbearers telling each other funny stories while they ride to the cemetery; like little boys whistling to tell themselves how brave they are as they walk quick past the graveyard after dark. ‘See us,’ they say, ‘we are devils of fellows; gay, carefree, debonair; we care for nothing, we fear nothing!’ But always they look fearfully across their shoulders, and always in the shadows behind they see the hovering, disapproving ghosts of Calvin, Knox and Wesley, of Cotton Mather and William Jennings Bryan. So they are triste. Yes.
“Take those ones, by example”—he nodded to the tenants of a table somewhat to our left—“c’est un couple bien assorti, n’est-ce-pas? They should have every mark of happiness upon them, and yet observe—is not discomfort, even fear, written in their faces? I think yes. Que diable? Is that the way of joyousness?”
Waiting a decent interval, I turned my head and followed his critical glance. The man was tall, slender, stoop-shouldered, thin-faced and studious-looking, a perfect example of American gentleman with generations of Anglo-Saxon heritage behind him. His duplicate could be found on all our college faculties, in half our law offices and experimental laboratories, in many of the higher branches of our Government departments. Calm, level-headed and efficient, but without the blatant hall-mark of the “go-getter” on him, he showed the ideal combination of seriousness and humor which has enabled science and the arts to keep alive amid the hustle of our New World tempo—and to find practical application in the usages of business.
His companion was a sight to draw the eye in any company. Long-bodied and long-limbed in build, graceful as a panther, with a small, proud head crowned with a skull-cap of close-cut hair the shade of ripened maize, long, insolent eyes of darkest blue set under almost horizontal brows of startling blackness, straight-nosed, firm-chinned, thin-lipped, her skin as white as pearl and seemingly almost transparent, she, too, was eloquent of breeding, but her ancestors had bred their women-folk for physical appeal. However fine her mind might be, no man could forget her brilliant body and allure even for a moment, and though she might show gentleness at times, I knew it would be but the mildness of a cat-creature whose claws are only thinly masked in velvet paws.
I took them in with one swift glance, then turned back to de Grandin. “Why, it’s Idris Breakstone and his wife,” I said.
“You know them?”
“I know him. I ought to. I helped bring him to Harrisonville thirty-six years ago, and I’d treated his parents for five years before that. The woman I don’t know. He married her out of town. She’s his second wife, and—”
“U’m?” his murmured comment cut me short. “And is that look—that air of malaise which he and his so charming lady display—entirely natural to them?”
I looked again. The little Frenchman was right. In both Idris’ face and that of his companion there was a look of vague fear, a sort of haunted expression which a fugitive from justice might wear when strangers were about and any moment might bring the tapping hand and grim announcement of arrest. “No-o,” I answered slowly. “I don’t think it is. Now you mention it, they do look ill at ease, but—”
“Perhaps that one is to blame?” De Grandin cast his glance beyond the Breakstones’ table to a man sitting alone. “He looks like Nemesis’s twin—or Satan’s. Observe how he regards the lady. Pardieu, were she a mouse and he a cat, I should not care to undertake insuring her life!”
I followed the direction of his gaze. Seated in an angle of the wall was a man of slight, boyish build with almost feminine, delicate hands idly toying with his watch chain in a listless, indolent fashion. His old face, long, hard-shaven like a priest’s or actor’s, was in odd contrast to his youthful body, and in the aged, wrinkle-etched countenance there burned a pair of great, sorrowful eyes—eyes like Lucifer’s as he broods upon the high estate from which he fell—which gazed steadfastly and unchangingly at the smoothly brushed blond hair above the nape of Mrs. Breakstone’s creamy neck.
I shook my head and wrinkled my brow in distaste. It seemed to me that every atom of liquor-heated masculine desire in the room had been merged into the fixed, unwavering stare of those two sad yet pitiless eyes set in that old, wicked face which topped the lithe, incongruously youthful body of the stranger.
“What do you make of him?” de Grandin prompted as I held my peace.
I shook off the sort of trance which held me. For a moment I had been deaf to the café’s clatter, blind to its softly glowing lights, unmindful of the food which cooled before me as a single thought-desire seemed to overwhelm me—an almost uncontrollable desire to rise and cross the floor and dash my knotted fist into that old and sinful face, bruise those sorrowful, steadfast eyes and trample that frail, boyish body underfoot.
“Eh?” I returned as I emerged from my fog of primordial fury like a sleeper coming out of sleep. “Oh—excuse me; I was thinking.”
“Exactement; I think I know your thoughts; I have the same,” de Grandin answered with a laugh. “But ere we give way to desire and slay that unclean-looking person, tell me what you think of him. Is he the cause of Monsieur and Madame Breakstone’s perturbation?”
“No,” I returned, “I do not think so. I doubt if they realize he’s there. If she did, she’d surely tell her husband, and if Idris saw him looking at his wife that way—well, I think our impulse would be translated into action, and without much delay.”
The little Frenchman nodded understandingly. “I agree,” he told me. “Come, let us eat and go, my friend. If we remain much longer I shall most certainly do that one an injury—and I have no desire to be embroiled with the police so late at night.”
THE NUMBING COLD OF the evening had abated somewhat and a fine, crisp snow had fallen, covering streets and lawns with an inch or so of gleaming veneer; but the snow had ceased and the moon had risen and silvered the sleeping city with an overlay of nacre when the shrilling of my bedside telephone summoned me from sleep. The biting caress of the light, early-morning wind filtering through the stripped trees made me shiver as I snatched up the instrument and growled a sleepy “Hullo?”
“Idris Breakstone speaking, Doctor Trowbridge,” the caller responded. “Can you come over? Muriel—my wife—she’s—please hurry; this is urgent!”
“H’m, it had better be!” I murmured gri
mly as I reached for the clothes which a lifetime of experience as a general practitioner had taught me to keep in order on the bedside chair against such emergencies as this. “Confounded nuisance, knocking a man out of bed like this. Why—”
“What is it, my friend?” Wrapped in a mauve-silk dressing-gown, purple kid slippers on his womanishly small feet, a pink-and-lavender muffler about his throat, Jules de Grandin appeared at the bedroom door, all trace of sleep banished from his little, round blue eyes as he surveyed me with an elfish grin.
“Oh? It woke you too, eh?” I countered, jamming my foot into a shoe and fumbling with the lacings. “Well, misery loves company. No, I doubt it’s important; it’s Muriel Breakstone, the girl we saw in the night club, you know—her husband just ’phoned, and”—I tied the knot of my second shoe and drew on my waistcoat and jacket—“and she’s probably got indigestion from too much rich food or some of that funny liquor they serve there. Little fool! If she’d had sense enough to stick to good, wholesome beer—”
“Await me, my old one; I hasten, I rush, I fly!” de Grandin interrupted as he swung about and raced down the hall toward his room. “The lady will surely not expire if you delay until I dress; and I damn think anything concerning her should interest us. Oh, undoubtlessly, yes.”
He was dressed in less time than it took me to go to the garage for my car, and was waiting, my medicine kit beneath his arm, as I drove round to the front door.
I gave him a curious sidelong glance as we swung out into the quiet snow-muffled street. “What’s up?” I asked. “I know you can smell a mystery as far as a Scotsman can scent a bargain, but—”
The Dark Angel Page 7