De Grandin neither wept nor prayed, but his little eyes were hard and cold as eyes of polished agate inlaid in the sockets of a statue’s face, and round his small and thin-lipped mouth, beneath the pointed tips of his trim, waxed mustache, there gathered such a snarling grin of murderous hate as I had never seen. “Hear me, my friends,” he ordered. “Hear me, you who hang so dead and lovely on the cross; hear me, all ye that dwell in heaven with the blessed saints,” and in his eyes and on his face was the terrifying look of the born killer; “when I have found the one who did this thing, it had been better far for him had he been stillborn, for I shall surely give him that which he deserves. Yes, though he take refuge underneath the very throne of God Himself, I swear it upon this!” He laid his hand against the nail-pierced feet of the dead girl as one who takes a ritual oath upon a sacred relic.
It was grisly business getting her from the cross, but at last the spikes were drawn and the task completed. While Costello and Renouard examined every inch of trodden snow about the violated Calvary, de Grandin and I bore the body to the convent mortuary chapel, composed the stiffened limbs as best we could, then notified the coroner.
“This must by no means reach the press, Monsieur,” de Grandin told the coroner when be arrived. “Promise you will keep it secret, at least until I give the word.”
“H’m, I can’t do that very well,” Coroner Martin demurred. “There’s the inquest, you know; it’s my sworn duty to hold one.”
“Ah, but yes; but if I tell you that our chances of capturing the miscreants who have done this thing depend upon our secrecy, then you will surely withhold publicity?” de Grandin persisted. “Can you not, by example, summon your jury, show them the body, swear them in, and then adjourn the public hearing pending further evidence?”
Mr. Martin lowered his handsome gray head in silent thought. “You’ll testify the cause of death was shock and exposure to the cold?” he asked at length.
“Name of a small asparagus tree, I will testify to anything!” answered Jules de Grandin.
“Very well, then, We’ll hush the matter up. I won’t call Mother Mary Margaret at all, and Costello can tell us merely that he found her, nude in the convent garden. Just how he found her is a thing we’ll not investigate too closely. She disappeared from City Hospital psychopathic ward—the inference is she wandered off and died of exposure. It will be quite feasible to keep the jury from seeing the wounds in her hands and feet; I’ll hold the official viewing in one of the reposing-rooms of my funeral home and have the body covered with a robe from the neck down. How’s that?”
“Monsieur,” de Grandin drew himself up stiffly and raised his hand in formal military salute, “permit me to inform you that you are a great man!
“Allons, speed, quickness, hurry, we must go!” he ordered when the pitiful body had been taken away and Costello and Renouard returned from their inspection of the garden.
“Where are we rushin’ to now, sor?” the big detective asked.
“To City Hospital, pardieu! I would know exactly how it comes that one whose custody was given to that institution last night should thus be taken from her bed beneath their very noses and murderously done to death in this so foul manner.”
“SAY, DE GRANDIN, WAS that gal you and Trowbridge brought here last night any kin to the late Harry Houdini?” Doctor Donovan greeted as we entered his office at City Hospital.
De Grandin favored him with a long, hard stare. “What is it that you ask?” he demanded.
“Was she a professional disappearing artist, or something of the kind? We saw her locked up so tight that five men and ten little boys couldn’t have got her out, but she’s gone, skipped, flown the coop; and not a soul saw her when she blew, either.”
“Perfectly, we are well aware she is no longer with you,” de Grandin answered. “The question is how comes it that you, who were especially warned to watch her carefully, permitted her to go.”
“Humph, I wish I knew the answer to that one myself,” Donovan returned. “I turned in a few minutes after you and Trowbridge went, and didn’t hear anything further till an hour or so ago when Dawkins, the night orderly in H-3, came pounding on my door with some wild story of her being gone. I threw a shoe at him and told him to get the devil away and let me sleep, but he kept after me till I finally got up in self-defense.
“Darned if he wasn’t right, too. Her room was empty as a bass drum, and she was nowhere to be found, though we searched the ward with a fine-tooth comb. No one had seen her go—at least, no one will admit it, though I think someone’s doing a piece of monumental lying.”
“U’m?” de Grandin murmured non-committally. “Suppose we go and see.”
The orderly, Dawkins, and Miss Hosskins, the night supervisor of the ward, met us as we passed the barred door. “No, sir,” the man replied to de Grandin’s quick questions. “I didn’t see or hear—gee whiz! I wonder if that could ’a’ had anything to do with it—no, o’ course it couldn’t!”
“Eh?” de Grandin returned sharply. “Tell us the facts, Monsieur. We shall draw our own conclusions, if you please.”
“Well sir,” the man grinned sheepishly, “it was somewhere about five o’clock, possibly a bit later, an’ I was sort o’ noddin’ in my chair down by th’ lower end o’ th’ corridor when all of a sudden I heard a funny-soundin’ kind o’ noise—sort o’ like a high wind blowin’, or—let’s see—well, you might compare it to the hum of a monster bee, only it was more of a whistle than a buzz, though there was a sort o’ buzzin’ sound to it, too.
“Well, as I was sayin’, I’d been noddin’, an’ this sudden queer noise woke me up. I started to get up an’ see what it was all about, but it didn’t come again, so I just sat back an—”
“And went to sleep, eh?” Donovan cut in. “I thought you’d been lying, you swine. Fine chance we have of keeping these nuts in—with you orderlies snoring all over the place!”
“Monsieur Donovan, if you please!” Renouard broke in with lifted hand. To Dawkins: “You say this was a high, shrill sound, mon vieux; very high and very shrill?”
“Yes, sir, it was. Not real loud, sir, but so awful! shrill it hurt my ears to listen to it. It seemed almost as though it made me sort o’ unconscious, though I don’t suppose—”
“Tiens, but I do,” Renouard broke in. “I think I understand.”
Turning to us he added seriously: “I have heard of him. Our agents in Kurdistan described him. It is a sound—a very high, shrill sound—produced by blowing on some sort of reed by those followers of Satan from Mount Lalesh. He who hears it becomes first deafened, then temporarily paralyzed. According to our agents’ testimony, it is a refinement of the wailing of the Chinese screaming boys; that high, thin, piercing wail which so disorganizes the hearers’ nervous system that his marksmanship, is impaired, and often he is rendered all but helpless in a fight.”
De Grandin nodded. “We know, my friend,” he agreed. “The night Mademoiselle Alice disappeared we heard him—Friend Trowbridge and I—but that time they used their devil-dust as well, to make assurance doubly sure. It is possible that their store of bulala-gwai is low, or entirely exhausted, and so they now rely upon the stupefying sound to help them at their work.
“Mademoiselle,” he bowed to Miss Hosskins, “did you, too, by any chance, hear the strange sound?”
“I—I can’t say I did,” the nurse answered with embarrassment. “The fact is, sir, I was very tired, too, and was rather relying on Dawkins being awake to call me if anything were needed, so—” she paused, a flush suffusing her face.
“Quite so,” de Grandin nodded. “But—”
“But I did wake up with a dreadful headache—almost as though something sharp had been thrust in my ears—just before Dawkins reported that the patient in forty-seven was missing,” she added.
Again de Grandin nodded, “I fear there is nothing more to learn,” he returned wearily. “Come, let us go.”
“Doctor, Doctor darlin’,
they wuz here last night, like I told ye they’d be!” the drunken Irishwoman called to Donovan as we went past her door.
“Now, Annie,” Donovan advised, “you just lie back and take it easy, and we’ll have you in shape to go out and get soused again in a couple o’ days.”
“Annie th’ divil, me name’s Bridget O’Shay, an’ well ye know it, bad cess to ye!” the woman stormed. “An’ as fer shlapin’ in this place again, I’d sooner shlape in hell, for ’tis haunted be divils th’ house is!
“Last night, Doctor, I heard th’ banshee keenin’ outside me windy, an’ ‘Bridget O’Shay,’ says I to mesilf, ‘th’ fairy-wife’s come for ye!’ an’ I lays down on th’ floor wid both fingers in me ears to shtop th’ sound o’ her callin’.
“But prisently there comes a throop o’ divils mar-rchin’ up th’ corridor, th’ one in front a-playin’ on some sort o’ divil’s pipes which I couldn’t hear a-tall, a-tall, fer havin’ me fingers shtuck in me ears; an’ walkin’ clost behint him there wuz two others wans, an’ they all wuz walkin’ like they knew where they wuz goin’.
“I watched ’em till they tur-rned th’ bend an’ then I took me finger from wan ear, but quick enough I shtuffed it back, fer there wuz th’ horriblest screamin’ noise in all th’ place as would ’a’ deafened me entirely if I hadn’t shtopped me ears agin.
“Prisently they come again, th’ foremost wan still playin’ on ’is pipes o’ hell, an’ wan o’ ’em carryin’ sumpin acrost ’is shoulders all wrapped up in a blanket, whilst th’ other wuz a-lookin’ round from right to left, an’ ’is eyes wuz like peat-fires bur-rnin’ in a cave, sor, so they wuz. I ducked me head as he wint past, for well I knowed they’d murder me if I wuz seen, and I know what it wuz, too. ’Twas Satan on earth come fer that woman ye brung in here last night, an’ well I know she’ll not be seen agin!”
“Gosh, that was some case of jimjams you had last night!” Donovan laughed. “Better see Father O’Connell and take the pledge again, Annie, or they’ll be putting you in the bughouse for keeps one of these days. It’s true the girl’s wandered off, but we don’t think anything has happened to her. We don’t know where she is, even.”
“Eh bien, my friend,” de Grandin contradicted as we left the psychopathic ward, “you are most badly mistaken. We know quite definitely where the poor one is.”
“Eh? The devil!” Donovan returned. “Where is she?”
“Upon a slab in Coroner Martin’s morgue.”
“For Pete’s sake! Tell me about it; how’d it happen; I’m interested—”
“The papers will contain a story of her death,” de Grandin answered as he suppressed a yawn. “I, too, am interested greatly—in five eggs with ham to match, ten cups of coffee and twelve hours’ sleep. Adieu, Monsieur.”
9. Thoughts in the Dark
I WAS TOO NEAR THE boundary line of exhaustion to do more than dally with the excellent breakfast which Nora McGinnis, my super-efficient household factotum, set before us, but Renouard, with the hardihood of an old campaigner, wolfed huge portions of cereal, fried sausages and eggs and hot buttered toast, washing them down with innumerable cups of well-creamed coffee, while de Grandin, ever ready to eat, drink or seek adventure, stowed away an amazing cargo of food.
“Très bon, now let us sleep,” he suggested when the last evidence of food had vanished from the table. “Parbleu, me, I could sleep for thirty days unceasingly, and as for food, the thought of it disgusts me!
“Madame Nora,” he raised his voice and turned toward the kitchen, “would it be too much to ask that you have roast duckling and apple tart for dinner, and that you serve it not later than five this evening? We have much to do, and we should prefer not to do it on an empty stomach.”
“No office hours today, Nora,” I advised as I rose, swaying with sleepiness, “and no telephone calls for any of us, either, please. Tell anyone who cannot wait to get in touch with Doctor Phillips.”
How long I slept I do not know, but the early dark of midwinter evening had fallen when I sat suddenly bolt-upright in my bed, my nerves still vibrating like telephone wires in a heavy wind. Gradually, insistently, insidiously, a voice had seemed commanding me to rise, don my clothes and leave the house. Where I should go was not explained, but that I go at once was so insistently commanded that I half rose from the bed, reluctance, fear and something close akin to horror dragging me back, but that not-to-be-ignored command impelling my obedience. Then, while I wrestled with the power which seemed dominating me, a sudden memory broke into my dream, a memory of other dreams of long ago, when I woke trembling in the darkened nursery, crying out in fright, then the stalwart bulk of a big body bending over me, hands firm yet tender patting my cheek reassuringly, and the mingled comforting smell of starched linen. Russian leather and good tobacco coming through the darkness while my father’s soothing voice bade me not to be afraid, for he was with me.
The second dream dispelled the first, but I was still a-tremble with the tension of the summons to arise when I struggled back to consciousness and looked about the room.
Half an hour later, bathed, shaved and much refreshed, I faced de Grandin and Renouard across the dinner table.
“Par l’amour d’un bouc, my friends,” de Grandin told us, “this afternoon has been most trying. Me, I have dreamed most unpleasant dreams—dreams which I do not like at all—and which I hope will not soon be repeated.”
“Comment cela?” Renouard inquired.
“By blue, I dreamed that I received direct command to rise and dress and leave the house—and what is more, I should have done so had I not awakened!”
“Great Scott,” I interjected, “so did I!”
“Eh, is it so?”
Renouard regarded each of us in turn with bright, dark eyes, shrewd and knowing as a monkey’s. “This is of interest,” he declared, tugging at his square-cut beard. “From what we know, it would seem that the societies to which the unfortunate young ladies who first did bring me in this case are mixed in some mysterious manner with the Yezidees of Kurdistan, n’est-ce-pas?”
De Grandin nodded, watching him attentively.
“Very well, then. As I told you heretofore, I do not know those Yezidees intimately. My information concerning them is hearsay, but it comes from sources of the greatest accuracy. Yes. Now, I am told, stretching over Asia, beginning in Manchuria and leading thence across Tibet, westward into Persia, and finally clear to Kurdistan, there is a chain of seven towered temples of the Yezidees, erected to the glorifying of the Devil. The chiefest of these shrines stands upon Mount Lalesh, but the others are, as the electricians say, ‘hooked up in series.’ No, underneath the domes of each one of these temples there sits at all times a priest of Satan, perpetually sending off his thought-rays—his mental emanations. Oh, do not laugh, my friends, I beg, for it is so! As priests or nuns professed to the service of God offer up perpetual adoration and prayers of intercession, so do these servants of the archfiend continually give forth the praise and prayer of evil. Unceasingly they broadcast wicked influences, and while I would not go so far as to assert that they can sway humanity to sin, some things I know.
“I said I did not know the Yezidees, but that is only partly so. Of them I have heard much, and some things connected with them I have seen. For instance: When I was in Damascus, seeking out some answer to the riddle of the six women, I met a certain Moslem who had gone to Kurdistan and while there incurred the enmity of the Yezidee priests. What he had done was not entirely clear, although I think that he had in some way profaned their idols. However that may be, Damascus is a long and tiresome journey from the confines of Lalesh, where Satan’s followers hold their sway, but—
“Attend me”—he leaned forward till the candle-light struck odd reflections from his deep-set eyes—“this man came to me one day and said he had received command to go out into the desert. Whence the command came he did not know, but in the night he dreamed, and every night thereafter he had dreamed, always the same thi
ng, that he arise and go into the desert. ‘Was it a voice commanding?’ I did ask, and, ‘No,’ he said, ‘it was rather like a sound unheard but felt—like that strange ringing in his ears we sometimes have when we have taken too much quinine for the fever.’
“I sent him to a doctor and the learned medical fool gave him some pills and told him to forget it. Ha, forget that never-ending order to arise and leave, which ate into his brain as a maggot eats in cheese? As well he might have told one burning in the fire to dismiss all thought of torment from his mind!
“There finally came a time when the poor fellow could no longer battle with the psychic promptings of the priests of Satan. One night he left the house and wandered off. Some few days later the desert patrol found his burnoose and boots, or what was left of them. The jackals, perhaps with the aid of desert bandits, had disposed of all the rest.
“Now we tread close upon these evil-doers’ heels. I have followed them across the ocean. You, my Jules, and you, Monsieur Trowbridge, have stumbled on their path, and all of us would bring them to account for their misdoings. What then?
“What, indeed, but that one of them, who is an adept at the black magic of their craft, has thrown himself into a state of concentration, and sent forth dire commands to us—such subtle, silent orders as the serpent gives the fascinated bird? You, my Jules, have it. So have you, Monsieur Trowbridge, for both of you are somewhat psychic. Me, I am the hard, tough-headed old policeman, practical, seeing little farther than my nose, and then seeing only what I do behold, no more. Their thought-commands, which are a species of hypnotism, will probably not reach me, or, if they do, will not affect my conduct.
“Your greatest danger is while you sleep, for then it is the sentry of your conscious mind will cease to go his guardian rounds, and the gateway to your inner consciousness will be wide open. I therefore think it wise that we shall share one room hereafter. Renouard is watchful; long years of practicing to sleep with one hand on his weapon and one eye open for attack have schooled him for such work. You cannot move without my knowing, and when I hear you move I wake you. And when I wake you their chain is broken. Do you agree?”
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