“Now Larry wins either way. Lonny can’t take his legacy under his father’s will, for he’s been convicted of murdering him; therefore, he can’t make a will and dispose of his half of the estate. Larry takes Lonny’s share as his father’s sole surviving next of kin capable of inheriting, and he’s already got most of his own through the advances he’s received and hidden away. A wife can’t testify against her husband in a criminal case; but even if I could repeat what he’s confessed to me in court, who’d believe me? He need only deny everything, and I’d not only be ridiculed for inventing such a fantastic story, but publicly branded as my brother-in-law’s mistress, as well. Larry told me that last night when I threatened to repeat his story to the governor, and Lonny agreed with him today. Oh, it’s dreadful, ghastly, hideous! An innocent man’s going to a shameful death for a crime he didn’t commit, and a perfidious villain who admits the crime goes scot-free, enjoying his brother’s heritage and gloating over his immunity from punishment. There isn’t any God, of course; if there were, He’d never let such things occur; but there ought to be a hell, somewhere, where such things can be adjusted.”
“Madame,” de Grandin returned evenly, “do not be deceived. God is not made mock of, even by such scheming, clever rogues as him to whom you’re married. Furthermore, it is possible, that we need not wait the flames of hell to furnish an adjustment of this matter.”
“But what can you or anyone do?” the girl demanded. “No one will believe me; this story is so utterly bizarre—”
“It is certainly decidedly unusual,” de Grandin answered non-committally.
“Oh? You think that I’ve invented it, too?” she wailed despairingly. “Oh, God, if there is a God, help, please help us in our trouble!”
“Quickly, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin cried. “Assist me with her. She has swooned!”
We drew up at my door even as he spoke, and, the girl’s form trailing between us, ascended the steps, let ourselves in and hastened to the consulting-room. The Frenchman eased our light burden down upon the divan while I got sal volatile and aromatic ammonia.
“Madame,” de Grandin told her when she had recovered consciousness, “you must let us take you home.”
“Home?” she echoed almost vaguely, as though the word were strange to her. “I haven’t any home. The house where he lives isn’t home to me, nor is—”
“Nevertheless, Madame, it is to that house which you must let us take you. It would be too much to ask that you dissemble affection for one who did so vile a thing, but you can at least pretend to be reconciled to making the best of your helplessness. Please, Madame, I beg it of you.”
“But why?” She answered wonderingly. “I only promised to delay my suicide till Lonny is—till he doesn’t need me any more. Must I endure the added torture of spending my last few hours with him? Must my agony be intensified by having him gloat over Lonny’s execution?—oh, he’ll do it, never doubt that! I know him—”
“Perhaps, Madame, it may be that you shall see that which will surprise you before this business is finished,” the Frenchman interrupted. “I can not surely promise anything—that would be too cruel—but be assured that I shall do my utmost to establish justice in this case. How? I do not surely know, but I shall try.
“Attend me carefully.” He crossed the office, rummaged in the medicine cabinet a moment, then returned with a small phial in his hand. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.
“No,” she said wonderingly.
“It is mercuric cyanide, a poison infinitely stronger and more swift in action than potassium cyanide or mercuric chloride, commonly called corrosive sublimate. You could not buy it, the law forbids its sale to laymen, yet here it is. A little so small pinch of this white powder on your tongue and pouf! unconsciousness and almost instant death. You want him, hein?”
“Oh, yes—yes!” she stretched forth eager hands, like a child begging for a sweetmeat.
“Very good. You shall go home and hide your intentions as ably as you can. You shall be patient under cruelty; you shall make no bungling effort to destroy yourself like that we caught you at tonight. Meanwhile, we shall do what we can for you and Monsieur Lonny. If we fail—Madame, this little bottle shall be yours when you demand it of me. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” she responded, then, falteringly, as though assenting to her own execution: “I’m ready to go any time you wish to take me.”
CARDENER’S BIG HOUSE WAS dark when we arrived, but our companion nodded understandingly. “He’s probably in the library,” she informed us. “It’s at the back, and you can’t see the lights from here. Thank you so much for what you’ve done—and what you’ve promised. Good-night.” She alighted nimbly and held her hand out in farewell.
De Grandin raised her fingers to his lips, and: “It may well be that we must see your husband upon business, Madame,” he whispered. “When is he most likely to be found at home?”
“Why, he’ll probably be here till noon tomorrow. He’s usually a late riser.”
“Bien, Madame, it may be that we shall be forced to put him to the inconvenience of rising earlier than usual,” he answered enigmatically as he brushed her fingers with his lips again.
“NOW, WHAT THE DEVIL are you up to?” I demanded reproachfully as we drove away. “You know there’s nothing you can do for that poor chap in jail, or for that woman, either. It was cruel to hold out hope, de Grandin. Even your promise of the poison is unethical. You’re making yourself an accessory before the fact to homicide by giving her that cyanide, and dragging me into it, too. We’ll be lucky if we see the end of this affair without landing in prison.”
“I think not,” he denied. “I scarcely know how I shall go about it, but I propose a gamble in souls, my friend. Perhaps, with Hussein Obeyid’s assistance we may yet win.”
“Who the deuce is Hussein Obeyid?”
“Another friend of mine,” he answered cryptically. “You have not met him, but you will. Will you be good enough to drive into East Melton Street? I do not know the number, but I shall surely recognize the house when we arrive.”
East Melton Street was one of those odd, forgotten backwaters common to all cities where a heterogeneous foreign population has displaced the ancient “quality” who once inhabited the brownstone-fronted houses. Italians, Poles, Hungarians, with a sprinkling of other European miscellany dwelt in Melton Street, each nationality occupying almost definite portions of the thoroughfare, as though their territories had been meted out to them. Far toward the water-end, where rotting piers projected out into the oily waters of the bay and the far from pleasant odors of trash-laden barges were wafted landward on every puff of superheated summer breeze, was the Syrian quarter. Here Greeks, Armenians, Arabians, a scattering of Persians and a horde of indeterminate mixed-breeds of the Levant lived in houses which had once been mansions but were now so sunk in disrepair that the wonder was they had not been condemned long since. Here and there was a house which seemed relatively untenanted, being occupied by no more than ten or a dozen families; but for the most part the places swarmed with patently unwashed humanity, children whose extreme vocality seemed matched only by their total unacquaintance with soap and water sharing steps, windows and iron-slatted fire escapes with slattern women of imposing avoirdupois, arrayed in soiled white nightgowns and unlaced shoes shockingly run over at the heels.
De Grandin called a halt before a house set back in what had been a lawn between a fly-blown restaurant where coatless men played dominoes and consumed great quantities of heavy, deadly-looking food, and a “billiard academy” where rat-faced youths in corset-waisted trousers knocked balls about or perused blatantly colored foreign magazines. The house before which we drew up was so dark I thought it tenantless at first, but as we mounted the low step which stood before its door I caught a subdued gleam of light from its interior. A moment we paused, inhaling the unpleasant perfume of the dark and squalid street while de Grandin pulled vigorously at the brass bellknob set
in the stone coping of the doorway.
“It looks as though nobody’s home,” I hazarded as he rang and rang again, but:
“Salaam aleikum,” a soft voice whispered, and the door was opened, not wide, but far enough to permit our entrance, by a diminutive individual in black satin waistcoat, loose, bloomer-like trousers and a red tarboosh several sizes too large for him.
“Aleikum salaam,” de Grandin answered, returning the salute the other made. “We should like to see your uncle on important business. Is he to be seen?”
“Bissahi!” the other answered in a high-pitched, squeaking voice, and hurried down the darkened hall toward the rear of the house.
“Is your friend his uncle?” I asked curiously, for the fellow was somewhere between sixty-five and seventy years of age, rather well-advanced to possess an uncle, it seemed to me.
The little Frenchman chuckled. “By no means,” he assured me. “‘Uncle’ is a euphemism for ‘master’ with these people, and used in courtesy to servants.”
I was about to request further information when the little old man returned and beckoned us to follow him.
“Salaam, Hussein Obeyid,” de Grandin greeted as we passed through a curtained doorway, “es salaat wes salaam aleik!—Peace be with thee, and the glory!”
A portly, bearded man in flowing robe of striped linen, red tarboosh and red Morocco slippers rose from his seat beside the window, touching forehead, lips and breast with a quick gesture as he crossed the room to take de Grandin’s outstretched hand. This, I learned as the Frenchman introduced us formally, was Doctor Hussein Obeyid, “one of the world’s ten greatest philosophers,” and a very special friend of Jules de Grandin’s. Doctor Obeyid was a big man, not only stout, but tall and strongly built, with massive, finely-chiseled features and a curling, square-cut beard of black which gave him somewhat the appearance of an Assyrian andro-sphinx.
The room in which we sat was as remarkable in appearance as its owner. It was thirty feet, at least, in length, being composed of the former front and back “parlors” of the old house, the partitions having been knocked out. Casement windows, glazed with richly painted glass, opened on a small back yard charmingly planted with grass and flowering shrubs; three electric fans kept the air pleasantly in motion. Persian rugs were on the polished floor and the place was dimly lighted by two lamps with pierced brass shades of Turkish fashion. The furniture was an odd conglomeration, lacquered Chinese pieces mingling with Eastern ottomans like enormously overgrown boudoir cushions, with here and there a bit of Indian cane-ware. Upon a stand was an aquarium in which swam several goldfish of the most gorgeous coloring I had ever seen, while near the opened windows stood what looked like an ancient refectory table with bits of chemical apparatus scattered over it. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with bookcases laden with volumes in unfamiliar bindings and glassed-in cabinets in which was ranged a miscellany of unusual objects—mummified heads, hands and feet, bits of clay inscribed with cuneiform characters, odd weapons and utensils of ancient make, fit to be included in the exhibitions of our best museums. A human skeleton, completely articulated, leered at us from a corner of the room. Such was the rest room and workshop of Doctor Hussein Obeyid, “one of the world’s ten greatest philosophers.”
De Grandin lost no time in coming to the point. Briefly he narrated Beth Cardener’s story, beginning with our first glimpse of her in the penitentiary and ending with our leaving her upon her doorstep. “Once, years ago, my friend,” he finished, “on the ancient Djebel Druse—the stronghold of that strange and mystic people who acknowledge neither Turk nor Frenchman as their overlord—I saw you work a miracle. Do you recall? A prisoner had been taken, and—”
“I recall perfectly,” our host cut in, his deep voice fairly booming through the room. “Yes, I well remember it. But it is not well to do such things promiscuously, my little one. The Ineffable One has His own plans for our goings and our comings; to gamble in men’s souls is not a game which men should play at.”
“Misère de Dieu!” de Grandin cried, “this is no petty game I ask that you should play, mon vieux. Madame Cardener? Her plight is pitiful, I grant; but women’s hearts have broken in the past, and they will break till time shall be no more. No, it is not for her I ask this thing, but for the sake of justice. Shall ninety-million-times-damned perfidy vaunt itself in pride at the expense of innocence? ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,’ truly; but consider: Does He not ever act through human agencies when He performs his miracles? Damn yes. If there were any way this poor one’s innocence could be established, even after death, I should not be here; but as it is he is enmeshed in webs of treachery. No sixty-times-accursed ‘reasonable’ man could be convinced he did not do that murder, and the so puerile Anglo-Saxon law of which the British and Americans prate so boastfully has its hard rules of evidence which for ever bar the truth from being spoken. This monstrous-great injustice must not—can not—be allowed, my friend.”
Doctor Obeyid stroked his black beard thoughtfully, “I hesitate to do it,” he replied, “but for you, my little birdling, and for justice, I shall try.”
“Triomphe!” de Grandin cried, rising from his chair and bounding across the room to seize the other in his arms and kiss him on both cheeks. “Ha, Satan, thou art stalemated; tomorrow we shall make a monkey of your plans and of the plans of that so evil man who did your work, by damn!” Abruptly he sobered. “You will go with us tomorrow morning?” he demanded.
Doctor Obeyid inclined his head in acquiescence. “Tomorrow morning,” he replied.
Then the diminutive, wrinkle-bitten “nephew” who performed the doctor’s household tasks appeared with sweet, black coffee and execrable little tarts compounded of pistachio nuts, chopped dates and melted honey, and we drank and ate and smoked long, amber-scented cigarettes until the tower-clock of the nearby Syrian Catholic church beat out the quarter-hour after midnight.
IT WAS SHORTLY AFTER ten o’clock next morning when we called at Cardener’s. Doctor Obeyid, looking more imposing, if possible, in a suit of silver-gray corduroy and a wide-brimmed black-felt hat than he had in Eastern robes, towered a full head above de Grandin and six inches over me as he stood between us and beat a soft tattoo on the porch floor with the ferule of his ivory-headed cane. It was a most remarkable piece of personal adornment, that cane. Longer by a half-foot than the usual walking-stick, it was more like the exaggerated staffs borne by gentlemen of the late Georgian period than any modern cane, and its carven ivory top was made to simulate a serpent’s head, scales being reproduced with startling fidelity to life, and little beads of some green-colored stone-jade, I thought—being inlaid for the eyes. The wood of the staff was a kind which I could not classify. It was a vague, indefinite color, something between an olive-green and granite-gray, and overlaid with little intersecting lines which might have been in imitation of a reptile’s scales or might have been a part of the strange wood’s odd grain.
“We should like to see Monsieur Cardener—” began de Grandin, but for once he failed to keep control of the situation.
“Tell him Doctor Obeyid desires to talk with him,” broke in our companion, in his deep, commanding voice. “At once, please.”
“He’s at breakfast now, sir,” the servant answered. “If you’ll step into the drawing-room and—”
“At once,” Hussein Obeyid repeated, not with emphasis, but rather inexorably, as one long used to having his orders obeyed immediately and without question.
“Yes, sir,” the butler returned, and led us toward the rear of the house.
Striped awnings kept the late summer sun from the breakfast room’s open windows where a double row of scarlet geranium-tops stood nodding in the breeze. At the end of the polished mahogany table in the center of the room a man sat facing us, and it needed no second glance to tell us he was Lawrence Cardener. Line for line and feature for feature, his face was the duplicate of that of the prisoned man whom we had seen the day before.
Even the fact that his upper lip was adorned by a close-cropped mustache, while the prisoner was smooth-shaven, and his hair was iron-gray, while the convict’s close-clipped hair was brown, did not affect the marked resemblance to any degree.
“What the dev—” he began as the servant ushered us into the room, but Doctor Obeyid cut his protest short.
“We are here to talk about your brother,” he announced.
“Ah?” An ugly, sneering smile gathered at the corners of Cardener’s mouth. “You are, eh? Well?” He pushed the blue-willow club plate laden with mutton chops and scrambled eggs away from him and picked up a slice of buttered toast. “Get on with it,” he ordered. “You wished to talk about my brother—”
“And you,” Doctor Obeyid supplied. “It is not too late for you to make amends.”
“Amends?” the other echoed, amusement showing in his eyes as he dropped a lump of sugar into his well-creamed coffee and stirred it with his spoon.
“Amends,” repeated Obeyid. “You still may go before the governor, and—”
“Oh, so that’s it, eh? My precious wife’s been talking to you? Poor dear, she’s a little touched, you know”—he tapped himself upon the temple significantly—“used to be fearfully stuck on Lonny, in the old days, and—”
“My friend,” Obeyid broke in, “it is of your immortal soul that we must talk, not of your wife. Is it possible that you will let another bear the stigma of your guilt? Your soul—”
Cardener laughed shortly. “My soul, is it?” he answered. “Don’t bother about my soul. If you’re so much interested in souls, you’d better skip down to Trenton and talk to Lonny. He’s got one now, but he won’t have it long. Tonight they’re going to—” his voice trailed off to nothingness and his eyes widened as he slowly and deliberately put his spoon down in its saucer. Not fear, but something like a compound of despair and resignation showed in his face as he stared in fascination at Hussein Obeyid.
The Dark Angel Page 59