Lights flashed inside the house. The patter of terrified feet sounded among the babel of wondering, questioning voices, but the scream was not repeated.
“Come forth, accursèd one—come forth and face de Grandin!” I heard the small Frenchman mutter, then: “Behold, my friend, he comes—le gorille!”
From Millicent’s window, horrible as a devil out of lowest hell, there came a hairy head set low upon a pair of shoulders at least four feet across. An arm which somehow reminded me of a giant snake slipped past the window casing, grasped the cast-iron downspout at the corner of the house, and drew a thickset, hairy body after it. A leg tipped with a handlike foot was thrown across the sill, and, like a spider from its lair, the monster leaped from the window and hung a moment to the iron pipe, its sable body silhouetted against the white wall of the house.
But what was that, that white-robed thing which hung pendant from the grasp of the beast’s free arm? Like a beautiful white moth inert in the grasp of the spider, her fair hair unbound, her silken night robe rent into a motley of tatters, Millicent Comstock lay senseless in the creature’s grasp.
“Shoot, man, shoot!” I screamed, but only a thin whisper came from my fear-stiffened lips.
“Silence, imbécile!” de Grandin ordered as he pressed his cheek against his gunstock. “Would you give warning of our ambuscade?”
Slowly, so slowly it seemed an hour was consumed in the process, the great primate descended the water-pipe, leaping the last fifteen feet of the descent and crouching on the moonlit lawn, its small red eyes glaring malignantly, as if it challenged the world for possession of its prey.
The bellow of de Grandin’s rifle almost deafened me, and the smokeless powder’s flash burned a gash in the night. He threw the loading mechanism feverishly, and fired a second time.
The monster staggered drunkenly against the house as the first shot sounded. At the second it dropped Millicent to the lawn and uttered a cry which was part roar, part snarl. Then, one of its great arms trailing helplessly, it leaped toward the rear of the house in a series of long, awkward bounds which reminded me, absurdly, of the bouncing of a huge inflated ball.
“Attend her, if you please, my friend,” de Grandin ordered as we reached Millicent’s inert form. “I shall make Monsieur le Gorille my personal business!”
I BENT ABOVE THE SENSELESS girl and put my ear to her breast. Faint but perceptible, I made out a heart-beat, and lifted her in my arms.
“Dr. Trowbridge!” Mrs. Comstock, followed by a throng of frightened guests, met me at the front door. “What’s happened? Good heavens, Millicent!” Seizing her daughter’s flaccid hand in both her own she burst into a flood of tears. “Oh, what’s happened? What is it?”
“Help me get Millicent to bed, then get some smelling salts and brandy,” I commanded, ignoring her questions.
A little later, with restoratives applied and electric pads at her feet and back, the girl showed signs of waking. “Get out—all of you!” I ordered. Hysterical women, especially patients’ mothers, are rather less than useless when consciousness returns after profound shock.
“Oh—oh, the ape-thing! The dreadful ape-thing!” cried Millicent in a small, childish whimper. “It’s got me—help—”
“It’s all right, dear,” I comforted. “You’re safe, safe home in your own bed, with old Dr. Trowbridge standing by.” It was not till several hours later that I realized her first waking exclamation had been almost identical to Paul Maitland’s when he revived from his faint.
“Dr. Trowbridge,” Mrs. Comstock whispered from the bedroom door. “We’ve looked all over, but there’s no sign of Mr. Manly. Do—do you suppose anything could have happened to him?”
“I think it quite likely that something could—and did,” I answered curtly, turning from her to smooth her daughter’s fluttering hand.
“PAR LE BARBE D’UN bouc vert!” de Grandin exclaimed as, disheveled, but with a light of exhilaration in his eyes, he met me in the Comstock hall some two hours later. “Madame Comstock, you are to be congratulated. But for my so brave colleague Dr. Trowbridge and my own so very clever self your charming daughter would have shared the fate of the poor Sarah Humphreys.
“Trowbridge, mon vieux, I have not been quite frank with you. I have not told you all. But this thing, it was so incredible, so seemingly impossible, that you would not have believed. Parbleu, I do not quite believe it myself, even though I know that it is so!
“Let us recapitulate: When this sacré Beneckendorff was in the madhouse he raved continually that his confinement cheated him of his revenge—the revenge he had so long planned against one Madame Cornélie Comstock of America.
“We French are logical, not like you English and Americans. We write down and keep for reference even what a madman says. Why not? It may be useful someday, who knows?
“Now, Friend Trowbridge, some time ago I told you this Beneckendorff was reported in the Congo Belgique. Yes? But I did not tell you he were reported in charge of a young, half-grown gorilla. No. When this so unfortunate Mademoiselle Humphreys is killed in that so terrible manner I remember my own African experiences, and I say to me, ‘Ah-ha, Jules de Grandin, it look as if Monsieur le Gorille has had a finger in this pie.’ And thereupon I ask to know if any such have escape from a circus or zoo nearby. All answers are no.
“Then that Sergeant Costello, he bring me to this so splendid savant, Dr. Trowbridge, and with him I go to interview the young Monsieur Maitland who have encountered much strangeness where the young Humphreys girl met death.
“And what does the young Maitland tell me? He tells of something that have hair, that jump up and down like an enraged ape and that act like a gorilla, but wears man’s evening clothes, parbleu! It is to think. No gorilla have escaped, yet what seems like a gorilla—in gentleman’s evening clothes, Mordieu!—have been encountered on the golf links.
“Thereupon I search my memory. I remember that madman and the poor infants he has turned into half-ape things by administration of his so vile serums. I say to me, ‘If he can turn man-children into monkey-things, for why can he not turn ape-things into men-things. Hein?’
“Then I find one Dr. Kalmar who has lived here for a year, almost, and of whom no one knows anything. I search about, I make the inquiries, and learn one man has been seen coming to and from his place in secret. Also, in this same man’s discarded shirt I find the hairs of a gorilla. Morbleu! I think some more, and what I think is not particularly pleasant.
“I reason: Suppose this serum which may make a man-thing of an ape-thing is not permanent in its effect? What then? If it is not renewed at stated intervals the man becomes an ape again. You follow? Bien.
“Now, the other day I learn something which gives me to think some more. This Beneckendorff, he raves against one Madame Comstock. You, Madame, admit you once knew him. He had loved you as he understood love. Now he hated you as only he could hate. Is it not against you he plans this devilish scheme? I think it quite possible.
“And so I send a cablegram—never mind to whom, Dr. Trowbridge knows that—and I got the answer I expect and fear. The man in whose shirt I find those hairs of the gorilla is no man at all, he is one terrible masquerade of a man. So. Now, I reason, ‘Suppose this masquerading monkey-thing do not get his serum as expected, what will he do?’ I fear to answer my own question, but I make myself do so: Voilà, I buy me a rifle.
“This gun has bullets of soft lead, and I make them even more effective by cutting a V-shaped notch in each of their heads. When they strike something they spread out and make a nobly deadly wound.
“Tonight what I have feared, but yet expected, comes to pass. Ha, but I am ready, me! I shoot, and each time I shoot my bullet tears a great hole in the ape-thing. He drops his prey and seeks the only shelter that his little ape-brain knows, the house of Dr. Kalmar. Yes.
“I follow all quickly, and reach the house almost as soon as he. He is maddened with the pain of my bullets, and in his rage he tears this so vile Kalmar into
little bits, even as he has done to poor young Sarah Humphreys. And I, arriving with my gun, dispatch him with another shot. C’est une affaire finie.
“But before I come back here I recognize the corpse of this Dr. Kalmar. Who is he? Who but the escaped lunatic, the monster-maker, the entirely detestable Dr. Otto Beneckendorff? Before I leave I destroy the devil’s brews with which he makes monkeys of men and men of monkeys. It is far better that their secret be forever lost.
“I think Mademoiselle Humphreys was unfortunate enough to meet this ape-man when he was on his way to Dr. Kalmar’s, as he had been taught to come. As a man, perhaps, he did not know this Kalmar, or, as we know him, Beneckendorff; but as a brute he knew no other man but Beneckendorff—his master, the man who brought him from Africa.
“When he came upon the poor girl on the golf links she screamed in terror, and at once his savageness became uppermost. Believe me, the gorilla is more savage than the bear, the lion or the tiger. Therefore, in his anger, he tear her to pieces. He also tried to tear the young Monsieur Maitland, but luckily for us he failed, and so we got the story which put us on his trail.
“Voilà, it is finished. Anon I shall report to the good Sergeant Costello and show him the bodies at the Kalmar house. Also I shall cable back to Paris. The Ministry of Health will be glad to know that Beneckendorff is no more.”
“But, Monsieur de Grandin,” Mrs. Comstock demanded, “who was this man—or ape—you killed?”
I held my breath as he fixed his cold stare on her, then sighed with relief as he answered. “I can not say, Madame.”
“Well,” Mrs. Comstock’s natural disputatiousness came to the surface, “I think it’s very queer—”
His laugh was positively Olympian. “You think it very queer, Madame? Mort d’un rat mort, as Balkis said of Solomon’s magnificence, the half has not been told you!”
“WHEN THE POLICE LOOK for Monsieur Manly—mon dieu, what a name for an ape-thing!—they will be puzzled,” he told me as we walked to my car. “I must warn Costello to enter his disappearance as a permanently unsolved case. No one will ever know the true facts but you, I and the Ministry of Health, Friend Trowbridge. The public would not believe, even if we told them.”
The Tenants of Broussac
1
THE RUE DES BATAILLES was justifying its name. From my table on the narrow sidewalk before the Café de Liberté I could view three distinct fights alternately, or simultaneously. Two cock-sparrows contended noisily for possession of a wisp of straw, a girl with unbelievably small feet and incredibly thick ankles addressed a flood of gamin abuse to an oily-haired youth who wore a dirty black-silk muffler in lieu of a collar. At the curb a spade-bearded patron, considerably the worse for vin ordinaire, haggled volubly with an unshaven taxi chauffeur over an item of five francs.
I had dropped my cigar end into my empty coffee cup, motioned the waiter for my addition and shoved back my chair, when a light but commanding tap fell on my shoulder.
“Now for it,” I muttered, feeling sure some passing bravo, aching for a fight, had chosen me for his attentions. Turning suddenly, I looked straight into a pair of light blue eyes, round as a cat’s, and just missing a humorous expression because of their challenging directness. Beneath the eyes was a straw-colored mustache, trimly waxed into a horizontal line and bristling so belligerently as to heighten its wearer’s resemblance to a truculent tomcat. Below the feline mustache was a grin wider and friendlier than any I’d seen in Paris.
“Par la barbe d’un bouc vert!” swore my accoster. “If it is not truly my friend, the good Dr. Trowbridge, then I am first cousin to the Emperor of China.”
“Why, de Grandin,” I exclaimed, grasping his small sinewy hand, “fancy meeting you this way! I called at the École de Médecine the day after I arrived, but they told me you were off on one of your wild goose chases and only heaven knew when you’d be back.”
He tweaked the points of his mustache alternately as he answered with another grin. “But of course! Those dull-witted ones would term my researches in the domain of inexact science a wild goose hunt. Pardieu! They have no vision beyond their test tubes and retorts, those ones.”
“What is it this time?” I asked as we caught step. “A criminal investigation or a ghost-breaking expedition?”
“Morbleu!” he answered with a chuckle; “I think, perhaps, it is a little of both. Listen, my friend, do you know the country about Rouen?”
“Not I,” I replied. “This is my first trip to France, and I’ve been here only three days.”
“Ah, yes,” he returned, “your ignorance of our geography is truly deplorable; but it can be remedied. Have you an inflexible program mapped out?”
“No. This is my first vacation in ten years—since 1915—and I’ve made no plans, except to get as far away from medicine as possible.”
“Good!” he applauded. “I can promise you a complete change from your American practice, my friend, such a change as will banish all thoughts of patients, pills and prescriptions entirely from your head. Will you join me?”
“Hm, that depends,” I temporized. “What sort of case are you working on?” Discretion was the better part of acceptance when talking with Jules de Grandin, I knew. Educated for the profession of medicine, one of the foremost anatomists and physiologists of his generation, and a shining light in the University of Paris faculty, this restless, energetic little scientist had chosen criminology and occult investigation as a recreation from his vocational work, and had gained almost as much fame in these activities as he had in the medical world. During the war he had been a prominent, though necessarily anonymous, member of the Allied Intelligence Service; since the Armistice he had penetrated nearly every quarter of the globe on special missions for the French Ministry of Justice. It behooved me to move cautiously when he invited me to share an exploit with him; the trail might lead to India, Greenland or Tierra del Fuego before the case was closed.
“Eh bien,” he laughed. “You are ever the old cautious one, Friend Trowbridge. Never will you commit yourself until you have seen blueprints and specifications of the enterprise. Very well, then, listen:
“Near Rouen stands the very ancient château of the de Broussac family. Parts of it were built as early as the eleventh century; none of it is less than two hundred years old. The family has dwindled steadily in wealth and importance until the last two generations have been reduced to living on the income derived from renting the château to wealthy foreigners.
“A common story, n’est-ce-pas? Very well, wait, comes now the uncommon part: Within the past year the Château Broussac has had no less than six tenants; no renter has remained in possession for more than two months, and each tenancy has terminated in a tragedy of some sort.
“Stories of this kind get about; houses acquire unsavory reputations, even as people do, and tenants are becoming hard to find for the château. Monsieur Bergeret, the de Broussac family’s avoue, has commissioned me to discover the reason for these interrupted tenancies; he desires me to build a dam against the flood of ill fortune which makes tenants scarce at the château and threatens to pauperize one of the oldest and most useless families of France.”
“You say the tenancies were terminated by tragedies?” I asked, more to make conversation than from interest.
“But yes,” he answered. “The cases, as I have their histories, are like this:
“Monsieur Alvarez, a wealthy Argentine cattle raiser, rented the château last April. He moved in with his family, his servants and entirely too many cases of champagne. He had lived there only about six weeks when, one night, such of the guests as retained enough soberness to walk to bed missed him at the goodnight round of drinks. He was also missing the following morning, and the following night. Next day a search was instituted, and a servant found his body in the chapel of the oldest part of the château. Morbleu, all the doctors in France could not reassemble him! Literally, my friend, he was strewn about the sanctuary; his limbs tom off, his he
ad severed most untidily at the neck, every bone in his trunk smashed like Crockery in a china store struck by lightning. He was like a doll pulled to pieces by a peevish child. Voilà, the Alvarez family decamped the premises and the Van Brundt family moved in.
“That Monsieur Van Brundt had amassed a fortune selling supplies to the sale Boche during the war. Eh bien, I could not wish him the end he had. Too much food, too much wine, too little care of his body he took. One night he rose from his bed and wandered in the château grounds. In the place where the ancient moat formerly was they found him, his thick body thin at last, and almost twice its natural length—squeezed out like a tube of creme from a lady’s dressing table trodden under foot by an awkward servant. He was not a pretty sight, my friend.
“The other tenants, too, all left when some member of their families or suites met a terrifying fate. There was Simpson, the Englishman, whose crippled son fell from the battlements to the old courtyard, and Biddle, the American, whose wife now shrieks and drools in a madhouse, and Muset, the banker from Montreal, who woke one night from a doze in his study chair to see Death staring him in the eye.
“Now Monsieur Luke Bixby, from Oklahoma, resides at Broussac with his wife and daughter, and—I wait to hear of a misfortune in their midst.
“You will come with me? You will help me avert peril from a fellow countryman?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” I agreed. One part of France appealed to me as strongly as another, and de Grandin was never a dull companion.
“Ah, good,” he exclaimed, offering his hand in token of our compact. “Together, mon vieux, we shall prove such a team as the curse of Broussac shall find hard to contend with.”
2
THE SUN WAS WELL down toward the horizon when our funny little train puffed officiously into Rouen the following day. The long European twilight had dissolved into darkness, and oblique shadows slanted from the trees in the nascent moonlight as our hired moteur entered the château park.
The Horror on the Links Page 4