“Wait a minute,” I cautioned. “The professor will be here in a moment. You can’t go out there now; you haven’t any gun.”
“Ha, have I not?” he replied sarcastically, drawing the heavy, blue-steel pistol from his jacket pocket. “Friend Trowbridge, there are entirely too many people of ill repute who desire nothing more than the death of Jules de Grandin to make it safe for me to be without a weapon at any time. Me, I go to investigate.”
“Never mind, sir,” the smooth, oily voice of Professor Judson sounded from the door at the rear of the room as he marched with short-legged dignity toward the altar. “Everything is all right, I assure you.
“My children,” he turned to the frightened girls, “Chloë has been frightened at the thought of Pan’s presence. It is true that the great god of all Nature hovers ever near his worshipers, especially at the dark of the moon, but there is nothing to fear.
“Chloë will soon be all right. Meantime, let us propitiate Pan by prayer and sacrifice. Thetis, bring hither a goat!” He turned his small, deep-set eyes on the young girl we had met as we entered the grounds, and waved a pudgy hand commandingly.
The girl went white to the lips, but with a submissive bow she hurried from the room, returning in a moment leading a half-grown black goat by a string, a long, sharp butcher-knife and a wide, shallow dish under her free arm.
She led the animal to the altar where the professor stood, gave the leading string into his hand and presented the sacrificial knife, then knelt before him, holding the dish beneath the terrified goat’s head, ready to catch the blood when the professor should have cut the creature’s throat.
It was as if some beady, madness-compelling fume had suddenly wafted into the room. For a single breathless moment the other girls looked at their preceptor and his kneeling acolyte with a gaze of fear and disgust, their tender feminine instincts rebelling at the thought of the warm blood soon to flow, then, as a progressive, contagious shudder seemed to run through them, one after another, they leaped wildly upward with frantic, frenzied bounds as though the stones beneath their naked feet were suddenly turned white-hot, beating their hands together, waving their arms convulsively above their heads, bending forward till their long, unbound hair cascaded before their faces and swept the floor at their feet, then leaping upward again with rolling, staring eyes and wantonly waving arms. With a maniac shriek one of them seized the bodice of her robe and rent it asunder, exposing her breasts, another tore her gown from hem to hips in half a dozen places, so that streamers of tattered linen draped like ribbons about her rounded limbs as she sprang and crouched and sprang again in the abandon of her voluptuous dance.
And all the while, as madness seemed to feed on madness, growing wilder and more depraved each instant, they chanted in a shrill, hysterical chorus:
Upon thy worshipers now gaze,
Pan, Pan, Io Pan,
To thee be sacrifice and praise,
Pan, Pan, to Pan.
Give us the boon of the seeing eye,
That we may behold ere yet we die
The ecstasies of thy mystery,
Pan, Pan, Pan!
Repeated insistently, with maniacal fervor, the name “Pan” beat against the air like the rhythm of a tom-tom. Its shouted repetition seemed to catch the tempo of my heart-beats; despite myself I felt an urging, strong as an addict’s craving for his drug, to join in the lunatic dance, to leap and shout and tear the encumbering clothing from my body as I did so.
The professor changed his grip from the goat’s tether to its hind legs. He swung the bleating animal shoulder-high, so that as it held its head back its throat curved above the dish held by the girl, who twitched her shoulders and swayed her body jerkily in time to the pagan hymn as she knelt at his feet.
“Oh, Pan, great goat-god, personification of all Nature’s forces, immortal symbol of the ecstasy of passion, to Thee we make the sacrifice; to Thee we spill the blood of this victim,” the professor cried, his eyes gleaming brilliantly in the reflection of the torches and the altar fire. “Behold, goat of thy worshiper’s flock, we—”
“Zut! Enough of this; cordieu, too much!” de Grandin’s furious voice cut through the clamor as a fire-bell stills the noise of street traffic. “Hold your hand, accursed of heaven, or by the head of St. Denis, I scatter your brains in yonder dish!” His heavy pistol pointed unwaveringly at the professor’s bald head till the terrified man unloosed his hold upon the squirming goat.
“To your rooms, my little ones,” de Grandin commanded, his round, blazing eyes traveling from one trembling girl to another. “Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Evil communications corrupt good manners—parbleu, Monsieur, I do refer to you and no one else—” he glowered at the professor. “And you, Mademoiselle,” he called to the kneeling girl, “do you put down that dish and have nothing to do with this sacrifice of blood. Do as I say. I, Jules de Grandin, command it!
“Now, Monsieur le Professeur,” he waved his pistol to enforce his order, “do you come with me and explore these grounds. If we find your great god Pan I shall shoot his evil eyes from out his so hideous head. If we do not find him, morbleu, it were better for you that we find him, I damn think!”
“Get outa my house!” Professor Judson’s mantle of culture ripped away, revealing the coarse fibre beneath it; “I’ll not have any dam’ Frenchman comin’ around here an’—”
“Softly, Monsieur, softly; you will please remember there are ladies present,” de Grandin admonished, motioning toward the door with his pistol. “Will you come with me, or must I so dispose of you that you can not ran away until I return? I could most easily shoot through one of your fat legs.”
Professor Judson left the altar of Pan and accompanied de Grandin into the night. I do not know what took place out under the stars, but when the Frenchman returned some ten minutes later, he carried the inert form of the eleventh young woman in his arms, and the professor was not with him.
“Quickly, Friend Trowbridge,” he commanded as he laid the girl on the pavement, “give me some of the wine left from our supper. It will help this poor one, I think. Meantime”—he swung his fierce, unwinking gaze about the clustering circle of girls—“do you young ladies assume garments more fitted for this day and age, and prepare to evacuate this house of hell in the morning. Dr. Trowbridge and I shall remain here until the day, and tomorrow we notify the police that this place is permanently closed forever.”
IT WAS A GRIM, hard task we had bringing the unconscious girl out of her swoon, but patience and the indomitable determination of Jules de Grandin finally induced a return of consciousness.
“Oh, oh, I saw Pan—Pan looked at me from the leaves!” the poor child sobbed hysterically as she opened her eyes.
“Non, non, ma chère,” de Grandin assured her. “’Twas but a papier-mâché mask which the so odious one placed in the branches of the bush to terrify you. Behold, I will bring it to you that you may touch it, and know it for the harmless thing it is!”
He darted to the doorway of the temple, returning instantly with the hideous mask of a long, leering face, grinning mouth stretched from pointed ear to pointed ear, short horns rising from the temples and upward-slanting eyes glaring in fiendish malignancy. “It is ugly, I grant you,” he admitted, flinging the thing upon the pavement and grinding it beneath his heavily booted heel, “but see, the foot of one who fears them not is mightier than all the gods of heathendom. Is it not so?”
The girl smiled faintly and nodded.
DE GRANDIN WAS OUT of the house at sunup, and returned before nine o’clock with a fleet of motor cars hastily commandeered from a roadhouse garage which he discovered a couple of miles down the road. “Remember, Mesdemoiselles,” he admonished as the cars swung away from the portico of the temple with the erstwhile pupils of the School of Neopaganism, “those wills and testaments, they must be revoked forthwith. The detestable one, he has the present copies, but any will which you wish to make will revoke those he holds. Leave your
money to found a vocal school for Thomas cats, or for a gymnasium for teaching young frogs to leap, but bequeath it to some other cause than this temple of false gods, I do implore you.”
“Ready, sport?” the driver of the car reserved for us demanded, lighting a cigarette and flipping the match toward the temple steps with a disdainful gesture.
“In one moment, my excellent one,” de Grandin answered as he turned from me and hurried into the house. “Await me, Friend Trowbridge,” he called over his shoulder; “I have an important mission to perform.”
“WHAT THE DICKENS DID you run back into that place for when the chauffeur was all ready to drive us away?” I demanded as we bowled over the smooth road toward the railway station.
He turned his unwinking cat’s stare on me a moment, then his little blue eyes sparkled with a gleam of elfin laughter. “Pardieu, my friend,” he chuckled, “that Professor Judson, I found a trunkful of his clothes in the room he occupied, and paused to burn them all. Death of my life, I did rout him from the premises in that Greek costume he wore last night, and when he returns he will find naught but glowing embers of his modern garments! What a figure he will cut, walking into a haberdasher’s clothed like Monsieur Nero, and asking for a suit of clothes. La, la, could we but take a motion picture of him, our eternal fortunes would be made!”
The Grinning Mummy
“IS THAT YOU, DE Grandin!” I called as the front door’s slam was followed by the sound of quick footsteps on the polished boards of the hall floor.
“No!” an irate voice responded as my friend, Professor Frank Butterbaugh, strode into my study. “‘Pologize for comin’ in without knockin’, Trowbridge,” he offered in excuse, “but I’m too confounded mad to pay ’tention to the amenities right now. Look at this, will you? Look at this dam’, impertinent—” he broke off, choking with choler, and gave the paper another bellicose flourish. “Of all the unqualified, unmitigated—”
“What is it?” I queried, reaching for the offending document.
“What is it?” he echoed. “It’s an outrage, a disgraceful outrage, that’s what it is. Listen to this.” Snatching at the wide black ribbon looped about his neck, he dragged a pair of gold-and-tortoise-shell pince-nez from the pocket of his white waistcoat, thrust them on his high-bridged nose with a savage, chopping motion, and read in a voice crackling with indignation:
Dr. Frank Butterbaugh,
The Beeches,
Harrisonville, New Jersey.
Dear Dr. Butterbaugh:
The tombstone you ordered for your lot in Rosedale Cemetery has been prepared in accordance with your directions, and is now ready for delivery. We shall be obliged if you will indicate when you will meet our representative at the cemetery and direct where you wish the monument placed.
In accordance with your order, the stone has been inscribed
DR. FRANCIS BUTTERBAUGH
August 23, 1852—October 18, 1926
Cave Iram Deorum
Very truly yours,
ELGRACE MONUMENT WORKS.
“Well—” I began, but he shouted me down.
“‘Well’, the devil!” he rasped. “It isn’t well. I got that note in today’s afternoon delivery, and came into town hot-foot to give the Elgrace people boiling hell for writing me such balderdash. Found they’d shut up shop for the day, so got John Elgrace on the ’phone at his house and made the wires sizzle with the dressing-down I gave him, and he had the brass-bound, copper-riveted gall to tell me he’d acted on my orders. My orders, d’ye understand? Claimed to have my written authority for preparing a monument for my family plot, and—”
“And he didn’t?” I cut in incredulously. “You mean this letter is the first inkling you’ve had of a tombstone—”
“Sulfur and brimstone, yes!” the professor yelled. “D’ye think I wouldn’t have remembered if I’d ordered a headstone for my own grave?—that’s what it amounts to, for my name’s on the thing. And what the triple-horned devil would I have had today’s date cut on it for? Today’s October eighteenth, in case you’ve forgotten it. And why in blazing Tophet should I have anything as silly as ‘Cave Iram Deorum’ on my tombstone, even if I had a rush of bone to the head and ordered the dam’ thing?”
“Wait a moment, professor,” I asked. “I’m a little rusty on my Latin. ‘Cave Iram Deorum’—let’s see, that means—”
“It means ‘Beware the Wrath of the Gods,’ if that is what you’re after,” he shot back, “but that’s of no importance. What I’d like to know is who the devil dared order a tombstone in my name—”
“Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, perhaps it is that someone makes la mauvasse plaisanterie—how do you say it? the practical joke?—upon you.” Jules de Grandin, very debonair in faultless dinner clothes, a white gardenia in his lapel and a slender ebony walking stick in his hand, stood smiling at us from the study doorway. “Trowbridge, mon cher,” he turned to me, “I did let myself in without knocking, in order to save the excellent Nora the trouble of opening the door, and I could not well escape overhearing this gentleman’s extraordinary statement. Will you not tell me more, Monsieur?” He regarded the professor with his round, childishly wide, blue eyes.
“More, more?” Professor Butterbaugh barked. “That’s all there is; there isn’t any more. Some fool with a perverted sense of humor has forged my name to an order for a tombstone. By Set and Ahriman, I’ll be hanged if the Elgrace people get a red-headed cent out of me for it! Let ’em find out who ordered it and charge it to him!”
“Pardon, Monsieur, I did hear you refer to the malignant deities of Egypt and Persia; is it that you—”
“Oh, excuse me,” I broke in, coming to a tardy recognition of my social obligations. “Professor Butterbaugh, this is Dr. Jules de Grandin, of the University of Paris. Dr. de Grandin, this is Professor Frank Butterbaugh, who headed—”
“Parbleu, yes!” de Grandin interrupted, crossing the room hurriedly, and seizing Butterbaugh’s hand in both of his. “No need for further introductions, Friend Trowbridge. Who has not heard of that peerless savant, that archeologist second only to the great Boussard? The very great honor is entirely mine, Monsieur.”
Professor Butterbaugh grinned a trifle sheepishly at the Frenchman’s enthusiastic greeting, fidgeted with the monument company’s letter and his glasses a moment, then reached for his hat and gloves. “Must be movin’,” he ejaculated in his queer, disjointed way. “Got to get home before Alice gives me double-jointed fits. Keepin’ dinner waitin’, you know. Glad to’ve met you,” he held out his hand almost diffidently to de Grandin, “mighty glad. Hope you an’ Trowbridge can come over tomorrow. Got an unusual sort o’ mummy I’m figurin’ on startin’ to unwrap tonight. Like to have you medics there when I expose the body.”
“Ah?” de Grandin assented, helping himself to a cigarette. “This mummy, then, it is different—?”
“You bet it is,” Butterbaugh assured him colloquially. “Don’t believe there’s another like it in the country. I’ve only seen one other of the kind—the one supposed to be Ra-nefer, in the British Museum, you know. It has no funerary statue, just linen and bitumen molded to conform to the body’s contours. Had the devil’s own time gettin’ it out of Egypt, too. Arabs went on strike half a dozen times while we were diggin’, Egyptian government tried to collar the body, an’, to top the whole business, a gang o’ swell-headed young Copts sent me a batch o’ black-hand letters, threatenin’ all sorts o’ penalties unless I returned the thing to its tomb. Huh, catch me givin’ up a relic literally worth its weight in gold to a crew o’ half-baked Johnnies like that!”
“But, Monsieur le Professeur,” de Grandin urged, his diminutive blond mustache bristling with excitement, “this letter, this tombstone order, it may have some relation—”
“Not a chance!” Butterbaugh scoffed. “Egypt’s half-way ’round the world from here, and I’ve no more chance of runnin’ foul o’ those chaps in this town than I have of bein’ bitten by a crocodile; but”�
��his lips tightened stubbornly and a faint flush deepened the sun-tanned hue of his face—“but if all the Egyptian secret societies from Ghizeh to Beni Hassan were camped on my front lawn, I’d start unwrappin’ that mummy tonight. Yes, by Jingo, an’ finish the job, too; no matter how much they howled!”
He glowered at us a moment as though he expected us to forbid him, jammed his knockabout hat over his ears, slapped his thigh pugnaciously with his motoring gloves and strode from the study, his back as stiffly straight as though a ramrod had been thrust down the collar of his Norfolk jacket.
“SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAS HAPPENED!”
“Eh, what’s that?” I muttered stupidly into the transmitter of my bedside telephone, still too immersed in sleep to understand the import of the message coming over the wire.
“This is Alice Butterbaugh, Dr. Trowbridge,” the fluttering voice repeated. “Alice Butterbaugh, Professor Butterbaugh’s niece. Something dreadful has happened. Uncle Frank’s dead!”
“Dead?” I echoed, swinging my feet to the floor. “Why, he was over to my house this evening, and—”
“Yes, I know,” she interrupted. “He told me he stopped to show you that mysterious letter he got from the Elgrace company. He was well enough then, doctor, but—but—I think—he was murdered! Can you come right over?”
“Of course,” I promised, hanging up the receiver and hustling into my clothes.
“De Grandin,” I called, opening his door on my way to the bathroom to wash the lingering sleep from my eyes with a dash of cold water, “de Grandin, Professor Butterbaugh is dead—murdered, his niece thinks.”
“Mille tonneres!” The Frenchman was out of his bed like a jack-in-the-box popping from its case. “The half of one little minute, Friend Trowbridge”—his silk pajamas were torn from his slender white body and he struggled furiously into a white crape union suit—“do you but wait until I have applied the water to my face, the brush to my hair and the wax to my mustache—nom d’un cochon! where is that wax?” He had drawn on socks, trousers and boots, as he talked, and was already before the washstand, a bath sponge, dripping with cold water, in one hand, a face towel in the other.
The Horror on the Links Page 23