Mrs. Norman was little more specific. “My son Ferdinand found him lying on the floor of his bath with the shower going and the window wide open, just before dinner,” she explained. “He was totally unconscious, and remained so till just a few minutes ago.”
“Ha, is it so?” de Grandin murmured half heedlessly, as he made a rapid inspection of the patient.
“Friend Trowbridge,” he called me to the window, “what do you make of these objective symptoms: a soft, frequent pulse, a fluttering heart, suffused eyes, a hot, dry skin and a flushed, hectic face?”
“Sounds like an arterial hemorrhage,” I answered promptly, “but there’s been no trace of blood on the boy’s floor, nor any evidence of a stain on his clothing. Sure you’ve checked the signs over?”
“Absolutely,” he replied with a vigorous double nod. Then to the young man: “Now, mon enfant, we shall inspect you, if you please.”
Quickly he examined the boy’s face, scalp, throat, wrists and calves, finding no evidence of even a pinprick, let alone a wound capable of causing syncope.
“Mon Dieu, this is strange,” he muttered; “of a surety, it has the queerness of the devil! Perhaps the bleeding is internal, but—ah, regardez vous, Friend Trowbridge!”
He had turned down the collar of the youngster’s pajama jacket, more in idle routine than in hope of discovering anything tangible, but the livid spot to which he pointed seemed the key to our mystery’s outer door. Against the smooth, white flesh of the young man’s left breast there showed a red, angry patch, such as might have resulted from a vacuum cup being held some time against the skin, and in the center of the discoloration was a double row of tiny punctures scarcely larger than needlepricks, arranged in horizontal divergent arcs, like a pair of parentheses laid sidewise.
“You see?” he asked simply, as though the queer, blood-infused spot explained everything.
“But he couldn’t have bled much through that,” I protested. “Why, the man seems almost drained dry, and these wounds wouldn’t have yielded more than a cubic centimeter of blood, at most.”
He nodded gravely. “Blood is not entirely colloidal, my friend,” he responded. “It will penetrate the tissues to some extent, especially if sufficient force is applied.”
“But it would have required a powerful suction—” I replied, when his rejoinder cut me short:
“Ha, you have said it, my friend. Suction—that is the word!”
“But what could have sucked a man’s blood like this?” I was in a near-stupor of mystification.
“What, indeed?” he replied gravely. “That is for us to find out. Meantime, we are here as physicians. A quarter-grain morphine injection is—indicated here, I think. You will administer the dose; I have no license in America.”
WHEN I RETURNED FROM my round of afternoon calls next day I found de Grandin seated on my front steps in close conference with Indian John.
Indian John was a town character of doubtful lineage who performed odd jobs of snow shoveling, furnace tending and grass cutting, according to season, and interspersed his manual labors with brief incursions into the mercantile field when he peddled fresh vegetables from door to door. He also peddled neighborhood gossip and retailed local lore to all who would listen, his claim to being a hundred years old giving him the standing of an indisputable authority in all matters antedating living memory.
“Pardieu, but you have told me much, mon vieux,” de Grandin declared as I came up the porch steps. He handed the old rascal a handful of silver and rose to accompany me into the house.
“Friend Trowbridge,” he accused as we finished dinner that night, “you had not told me that this town grew up on the site of an early Swedish settlement.”
“Never knew you wanted to know,” I defended with a grin.
“You know the ancient Swedish church, perhaps,” he persisted.
“Yes, that’s old Christ Church,” I answered. “It’s down in the east end of town; don’t suppose it has a hundred communicants today. Our population has made some big changes, both in complexion and creed, since the days when the Dutch and Swedes fought for possession of New Jersey.”
“You will drive me to that church, right away, at once, immediately?” he demanded eagerly.
“I guess so,” I agreed. “What’s the matter now; Indian John been telling you a lot of fairy-tales?”
“Perhaps,” he replied, regarding me with one of his steady, unwinking stares. “Not all fairy-tales are pleasant, you know. Do you recall those of Chaperon Rouge—how do you say it, Red Riding Hood?—and Bluebeard?”
“Huh!” I scoffed; “they’re both as true as any of John’s stories, I’ll bet.”
“Undoubtlessly,” he agreed with a quick nod. “The story of Bluebeard, for instance, is unfortunately a very true tale indeed. But come, let us hasten; I would see that church tonight, if I may.”
CHRIST CHURCH, THE OLD Swedish place of worship, was a combined demonstration of how firmly adz-hewn pine and walnut can resist the ravages of time and how nearly three hundred years of weather can demolish any structure erected by man. Its rough-painted walls and short, firm-based spire shone ghostly and pallid in the early spring moonlight, and the cluster of broken and weather-worn tombstones which staggered up from its unkempt burying ground were like soiled white chicks seeking shelter from a soiled white hen.
Dismounting from a car at the wicket gate of the churchyard, we made our way over the level graves, I in a maze of wonderment, de Grandin with an eagerness almost childish. Occasionally he flashed the beam from his electric torch on some monument of an early settler, bent to decipher the worn inscription, then turned away with a sigh of disappointment.
I paused to light a cigar, but dropped my half-burned match in astonishment as my companion gave vent to a cry of excited pleasure. “Triomphe!” he exclaimed delightedly. “Come and behold, Friend Trowbridge. Thus far your lying friend, the Indian man, has told the truth. Regardez!”
He was standing beside an old, weather-gnawed tombstone, once marble, perhaps, but appearing more like brown sandstone under the ray of his flashlight. Across its upper end was deeply cut the one word:
SARAH
While below the name appeared a verse of half-obliterated doggerel:
Let nonne difturb her deathleffe fleepe
Abote ye tombe wilde garlick keepe
For if fhee wake much woe will boaft
Prayfe Faither, Sonne & Holie Goaft.
“Did you bring me out here to study the orthographical eccentricities of the early settlers?” I demanded in disgust.
“Ah bah!” he returned. “Let us consult the ecclesiastique. He, perhaps, will ask no fool’s questions.”
“No, you’ll do that,” I answered tartly as we knocked at the rectory door.
“Pardon, Monsieur,” de Grandin apologized as the white-haired old minister appeared in answer to our summons, “we do not wish to disturb you thus, but there is a matter of great import on which we would consult you. I would that you tell us what you can, if anything, concerning a certain grave in your churchyard. A grave marked ‘Sarah’ if you please.”
“Why”—the elderly cleric was plainly taken aback—“I don’t think there is anything I can tell you about it, sir. There is some mention in the early parish records, I believe, of a woman believed to have been a murderess being buried in that grave, but it seems the poor creature was more sinned against than sinning. Several children in the neighborhood died mysteriously—some epidemic the ignorant physicians failed to understand, no doubt—and Sarah, whatever the poor woman’s surname may have been, was accused of killing them by witchcraft. At any rate, one of the bereft mothers took vengeance into her own hands, and strangled poor Sarah with a noose of well-rope. The witchcraft belief must have been quite prevalent, too, for there is some nonsense verse on the tombstone concerning her ‘deathless sleep’ and an allusion to her waking from it; also some mention of wild garlic being planted about her.”
He l
aughed somewhat ruefully. “I wish they hadn’t said that,” he added, “for, do you know, there are garlic shoots growing about that grave to this very day. Old Christian, our sexton, declares that he can’t get rid of it, no matter how much he grubs it up. It spreads to the surrounding lawn, too,” he added sadly.
“Cordieu!” de Grandin gasped. “This is of the importance, sir!”
The old man smiled gently at the little Frenchman’s impetuosity.
“It’s an odd thing,” he commented, “there was another gentleman asking about that same tomb a few weeks ago; a—pardon the expression—a foreigner.”
“So?” de Grandin’s little waxed mustache twitched like the whiskers of a nervous tomcat. “A foreigner, do you say? A tall, rawboned, fleshless living skeleton of a man with a scar on his face and a white streak in his hair?”
“I wouldn’t be quite so severe in my description,” the other answered with a smile. “He certainly was a thin gentleman, and I believe he had a scar on his face, too, though I can’t be certain of that, he was so very wrinkled. No, his hair was entirely white, there was no white streak in it, sir. In fact, I should have said he was very advanced in age, judging from his hair and face and the manner in which he walked. He seemed very weak and feeble. It was really quite pitiable.”
“Sacré nom d’un fromage vert!” de Grandin almost snarled. “Pitiable, do you say, Monsieur? Pardieu, it is damnable, nothing less!”
He bowed to the clergyman and turned to me. “Come, Friend Trowbridge, come away,” he cried. “We must go to Madame Norman’s at once, right away, immediately.”
“What’s behind all this mystery?” I demanded as we left the parsonage door.
He elevated his slender shoulders in an eloquent shrug. “I only wish I knew,” he replied. “Someone is working the devil’s business, of that I am sure; but what the game is, or what the next move will be, only the good God can tell, my friend.”
I turned the car through Tunlaw Street to effect a short-cut, and as we drove past an Italian green grocer’s, de Grandin seized my arm. “Stop a moment, Friend Trowbridge,” he asked, “I would make a purchase at this shop.
“We desire some fresh garlic,” he informed the proprietor as we entered the little store, “a considerable amount, if you have it.”
The Italian spread his hands in a deprecating gesture. “We have it not, Signor,” he declared. “It was only yesterday morning that we sold our entire supply.” His little black eyes snapped happily at the memory of an unexpected bargain.
“Eh, what is this?” de Grandin demanded. “Do you say you sold your supply? How is that?”
“I know not,” the other replied. “Yesterday morning a rich gentleman came to my shop in an automobile, and called me from my store. He desired all the garlic I had in stock—at my own price, Signor, and at once. I was to deliver it to his address in Rupleysville the same day.”
“Ah?” de Grandin’s face assumed the expression of a cross-word fiend as he begins to see the solution of his puzzle. “And this liberal purchaser, what did he look like?”
The Italian showed his white, even teeth in a wide grin. “It was funny,” he confessed. “He did not look like one of our people, nor like one who would eat much garlic. He was old, very old and thin, with a much-wrinkled face and white hair, he—”
“Nom d’un chat!” the Frenchman cried, then burst into a flood of torrential Italian.
The shopkeeper listened at first with suspicion, then incredulity, finally in abject terror. “No, no,” he exclaimed. “No, Signor; santissima Madonna, you do make the joke!”
“Do I so?” de Grandin replied. “Wait and see, foolish one.”
“Santo Dio forbid!” The other crossed himself piously, then bent his thumb across his palm, circling it with his second and third fingers and extending the fore and little fingers in the form of a pair of horns.
The Frenchman turned toward the waiting car with a grunt of inarticulate disgust.
“What now?” I asked as we got under way once more; “what did that man make the sign of the evil eye for, de Grandin?”
“Later, my friend; I will tell you later,” he answered. “You would but laugh if I told you what I suspect. He is of the Latin blood, and can appreciate my fears.” Nor would he utter another word till we reached the Norman house.
“Dr. Trowbridge—Dr. de Grandin!” Mrs. Norman met us in the hall; “you must have heard my prayers; I’ve been phoning your office for the last hour, and they said you were out and couldn’t be reached.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“It’s Mr. Eckhart again. He’s been seized with another fainting fit. He seemed so well this afternoon, and I sent a big dinner up to him at eight o’clock, but when the maid went in, she found him unconscious, and she declares she saw something in his room—”
“Ha?” de Grandin interrupted. “Where is she, this servant? I would speak with her.”
“Wait a moment,” Mrs. Norman answered; “I’ll send for her.”
The girl, an ungainly young Southern Negress, came into the front hall, sullen dissatisfaction written large upon her black face.
“Now, then,” de Grandin bent his steady, unwinking gaze on her, “what is it you say about seeing someone in the young Monsieur Eckhart’s room, hein?”
“Ah, did see sumpin’, too,” the girl replied stubbornly. “Ah don’ care who says Ah didn’t see nothin’, Ah says Ah did. Ah’d just toted a tray o’ vittles up to Mistuh Eckhart’s room, an’ when Ah opened de do’, dere wuz a woman—dere wuz a woman—yas, sar, a skinny, black-eyed white woman-a-bendin’ ober ’um an’—an’—”
“And what, if you please?” de Grandin asked breathlessly.
“A-bitin’ ’um!” the girl replied defiantly. “Ah don’ car whut Mis’ Norman says, she wuz a-bitin’ ’um. Ah seen her. Ah knows whut she wuz. Ah done hyeah tell erbout dat ol’ Sarah woman what come up out ’er grave wid a long rope erbout her neck and go ’round bitin’ folks. Yas, sar; an’ she wuz a-bitin’ ’um, too. Ah seen her!”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Norman commented in an annoyed whisper over de Grandin’s shoulder.
“Grand Dieu, is it so?” de Grandin exclaimed, and turning abruptly, leaped up the stairs toward the sick man’s room, two steps at a time.
“See, see, Friend Trowbridge,” he ordered fiercely when I joined him at the patient’s bedside. “Behold, it is the mark!” Turning back Eckhart’s pajama collar, he displayed two incised horizontal arcs on the young man’s flesh. There was no room for dispute, they were undoubtedly the marks of human teeth, and from the fresh wounds the blood was flowing freely.
As quickly as possible we staunched the flow and applied restoratives to the patient, both of us working in silence, for my brain was too much in a whirl to permit the formation of intelligent questions, while de Grandin remained dumb as an oyster.
“Now,” he ordered as we completed our ministrations, “we must get back to that cemetery, Friend Trowbridge, and once there, we must do the thing which must be done!”
“What the devil’s that?” I asked as we left the sickroom.
“Non, non, you shall see,” he promised as we entered my car and drove down the street.
“Quick, the crank-handle,” he demanded as we descended from the car at the cemetery gate, “it will make a serviceable hammer.” He was prying a hemlock paling from the graveyard fence as he spoke.
We crossed the unkempt cemetery lawn again and finally paused beside the tombstone of the unknown Sarah.
“Attend me, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin commanded, “hold the searchlight, if you please.” He pressed his pocket flash into my hand. “Now—” He knelt beside the grave, pointing the stick he had wrenched from the fence straight downward into the turf. With the crank of my motor he began hammering the wood into the earth.
Farther and farther the rough stake sank into the sod, de Grandin’s blows falling faster and faster as the wood drove home. Finally, when there was less
than six inches of the wicket projecting from the grave’s top, he raised the iron high over his head and drove downward with all his might.
The short hair at the back of my neck suddenly started upward, and little thrills of horripilation chased each other up my spine as the wood sank suddenly, as though driven from clay into sand, and a low hopeless moan, like the wailing of a frozen wind through an ice-cave, wafted up to us from the depths of the grave.
“Good God, what’s that?” I asked, aghast.
For answer he leaned forward, seized the stake in both hands and drew suddenly up on it. At his second tug the wood came away. “See,” he ordered curtly, flashing the pocket lamp on the tip of the stave. For the distance of a foot or so from its pointed end the wood was stained a deep, dull red. It was wet with blood.
“And now forever,” he hissed between his teeth, driving the wood into the grave once more, and sinking it a full foot below the surface of the grass by thrusting the crank-handle into the earth. “Come, Friend Trowbridge, we have done a good work this night. I doubt not the young Eckhart will soon recover from his malady.”
HIS ASSUMPTION WAS JUSTIFIED. Eckhart’s condition improved steadily. Within a week, save for a slight pallor, he was, to all appearances, as well as ever.
The pressure of the usual early crop of influenza and pneumonia kept me busily on my rounds, and I gradually gave up hope of getting any information from de Grandin, for a shrug of the shoulders was all the answer he vouchsafed to my questions. I relegated Eckhart’s inexplicable hemorrhages and the bloodstained stake to the limbo of never-to-be-solved mysteries. But—
2
“GOOD MORNIN’, GENTLEMEN,” DETECTIVE Sergeant Costello greeted as he followed Nora, my household factotum, into the breakfast room, “it’s sorry I am to be disturbin’ your meal, but there’s a little case puzzlin’ th’ department that I’d like to talk over with Dr. de Grandin, if you don’t mind.”
The Horror on the Links Page 27