Evander turned on him, eyes ablaze. “You’re Dr. de Grandin,” he accused. “I’ve heard of you from the nurse. It was you who persuaded Trowbridge to dope my wife—buttin’ in on a case that didn’t concern you. I know all about you,” he went on furiously as the Frenchman gave him a cold stare. “You’re some sort of charlatan from Paris, a dabbler in criminology and spiritualism and that sort of rot. Well, sir, I want to warn you to keep your hands off my wife. American doctors and American methods are good enough for me!”
“Your patriotism is most admirable, Monsieur,” de Grandin murmured with a suspicious mildness. “If you …”
The jangle of the telephone bell cut through his words. “Yes?” he asked sharply, raising the receiver, but keeping his cold eyes fixed on Evander’s face. “Yes, Mademoiselle Ostrander, this is—grand Dieu! What? How long? Eh, do you say so? Dix million diables! But of course, we come, we hasten—morbleu, but we shall fly.
“Gentlemen,” he hung up the receiver, then turned to us, inclining his shoulders ceremoniously to each of us in turn, his gaze as expressionless as the eyes of a graven image, “that was Mademoiselle Ostrander on the ’phone. Madame Evander is gone—disappeared.”
“Gone? Disappeared?” Evander echoed stupidly, looking helplessly from de Grandin to me and back again. He slumped down in the nearest chair, gazing straight before him unseeing. “Great God!” he murmured.
“Precisely, Monsieur,” de Grandin agreed in an even, emotionless voice. “That is exactly what I said. Meantime”—he gave me a significant glance—“let us go, cher Trowbridge. I doubt not that Mademoiselle Ostrander will have much of interest to relate.
“Monsieur”—his eyes and voice again became cold, hard, stonily expressionless—“if you can so far discommode yourself as to travel in the company of one whose nationality and methods you disapprove, I suggest you accompany us.”
Niles Evander rose like a sleep-walker and followed us to my waiting car.
THE PREVIOUS DAY’S RAIN had turned to snow with a shifting of the wind to the northeast, and we made slow progress through the suburban roads. It was nearly midnight when we trooped up the steps to the Evander porch and pushed vigorously at the bell-button.
“Yes, sir,” Miss Ostrander replied to my question, “Mr. Evander came home last night and positively forbade my giving Mrs. Evander any more codeine. I told him you wanted to see him right away, and that Dr. de Grandin had ordered the narcotic, but he said …”
“Forbear, if you please, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin interrupted. “Monsieur Evander has already been at pain to say as much—and more—to us in person. Now, when did Madame disappear, if you please?”
“I’d already given her her medicine last night,” the nurse took up her story at the point of interruption, “so there was no need of calling you to tell you of Mr. Evander’s orders. I thought perhaps I could avoid any unpleasantness by pretending to obey him and giving her the codeine on the sly this evening, but about nine o’clock he came into the sickroom and snatched up the box of powders and put them in his pocket. Then he said he was going to drive over to have it out with you. I tried to telephone you about it, but the storm had put the wires out of commission, and I’ve been trying to get a message through ever since.”
“And the dog, Mademoiselle, the animal who did howl outside the window, has he been active?”
“Yes! Last night he screamed and howled so I was frightened. Positively, it seemed as though he were trying to jump up from the ground to the window. Mrs. Evander slept through it all, though, thanks to the drug.”
“And tonight?” de Grandin prompted.
“Tonight!” The nurse shuddered. “The howling began about half-past nine, just a few minutes after Mr. Evander left for the city. Mrs. Evander was terrible. She seemed like a woman possessed. I fought and struggled with her, but nothing I could do had the slightest effect. She was savage as a maniac. I called James to help me hold her in bed once, and then, for a while, she lay quietly, for the thing outside seemed to have left.
“Sometime later the howling began again, louder and more furious, and Mrs. Evander was twice as hard to manage. She fought and bit so that I was beginning to lose control of her, and I screamed for James again. He must have been somewhere downstairs, though, for he didn’t hear my call. I ran out into the hall and leaned over the balustrade to call again, and when I ran back—I wasn’t out there more than a minute—the window was up and Mrs. Evander was gone.”
“And didn’t you do anything?—didn’t you look for her?” Evander cut in passionately.
“Yes, sir. James and I ran outside and called and searched all through the grounds, but we couldn’t find a trace of her. The wind is blowing so and the snow falling so rapidly, any tracks she might have made would have been wiped out almost immediately.”
De Grandin took his little pointed chin between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and bowed his head in silent meditation. “Horns of the devil!” I heard him mutter to himself. “This is queer—those cries, that delirium, that attempted flight, now this disappearance, Pardieu, the trail seems clear. But why? Mille cochons, why?”
“See here,” Evander broke in frantically, “can’t you do something? Call the police, call the neighbors, call …”
“Monsieur,” de Grandin interrupted in a frigid voice, “may I inquire your vocation?”
“Eh?” Evander was taken aback. “Why—er—I’m an engineer.”
“Precisely, exactly. Dr. Trowbridge and I are medical men. We do not attempt to build bridges or sink tunnels. We should make sorry work of it. You, Monsieur have already once tried your hand at medicine by forbidding the administration of a drug we considered necessary. Your results were most deplorable. Kindly permit us to follow our profession in our own way. The thing we most of all do not desire in this case is the police force. Later, perhaps. Now, it would be more than ruinous.”
“But …”
“There are no buts, Monsieur. It is my belief that your wife, Madame Evander, is in no immediate danger. However, Dr. Trowbridge and I shall institute such search as may be practicable, and do you meantime keep in such communication with us as the storm will permit.” He bowed formally. “A very good night to you, Monsieur.”
Miss Ostrander looked at him questioningly. “Shall I go with you, doctor?” she asked.
“Mais non,” he replied. “You will please remain here, ma nourice, and attend the homecoming of Madame Evander.”
“Then you think she will return?”
“Most doubtlessly. Unless I am more badly mistaken than I think I am, she will be back to you before another day.”
“Say,” Evander, almost beside himself burst out, “what makes you so cocksure she’ll be back? Good Lord, man, do you realize she’s out in this howling blizzard with only her nightclothes on?”
“Perfectly. But I do declare she will return.”
“But you’ve nothing to base your absurd….”
“Monsieur!” de Grandin’s sharp, whiplike reply cut in. “Me, I am Jules de Grandin. When I say she will return, I mean she will return. I do not make mistakes.”
“WHERE SHALL WE BEGIN the search?” I asked as we entered my car.
He settled himself snugly in the cushions and lighted a cigarette. “We need not search, cher ami,” he replied. “She will return of her own free will and accord.”
“But, man,” I argued, “Evander was right; she’s out in this storm with nothing put a Georgette nightdress on.”
“I doubt it,” he answered casually.
“You doubt it? Why … ?”
“Unless the almost unmistakable signs fail, my friend, this Madame Evander, thanks to her husband’s pig-ignorance, is this moment clothed in fur.”
“Fur?” I echoed.
“Perfectly. Come, my friend, tread upon the gas. Let us snatch what sleep we can tonight—eh bien, tomorrow is another day.”
HE WAS UP AND waiting for me as I entered the office next morning
. “Tell me, Friend Trowbridge,” he demanded, “this Madame Evander’s leukemia, upon what did you base your diagnosis?”
“Well,” I replied, referring to my clinical cards, “a physical examination showed the axillary glands slightly enlarged, the red corpuscles reduced to little more than a million to the count, the white cells stood at about four hundred thousand, and the patient complained of weakness, drowsiness and a general feeling of malaise.”
“U’m?” he commented noncommitally. “That could easily be so. Yes; such signs would undoubtlessly be shown. Now …” The telephone bell broke off his remarks half uttered.
“Ah?” his little blue eyes snapped triumphantly, as he listened to the voice on the wire. “I did think so. But yes; right away, at once, immediately.
“Trowbridge, my old one, she has returned. That was Mademoiselle Ostrander informing me of Madame Evander’s reappearance. Let us hasten. There is much I would do this day.”
“AFTER YOU WENT LAST night,” Miss Ostrander told us, “I lay down on the chaise longue in the bedroom and tried to sleep. I suppose I must have napped by fits and starts, but it seemed to me I could hear the faint howling of dogs, sometimes mingled with yelps and cries, all through the night. This morning, just after six o’clock, I got up to prepare myself a piece of toast and a cup of tea before the servants were stirring, and as I came downstairs I found Mrs. Evander lying on the rug in the front hall.”
She paused a moment, and her color mounted slightly as she went on. “She was lying on that gray wolfskin rug before the fireplace, sir, and was quite nude. Her sleeping cap and nightgown were crumpled up on the floor beside her.”
“Ah?” de Grandin commented. “And … ?”
“I got her to her feet and helped her upstairs, where I dressed her for bed and tucked her in. She didn’t seem to show any evil effects from being out in the storm. Indeed, she seems much better this morning, and is sleeping so soundly I could hardly wake her for breakfast, and when I did, she wouldn’t eat. Just went back to sleep.”
“Ah?” de Grandin repeated. “And you bathed her, Mademoiselle, before she was put to bed?”
The girl looked slightly startled. “No sir, not entirely; but I did wash her hands. They were discolored, especially about the fingertips, with some red substance, almost as if she had been scratching something, and gotten blood under her nails.”
“Parbleu!” the Frenchman exploded. “I did know it, Friend Trowbridge. Jules de Grandin, he is never mistaken.
“Mademoiselle,” he turned feverishly to the nurse, “did you, by any happy chance, save the water in which you laved Madame Evander’s hands?”
“Why, no, I didn’t, but—oh I see—yes, I think perhaps some of the stain may be on the washcloth and the orange stick I cleaned her nails with. I really had quite a time cleaning them, too.”
“Bien, très bien!” he ejaculated. “Let us have these cloths, these sticks, at once, please. Trowbridge, do you withdraw some blood from Madame’s arm for a test, then we must hasten to the laboratory. Cordieu, I burn with impatience!”
An hour later we faced each other in the office. “I can’t understand it,” I confessed. “By all the canons of the profession, Mrs. Evander ought to be dead after last night’s experience, but there’s no doubt she’s better. Her pulse was firmer, her temperature right, and her blood count practically normal today.”
“Me, I understand perfectly, up to a point,” he replied. “Beyond that, all is dark as the cave of Erebus. Behold, I have tested the stains from Madame’s fingers. They are—what do you think?”
“Blood?” I hazarded.
“Parbleu, yes, but not of humanity. Mais non, they are blood of a dog, my friend.”
“Of a dog?”
“Perfectly. I, myself, did greatly fear they might prove human, but grace à Dieu, they are not. Now, if you will excuse, I go to make certain investigations, and will meet you at the maison Evander this evening. Come prepared to be surprised, my friend. Parbleu, I shall be surprised if I do not astonish myself!”
FOUR OF US, DE Grandin, Miss Ostrander, Niles Evander and I, sat in the dimly lighted room, looking alternately toward the bed where the mistress of the house lay in a drugged sleep, into the still-burning fire of coals in the fireplace grate, and at each other’s faces. Three of us were puzzled almost to the point of hysteria, and de Grandin seemed on pins and needles with excitement and expectation. Occasionally he would rise and walk to the bed with that quick soundless tread of his which always made me think of a cat. Again he would dart into the hall, nervously light a cigarette, draw a few quick puffs from it, then glide noiselessly into the sickroom once more. None of us spoke above a whisper and our conversation was limited to inconsequential things. Throughout our group there was the tense expectancy and solemn, taut-nerved air of medical witnesses in the prison death chamber awaiting the advent of the condemned.
Subconsciously, I think, we all realized what we waited for, but my nerves nearly snapped when it came.
With the suddenness of a shot, unheralded by any preliminary, the wild, vibrating howl of a beast sounded beneath the sickroom window, its sharp, poignant wail seeming to split the frigid, moonlit air of the night.
“O-o-o—o-o-o-o—o-o-o—o-o-o-o!” it rose against the winter stillness, diminished to a moan of heart-rending melancholy, then suddenly crescendoed upward, from a moan to a wail, from a wail to a howl, despairing, passionate, longing as the lament of a damned spirit, wild and fierce as the rallying call of the fiends of hell.
“Oh!” Miss Ostrander exclaimed involuntarily.
“Let be!” Jules de Grandin ordered tensely, his whisper seeming to carry more because of its sharpness than from any actual sound it made.
“O-o-o—o-o-o-o—o-o-o—o-o-o-o!” again the cry shuddered through the air, again it rose to a pitch of intolerable shrillness and evil, then died away, and, as we sat stone-still in the shadowy chamber, a new sound, a sinister, scraping sound, intensified by the ice-hard coldness of the night, came to us. Someone, some thing, was swarming up the rose-trellis outside the house!
Scrape, scratch, scrape, the alternate hand- and foot-holds sounded on the cross-bars of the lattice. A pair of hands, long, slender, corded hands, like hands of a cadaver long dead, and armed with talons, blood-stained and hooked, grasped the window-ledge, and a face—God of Mercy, such a face!—was silhouetted against the background of the night.
Not human, nor yet wholly bestial it was, but partook grotesquely of both, so that it was at once a foul caricature of each. The forehead was low and narrow, and sloped back to a thatch of short, nondescript-colored hair resembling an animal’s fur. The nose was elongated out of all semblance to a human feature and resembled the pointed snout of some animal of the canine tribe except that it curved sharply down at the tip like the beak of some unclean bird of prey. Thin, cruel lips were drawn sneeringly back from a double row of tusk-like teeth which gleamed horridly in the dim reflection of the open fire, and a pair of round, baleful eyes, green as the luminescence from a rotting carcass in a midnight swamp, glared at us across the windowsill. On each of us in turn the basilisk glance dwelt momentarily, then fastened itself on the sleeping sick woman like a falcon’s talons on a dove.
Miss Ostrander gave a single choking sob and slid forward from her chair unconscious. Evander and I sat stupefied with horror, unable to do more than gaze in terror-stricken silence at the apparition, but Jules de Grandin was out of his seat and across the room with a single bound of feline grace and ferocity.
“Aroint thee, accursed of God!” he screamed, showering a barrage of blows from a slender wand on the creature’s face. “Back, spawn of Satan! To thy kennel, hound of hell! I, Jules de Grandin, command it!”
The suddenness of his attack took the thing by surprise. For a moment it snarled and cowered under the hailstorm of blows from de Grandin’s stick, then, as suddenly as it had come into view, it loosed its hold on the windowsill and dropped from sight.
; “Sang de Dieu, sang du diable; sang des tous les saints de ciel!” de Grandin roared, hurling himself out the window in the wake of the fleeing monster. “I have you, vile wretch. Pardieu, Monsieur Loup-garou, but I shall surely crush you!”
Rushing to the window, I saw the tall, skeleton-thin form of the enormity leaping across the moonlit snow with great, space-devouring bounds, and after it, brandishing his wand, ran Jules de Grandin, shouting triumphant invectives in mingled French and English.
By the shadow of a copse of evergreens the thing made a stand. Wheeling in its tracks, it bent nearly double, extending its cadaverous claws like a wrestler searching for a hold, and baring its glistening tusks in a snarl of fury.
De Grandin never slackened pace. Charging full tilt upon the waiting monstrosity, he reached his free hand into his jacket pocket. There was a gleam of blue metal in the moonlight. Then eight quick, pitiless spurts of flame stabbed through the shadow where the monster lurked, eight whiplike crackling reports echoed and re-echoed in the midnight stillness—and the voice of Jules de Grandin:
“Trowbridge, mon vieux, ohé, Friend Trowbridge, bring a light quickly! I would that you see what I see!”
Weltering in a patch of blood-stained snow at de Grandin’s feet we found an elderly man, ruddy-faced, gray-haired, and, doubtless, in life, of a dignified, even benign aspect. Now, however, he lay in the snow as naked as the day his mother first saw him, and eight gaping gunshot wounds told where de Grandin’s missiles had found their mark. The winter cold was already stiffening his limbs and setting his face in a mask of death.
“Good heavens,” Evander ejaculated as he bent over the lifeless form, “it’s Uncle Friedrich—my wife’s uncle! He disappeared just before I went south.”
“Eh bien,” de Grandin regarded the body with no more emotion than if it had been an effigy molded in snow, “we shall know where to find your uncle henceforth, Monsieur. Will some of you pick him up? Me—pardieu I would no more touch him than I would handle a hyena!”
The Horror on the Links Page 30