The Horror on the Links
Page 40
Silently as a trio of ghosts we stole out into the moonless, humid night, skirted the line of the house wall, and crouched in the shadow of a dilapidated rain-barrel.
“D’ye think anyone will—” Costello began in a hoarse whisper, but:
“S-s-sh!” de Grandin shut him off. “Observe, my friends; look yonder!”
A clump of scrub maple and poplar grew some forty feet from the house, and as we obeyed the Frenchman’s imperative nod, a portion of the dense shadow thrown by the trees appeared to detach itself from the surrounding gloom and drift slowly toward the lighted window across which the crudely modeled bust of Deacons was being pulled.
“Careful, my friends; no noise!” de Grandin warned, so low the syllables were barely audible above the murmuring night noises. The drifting shadow was joined by another, the two merging into one almost imperceptible blot of blackness.
Nearer, still nearer the creeping patch of gloom approached, then, with the suddenness of a wind-driven cloud altering shape, the ebon blotch changed from horizontal to vertical, two distinct shapes—squat, crooked-legged human shapes—became visible against the darkness of the night’s background, and a wild, eery, bloodcurdling yell rent the heavy, grass-scented air.
Two undersized, screaming shapes ran wildly toward the dimly lit window, but Detective Sergeant Costello was quicker than they. “I’ve got ye, ye murderin’ devils!,” he roared, leaping from his ambush and flourishing his revolver. “Stick up your paws, or I’ll make, a fly-net out o’ th’ pair of yez!”
“Down—down, fool!” de Grandin shrieked despairingly, as he strove futilely to drag the big Irishman back into the shadow.
He gave up the attempt and leaped forward with lithe, catlike grace, interposing himself between the detective and the shadowy forms. Something shone dimly in the night’s starless air, two flashes of intense orange flame spurted through the darkness, and the twin roar of a French army pistol crashed and reverberated against the house wall.
The racing shadows halted abruptly in their course, seemed to lean together an instant, to merge like a mass of vapor jostled by the wind, then slumped suddenly downward and lay still.
“Blessed St. Patrick!” Costello murmured, turning the prostrate forms over, inspecting the gaping wounds torn by de Grandin’s soft-nosed bullets with a sort of pathetic awe. “That’s what I call some shootin’, Dr. de Grandin, sor. I knew ye was a clever little devil—askin’ your pardon—but—”
“Parbleu, my friend, when shooting is necessary, I shoot,” de Grandin replied complacently. “But we have other things of more importance to observe, if you please. Turn your flashlight here, if you will.”
Sharply silhouetted against the circle of brilliance cast by the electric torch were two slender, thorn-like splinters of wood, their hard, pointed tips buried to a depth of a quarter-inch in the clapboard’s crumbling surface.
“It was such as these which killed Craven and Comrade Schippert,” the Frenchman explained shortly. “Had I not fired when I did, these”—he pointed gingerly to the thorns—“would have been in you, my friend, and you, I doubt not, would have been in heaven. Morbleu, as it was, I did despair of drawing you back before they had pierced you with their darts, and le bon Dieu knows I shot not a moment too soon!”
“But—howly Mither!—what th’ devil is it, annyway, sor?” th’ big detective demanded in a fever of mystification.
De Grandin blew methodically down the barrel of his pistol to clear the smoke fumes away before restoring the weapon to his shoulder holster. “They are darts, my friend. Arrows from blowguns—arrows of sure and certain death, for with them every hit is a fatal one. In South and Central America the Indians use them in blowguns for certain classes of hunting, and sometimes in war, and when they blow one of them into a jaguar, fierce and tenacious of life as the great cat is, he dies before he can fall from his tree to the earth. Beside the venom in which these darts are steeped the poison of the cobra or the rattlesnake is harmless as water.
“But come”—he turned again toward the house—“let us go in. Me, I think I have all this sad and sordid story by heart, but there is certain information I would get from the excellent Deacons, before we write the last chapter.”
“NOW, MONSIEUR,” DE GRANDIN leveled his unwinking, steel-hard stare at the little man cowering in the cottage’s shabby living room, “you have spent much time in Central America, I take it. You and your compatriots, Murphy and Craven, were grave-robbers, n’est-ce-pas?”
“Huh? What’s that?” Costello interrupted incredulously. “Grave-robbers, did ye say, sor? Stiff-stealers?”
“Non, non,” the Frenchman returned with a quick smile, then turned a stern face toward Deacons. “Not stealers of corpses, my friend, but stealers of treasure. Morbleu, do I not know their ilk? But of course. My friends, I was with de Lesseps when he strove to consummate the wedding of the Atlantic with the Pacific at Panama. I was for a time with the French engineers when Diaz drove the railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and in that time I learned much of gentry such as these. In all Central America there is great store of gold and silver and turquoise buried in the graveyards and ruined cities of the native peoples whom the pig-ignorant Spaniards destroyed in their greed for gold and power. Today brave men of science do risk their lives that these priceless relics of a forgotten people may be brought to light, and fellows such as Deacons and his two dead partners hang about the head-quarters of exploring parties waiting for them to map the course to the ancient ruins, then rush in and steal each scrap of gold on which they can lay their so unclean hands. They are vandals more vile than the Spaniards who went before them, for they steal not only from the dead, but from the treasure-house of science as well.”
“We didn’t do nothin’ worse than th’ highbrows did,” Deacons defended sullenly. “You never heard of us tryin’ to alibi ourselves by claimin’ to be workin’ for some university, ’stead o’ bein’ just plain thieves. Them scientists are just as bad as we was, on’y they was gentlemen, an’ could git away with their second-story work.”
“About ten years ago,” de Grandin went on as if Deacons had not spoken, “this fellow, together with Craven, Murphy and three others, stumbled on the ruins of an old Mayan city in Yucatan. Only the good God knows how they found it, but find it they did, and with it they found a perfect El Dorado of golden relics.
“The local Indians—poor, ignorant, oppressed wretches—had lost all knowledge of their once so splendid ancestors, and retained nothing of the ancient Mayan culture but a few perverted legends and a deep, idolatrous veneration for the ruins of their vanished forebears’ sacred cities. When they beheld Deacons and his companions pawing over the bodies in the tombs, kicking the skeletons about as though they were but rubbish, and snatching frantically at anything and everything with the glint of gold upon it—cordieu, how many priceless pieces of copal and obsidian these so ignorant ignoramuses must have thrown away!—they swooped down on the camp and the robbers had to shoot their way to freedom. Three of them were slain, but three of them escaped and won through to the coast. They made their way back to this country with their booty and—”
“Say”—Deacons looked at the Frenchman as a bird might regard a serpent—“how’d you find all this out?”
“Parbleu, my friend,” the other smiled tolerantly, “Jules de Grandin is not to be fooled by such as you!
“Sergent”—he turned again to Costello—“while you and Callaghan did seek the ambulance to bear away the body of poor Schippert last night, Friend Trowbridge and I investigated the house where Monsieur Craven died. It was not hard for us to see the place was one occupied by a man much used to living alone and being his own servant in all ways—a sailor, perhaps, or a man much accustomed to the out-o-the-way places of the world. That was the first domino with which we had to begin building.
“Now, when we came to examine his table de cuisine we did find an ancient Mayan plate engraved with an effigy of a priest in full sac
rificial regalia. This plate was the only thing of its kind among the dead man’s effects and was carefully wrapped in a cotton rag. Evidently he had retained it as a souvenir. Those who knew not the goldsmithing trade in ancient Central America might easily have mistaken the plate for a piece of Oriental brass; but I, who know many things, realized it was of solid, unalloyed gold intrinsically worth from five to seven thousand dollars, perhaps, but priceless from the anthropologist’s standpoint.
“‘Now,’ I ask me, ‘what would a man like this Monsieur Craven, comfortably off, but not rich, be doing with such a relic among his things unless he himself had brought it from Yucatan?’
“‘Nothing,’ I say to me.
“‘Quite right,’ I reply. ‘Jules de Grandin, you do not make mistakes.’
“Also there was the coroner’s report that this Monsieur Deadman had been dead for several days when he was found, and your piece of intelligence that his head have disappeared. Also, again, we know from you and the other officers that he had not been dead several days, but only several hours when discovered. What is the answer to that?
“Hélas, we found it out only through your poor friend’s death! Officer Schippert had pricked himself on what he thought was a thorn—so much like thorns do these accursed darts look that the police and coroner’s attachés might have seen that one a thousand times, yet never recognized it for what it was. But our poor friend was wounded by it, and almost at once he died.
“Now, what was such a dart as this doing in the Craven yard? Why did the Poor Schippert have to scratch himself on a thing which should not have been in existence in that latitude and longitude? It is to seek the answer.
“We carried Schippert into the house, and what do we see? Almost at once he had begun to become livide—discolored. Yes. I have seen men shot with such arrows while I worked under the tropic sun, I had handled those splinters of death, and had seen the corpses assume the appearance of the long dead almost as I watched them. When I saw the appearance of the poor Schippert, and beheld the dart by which he died, I say to me, ‘This is the answer. This is why the physicians at the coroner’s office declare that my friend, the good Costello, speaks words of foolishness when he insists Craven was not long dead when found.’ Yes.
“Also, you have told me of the missing head. I know from experience and hearsay that those Indians do take the heads of their enemies as your Apaches once took the scalps of theirs, and preserve them as trophies. Everything points one way.
“You see, we have these parts of our puzzle”—he checked the facts off on his fingers—“a man who brought a golden plate from Yucatan is found dead in his front yard. He is undoubtlessly the victim of an Indian blowgun dart, for his appearance and the dart which we have found too late to save the poor Schippert, all say so. Very good. No one knew anything about him, but he was apparently of those fortunate ones who can live in some comfort without working. From this I reason he might once have possessed other Indian gold which he has sold.
“Now, while I think of these things, I notice a piece of burned paper in his fireplace, and on it I read these fragments of words:
ar al red ils av ot Murphy. Lay low an …
“What does it mean?”
“I think some more, and decide what was written originally was:
Dear Pal: The red devils have got Murphy. Lay low and…
“Who are these ‘red devils’? Because an Indian dart have killed both Craven and Schippert, must we not assume they are Indians? I think so. Most likely they were natives of Yucatan who had shipped as sailors on some tramp steamer and come to this land to wreak vengeance on those who despoiled their sacred cities and burying places. I have observed instances of such before. In Paris we have known of it, for there is no sort of crime with which the face of man is blackened which has not been at least once investigated by the Service de Sûreté.
“Now, from all this, it was most apparent the writer of this burned note had been warning Craven that one Murphy had been translated to another—though probably not a better—world, and that Craven must lie low, or he would doubtless share the same fate. So much is plain; but who was Murphy, and who had written the warning?
“I decided to shoot at the only target in sight. Next day I interviewed Dr. Symington, of the New York Museum of Natural History, asking him if he remembered Mayan relics being bought from a man named Craven or Murphy, or from anyone who mentioned any of those names in his conversation.
“A desperate chance, you say? But certainly. Yet it was by taking desperate chances that we turned back the sale boche; it was by taking desperate chances that the peerless Wright brothers learned to fly; it was by taking a desperate chance that I, Jules de Grandin, triumphed!
“Friend Symington had heard such names. Eight years ago one Michael Murphy had sold the Museum a small piece of Mayan jewelry, a little statuette of hammered rose-gold. He had boasted of exploits in Central America when he obtained this statue, told how he, together with Arthur Craven and Charles Deacons, had a fortune in bullion within their grasp, only to lose it when the outraged Indians attacked their camp and killed three of their companions. And that he spoke truth there was small doubt, for so greatly did he fear the Indian vengeance that he refused an offer of five thousand dollars and expenses to guide a party from the Museum to the place where he found the Indian gold.
“Very good. We have got the answer to our questions: ‘Whom have the “red devils” gotten?’ and ‘Who wrote the warning letter to Craven?’
“But where is this Charles Deacons? In the directory of this city there are three of him listed, but only one of him is labeled as retired, and it was to him I looked for further light. I assume the Deacons I seek lives, as Craven did, on the proceeds of his thefts. I further assume he goes in deadly fear of the Indians’ flying vengeance by day and by night. I find his address here, and”—he waved his hand in a gesture of finality—“here we come. Voilà!”
I started to put a question, but Costello was before me.
“How did ye know th’ murderin’ heathens would be here tonight, Dr. de Grandin?” he demanded.
“Eh bien, by elimination, of course,” the Frenchman replied in high good humor. “Three men were sought by the Indians. Two of them had already been disposed of, therefore, unless Deacons had already fallen to their flying death, they still remained in the vicinity, awaiting a chance to execute him. We found him alive, hence we knew they had still one-third of their task to perform. So I did bait our trap with Deacons’ dummy, for well I knew they would shoot their poisoned darts at him the moment they saw his shadow pass the lighted open window. Morbleu, my friend, how near your own foolish courage came to making you, instead, their victim!”
“Thanks to you, sor, I’m still alive an kickin’,” Costello acknowledged. “Shall I be ringin’ th’ morgue wagon for th’ fellies ye shot, sor?”
“I care not,” de Grandin responded indifferently, “dispose of them as you will.”
“Well, say”—Deacons suddenly seemed to emerge from his trance, and advanced, toward de Grandin, his lean hand extended—“I cert’ny got to thank you for pullin’ me out of a mighty tight hole, sir.”
De Grandin took no notice of the proffered hand. “Pardieu, Monsieur,” he responded coldly, “it was from no concern for you that I undertook this night’s work. Those Indians had slain a friend of my friend, Sergeant Costello. I came not to save you, but to execute the murderers. You were but the stinking goat with which our tiger-trap was baited.”
The White Lady of the Orphanage
“DR. TROWBRIDGE? DR. DE Grandin?” our visitor looked questioningly from one of us to the other.
“I’m Trowbridge,” I answered, “and this is Dr. de Grandin. What can we do for you?”
The gentle-faced, white-haired little man bowed rather nervously to each of us in turn, acknowledging the introduction. “My name is Gervaise, Howard Gervaise,” he replied. “I’m superintendent of the Springville Orphans’ Home.”
“I was advised to consult you gentlemen by Mr. Willis Richards, of your city,” he continued. “Mr. Richards told me you accomplished some really remarkable results for him at the time his jewelry was stolen, and suggested that you could do more to clear up our present trouble than anyone else. He is president of our board of trustees, you know,” he added in explanation.
“U’m?” Jules de Grandin murmured noncommittally as he set fire to a fresh cigarette with the glowing butt of another. “I recall that Monsieur Richards. He figured in the affair of the disembodied hand, Friend Trowbridge, you remember. Parbleu, I also recall that he paid the reward for his jewels’ return with very bad grace. You come poorly introduced, my friend”—he fixed his uncompromising cat-stare on our caller—“however, say on. We listen.”
Mr. Gervaise seemed to shrink in upon himself more than ever. It took small imaginative powers to vision him utterly cowed before the domineering manner of Willis Richards, our local nabob. “The fact is, gentlemen,” he began with a soft, deprecating cough, “we are greatly troubled at the orphanage. Something mysterious—most mysterious—is taking place there. Unless we can arrive at some solution we shall be obliged to call in the police, and that would be most unfortunate. Publicity is to be dreaded in this case, yet we are at a total loss to explain the mystery.”
“U’m,” de Grandin inspected the tip of his cigarette carefully, as though it were something entirely novel, “most mysteries cease to be mysterious, once they are explained, Monsieur. You will be good enough to proceed?”
“Ah—” Mr. Gervaise glanced about the study as though to take inspiration from the surroundings, then coughed apologetically again. “Ah—the fact is, gentlemen, that several of our little charges have—ah—mysteriously disappeared. During the past six months we have missed no less than five of the home’s inmates, two boys and three girls and only day before yesterday a sixth one disappeared—vanished into air, if you can credit my statement.”