Something seemed to brush by him, something invisible, but tangible enough to stir the white scrim curtains trailing lazily in the still air, and for a moment I thought I caught the faint penumbra of a shadow cast against the ivory wall. A monstrous thing it was, large as a lion, yet like nothing I had ever seen or imagined, for it seemed to resemble both a bat and fox, with long, pointed snout, claw-armed forepaws and great, spike-edged wings extending to each side from close behind the head.
“Get you gone, unfortunate one,” de Grandin cried, striking directly at the shadow with his sprigs of mistletoe. “Poor soul who would collect the wager of a thoughtless promise, hie you back to your own place and leave the ordering of other lives to God.”
The terrible shadow rested against the pale wall another fraction of a second, then, like smoke borne away in a rising breeze, it was gone.
“Gone,” de Grandin repeated softly, closing the window and shutting off the lights. “Call the nurse, I pray you, Friend Trowbridge. Her duties will be simpler hereafter. A little medicine, a little tonic, and much rest and food will see Mademoiselle Julie as well as ever.”
Together we tiptoed into the hall, roused the sleeping nurse and turned the patient over to her care.
“AND NOW THE OTHER time you spoke of last night has come, I suppose?” I said, rather huffily, as we drove home. “You were close-mouthed enough about it all while it was happening. Will you explain now?”
“Most certainly,” he returned in high good humor, lighting a cigarette, breathing in a great lungful of smoke, then discharging the vapor with a sigh of gusty content. “It was most simple—like everything else—when once I knew the answer.
“To begin: When first Captain Loudon explained his daughter’s case, it seemed like one of simple hysteria to me, and one which any capable physician could cure. ‘Why, then,’ I ask me, ‘does Monsieur le Capitaine seek the services of Jules de Grandin? I am not a great physician.’ I have no answer, and at first I decline the case, as you know.
“But when we go to his house and behold Mademoiselle Julie all unconscious as she wandered about, I was of another mind; and when I hear the noises which accompanied her, I was of still a third mind. But when that evil one hurled a knife at my head, I said to me, ‘Parbleu, it is the challenge! Shall Jules de Grandin fly from such a contest?’
“Now, across the Rhine from France, those boches have some words which are most expressive. Among them is poltergeist, which signifies a pelting ghost, a ghost which flings things around the house. But more often he is not a ghost at all, he is some evil entity which plagues a man, or more frequently a woman. Not for nothing, my friend, did the ancients refer to Satan as the Prince of the Powers of the Air, for there are many very evil things in the air which we can no more see than we can behold the germs of disease. Yes.” He nodded solemn affirmation.
“But when Mademoiselle Julie tells me of the mark which came on her arm, and I recognized the Rumanian word for demon, I think some more. And when she tells me of the bird or bat which fluttered at her window and yet was not there, I recognize many things in common with other cases I have observed.
“Foolish people, my friend, sometimes say, ‘Come in,’ when they think the wind has blown their door ajar. It is not well to do so. Who knows what invisible terror awaits without, needing only the spoken invitation unthinkingly made to enter? For attend me, my friend, very rarely can the evil ones come in unless they are first invited, and very rarely can they be gotten out once they have been bidden to enter. So all these things fit together in my mind, and I say to me, ‘Morbleu, we have here a poltergeist, and nothing else. Certainly.’
“But why should a poltergeist attach his evil self to that sweet Mademoiselle Julie? True, she are very pretty, but there are other pretty women in the world of whom the poltergeister do not seek shelter.
“Then when the demon tell us he hold her completely in his power and makes her to dance almost nude in her father’s house and sticks pins and needles in her, I hear something else. I hear him promise to take her life.
“Why? What have she done that she must die?
“Then I see the picture of Anna Wassilko. Very like Mademoiselle Julie she was, but there was a subtle something in her face which makes me know she was not the same. And what story does Monsieur le Capitaine tell when I ask about her? Ah, now we begin to see the light! She were Rumanian by birth and partly by ancestry. Very good. She had gone to school with her cousin, Mademoiselle Julie. Again good. She had lived in the same house here, she had loved the same man, and she had committed suicide; best of all. I need now only a little reassuring as to the reason why—the result I already know.
“You know what Mademoiselle Julie told us; it all fitted in well with the theory I had formed. But there was work to be done that night.
“The demon which made Julie do all kinds of things she knew not of had promised to take her life. How to circumvent her? That were the question.
“I think. ‘This young woman goes off into trances, and does all manner of queer things without knowing of them,’ I inform me. ‘Would she not do much the same in a state of hypnosis!’ Assuredly, Very well, then.
“I procure me a set of whirling mirrors, not because there is any magic in them but because they are the easiest thing to focus the subject’s attention. Last night I use them, and hypnotize Mademoiselle Julie before the poltergeist has a chance to conquer her consciousness. Hypnotism, when all is said and done, is the rendering of a subject’s objective mind passive while the mind of the operator is substituted for that of the subject. The poltergeist, which was really the revenant of Anna, had substituted her mind for Julie’s on former occasions; now I get there first, and place my mind in her brain. There is no room for the other, and Mademoiselle Julie can not take suggestions or brain-hints from the ghost and destroy herself. No, Jules de Grandin is already in possession of her brain-house, and he says ‘No Admission’ to all others who try to come in. Mademoiselle Julie slept peacefully through the night, as you did observe.”
“But what was all that monkey business with the mistletoe?” I demanded.
“Tiens, my friend, the monkey’s business had nothing to do with that,” he assured me. “Do you, perhaps, remember what the mistletoe stands for at Noël?”
“You mean a kiss?”
“What else? It is the plant held sacred to lovers in this day, but in the elder times it was the holy bush of the Druids. With it they cast many spells, and with it they cast out many evil-workers. Not by mistake is it the lover’s tree today, for it is a powerful charm against evil and will assuredly lay the unhappy ghost of one who dies because of unfortunate love. Voilà—you do catch the connection?”
“I never heard that before—” I began, but he cut me short with a chuckle.
“Much you have never heard, Trowbridge, my friend,” he accused, “yet all of it is true, none the less.”
“And that hideous shadow?”
He sobered instantly. “Who can say? In life Mademoiselle Anna was beautiful, but she went forth from the world uncalled and in an evil way, my friend. Who knows what evil shape she is doomed to wear in the next life? The less we think on that subject the better for our sleep hereafter.
“Come, we are at your house once more. Let us drink one glass of brandy for luck’s sake, then to sleep. Mordieu, me, I feel as though I had been stranger to my bed since my fifth birthday!”
The Gods of East and West
“TIENS, FRIEND TROWBRIDGE, YOU work late tonight.”
Jules de Grandin, debonair in faultlessly pressed dinner clothes, a white gardenia sharing his lapel buttonhole with the red ribbon of the Légion d’Honneur, paused at the door of my consulting-room, glimpsed the box of coronas lying open on the table, and straightaway entered, seating himself opposite me and selecting a long, black cigar with all the delighted precision of a child choosing a bonbon from a box of sweets.
I laid aside the copy of Baring’s Diagnosis in Diseases of the Bl
ood I had been studying and helped myself to a fresh cigar. “Have a pleasant time at the Medical Society dinner?” I asked, somewhat sourly.
“But yes,” he agreed, nodding vigorously while his little blue eyes shone with enthusiasm. “They are a delectable crowd of fellows, those New York physicians. I regret you would not accompany me. There was one gentleman in particular, a full-blooded Indian, who—but you do not listen, my friend; you are distrait. What is the trouble?”
“Trouble enough,” I returned ungraciously. “A patient’s dying for no earthly reason that I can see except that she is.”
“Ah! You interest me. Have you made a tentative diagnosis?”
“Half a dozen, and none of ’em checks up. I’ve examined her and re-examined her, and the only thing I’m absolutely certain of is that she’s fading away right before my eyes, and nothing I can do seems an earthly bit of good.”
“U’m. Phthisis, perhaps?”
“Not a bit of it. I’ve tested her sputum numerous times; every result is negative. There isn’t a thing wrong with her organically, and her temperature is almost always normal, fluctuating slightly at times one way or the other, but hardly ever more than one or two degrees. I’ve made several blood counts, and while she runs slightly under the million mark, the deficiency isn’t enough to cause alarm. About the only objective symptoms she displays are a steady falling off in weight and a progressive pallor, while subjectively she complains of loss of appetite, slight headaches and profound lassitude in the morning.”
“U’m,” he repeated thoughtfully, expelling a twin cloud of smoke from his narrow nostrils and regarding the ash of his cigar as though it were something of intense interest, “and how long has this condition of affairs obtained?”
“About three months. She’s a Mrs. Chetwynde, wife of a likable young chap who’s superintending a piece of railway construction for an English company in Burma. He’s been away about six months or so, and while she would naturally be expected to pine for him to some extent—they’ve been married only a couple of years—this illness has been going on only since about the middle of August.”
“U’m!” He knocked the ash from his cigar with a deft motion of his little finger and inhaled a great lungful of strong, fragrant smoke with careful deliberation. “This case interests me, Friend Trowbridge. These diseases which defy diagnosis are the things which make the doctor’s trade exciting. With your permission I will accompany you when next you visit Madame Chetwynde. Who knows? Together we may find the doormat under which the key of her so mysterious malady lies hidden. Meantime, I famish for sleep.”
“I’m with you,” I agreed as I closed my book, shut off the light and accompanied him upstairs to bed.
THE CHETWYNDE COTTAGE WAS one of the smallest and newest of the lovely little dwellings in the Rookwood section of town. Although it contained but seven rooms, it was as completely a piece of art as any miniature painted on ivory, and the appointments and furnishings comported perfectly with the exquisite architectural artistry of the house. Jules de Grandin’s round little eyes danced delightedly as he took in the perfect harmony existing inside and out when we parked my car before the rose-trellised porch and entered the charming reception hall. “Eh bien, my friend,” he whispered as we followed the black-and-white-uniformed maid toward the stairs, “whatever her disease may be, she has the bon goût—how do you say? good taste?—this Madame Chetwynde.”
Lovely as a piece of Chinese porcelain—and as frail—Idoline Chetwynde lay on the scented pillows of her Louis Treize bed, a negligée of knife-plaited crêpe de chine trimmed with fluffy black marabou shrouding her lissom form from slender neck to slenderer ankles, but permitting occasional high-lights of ivory body to be glimpsed through its sable folds. Little French-heeled mules of scarlet satin trimmed with black fur were on her stocking-less feet, and the network of veins showed pale violet against the dead-white of her high-arched insteps. Her long, sharp-chinned face was a rich olive hue in the days of her health, but now her cheeks had faded to the color of old ivory, and her fine, high forehead was as pale and well-nigh as translucent as candle-wax. The long, beautifully molded lips of her expressive mouth were more an old rose than a coral red, and her large gray eyes, lifted toward the temples like those of an Oriental, shone with a sort of patient resignation beneath the “flying gull” curve of her intensely black brows. Her hair, cut short as a boy’s at the back, had been combed across her forehead from right to left and plastered down with some perfumed unguent so that it surmounted her white face like a close-wrapped turban of gleaming ebon silk. Diamond studs, small, but very brilliant, flickered lambently in the lobes of her low-set ears. Some women cast the aura of their feminine allure about them as a bouquet of roses exudes its perfume. Idoline Chetwynde was one of these.
“Not so well this morning, thank you, Doctor,” she replied to my inquiry. “The weakness seems greater than usual, and I had a dreadful nightmare last night.”
“H’umph, nightmare, eh?” I answered gruffly. “We’ll soon attend to that. What did you dream?”
“I—I don’t know,” she replied languidly, as though the effort of speaking were almost too much for her. “I just remember that I dreamed something awful, but what it was I haven’t the slightest notion. It really doesn’t matter, anyway.”
“Pardonnez-moi, Madame, but it matters extremely much,” de Grandin contradicted. “These things we call dreams, they are sometimes the expression of our most secret thoughts; through them we sometimes learn things concerning ourselves which we should not otherwise suspect. Will you try to recall this unpleasant dream for us?”
As he spoke he busied himself with a minute examination of the patient, tapping her patellar tendons, feeling along her wrists and forearms with quick, practiced fingers, lifting her lids and examining the pupils of both her luminous eyes, searching on her throat, neck and cardiac region for signs of abrasions. “Eh bien,” and “morbleu, c’est étrange!” I heard him mutter to himself once or twice, but no further comment did he make until he had completed his examination.
“Do you know, Dr. Trowbridge,” Mrs Chetwynde remarked as de Grandin rolled down his cuffs and scribbled a memorandum in his notebook, “I’ve been gone over so many times I’ve begun to feel like an entry at the dog show. It’s really not a bit of use, either. You might just as well save yourselves and me the trouble and let me die comfortably. I’ve a feeling I shan’t be here much longer, anyway, and it might be better for all concerned if—”
“Zut!” de Grandin snapped the elastic about his pocketbook with a sharp report and leveled a shrewd, unwinking stare at her. “Say not so, Madame. It is your duty to live. Parbleu, the garden of the world is full to suffocation with weeds; flowers like yourself should be most sedulously cultivated for the joying of all mankind.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Mrs. Chetwynde smiled slowly in acknowledgment of the compliment and pressed the ebony-and-silver bell which hung over the ornamental head of her bed.
“Madame has called?” The swart-visaged maid servant appeared at the door of the chamber with a promptitude which led me to suspect her ear had never been far from the keyhole.
“Yes, Dr. Trowbridge and Dr. de Grandin are leaving,” her mistress replied in a tired voice.
“Adieu, Madame,” de Grandin murmured in farewell, leaning forward and possessing himself of the slender hand our hostess had not troubled to lift as we turned to go.
“We go, but we shall return anon, and with us, unless I greatly mistake, we shall bring you a message of good cheer. No case is hopeless until—”
“Until the undertaker’s been called?” Mrs. Chetwynde interrupted with another of her slow, tired smiles as the little Frenchman pressed his lips to her pale fingers and turned to accompany the maid and me from the room.
“Be careful—sir,” the maid cautioned, with just enough space between the command and the title of courtesy to rob her utterance of all semblance of respect. De Grandin, turning from the stairs
into the hall, had almost collided with a statuette which stood on a pedestal in a niche between the staircase and the wall. To me it seemed the woman bent a look of almost venomous hate on him as he regained his footing on the highly polished floor and wheeled about to stare meditatively at the figurine into which he had nearly stumbled.
“This way—if you please, sir,” the servant admonished, standing by the front door and offering his hat in a most suggestive manner.
“Ah, yes, just so,” he agreed, turning from the statue to her, then back again. “And do you suffer from the mosquitoes here at this time of year, Mademoiselle?”
“Mosquitoes?” the woman’s reply was half word, half scornful sniff at the little foreigner’s irrelevant remark.
“Precisely, the mosquito, the gnat, the mousquite,” he rejoined with a humorous lift of his brows. “The little, buzzing pests, you know.”
“No, sir!” The answer served notice there was no more to be said on the subject.
“Ah? Perhaps it is then that Madame your mistress delights in the incense which annoys the moths, yes?”
“No, sir!”
“Parbleu, ma vierge, there are many strange things in the world, are there not?” he returned with one of his impish grins. “But the strangest of all are those who attempt to hold information from me.”
The servant’s only reply was a look which indicated clearly that murder was the least favor she cared to bestow on him.
“Lá, lá,” he chuckled as we descended the steps to my car. “I did her in the eye, as the Englishmen say, that time, did I not, my friend?”
“You certainly had the last word,” I admitted wonderingly, “but you’ll have to grant her the last look, and it was no very pleasant one, either.”
“Ah bah,” he returned with another grin, “who cares how old pickle-face looks so long as her looks reveal that which I seek? Did not you notice how she stiffened when I hinted at the odor of incense in the house? There is no reason why they should not burn incense there, but, for some cause, the scent is a matter of utmost privacy—with the maid, at least.”
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