“Frau Stoeger suggested that I borrow it from my employer. He is wealthy, and she knew I had the combination to his safe and access to a book of signed checks which he keeps in his library desk. When I refused she laughed and said, ‘You’ll be glad to do worse things than forge a check or steal some paltry jewelry before you’re free, my dear.’
“That was a week ago. Since then my life has been an earthly hell. Everywhere I have seen reminders of my dreadful fate. Children scream at the sight of me, women cross the street to avoid me, men turn and sneer as I pass by. Tonight I attended a party at my employer’s house, though I felt little enough like dancing. Finally, when I knew I must be alone or go mad, I went for a walk in the park.
“Mein Herr—believe me; oh, please believe what I say!—as I entered the square the Devil stepped from behind a patch of bushes and raised his hat to me, saying, ‘When are you coming to dwell in hell with me?’ As he finished speaking he stretched out his hand and touched me, and it burned like a white-hot iron!
“I was terrified at the apparition, but thought my nerves had played a trick on me, so I began to run. Fifty feet farther on, the Devil rose up again, doffed his hat as before, and asked me the same question. And again he touched me with his fiery claw. I screamed and ran like a frightened cat from a pursuing hound, and just before I met you the Devil appeared to me a third time, asked me the same question, and added, ‘I have put my mark on you three times tonight, so all who see you shall know you for mine.’ At that I went quite mad, mein Herr, and ran as I had never run before. When you stepped forward with your offer of help, I thought you were the fiend accosting me for a fourth time, and I must have fainted, for I know nothing more until I found myself here.”
“And how did the Devil appear, Mademoiselle?” asked de Grandin, edging slightly forward on his chair, his slender hands twitching with excitement.
“Very like a man, mein Herr. His body was like that of a man in evening dress, but his face was the face of the foul fiend and the horns which grew from his brows and the beard and mustache on his face were all aglow with the fires of hell. When he spoke, he spoke in German.”
“I doubt it not!” de Grandin acquiesced, sotto voce, then aloud: “And you say he touched you with his claw? Where?”
“Here!” the girl returned in a stifled whisper, laying a trembling hand on one bare shoulder. “Here and here and here!” In quick succession her pointed finger touched her shoulder, her upper arm and the white half-moon of her bosom where the top of her bodice curved below her slender throat.
“Sang d’un poisson!—one thousand pale blue roosters!” de Grandin exclaimed between gasps of incredulity. At each place the girl indicated on her white skin there showed, red and angry, the seared, scorched soreness of a newly made burn; the crude design of a countenance of incomparable evil—a horned, bearded face, surmounted by the device of an inverted passion-cross.
Jules de Grandin regarded the brands on the girl’s tender flesh with a wondering, speculative gaze, his lips pursed in a soundless whistle beneath the up-rearing ends of his waxed mustache; his little, round blue eyes seemed to snap and sparkle with flashes of light.
At length: “Name of an old and very immoral cockroach, this is abominable!” he flared. “Who and where is this medium of spirits?”
“They call her Laïla the Seeress,” the girl replied with a shudder. “Her atelier is in Tecumseh Street; she—”
“Très bien,” de Grandin broke in, “you will return to her and tell her—”
“I couldn’t—I couldn’t!” the denial was a wail of mingled terror and repulsion.
“Nevertheless, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin continued as though she had not interrupted, “you will go to her tomorrow afternoon and tell her you have decided to hire a substitute to undergo the ordeal for you.
“Parbleu, but you will,” he insisted as she made a half-frantic gesture of dissent. “You will visit her tomorrow, and Dr. Trowbridge and I will go with you. We shall pose as new-found friends who have agreed to finance your employment of an agent, and you shall suffer no harm, for we shall be with you. Meantime”—he consulted the tiny gold watch strapped to his wrist—“it grows late. Come; Dr. Trowbridge and I will take you to Monsieur Hopfer’s house and see you safely within doors.”
“But,” she protested, snatching at his jacket sleeve as a drowning person might clutch a rope, “but, mein Herr, what of the Devil? I am afraid. Suppose he—”
A tiny network of wrinkles deepened suddenly about the outer corners of de Grandin’s small, round eyes. From the side pocket of his dinner coat he produced a long-barreled French army revolver and patted its walnut stock affectionately. “Mademoiselle,” he assured her, “should Monsieur le Diable manifest himself to us, I think we have here the fire necessary to fight him. Come—allons let us go.”
“JUST WHAT IS YOUR idea of mixing up in this nonsense?” I demanded somewhat coolly as we drove home from returning Fräulein Mueller to her employer’s house. “This looks like a plain case of hysteria to me, and what you expect to accomplish is more than I—”
“Indeed?” he answered sarcastically. “The brands on Mademoiselle Mueller’s flesh, they, too, were perhaps marks of hysteria?”
“Well,” I temporized, “I can’t exactly account for them, but—”
“But you are like all other good, kind souls who see no farther than the points of their noses and declare all outside that distance to be non-existent,” he interrupted with a grin. “Non, non, Trowbridge, my friend, I fear you are unable to recognize the beans, even when the sack has been opened for you. Consider, mon ami, think, cogitate and reflect on what we have witnessed this night. Recall the details of the young lady’s story, if you please.
“Does not her experience point to a great, a marvelously organized criminal band as plainly as a road map indicates the motorist’s route? I think yes. Alone and friendless in a strange city, she meets a woman who claims to come from her own country—after she has been told first what that country is. Is that only happen-so? I think no. The girl must have let slip the information that she has access to her master’s safe and checkbook, and so she was deemed fitting prey for this criminal gang. Does not every step of her path of misfortune mark the trail these wicked ones followed to bring her to a state of desperation where she would be ready to commit larceny?
“What of the supposed demon who accosted her in the park tonight? She thought he was one, but I saw three men rise up from behind shrubbery and address her. I, too, saw their faces shine with fire, but it was not the fire of flame, as she believed. Mais non, did I not say it was like the light given off by rotting carcasses? What then? The answer is simple. Me, I believe these three men who seemed but one to her, wore false beards and eyebrows—masks, perhaps—which were smeared with some sort of luminous paint, the better to simulate the popular conception of the Devil and terrify a girl already half insane with terror.
“Very well, let us proceed another step. The big young man who came upon us so suddenly, the man who claimed to know her and would have borne her off had I not argued with him with the heel of the boot—did he, too, not speak with the accent of the German tongue, even as she does? Surely. Beyond doubt, my friend, he was one of the three men with fiery faces who had addressed her a moment before, and who sought to take her from us when he thought we would rescue her.
“Another thing: I have noted the manners and customs of many men in many places, and I know the charms they employ against evil. ‘What of that?’ you ask. ‘This,’ I reply: ‘Never does the American or Englishman make the sign of the horns to ward off the evil eye. That is distinctly a continental European custom.’ Therefore, when I hear the Negro nurse made the horns at Mademoiselle Mueller in the park I smell a fish in her story. Wherever that black woman—undoubtlessly herself an American—learned that sign, she did not learn it from an American. An American seeing her make that sign would have understood nothing from it; but Mademoiselle Mueller is no American
. She is fresh from Europe, where that sign means something, and she understood what the Negress meant when she made the horns at her—as it was intended she should.”
“Well,” I replied, “what’s your theory, then?”
“Simply this: The child who fled from Mademoiselle Mueller, the Negro nurse who made the evil sign at her, the people who passed her in the street and turned away—all had been planted in her path for the purpose of wearing down her resistance, of obtaining her goat, as you Americans say. But listen: They demanded of her only two thousand dollars. Why? Because they thought she could get no more. Yet so elaborate a system as theirs surely would not have been organized for the tiny sum they demanded. No, men do not take elephant guns into the fields to hunt butterflies. This poor girl is but one of many victims these rogues have preyed upon. The Stoeger woman is one of their scouts who happened to fall upon her, but they must have imposed on many other foolish women—men, too, undoubtlessly, and therefore—” He paused, his lips parted in an expectant grin, his little eyes gleaming with excitement and elation.
“All right; I’ll bite,” I replied. “Therefore—”
“Attend me, my friend,” he replied irrelevantly; “have you ever been in India?”
“No!”
“Very good. I will tell you things. In that land the natives are much plagued by tigers, is it not so?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Parfaitement. When the white man comes to rid a community of the striped devil of the jungle, what does he do?”
“Do?”
“But of course! He climbs into a convenient tree and waits, does he not, and beneath the tree, for bait, he tethers a luckless goat, is it not so?”
“Why—”
“Very good, my friend. You and I are the hunters. This gang of miscreants are the tigers. The unfortunate Mademoiselle Mueller is—”
“Good heavens, man!” I exclaimed, the full purport of his scheme dawning on me. “You don’t mean—”
“But certainly,” he nodded with perfect aplomb, “she is the goat who lures the tigers within range of our guns.”
His small, even teeth came together with a sharp, decided click. “Come, my friend,” he bade as we drew up before my house, “let us to bed. We shall have need of a good night’s sleep, for tomorrow—parbleu, I damn think we shall have much good sport before we take the pelts from off these two-legged tigers!”
3
A NEGRO DWARF, WHOSE EXCESSIVELY ugly features were rendered still less prepossessing by deep smallpox pits, opened the stained-glass-and-walnut door of the big house in Tecumseh Street where we called with Fräulein Mueller about four o’clock the following afternoon.
“Have you an appointment with the Sibyl?” he asked arrogantly as he ushered us into the rug-strewn hall and paused before a heavily curtained doorway.
“La, la,” de Grandin murmured wonderingly, “is she then a dentist or physician that one must arrange beforehand to consult her? We have no appointment, my friend; nevertheless, you will inform her that we desire to see her, and without unnecessary delay.”
The undersized servitor blinked in amazement. Callers on Madame Laïla were wont to arrive in humble mien, apparently, and the little Frenchman’s high-handed manner was a distinct novelty.
“Perhaps the Seeress will consent to see you, even though it’s usual to arrange for a sitting beforehand,” he replied in a slightly more cordial tone, presenting de Grandin with a pencil and pad of paper. “Kindly write your name on this tablet,” he requested, then, as the Frenchman complied: “Tear the sheet off and put it in your pocket. It is not necessary for the Sibyl to see it in order to know your name; we only ask that you write it as a guaranty of good faith. Await me here; I will see if you can be admitted.”
We had not long to wait, for the attendant returned almost before the curtains through which he had vanished had ceased to sway, and bowed formally to us. “The Sibyl will see you, Dr. de Grandin,” he announced, holding the draperies aside.
I gave a slight start as my companion was addressed by name, for I had seen him stow the folded sheet of paper on which he had scribbled his signature in his waistcoat pocket.
“Laïla the Seeress sees all and knows all,” the black dwarf informed me, as though reading my mind. “There are no secrets from her. This way, if you please.”
The room we entered was hung with unrelieved black and lighted only by a lamp with three burners suspended from the ceiling by a bronze chain. Slightly beyond the center of the apartment sat a young woman garbed in a long loose robe of some clinging black stuff with a headdress resembling a nun’s wimple of the same sable hue. Her face denoted she was about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, though, contrary to the usual feminine custom, she appeared anxious to seem older. Her long, excessively thin arms were bare, as were her neck and feet, and the contrast of her pale flesh and black draperies in the room was an eery one. About her waist was a wide belt of shining black leather clasped with a garnet fastening which flashed fitfully in the chamber’s half-light. In one hand she held a three-foot wand tipped with an ivory hand with outspread fingers, and she was seated on a sort of three-legged stool roughly resembling an ancient Greek tripod. From a brazen censer standing on the floor before her emanated penetrating, acrid odors, while the charcoal fire in the incense pot glowed and sank to dullness alternately as though blown upon by a bellows, though no instrument from which a draft could come was visible.
“What seek ye here, oh man?” she demanded in a hollow, sepulchral voice, fixing her deep-set eyes on de Grandin.
The little Frenchman bowed with continental courtesy. “Madame,” he explained, “we have learned this unfortunate young lady’s plight and have determined to aid her. The sum of two thousand dollars is required in order to save her the pain and humiliation of a most terrifying ordeal, and this sum we are prepared to advance, provided, of course, you can offer proper guaranty—”
“Thy money perish with thee!” rejoined the Seeress furiously, half rising from her tripod; then, as though relenting: “Stay, power over the spirits have I none, but I can direct thee to one whose power is infinite.
“Woman,” her glowing, cavernous orbs bored into the frightened blue eyes of the little Austrian girl, “if thou wouldst be freed from the demon who dominates thee, be at this house at precisely seven o’clock this evening. Come alone and bring the money with thee, and—perhaps—Martulus the Mighty will consent to have thee exorcized by proxy. I can promise thee naught, but what I can do, I will. Wilt thou come?”
“Ach, ja, ja!” Fräulein Mueller sobbed hysterically, clutching at the Sibyl’s black raiment. But the Seeress had risen from her stool and stalked majestically from the room, leaving us bewildered and alone.
“Mort d’une sèche,” de Grandin chuckled as we re-entered my study and regarded each other across the table, “but the entertainment they furnish at Madame Laïla’s is worthy of the Odéon! Behold how they assault the superstitions of the caller at the very front door with their trick of name-reading. Parbleu, but it is droll!”
“It seemed mysterious enough to me,” I admitted. “Do you know how it was done?”
“Tiens, my friend, am I a little, wondering boy to be mystified by the trickery of a fire-eater?” he returned with a grin. “But certainly, it was the simplest of tricks. The top sheet of the tablet whereon I wrote my name was almost as thin as tissue paper and the pencil was so hard I had to bear down heavily in order to leave any mark at all. The second sheet of paper was coated with a thin layer of wax, and when the colored man took the tablet inside with him they simply dusted lampblack over it, then blew it off and read what I had written where the blacking remained in the pencil’s impression in the wax. It is very simple.”
“Well!” I exclaimed in astonishment. “What made the charcoal brazier glow and subside—”
“Enough!” he interrupted. “We have more to do than explain the cheap wonders of a cheap fortune-teller’s establishment this
afternoon, my friend. Do you go for a walk, a nap or a game of solitaire. Me, I have much to do between now and seven o’clock. Be sure to have your car ready and waiting at the corner of Tecumseh and Irvine Streets at fifty minutes after six, if you please. I go to perform important duties.” And, lighting a cigarette, he picked up his hat and cane and set off for the corner pharmacy humming a snatch of sentimental tune:
Le souvenir, présent céleste,
Ombre des biens que l’on n’a plus,
Est encore un plaisir qui reste,
Après tons ceux qu’on a perdus.
4
FROM THE SHELTER OF a convenient areaway de Grandin and I watched the door of Laïla’s house as the city hall clock boomed out the hour of seven.
Falteringly, plainly in a state bordering on collapse, but more afraid of turning back than of unknown dangers before her, Fräulein Mueller mounted the mansion’s wide stone steps and rang the doorbell timidly.
As soon as the black dwarf had admitted her, de Grandin leaped up the area steps and hastened across the street to the big, black limousine parked before Laïla’s door. For a moment he fumbled about the car’s gas tank, then sped back to where I waited and riveted his gaze on the portal through which Fräulein Mueller had vanished.
We had not long to wait. Almost before the Frenchman had regained his ambush, the big door swung open and Laïla and the little Austrian girl emerged, descended the curving stairs and entered the waiting limousine. There was a buzzing, irritable hum of the self-starter, the spiteful swish of the powerful motor going into action; then, with a low, steady hum, the car glided from the curb and shot down the street with surprising speed.
The Horror on the Links Page 51