The color which had come into Ned’s cheeks as the fiery cognac warmed his veins drained out again, leaving him as ghastly as a corpse. “Did Nella hear me?” he asked hoarsely. “Did I blab—”
“Compose yourself, Monsieur,” de Grandin bade. “She heard nothing, but it would be well if we heard more. I think I understand your difficulty. I am a physician and a Frenchman and no prude. This renunciation which you make is but the noble gesture. You have been unfortunate, and now you fear. Have courage; no infection is so bad there is no remedy—”
Ned’s laugh was hard and brittle as the tinkle of a breaking glass. “I only wish it were the thing you think,” he interrupted. “I’d have you give me salvarsan2 and see what happened; but there isn’t any treatment I can take for this. I’m not delirious, and I’m not crazy, gentlemen; I know just what I’m saying. Insane as it may sound, I’m pledged to the dead, and there isn’t any way to bail me out.”
“Eh, what is it you say?” de Grandin’s small blue eyes were gleaming with the light of battle as he caught the occult implication in Ned’s declaration. “Pledged to the dead? Comment cela?”
Ned raised himself unsteadily and balanced on the table edge.
“It happened in New Orleans last winter,” he answered. “I’d finished up my business and was on the loose, and thought I’d walk alone through the Vieux Carré—the old French Quarter. I’d had dinner at Antoine’s and stopped around at the Old Absinthe House for a few drinks, then strolled down to the French Market for a cup of chicory coffee and some doughnuts. Finally I walked down Royal Street to look at Madame Lalaurie’s old mansion; that’s the famous haunted house, you know. I wanted to see if I could find a ghost. Good Lord, I wanted to!
“The moon was full that night, but the house was still as old Saint Denis Cemetery, so after peering through the iron grilles that shut the courtyard from the street for half an hour or so, I started back toward Canal Street.
“I’d almost reached Bienville Street when just as I passed one of those funny two-storied iron-grilled balconies so many of the old houses have, I heard something drop on the sidewalk at my feet. It was a japonica, one of those rose-like flowers they grow in the courtyard gardens down there. When I looked up, a girl was laughing at me from the second story of the balcony. ‘Mon fleuron, monsieur, s’il vous plait,’ she called, stretching down a white arm for the bloom.
“The moonlight hung about her like a veil of silver tissue, and I could see her plainly as though it had been noon. Most New Orleans girls are dark. She was fair; her hair was very fine and silky and about the color of a frosted chestnut-burr. She wore it in a long bob with curls around her face and neck, and I knew without being told that those ringlets weren’t put in with a hot iron. Her face was pale, colorless and fine-textured as a magnolia petal, but her lips were brilliant crimson. There was something reminiscent of those ladies you see pictured in Directoire prints about her; small, regular features, straight, white, high-waisted gown tied with a wide girdle underneath her bosom, low, round-cut neck and tiny, ball-puff sleeves that left her lovely arms uncovered to the shoulder. She was like Rose Beauharnais or Madame de Fontenay, except for her fair hair, and her eyes. Her eyes were like an Eastern slave’s, languishing and passionate, even when she laughed. And she was laughing then, with a throaty, almost caressing laugh as I tossed the flower up to her and she leant across the iron railing, snatching at it futilely as it fell just short of reach.
“‘C’est sans profit,’ she laughed at last. “Your skill is too small or my arm too short, m’sieur. Bring it up to me.’
“‘You mean for me to come up there?’ I asked.
“‘But certainly. I have teeth, but will not bite you—maybe.’
“The street door to the house was open; I pushed it back, groped my way along a narrow hall, and climbed a flight of winding stairs. She was waiting for me on the balcony, lovelier, close up, if that were possible, than when I’d seen her from the sidewalk. Her gown was China silk, so sheer and clinging that the shadow of her charming figure showed against its rippling folds like a lovely silhouette; the sash which bound it was a six-foot length of rainbow ribbon tied coquettishly beneath her shoulders and trailing in fringed ends almost to her dress-hem at the back; her feet were stockingless and shod with sandals fastened with cross-straps of purple grosgrain laced about the ankles. Save for the small gold rings that scintillated in her ears, she wore no ornaments of any kind.
“‘Mon fleur, m’sieur,’ she ordered haughtily, stretching out her hand; then her eyes lighted with sudden laughter and she turned her back to me, bending her head forward. “But no, it fell into your hands; it is that you must put in its place again,’ she ordered, pointing to a curl where she wished the flower set. ‘Come, m’sieur, I wait upon you.’
“On the settee by the wall a guitar lay. She picked it up and ran her slim, pale fingers twice across the strings, sounding a soft, melancholy chord. When she began to sing, her words were slurred and languorous, and I had trouble understanding them; for the song was ancient when Bienville turned the first spadeful of earth that marked the ramparts of New Orleans:
“‘O knights of gay Toulouse
And sweet Beaucaire,
Greet me my own true love
And speak him fair…’
“Her voice had the throaty, velvety quality one hears in people of the Southern countries, and the words of the song seemed fairly to yearn with the sadness and passionate longing of the love-bereft. But she smiled as she put by her instrument, a curious smile, which heightened the mystery of her face, and her wide eyes seemed suddenly half questing, half drowsy, as she asked, ‘Would you ride off upon your grim, pale horse and leave poor little Julie d’Ayen famishing for love, m’sieur?’
“‘Ride off from you?’ I answered gallantly. ‘How can you ask?’ A verse from Burns came to me:
Then fare thee well, my bonny lass.
And fare thee well awhile.
And I will come to thee again
An it were ten thousand mile.
“There was something avid in the look she gave me. Something more than mere gratified vanity shone in her eyes as she turned her face up to me in the moonlight. ‘You mean it?’ she demanded in a quivering, breathless voice.
“‘Of course,’ I bantered. ‘How could you doubt it?’
“‘Then swear it—seal the oath with blood!’
“Her eyes were almost closed, and her lips were lightly parted as she leant toward me. I could see the thin, white line of tiny, gleaming teeth behind the lush red of her lips; the tip of a pink tongue swept across her mouth, leaving it warmer, moister, redder than before; in her throat a small pulse throbbed palpitatingly. Her lips were smooth and soft as the flower-petals in her hair, but as they crushed on mine they seemed to creep about them as though endowed with a volition of their own. I could feel them gliding almost stealthily, searching greedily, it seemed, until they covered my entire mouth. Then came a sudden searing burn of pain which passed as quickly as it flashed across my lips, and she seemed inhaling deeply, desperately, as though to pump the last faint gasp of breath up from my lungs. A humming sounded in my ears; everything went dark around me as if I had been plunged in some abysmal flood; a spell of dreamy lassitude was stealing over me when she pushed me from her so abruptly that I staggered back against the iron railing of the gallery.
“I gasped and fought for breath like a winded swimmer coming from the water, but the half-recaptured breath seemed suddenly to catch itself unbidden in my throat, and a tingling chill went rippling up my spine. The girl had dropped down to her knees, staring at the door which let into the house, and as I looked I saw a shadow writhe across the little pool of moonlight which lay upon the sill. Three feet or so in length it was, thick through as a man’s wrist, the faint light shining dully on its scaly armor and disclosing the forked lightning of its darting tongue. It was a cottonmouth—a water moccasin—deadly as a rattlesnake, but more dangerous, for it sounds no warn
ing before striking and can strike when only half coiled. How it came there on the second-story gallery of a house so far from any swampland I had no means of knowing, but there it lay, bent in the design of a double S, its wedge-shaped head swaying on upreared neck a scant six inches from the girl’s soft bosom, its forked tongue darting deathly menace.
“Half paralyzed with fear and loathing, I stood there in a perfect ecstasy of horror, not daring to move hand or foot lest I aggravate the reptile into striking. But my terror changed to stark amazement as my senses slowly registered the scene. The girl was talking to the snake, and—it listened as a person might have done!
“‘Non, non, grand’tante; halte là!’ she whispered. ‘Cela est à moi—il est dévoué!”
“The serpent seemed to pause uncertainly, grudgingly, as though but half convinced, then shook its head from side to side, much as an aged person might when only half persuaded by a youngster’s argument. Finally, silently as a shadow, it slithered back again into the darkness of the house.
“Julie bounded to her feet and put her hands upon my shoulders.
“‘You mus’ go, my friend,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Quickly, ere she comes again. It was not easy to convince her; she is old and very doubting. O, I am afraid—afraid!’
“She hid her face against my arm, and I could feel the throbbing of her heart against me. Her hands stole upward to my cheeks and pressed them between palms as cold as graveyard clay as she whispered, “Look at me, mon beau.’ Her eyes were closed, her lips were slightly parted, and beneath the arc of her long lashes I could see the glimmer of fast-forming tears. ‘Embrasse moi’, she commanded in a trembling breath. ‘Kiss me and go quickly, but O mon chèr, do not forget poor little foolish Julie d’Ayen who has put her trust in you. Come to me again tomorrow night!”
“I was reeling as from vertigo as I walked back to the Greenwald, and the bartender looked at me suspiciously when I ordered a sazarac. They’ve a strict rule against serving drunken men at that hotel. The liquor stung my lips like liquid flame, and I put the cocktail down half finished. When I set the fan to going and switched the light on in my room, I looked into the mirror and saw two little beads of fresh, bright blood upon my lips. ‘Good Lord!’ I murmured stupidly as I brushed the blood away; ‘she bit me!’
“It all seemed so incredible that if I had not seen the blood upon my mouth I’d have thought I suffered from some lunatic hallucination, or one too many frappes at the Absinthe House. Julie was as quaint and out of time as a Directoire print, even in a city where time stands still as it does in old New Orleans. Her costume, her half-shy boldness, her—this was simply madness, nothing less!—her conversation with that snake!
“What was it she had said? My French was none too good, and in the circumstances it was hardly possible to pay attention to her words, but if I’d understood her, she’d declared, ‘He’s mine; he has dedicated himself to me!’ And she’d aaddressed that crawling horror as grand’tante—great-aunt!’
“‘Feller, you’re as crazy as a cockroach!’ I admonished my reflection in the mirror, ‘But I know what’ll cure you. You’re taking the first train north tomorrow morning, and if I ever catch you in the Vieux Carré again, I’ll—’
“A sibilating hiss, no louder than the noise made by steam escaping from a kettle-spout, sounded close beside my foot. There on the rug, coiled in readiness to strike, was a three-foot cottonmouth, head swaying viciously from side to side, wicked eyes shining in the bright light from the chandelier. I saw the muscles in the creature’s fore-part swell, and in a sort of horror-trance I watched its head dart forward, but, miraculously, it stopped its stroke halfway and drew its head back, turning to glance menacingly at me first from one eye, then the other. Somehow, it seemed to me, the thing was playing with me as a cat might play a mouse, threatening, intimidating, letting me know it was master of the situation and could kill me any time it wished, but deliberately refraining from the death-stroke.
“With one leap I was in the middle of my bed, and when a squad of bellboys came running in response to the frantic call for help I telephoned, they found me crouched against the headboard, almost wild with fear.
“They turned the room completely inside out, rolling back the rugs, probing into chairs and sofa, emptying the bureau drawers, even taking down the towels from the bathroom rack, but nowhere was there any sign of the water moccasin that had terrified me. At the end of fifteen minutes’ search, they accepted half a dollar each and went grinning from the room. I knew it would be useless to appeal for help again, for I heard one whisper to another as they paused outside my door: ‘It ain’t right to let them Yankees loose in N’Orleans; they don’t know how to hold their licker.’
“I didn’t take a train next morning. Somehow, I’d an idea—crazy as it seemed—that my promise to myself and the sudden, inexplicable appearance of the snake beside my foot were related in some way. Just after luncheon, I thought I’d put the theory to a test.
“‘Well,’ I said aloud, ‘I guess I might as well start packing. Don’t want to let the sun go down and find me here—’
“My theory was right. I hadn’t finished speaking when I heard the warning hiss, and there, poised ready for the strike, the snake was coiled before the door. And it was no phantom, either, no figment of an overwrought imagination. It lay upon a rug the hotel management had placed before the door to take the wear of constant passage from the carpet, and I could see the high pile of the rug crushed down beneath its weight. It was flesh and scales—and fangs!—and it coiled and threatened me in my twelfth-floor room in the bright sunlight of the afternoon.
“Little chills of terror chased each other up my back, and I could feel the short hairs on my neck grow stiff and scratch against my collar, but I kept myself in hand. Pretending to ignore the loathsome thing, I flung myself upon the bed.
“‘Oh, well,’ I said aloud, ‘there really isn’t any need of hurrying. I promised Julie that I’d come to her tonight, and I mustn’t disappoint her.’ Half a minute later I roused myself upon my elbow and glanced toward the door. The snake was gone.
“‘Here’s a letter for you, Mr. Minton,’ said the desk clerk as I paused to leave my key. The note was on gray paper edged with silver-gilt and very highly scented. The penmanship was tiny, stilted and ill-formed, as though the author were unused to writing, but I could make it out:
Adoré
Meet me in St. Dents Cemetery at sunset.
A vous de coeur pour l’éternité.
Julie
“I stuffed the note back in my pocket. The more I thought about the whole affair, the less I liked it. The flirtation had begun harmlessly enough, and Julie was as lovely and appealing as a figure in a fairy-tale, but there are unpleasant aspects to most fairy-tales, and this was no exception. That scene last night when she had seemed to argue with a full-grown cottonmouth, and the mysterious appearance of the snake whenever I spoke of breaking my promise to go back to her—there was something too much like black magic in it. Now she addressed me as her adored and signed herself for eternity; finally named a graveyard as our rendezvous. Things had become a little bit too thick.
“I was standing at the corner of Canal and Baronne Streets, and crowds of office workers and late shoppers elbowed past me. ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll meet her in a cemetery, or anywhere else,’ I muttered. ‘I’ve had enough of all this nonsense—’
“A woman’s shrill scream, echoed by a man’s hoarse shout of terror, interrupted me. On the marble pavement of Canal Street, with half a thousand people bustling by, lay coiled a three-foot water moccasin. Here was proof. I’d seen it twice in my room at the hotel, but I’d been alone each time. Some form of weird hypnosis might have made me think I saw it, but the screaming woman and the shouting man, these panic-stricken people in Canal Street, couldn’t all be victims of a spell which had been cast on me. ‘All right, I’ll go,’ I almost shouted, and instantly, as though it been but a puff of smoke, the snake was gone,
the half-fainting woman and a crowd of curious bystanders asking what was wrong left to prove I had not been the victim of some strange delusion.
“Old Saint Denis Cemetery lay drowsing in the blue, faint twilight. It has no graves as we know them, for when the city was laid out it was below sea-level and bodies were stored away in crypts set row on row like lines of pigeon-holes in walls as thick as those of mediaeval castles. Grass-grown aisles run between the rows of vaults, and the effect is a true city of the dead with narrow streets shut in by close-set houses. The rattle of a trolley car in Rampart Street came to me faintly as I walked between the rows of tombs; from the river came the mellow-throated bellow of a steamer’s whistle, but both sounds were muted as though heard from a great distance. The tomb-lined bastions of Saint Denis hold the present out as firmly as they hold the memories of the past within.
“Down one aisle and up another I walked, the close-clipped turf deadening my footfalls so I might have been a ghost come back to haunt the ancient burial ground, but nowhere was there sign or trace of Julie. I made the circuit of the labyrinth and finally paused before one of the more pretentious tombs.
“‘Looks as if she’d stood me up,’ I murmured. ‘If she has, I have a good excuse to—’
“‘But non, mon coeur, I have not disappointed you!’ a soft voice whispered in my ear. ‘See, I am here.’
“I think I must have jumped at sound of her greeting, for she clapped her hands delightedly before she put them on my shoulders and turned her face up for a kiss. ‘Silly one,’ she chided, ‘did you think your Julie was unfaithful?’
“I put her hands away as gently as I could, for her utter self-surrender was embarrassing. ‘Where were you?’ I asked, striving to make neutral conversation. ‘I’ve been prowling ’round this graveyard for the last half-hour and came through this aisle not a minute ago, but I didn’t see you—’
The Occult Detective Megapack Page 84