Coming toward us, walking heavily with the aid of a stout cane, was an unusually handsome man attired in pajamas and dressing gown, a sort of nightcap of flowered silk on his white head, slippers of softest morocco on his feet.
“You are a physician, sir?” he asked, glancing inquiringly at the medicine case in my hand.
“Yes,” I answered. “I am Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, from Harrisonville, and this is Dr. Jules de Grandin, of Paris, who is my guest.”
“Ah,” replied our host, “I am very, very glad to welcome you to Marston Hall, gentlemen. It so happens that one—er—my daughter, is quite ill, and I have been unable to obtain medical aid for her on account of my infirmities and the lack of a telephone. If I may trespass on your charity to attend my poor child, I shall be delighted to have you as my guests for the night. If you will lay aside your coats”—he paused expectantly. “Ah, thank you”—as we hung our dripping garments over a chair—“you will come this way, please?”
We followed him up the broad stairs and down an upper corridor to a tastefully furnished chamber where a young girl—fifteen years of age, perhaps—lay propped up with a pile of diminutive pillows.
“Anabel, Anabel, my love, here are two doctors to see you,” the old gentleman called softly.
The girl moved her fair head with a weary, peevish motion and whimpered softly in her sleep, but gave no further recognition of our presence.
“And what have been her symptoms, if you please, Monsieur?” de Grandin asked as he rolled back the cuffs of his jacket and prepared to make an examination.
“Sleep,” replied our host, “just sleep. Some time ago she suffered from influenza; lately she has been given to fits of protracted slumber from which I can not waken her. I fear she may have contracted sleeping sickness, sir. I am told it sometimes follows influenza.”
“H’m.” De Grandin passed his small, pliable hands rapidly over the girl’s cheeks in the region of the ears, felt rapidly along her neck over the jugular vein, then raised a puzzled glance to me. “Have you some laudanum and aconite in your bag, Friend Trowbridge?” he asked.
“There’s some morphine,” I answered, “and aconite; but no laudanum.”
“No matter,” he waved his hand impatiently, bustling over to the medicine case and extracting two small phials from it. “No matter, this will do as well. Some water, if you please, Monsieur,” he turned to the father, a medicine bottle in each hand.
“But, de Grandin”—I began, when a sudden kick from one of his slender, heavily-shod feet nearly broke my shin—“de Grandin, do you think that’s the proper medication?” I finished lamely.
“Oh, mais oui, undoubtedly,” he replied. “Nothing else would do in this case. Water, if you please, Monsieur,” he repeated, again addressing the father.
I STARED AT HIM IN ill-disguised amazement as he extracted a pellet from each of the bottles and quickly ground them to powder while the old gentleman filled a tumbler with water from the porcelain pitcher which stood on the chintz-draped wash-stand in the corner of the chamber. He was as familiar with the arrangement of my medicine case as I was, I knew, and knew that my phials were arranged by numbers instead of being labeled. Deliberately, I saw, he had passed over the morphine and aconite, and had chosen two bottles of plain, unmedicated sugar of milk pills. What his object was I had no idea, but I watched him measure out four teaspoonfuls of water, dissolve the powder in it, and pour the sham medication down the unconscious girl’s throat.
“Good,” he proclaimed as he washed the glass with meticulous care. “She will rest easily until the morning, Monsieur. When daylight comes we shall decide on further treatment. Will you now permit that we retire?” He bowed politely to the master of the house, who returned his courtesy and led us to a comfortably furnished room farther down the corridor.
“SEE HERE, DE GRANDIN,” I demanded when our host had wished us a pleasant good-night and closed the door upon us, “what was your idea in giving that child an impotent dose like that …?”
“S-s-sh!” he cut me short with a fierce whisper. “That young girl, mon ami, is no more suffering from encephalitis than you or I. There is no characteristic swelling of the face or neck, no diagnostic hardening of the jugular vein. Her temperature was a bit subnormal, it is true—but upon her breath I detected the odor of chloral hydrate. For some reason, good I hope, but bad I fear, she is drugged, and I thought it best to play the fool and pretend I believed the man’s statements. Pardieu, the fool who knows himself no fool has an immense advantage over the fool who believes him one, my friend.”
“But …”
“But me no buts, Friend Trowbridge; remember how the door of this house opened with none to touch it, recall how it closed behind us in the same way, and observe this, if you will.” Stepping softly, he crossed the room, pulled aside the chintz curtains at the window and tapped lightly on the frame which held the thick plate glass panes. “Regardez vous,” he ordered, tapping the frame a second time.
Like every other window I had seen in the house, this one was of the casement type, small panes of heavy glass being sunk into latticelike frames. Under de Grandin’s directions I tapped the latter, and found them not painted wood, as I had supposed, but stoutly welded and bolted metal. Also, to my surprise, I found the turnbuckles for opening the casement were only dummies, the metal frames being actually securely bolted to the stone sills. To all intents, we were as firmly incarcerated as though serving a sentence in the state penitentiary.
“The door …” I began, but he shook his head.
Obeying his gesture, I crossed the room and turned the handle lightly. It twisted under the pressure of my fingers, but, though we had heard no warning click of lock or bolt, the door itself was as firmly fastened as though nailed shut.
“Wh—why,” I asked stupidly, “what’s it all mean, de Grandin?”
“Je ne sais quoi,” he answered with a shrug, “but one thing I know: I like not this house, Friend Trowbridge. I …”
Above the hissing of the rain against the windows and the howl of the sea-wind about the gables, there suddenly rose a scream, wire-edged with inarticulate terror, freighted with utter, transcendental anguish of body and soul.
“Cordieu!” He threw up his head like a hound hearing the call of the pack from far away. “Did you hear it, too, Friend Trowbridge?”
“Of course,” I answered, every nerve in my body trembling in horripilation with the echo of the hopeless wail.
“Pardieu,” he repeated, “I like this house less than ever, now! Come, let us move this dresser before our door. It is safer that we sleep behind barricades this night, I think.”
We blocked the door, and I was soon sound asleep.
“TROWBRIDGE, TROWBRIDGE, MY FRIEND”—DE Grandin drove a sharp elbow into my ribs—“wake up, I beseech you. Name of a green goat, you lie like one dead, save for your so abominable snoring!”
“Eh?” I answered sleepily, thrusting myself deeper beneath the voluminous bedclothes. Despite the unusual occurrences of the night I was tired to the point of exhaustion, and fairly drunk with sleep.
“Up; arise, my friend,” he ordered, shaking me excitedly. “The coast is clear, I think, and it is high time we did some exploring.”
“Rats!” I scoffed, disinclined to leave my comfortable couch. “What’s the use of wandering about a strange house to gratify a few unfounded suspicions? The girl might have been given a dose of chloral hydrate, but the chances are her father thought he was helping her when he gave it. As for these trick devices for opening and locking doors, the old man apparently lives here alone and has installed these mechanical aids to lessen his work. He has to hobble around with a cane, you know.”
“Ah!” my companion assented sarcastically. “And that scream we heard, did he install that as an aid to his infirmities, also?”
“Perhaps the girl woke up with a nightmare,” I hazarded, but he made an impatient gesture.
“Perhaps the moon is composed of green
cheese, also,” he replied. “Up, up and dress; my friend. This house should be investigated while yet there is time. Attend me: But five minutes ago, through this very window, I did observe Monsieur our host, attired in a raincoat, depart from his own front door, and without his cane. Parbleu, he did skip, as agilely as any boy, I assure you. Even now he is almost at the spot where we abandoned your automobile. What he intends doing there I know not. What I intend doing I know full well. Do you accompany me or not?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” I agreed, crawling from the bed and slipping into my clothes. “How are you going to get past that locked door?”
He flashed me one of his sudden smiles, shooting the points of his little blond mustache upward like the horns of an inverted crescent. “Observe,” he ordered, displaying a short length of thin wire. “In the days when a woman’s hair was still her crowning glory, what mighty deeds a lady could encompass with a hairpin! Pardieu, there was one little grisette in Paris who showed me some tricks in the days before the war! Regard me, if you please.”
Deftly he thrust the pliable loop of wire into the key’s hole, twisting it tentatively back and forth, at length pulling it out and regarding it carefully. “Très bien,” he muttered as he reached into an inside pocket, bringing out a heavier bit of wire.
“See,” he displayed the finer wire, “with this I take an impression of that lock’s tumblers, now”—quickly he bent the heavier wire to conform to the waved outline of the lighter loop—“voilà, I have a key!”
And he had. The lock gave readily to the pressure of his improvised key, and we stood in the long, dark hall, staring about us half curiously, half fearfully.
“This way, if you please,” de Grandin ordered; “first we will look in upon la jeunesse, to see how it goes with her.”
We walked on tiptoe down the corridor, entered the chamber where the girl lay, and approached the bed.
SHE WAS LYING WITH her hands folded upon her breast in the manner of those composed for their final rest, her wide, periwinkle-blue eyes staring sightlessly before her, the short, tightly curled ringlets of her blonde, bobbed hair surrounding her drawn, pallid face like a golden nimbus encircling the ivory features of a saint in some carved ikon.
My companion approached the bed softly, placing one hand on the girl’s wrist with professional precision. “Temperature low, pulse weak,” he murmured, checking off her symptoms. “Complexion pale to the point of lividity—ha, now for the eyes; sleeping, her pupils should have been contracted, while they should now be dilate—Dieu de Dieu! Trowbridge, my friend, come here.
“Look,” he commanded, pointing to the apathetic girl’s face. “Those eyes—grand Dieu, those eyes! It is sacrilege, nothing less.”
I looked into the girl’s face, then started back with a half-suppressed cry of horror. Asleep, as she had been when we first saw her, the child had been pretty to the point of loveliness. Her features were small and regular, clean-cut as those of a face in a cameo, the tendrils of her light-yellow hair had lent her a dainty, ethereal charm comparable to that of a Dresden china shepherdess. It had needed but the raising of her delicate, long-lashed eyelids to give her face the animation of some laughing sprite playing truant from fairyland.
Her lids were raised now, but the eyes they unveiled were no clear, joyous windows of a tranquil soul. Rather, they were the peepholes of a spirit in torment. The irises were a lovely shade of blue, it is true, but the optics themselves were things of horror. Rolling grotesquely to right and left, they peered futilely in opposite directions, lending to her sweet, pale face the half-ludicrous, wholly hideous expression of a bloating frog.
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, turning from the deformed girl with a feeling of disgust akin to nausea; “What a terrible affliction!”
De Grandin made no reply, but bent over the girl’s still form, gazing intently at her malformed eyes. “It is not natural,” he announced. “The muscles have been tampered with, and tampered with by someone who is a master hand at surgery. Will you get me your syringe and some strychnine, Friend Trowbridge? This poor one is still unconscious.”
I HASTENED TO OUR BEDROOM and returned with the hypodermic and stimulant, then stood beside him, watching eagerly, as he administered a strong injection.
The girl’s narrow chest fluttered as the powerful drug took effect, and the pale lids dropped for a second over her repulsive eyes. Then, with a sob which was half moan, she attempted to raise herself on her elbow, fell back again, and, with apparent effort, gasped, “The mirror, let me have the mirror! Oh, tell me it isn’t true; tell me it was a trick of some sort. Oh, the horrible thing I saw in the glass couldn’t have been I. Was it?”
“Tiens, ma petite,” de Grandin replied, “but you speak in riddles. What is it you would know?”
“He—he”—the girl faltered weakly, forcing her trembling lips to frame the words—“that horrible old man showed me a mirror a little while ago and said the face in it was mine. Oh, it was horrible, horrible!”
“Eh? What is this?” de Grandin demanded on a rising note. “‘He’? ‘Horrible old man’? Are you not his daughter? Is he not your father?”
“No,” the girl gasped, so low her denial was scarcely audible. “I was driving home from Mackettsdale last—oh, I forget when it was, but it was at night—and my tires punctured. I—I think there must have been glass on the road, for the shoes were cut to ribbons. I saw the light in this house and came to ask for help. An old man—oh, I thought he was so nice and kind!—let me in and said he was all alone here and about to eat dinner, and asked me to join him. I ate some—some—oh, I don’t remember what it was—and the next thing I knew he was standing by my bed, holding a mirror up to me and telling me it was my face I saw in the glass. Oh, please, please, tell me it was some terrible trick he played on me. I’m not truly hideous, am I?”
“Morbleu!” de Grandin muttered softly, tugging at the ends of his mustache. “What is all this?”
To the girl he said: “But of course not. You are like a flower, Mademoiselle. A little flower that dances in the wind. You …”
“And my eyes, they aren’t—they aren’t”—she interrupted with piteous eagerness—“ please tell me they aren’t …”
“Mais non, ma chère,” he assured her. “Your eyes are like the pervenche that mirrors the sky in springtime. They are …”
“Let—let me see the mirror, please,” she interrupted in an anxious whisper. “I’d like to see for myself, if you—oh, I feel all weak inside …” She lapsed back against the pillow, her lids mercifully veiling the hideously distorted eyes and restoring her face to tranquil beauty.
“Cordieu!” de Grandin breathed. “The chloral re-asserted itself none too soon for Jules de Grandin’s comfort, Friend Trowbridge. Sooner would I have gone to the rack than have shown that pitiful child her face in a mirror.”
“But what’s it all mean?” I asked. “She says she came here, and …” “And the rest remains for us to find out, I think,” he replied evenly. “Come, we lose time, and to lose time is to be caught, my friend.”
DE GRANDIN LED THE way down the hall, peering eagerly into each door we passed in search of the owner’s chamber, but before his quest was satisfied he stopped abruptly at the head of the stairs. “Observe, Friend Trowbridge,” he ordered, pointing a carefully manicured forefinger to a pair of buttons, one white, one black, set in the wall. “Unless I am more mistaken than I think I am, we have here the key to the situation—or at least to the front door.”
He pushed vigorously at the white button, then ran to the curve of the stairs to note the result.
Sure enough, the heavy door swung open on its hinges of cast bronze, letting gusts of rain drive into the lower hall.
“Pardieu,” he ejaculated, “we have here the open sesame; let us see if we possess the closing secret as well! Press the black button, Trowbridge, my friend, while I watch.”
I did his bidding, and a delighted exclamation told me the door had clos
ed.
“Now what?” I asked, joining him on the stairway.
“U’m,” he pulled first one, then the other end of his diminutive mustache meditatively; “the house possesses its attractions, Friend Trowbridge, but I believe it would be well if we went out to observe what our friend, le vieillard horrible, does. I like not to have one who shows young girls their disfigured faces in mirrors near our conveyance.”
Slipping into our raincoats we opened the door, taking care to place a wad of paper on the sill to prevent its closing tightly enough to latch, and scurried out into the storm.
As we left the shelter of the porch a shaft of indistinct light shone through the rain, as my car was swung from the highway and headed toward a depression to the left of the house.
“Parbleu, he is a thief, this one!” de Grandin exclaimed excitedly. “Holà, Monsieur!” He ran forward, swinging his arms like a pair of semaphores. “What sort of business is it you make with our moteur?”
The wailing of the storm tore the words from his lips and hurled them away, but the little Frenchman was not to be thwarted. “Pardieu,” he gasped, bending his head against the wind-driven rain, “I will stop the scoundrel if—nom d’un coq, he has done it!”
Even as he spoke the old man flung open the car’s forward door and leaped, allowing the machine to go crashing down a low, steep embankment into a lake of slimy swamp-mud.
For a moment the vandal stood contemplating his work, then burst into a peal of wild laughter more malignant than any profanity.
“Parbleu, robber, Apache! You shall laugh from the other side of your mouth!” de Grandin promised, as he made for the old man.
But the other seemed oblivious of our presence. Still chuckling at his work, he turned toward the house, stopped short as a sudden heavy gust of wind shook the trees along the roadway, then started forward with a yell of terror as a great branch, torn bodily from a towering oak tree came crashing toward the earth.
He might as well have attempted to dodge a meteorite. Like an arrow from the bow of divine justice, the great timber hurtled down, pinning his frail body to the ground like a worm beneath a laborer’s brogan.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 7