The body, when found, was clothed in the remnants of a gray ensemble with a gray fox neck-piece and a silver mesh bag was still looped about one of her wrists. In the purse were four ten-dollar bills and some silver, showing conclusively that robbery was not the motive for the crime.
The authorities are checking up the girl’s movements on the day before her death, and an arrest is promised within twenty-four hours.
“U’m?” I remarked, laying down the paper.
“U’m?” he mocked. “May the devil’s choicest imps fly away with your ‘u’ms,’ Friend Trowbridge. Come, get the car; we must be off.”
“Off where?”
“Beard of a small blue pig, where, indeed, but to the spot where this so unfortunate girl’s dead corpse was discovered?” Delay not, we must utilize what little light remains!”
The bunker where poor Lillian Conover’s broken body had been found was a banked sand-trap in the golf course about twenty-five yards from the highway. Throngs of morbidly curious sightseers had trampled the smoothly kept fairways all day, brazenly defying the “PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING” signs with which the links were posted.
To my surprise, de Grandin showed little annoyance at the multitude of footprints about, but turned at once to the business of surveying the terrain. After half an hour’s crawling back and forth across the turf, he rose and dusted his trouser knees with a satisfied sigh.
“Succès!” he exclaimed, raising his hand, thumb and forefinger clasped together on something which reflected the last rays of the sinking sun with an ominous red glow. “Behold, mon ami, I have found it; it is even as I suspected.”
Looking closely, I saw he held a red bead, about the size of a small hazelnut, the exact duplicate of the little globule Haroldine Arkright had discovered in her reticule.
“Well?” I asked.
“Barbe d’un lièvre, yes; it is very well, indeed,” he assented with a vigorous nod. “I was certain I should find it here, but had I not, I should have been greatly worried. Let us return, good friend; our quest is done.”
I knew better than to question him as we drove slowly home; but my ears were open wide for any chance remark he might drop. However, he vouchsafed no comment till we reached home; then he hurried to the study and put an urgent call through to the Arkright mansion. Five minutes later he joined me in the library, a smile of satisfaction on his lips. “It is as I thought,” he announced. “Mademoiselle Haroldine went shopping yesterday afternoon and the unfortunate Conover girl picked her pocket in the store. Forty dollars was stolen—forty dollars and a red bead!”
“She told you this?” I asked. “Why—”
”Non, non,” he shook his head. “She did tell me of the forty dollars, yes; the red bead’s loss I already knew. Recall, my friend, how was it the poor dead one was dressed, according to the paper?”
“Er—”
“Précisément. Her costume was a cheap copy, a caricature, if you please, of the smart ensemble affected by Mademoiselle Haroldine. Poor creature, she plied her pitiful trade of pocket-picking once too often, removed the contents of Haroldine’s purse, including the sign of vengeance which had been put there, le bon Dieu knows how, and walked forth to her doom. Those who watched for a gray-clad woman with the fatal red ball seized upon her and called down their winds of destruction, even as they did upon the camp of Monsieur Arkright in the mountains of Tibet long years ago. Yes, it is undoubtlessly so.”
“Do you think they’ll try again?” I asked. “They’ve already muffed things twice, and—”
“And, as your proverb has it, the third time is the charm,” he cut in. “Yes, my friend, they will doubtlessly try again, and again, until they have worked their will, or been diverted. We must bend our energies toward the latter consummation.”
“But that’s impossible!” I returned. “If those lamas are powerful enough to seek their victims out in France, England and this country and kill them, there’s not much chance for the Arkrights in flight, and it’s hardly likely we’ll be able to argue them out of their determination to exact payment for the theft of their—”
“Zut!” he interrupted with a smile. “You do talk much but say little, Friend Trowbridge. Me, I think it highly probable we shall convince the fish-faced gentlemen from Tibet they have more to gain by foregoing their vengeance than by collecting their debt.”
4
HARRISONVILLE’S NEWEST CITIZEN HAD delayed her debut with truly feminine capriciousness, and my vigil at City Hospital had been long and nerve-racking. Half an hour before I had resorted to the Weigand-Martin method of ending the performance, and, shaking with nervous reaction, took the red, wrinkled and astonishingly vocal morsel of humanity from the nurse’s hands and laid it in its mother’s arms; then, nearer exhaustion than I cared to admit, set out for home and bed.
A rivulet of light trickled under the study door and the murmur of voices mingled with the acrid aroma of de Grandin’s cigarette came to me as I let myself in the front door. “Eh bien, my friend,” the little Frenchman was asserting, “I damn realize that he who sups with the devil must have a long spoon; therefore I have requested your so invaluable advice.
“Trowbridge, mon vieux,” his uncannily sharp ears recognized my tread as I stepped softly into the hall, “may we trespass on your time a moment? It is of interest.”
With a sigh of regret for my lost sleep I put my obstetrical kit on a chair and pushed open the study door.
Opposite de Grandin was seated a figure which might have been the original of the queer little manikins with which Chinese ivory-carvers love to ornament their work. Hardly more than five feet tall, his girth was so great that he seemed to overflow the confines of the armchair in which he lounged. His head, almost totally void of hair, was nearly globular in shape, and the smooth, hairless skin seemed stretched drum-tight over the fat with which his skull was generously upholstered. Cheeks plump to the point of puffiness almost forced his oblique eyes shut; yet, though his eyes could scarcely be seen, it required no deep intuition to know that they always saw. Between his broad, flat nose and a succession of chins was set, incongruously a small, sensitive mouth, full-lipped but mobile, and drooping at the corners in a sort of perpetual sad smile.
“Dr. Feng,” de Grandin introduced, “this is my very good friend, Dr. Trowbridge. Trowbridge, my friend, this is Dr. Feng Yuin-han, whose wisdom is about to enable us to foil the machinations of those wicked ones who threaten Mademoiselle Haroldine. Proceed, if you please, cher ami,” he motioned the fat little Chinaman to continue the remark he had cut short to acknowledge the introduction.
“It is rather difficult to explain,” the visitor returned in a soft, unaccented voice, “but if we stop to remember that the bird stands midway between the reptile and the mammal we may perhaps understand why it is that the cock’s blood is most acceptable to those elemental forces which my unfortunate superstitious countrymen seek to propitiate in their temples. These malignant influences were undoubtedly potent in the days we refer to as the age of reptiles, and it may be the cock’s lineal descent from the pterodactyl gives his blood the quality of possessing certain emanations soothing to the tempest spirits. In any event, I think you would be well advised to employ such blood in your protective experiments.”
“And the ashes?” de Grandin put in eagerly.
“Those I can procure for you by noon tomorrow. Camphor wood is something of a rarity here, but I can obtain enough for your purpose, I am sure.”
“Bon, très bon!” the Frenchman exclaimed delightedly. “If those camel-faces will but have the consideration to wait our preparations, I damn think we shall tender them the party of surprise. Yes. Parbleu, we shall astonish them!”
SHORTLY AFTER NOON THE following day an asthmatic Ford delivery wagon bearing the picture of a crowing cockerel and the legend
P. GRASSO
Vendita di Pollame Vivi
on its weatherworn leatherette sides drew up before the house, and an Italia
n youth in badly soiled corduroys and with a permanent expression indicative of some secret sorrow climbed lugubriously from the driver’s seat, took a covered two-gallon can, obviously originally intended as a container for Quick’s Grade A Lard, from the interior of the vehicle and advanced toward the front porch.
“Docta de Grandin ’ere?” he demanded as Nora McGinnis, my household factotum, answered his ring.
“No, he ain’t,” the indignant Nora informed him, “an’ if he wuz, ’tis at th’ back door th’ likes o’ you should be inquirin’ fer ’im!”
The descendant of the Cæsars was in no mood for argument. “You taka dissa bucket an’ tella heem I breeg it—Pete Grasso,” he returned, thrusting the lard tin into the scandalized housekeeper’s hands. “You tella heem I sella da han, I sella da roosta, too, an’ I keela heem w’an my customers ask for it; but I no lika for sella da blood. No, santissimo Dio, not me! Perchè il sangue è la vita—how you say? Da blood, he are da life; I not lika for carry heem aroun’.”
“Howly Mither, is it blood ye’re afther givin’ me ter hold onto?” exclaimed Nora in rising horror. “Ye murtherin’ dago, come back ’ere an’ take yer divilish—”
But P. Grasso, dealer in live poultry, had cranked his decrepit flivver into a state of agitated life and set off down the street, oblivious of the choice insults which Mrs. McGinnis sent in pursuit of him.
“Sure, Dr. Trowbridge, sor,” she confided as she entered the consulting-room, the lard tin held at arm’s length, “’tis th’ fine gintleman Dr. de Grandin is entirely; but he do be afther doin’ some crazy things at times. Wud ye be afther takin’ charge o’ this mess o’ blood fer him? ’Tis meself as wouldn’t touch it wid a fifthy-foot pole, so I wouldn’t, once I’ve got it out o’ me hands!”
“Well,” I laughed as I espied a trim little figure turning into my front yard, “here he comes now. You can tell him your opinion of his practises if you want.”
“Ah, Docthor, darlin’, ye know I’d niver have th’ heart to scold ’im,” she confessed with a shamefaced grin. “Sure, he’s th’—”
The sudden hysterical cachinnation of the office telephone bell cut through her words, and I turned to the shrilling instrument.
For a moment there was no response to my rather impatient “Hello?”; then dimly, as one entering a darkened room slowly begins to descry objects about him, I made out the hoarse, rale-like rasp of deep-drawn, irregular breathing.
“Hello?” I repeated, more sharply.
“Dr. Trowbridge,” a low, almost breathless feminine voice whispered over the wire, “this is Haroldine Arkright. Can you come right over with Dr. de Grandin? Right away? Please. It—it’s here!”
“Right away!” I called back, and wheeled about, almost colliding with the little Frenchman, who had been listening over my shoulder.
“Quick, speed, haste!” he cried, as I related her message. “We must rush, we must hurry, we must fly, my friend! There is not a second to lose!”
As I charged down the hall and across the porch to my waiting car he stopped long enough to seize the lard tin from beside my desk and two bulky paper parcels from a hall chair, then almost trod on my heels, in his haste to enter the motor.
5
“NOT HERE, Monsieur, IF you please,” de Grandin ordered as he surveyed the living-room where Arkright and his daughter awaited us. “Is there no room without furniture, where we can meet the foeman face to face? I would fight over a flat terrain, if possible.”
“There’s a vacant bedroom on the next floor,” Arkright replied, “but—”
“No buts, if you please; let us ascend at once, immediately, right away!” the Frenchman interrupted. “Oh, make haste, my friends! Your lives depend upon it, I do assure you!”
About the floor of the empty room de Grandin traced a circle of chicken’s blood, painting a two-inch-wide ruddy border on the bare boards, and inside the outer circle he drew another, forcing Haroldine and her father within it. Then, with a bit of rag, he wiped a break in the outside line, and opening one of his paper parcels proceeded to scatter a thin layer of soft, white wood-ashes over the boards between the two circles.
“Now, mon vieux, if you will assist,” he turned to me, ripping open the second package and bringing to light a tin squirt-gun of the sort used to spray insecticide about a room infested with mosquitoes.
Dipping the nozzle of the syringe into the blood-filled lard tin, he worked the plunger back and forth a moment, then handed the contrivance to me. “Do you stand at my left,” he commanded, “and should you see footprints in the ashes, spray the fowl’s blood through the air above them. Remember, my friend, it is most important that you act with speed.”
“Footprints in the ashes—” I began incredulously, wondering if he had lost his senses, but a sudden current of glacial air sweeping through the room chilled me into silence.
“Ah! of the beautiful form is Mademoiselle, and who was I to know that cold wind of Tibetan devils would display it even more than this exquisite robe d’Orient?” said de Grandin.
Clad in a wondrous something, she explained fright had so numbed her that dressing had been impossible.
“When did you first know they were here?” de Grandin whispered, turning his head momentarily toward the trembling couple inside the inner circle, then darting a watchful glance about the room as though he looked for an invisible enemy to materialize from the air.
“I found the horrible red ball in my bath,” Haroldine replied in a low, trembling whisper. “I screamed when I saw it, and Daddy got up to come to me, and there was one of them under his ash-tray; so I telephoned your house right away, and—”
“S-s-st!” the Frenchman’s sibilant warning cut her short. “Garde à vous, Friend Trowbridge! Fixe!” As though drawing a saber from its scabbard he whipped the keen steel sword blade from his walking-stick and swished it whiplike through the air. “The cry is still ‘On ne passe pas!’ my friends!”
There was the fluttering of the tiny breeze along the bedroom floor, not like a breeze from outside, but an eery, tentative sort of wind, a wind which trickled lightly over the doorsill, rose to a blast, paused a moment in reconnaissance, then crept forward experimentally, as though testing the strength of our defenses.
A light, pit-pattering noise, as though an invisible mouse were circling the room, sounded from the shadows; then, to my horrified amazement, there appeared the print of a broad, naked foot in the film of ashes de Grandin had spread upon the floor!
Wave on wave of goose-flesh rose on my arms and along my neck as I watched the first print followed by a second, for there was no body above them, no sign nor trace of any alien presence in the place; only, as the keys of a mechanical piano are depressed as the strings respond to the notes of the reeling record, the smooth coating of ashes gave token of the onward march of some invisible thing.
“Quick, my friend, shoot where you see the prints!” de Grandin cried in a shrill, excited voice, and I thrust the plunger of my pump home, sending out a shower of ruddy spray.
As invisible ink takes form when the paper is held before a flame, there was suddenly outlined in the empty air before us the visage of—
“Sapristi! ’Tis Yama himself, King of Hell! God of Death! Holà, mon brave,” de Grandin called almost jocularly as the vision took form wherever the rain of fowl’s blood struck, “it seems we meet face to face, though you expected it not. Nom d’un porc, is this the courtesy of your country? You seem not overjoyed to meet me.
“Lower, Friend Trowbridge,” he called from the corner of his mouth, keeping wary eyes fixed upon the visitant, “aim for his legs; there is a trick I wish to show him.”
Obediently, I aimed the syringe at the footless footprints in the ashes, and a pair of broad, naked feet sprang suddenly into view.
“Bien,” the Frenchman commended, then with a sudden forward thrust of his foot engaged the masked Mongolian’s ankle in a grapevine twist and sent the fellow sprawling to the floor. The bl
ue and gold horror that was the face of Yama came off, disclosing a leering, slant-eyed lama.
“Now, Monsieur,” de Grandin remarked, placing his sword-point against the other’s throat directly above the palpitating jugular vein, “I damn think perhaps you will listen to reason, hein?”
The felled man gazed malignantly into his conqueror’s face, but neither terror nor surrender showed in his sullen eyes.
“Morbleu, he is a brave savage, this one,” de Grandin muttered, then lapsed into a wailing, singsong speech the like of which I had never heard.
A look of incredulous disbelief, then of interest, finally of amazed delight, spread over the copper-colored features of the fallen man as the little Frenchman progressed. Finally he answered with one or two coughing ejaculations, and at a sign from de Grandin rose to his feet and stood with his hands lifted above his head.
“Monsieur Arkright,” the Frenchman called without taking his eyes from his captive, “have the goodness to fetch the Pi Yü Stone without delay. I have made a treaty with this emissary of the lamas. If you return his treasure to him at once he will repair forthwith to his lamasery and trouble you and yours no more.”
“But what about my wife, and my children these fiends killed?” Arkright expostulated. “Are they to go scot-free? How do I know they’ll keep their word? I’m damned if I’ll return the Pi Yü!”
“You will most certainly be killed if you do not,” de Grandin returned coolly. “As to your damnation, I am a sinful man, and do not presume to pronounce judgment on you, though I fear the worst unless you mend your morals. Come, will you return this man his property, or do I release him and bid him do his worst?”
Muttering imprecations, Arkright stepped across the barrier of blood, left the room and returned in a few minutes with a small parcel wrapped in what appeared to be thin plates of gold.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 21