The Best of Jules de Grandin

by Seabury Quinn

  “I followed the family tradition and studied at the Sorbonne when my undergraduate work at Oxford was completed. It was while I lived in Paris I met Inocencia. She was an Argentina—a native of the Argentine, a dancer in a cabaret, and as lovely a creature as ever set a man’s blood afire. All the students were mad about her, but Ruiz, a fellow-countryman of hers, and I were the most favored of her coterie of suitors.

  “Leandro Ruiz was a medical student, the son of an enormously wealthy cattleman, who took to surgery from an innate love of blood and suffering rather than from any wish to serve humanity or earn a livelihood, for he already had more money than he could ever spend, and as for humanitarianism, the devil himself had more of it.

  “One night as I sat studying, there came a terrified rapping at my door, and Inocencia fell, rather than ran, into my rooms. She had struggled through the raging sleet-storm from Montmartre, and Ruiz was hot behind her. He had accosted her as she left the café, and demanded that she come forthwith and consort with him—there never was an honorable thought in the scoundrel’s mind, and what he could not buy he was accustomed to take by force.

  “I had barely time to lock and bar the door when Ruiz and three hired bullies came clamoring up the stairs and battered on the panels like werewolves shut out from their prey. Ha, I left my mark on him that night! As he stooped down to bawl obscenities through the keyhole I thrust, a sword-cane through the lock and blinded him in one eye. Despite his wound he hung around the door nearly all night, and it was not till two gendarmes threatened him and his companions with arrest for public disturbance that they slunk away.

  “Next morning Inocencia and I arranged to be married, and as soon as the formalities of French-law could be complied with, we were wed and made a tour of Europe for our honeymoon. When we returned to Paris we heard Ruiz had contracted pneumonia the night he raged outside my quarters in the sleet, and had died and been buried in St. Sulpice. Ha, you may be sure we shed no tears at the news!

  “I was nearly thirty, Inocencia barely twenty, when we married. It was not till ten years later that Clarimonde was born, and when at last we had a child to crown our union we thought our cup of joy was surely overflowing. God!” He paused, poured himself a goblet of wine and drained it to the bottom before continuing:

  “No hired bonne was good enough to take our darling out; Inocencia herself accompanied her on every outing and filled the afternoons with recitals of the thousand cunning things our baby did and said while toddling in the park.

  “One day they did not return. I was frantic and set the entire gendarmerie by the ears to search for them. Nowhere could we find a trace till finally my wife’s dead body, partly decomposed, but still identifiable, was rescued from the Seine. Police investigation disclosed she had been murdered—her throat severed and her heart cut out, but not before a hundred and more disfiguring wounds had been inflicted with a knife.

  “My baby’s fate was still unknown, and I lived for weeks and months in a frenzy of mingled despair and hope till—” Again he paused; once more he filled and drained a wine-glass. Then: “At last my fears were set at rest. At daylight one morning the thin, pitiful wailing of a little frightened child sounded at my door, and when the concierge went to investigate she found Clarimonde lying there in a basket. Clarimonde, my Clarimonde, her mother’s sole remaining souvenir, dressed in the baby garments she had worn the day she vanished, positively identified by the little, heart-shaped birthmark on the under side of her left arm, but, my God, how altered! Her face, gentlemen, was as you see it now, a dreadful, disfigured, mutilated mask of horror, warped and carved and twisted almost out of human semblance, save as the most grotesque caricature resembles the thing it parodies. And with her was a letter, a letter from Leandro Ruiz. The fiend had caused the report of his death to be given us, and bided his time through all the years, always studying and experimenting in plastic surgery that he might one day carry out his terrible revenge, watching Inocencia and Clarimonde when they least suspected it, familiarizing himself with their habits and ways so that he might best set his apaches on them and kidnap them when the time was ripe for his devil’s vengeance. After dishonoring and torturing Inocencia, he killed her slowly—cut her heart from her living breast before he slashed her throat. The next three months he spent carefully disfiguring the features of our baby, adding horror on horror to the poor, helpless face as though he were a sculptor working out the details of a statue with slow, painstaking care. At last, when even he could think of nothing more to add to the devastation he had made, he laid the poor, mutilated mite on my doorstep with a note describing his acts, and containing the promise that all his life and all his boundless wealth would be devoted to making his revenge complete.

  “You wonder how he could do more? Gentlemen, you can not think how vile humanity can be until you’ve known Leandro Ruiz. Listen: When Clarimonde reaches her twenty-first year, he said he would come for her. If death had taken him meanwhile, he would leave a sum of money to pay those who carried out his will. He, or his hirelings, would come for her, and though she hid behind locked doors and armed men, they would ravish her away, cut out her tongue to render her incapable of speech, then exhibit her for hire in a freak show—make my poor, disfigured baby girl the object of yokels’ gawking curiosity throughout the towns and provinces of Europe and South America!

  “I fled from Paris as Lot fled from Sodom, and brought my poor, maimed child to Ducharme Hall. Here I secured Minerva and Poseidon for servants, because both were blind and could not let fall any remarks which would make Clarimonde realize her deformity. I secured blind teachers and tutors; she is as well educated as any seminary graduate; every luxury that money could buy has been given her, but never has there been a mirror in Ducharme Hall, or anything which could serve as a mirror, since we came here from Paris.

  “Now, gentlemen, perhaps you understand the grounds for my suspicions? Clarimonde was twenty-one this month.”

  Jules de Grandin twisted the fine, blond hairs of his diminutive mustache until they stood out in twin needle-points each side of his mouth, and fixed a level, unwinking stare upon our host. “Monsieur,” he said, “a moment hence I was all for going to the North; I would have argued to the death against a moment’s delay which kept me from performing the necessary work to restore Mademoiselle Clarimonde’s features to their pristine loveliness. Now, parbleu, five men and ten little boys could not drag me from this spot. We shall wait here, Monsieur, we shall stay here, rooted as firmly as the tallest oak in yonder forest, until this Monsieur Ruiz and his corps of assassins appear. Then”—he twisted the ends of his mustache still more fiercely, and the lightning-flashes in his little, round eyes were cold as arctic ice and hot as volcanic fire—“then, by damn, I think those seventy-six-thousand-times accursed miscreants shall find that he who would step into the hornet’s nest would be advised to wear heavy boots. Yes; I have said it.”

  FROM THAT NIGHT DUCHARME Hall was more like a castle under siege than ever. In terror of abduction Clarimonde no longer roamed the woods, and Mr. Ducharme, de Grandin or I was always on lookout for any strangers who might appear inside the walled park. A week, ten days passed quietly, and we resumed our plans for returning North, where the deformed girl’s face could receive expert surgical treatment.

  “I shall give Mademoiselle Clarimonde my undivided attention until all is accomplished,” de Grandin told me as we lay in bed one evening while the October wind soughed and moaned through the locust-trees bordering the avenue and a pack of tempest-driven storm clouds harried the moon like hounds pursuing a fleeing doe. “With your permission I shall leave your house and take up residence in the hospital, Friend Trowbridge, and neither day nor night shall I be beyond call of the patient. I shall—

  “Attendez, voilà les assassins!” Faintly as the scuffing of a dried twig against the house, there came the gentle sound of something scratching against the rubble-stone of the wall.

  For a moment the Frenchman lay rigid; then w
ith bewildering quickness he leaped from the bed, bundled the sheets and pillows together in simulation of a person covered with bedclothes, and snatched down one of the heavy silken cords binding back the draperies which hung in mildewed festoons, between the mahogany posts. “Silence!” he cautioned, tiptoeing across the chamber and taking his station beside the open casement. “No noise, my friend, but if it is possible, do you creep forward and peer out, then tell me what it is you see.”

  Cautiously, I followed his instructions, rested my chin upon the wide stone window-sill and cast a hurried glance down the wall.

  Agilely as a cat, a man encased in close-fitting black jersey and tights was scaling the side of the house by aid of a hooked ladder similar to those firemen use. Behind him came a companion, similarly costumed and equipped, and even as I watched them I could not but marvel at the almost total silence in which they swarmed up the rough stones.

  I whispered my discovery to de Grandin, and saw him nod once understandingly. “Voleurs de nuit—professional burglars,” he pronounced. “He chose expert helpers, this one. Let us await them.”

  A moment later there was a soft, rubbing sound as a long steel hook, well wrapped in tire-tape, crept like a living thing across the window-sill, and was followed in a moment by a slender and none too clean set of fingers which reached exploringly through the casement.

  In another instant a head covered by a tight-fitting black jersey cowl loomed over the sill, the masked eyes peered searchingly about the candlelit room; then, apparently satisfied that someone occupied the bed and slept soundly, the intruder crept agilely across the sill, landed on the stone floor with a soft thud and cleared the space between bed and window in a single feline leap.

  There was the glint of candlelight on sharpened steel and a fiendish-looking stiletto flashed downward in a murderous arc and buried itself to the hilt in the pillow which lay muffled in the blankets where I had lain two minutes before.

  Like a terrier pouncing on a rat de Grandin leaped on the assassin’s shoulders. While awaiting the intruder’s advent he had looped the strong curtain cord into a running noose, and as he landed on the other’s back, driving his face down among the bedding and effectively smothering outcry, he slipped the strangling string about the burglar’s throat, drew it tight with a single dexterous jerk, then crossed its ends and pulled them as one might pull the draw-string of a sack. “Ha, good Monsieur le Meurtrier,” he whispered exultantly, “I serve you a dish for which you have small belly, n’est-ce-pas? Eat your fill, my friend, do not stint yourself, Jules de Grandin has plentiful supply of such food for you!

  “So!” He straightened quickly and whipped the cord from his captive’s throat. “I damnation think you will give us small trouble for some time, my friend. Attention, Friend Trowbridge, the other comes!”

  Once more he took his place beside the window, once more he cast his strangling cord as a masked head protruded into the room. In a moment two black-clad, unconscious forms lay side by side upon the bed.

  “Haste, my friend, dépêchez vous,” he ordered, beginning to disrobe our prisoners as he spoke. “I do dislike to ruin Monsieur Ducharme’s bedding, but we must work with what we have. Tear strips from the sheets and bind these unregenerate sons of pigs fast. There is no time to lose; a moment hence and we must don their disguises and perform that which they set out to do.”

  We worked feverishly, tying the two desperadoes in strip after strip of linen ripped from the sheets, gagging them, blindfolding them; finally, as an added precaution, lashing their hands and feet to the head—and footposts of the bed. Then, shedding our pajamas, we struggled into the tightfitting jerseys the prisoners had worn. The stocking-like garments were clammily wet and chilled me to the marrow as I drew them on, but the Frenchman gave me no time for complaint. “Allons, en route, make haste!” he ordered.

  Leaving the unconscious thugs to such meditations as they might have upon regaining consciousness, we hastened to Ducharme’s chamber.

  “Fear not, it is I,” de Grandin called as he beat imperatively on our host’s door. “In our chamber repose two villains who gained entrance by means of scaling ladders—from the feel of their clothes, which we now wear, I should say they swam your moat. We go now to lower the drawbridge and let the master villain in. Do you be ready to receive him!”

  “Holà!” he called a moment later as we let ourselves out the front door and lowered the drawbridge. “Come forth, all is prepared!”

  Two men emerged from the darkness beyond the moat in answer to his hail, one a tall, stoop-shouldered fellow arrayed in ill-fitting and obviously new clothes, the other small, frail-looking, and enveloped from neck to high-heeled boots in a dark mackintosh or raincoat of some sort which hung about his spare figure like the cloak of a conspirator in a melodramatic opera. There was something infinitely wicked in the slouching truculent swagger of the big, stoop-shouldered bully, something which suggested brute strength, brute courage and brute ferocity; but there was something infinitely more sinister in the mincing, precise walk of his smaller companion, who advanced with an odd sort of gait, placing one foot precisely before the other like a tango dancer performing to the rhythm of inaudible music.

  “Judas Iscariot and Company,” de Grandin whispered to me as the queerly assorted couple set foot on the drawbridge; then with an imperative wave of his hand he beckoned them toward the house and set off up the driveway at a rapid walk. “We must not let them get close enough to suspect,” he whispered, quickening his pace. “All cats are gray in the dark, and we much resemble their friends at a distance, but it is better that we take no chances.”

  Once or twice the other two called to us, demanding to know if we had encountered resistance, but de Grandin’s only answer was another gesture, urging them to haste, and we were still some ten feet in the lead when we reached the door, swung it open and slipped into the house, awaiting the others’ advent.

  The candles burned with a flickering, uncertain light, scarcely more than staining the darkness flooding the big stone hall as the two men trailed us through the door. By the table, the candlelight falling full upon her mutilated face, stood Clarimonde Ducharme, her hideously distorted eyes rolling pathetically in their elongated sockets as she turned her head from side to side in an effort to get a better view of the intruders.

  A shrill, cackling laugh burst from the smaller man. “Look at that; Henri,” he bade, catching his breath with an odd, sucking sound. “Look at that. That’s my work; isn’t it a masterpiece?”

  Mockingly, he snatched the wide-brimmed soft black-felt hat from his head, laid it over his heart, then swept it to the floor as he bowed profoundly to the girl. “Señorita hermosa, yo beso sus manos!” he declared, then burst into another cackle of cachinnating laughter. As he removed his headgear I observed he was bald as an egg, thickly wrinkled, and wore a monocle of dark glass in his right eye.

  His companion growled an inarticulate comment, then turned toward us with an expectant look. “Now?” he asked. “Shall I do it now and get it over?”

  “Si, como no?—certainly, why not?” the smaller man lisped. “They’ve served their purpose, have they not?”

  “Right,” the big man returned. “They did the job, and dead men tell no tales—”

  There was murderous menace in every movement of his big body as he swaggered toward de Grandin. “Come, little duckie,” he bade mockingly in gamin French, “come and be killed. We can’t have you running loose and babbling tales of what you’ve seen tonight the first time you get your hide full of vin ordinaire. Say your prayers, if you know any; you’ve precious little time to do it. Come, duckie—” As he advanced he thrust his hand beneath his ill-fitting jacket and drew a knife of fearsome proportions, whetting it softly against the heel of his hand, smiling to himself as though anticipating a rare bit of sport.

  De Grandin gave ground before the other’s onslaught. Two or three backward running steps he took, increasing the distance between them, then pause
d.

  With a flick of his left hand he swept the disguising hood from his features and smiled almost tenderly at the astonished bully. “Monsieur,” he announced softly, “it sometimes happens that the weasel discovers the duck he hunts to be an eagle in disguise. So it would seem tonight. You have three seconds to live; make the most of them. Un—deux—trois!” The spiteful, whip-like report of pistol sounded sharp punctuation to his third count, and the bravo stumbled back a step, an expression of amazement on his coarse face, a tiny bruised-looking circle almost precisely bisecting the line of heavy, black brows which met above his nose.

  “Wha—what?” the smaller villain began in a strangled, frightened scream, wheeling on de Grandin and snatching at a weapon beneath his cloak.

  But George Ducharme leaped out of the darkness like a lion avenging the slaughter of its mate and bore him, screaming madly, to the floor. “At last, Leandro Ruiz—at last!” he shouted exultantly, fastening his fingers on the other’s thin, corded neck and pressing his thumb into the sallow, flaccid flesh. “At last I’ve got you! You killed my wife, you deformed my baby, you’ve made me live in a hell of fear for eighteen years; but now I’ve got you—I’ve got you!”

  “Eh bien, have a care, Monsieur, you are unduly rough!” de Grandin protested, tapping Ducharme’s shoulder gently, “Be careful I implore you!”

  “What?” George Ducharme cried angrily, looking up at the diminutive Frenchman, but retaining his strangling hold on his foeman’s throat. “D’ye mean I’m not to treat this dog as he deserves?”

  The other’s narrow shoulders rose nearly level with his ears in an eloquent shrug. “I did but caution you, my friend,” he answered mildly. “When one is very angry one easily forgets one’s strength. Be careful, or you kill him too swiftly.

  “Come, Friend Trowbridge, the night is fine outside. Let us admire the view.”

  The prisoners in the bedroom were only too glad to take their departure without stopping to inquire concerning their late employer. From remarks they dropped while we hunted clothing to replace the conspicuous black tights of which we had relieved them, I gathered they had distrusted Ruiz’s good faith, and insisted on payment in advance. That Monsieur Ruiz had left, leaving no address, and consequently would not be in position to extort return of his fee with the aid of the gigantic Henri was the best possible news we could have given them, and they took speedy farewell of us.