The Best of Jules de Grandin

by Seabury Quinn

  “Donald!” the young woman interrupted breathlessly. “Call Donald and tell him I’m all right!”

  “Avec plaisir,” he agreed with another bow. “And this Monsieur Donald, he is who, if you please?”

  “My husband.”

  “Perfectly, Madame. But his name?”

  “Donald Tanis. Call him at the Hotel Avalon and tell him that I—that Sonia is all right, and where I am, please. Oh, he’ll be terribly worried!”

  “But certainly, Madame, I fully understand,” he assured her. Then:

  “You have been through a most unpleasant experience. Perhaps you will be kind enough to permit that we offer you refreshment—some sherry and biscuit—while Monsieur your husband comes to fetch you? He is even now upon his way.”

  “Thank you so much,” she nodded with a wan little smile, and I hastened to the pantry in search of wine and biscuit.

  Seated in an easy-chair before the study fire, the girl sipped a glass of Duff Gordon and munched a pilot biscuit while de Grandin, Renouard and I studied her covertly. She was quite young—not more than thirty, I judged—and lithe and slender in stature, though by no means thin, and her hands were the whitest I had ever seen. Ash-blond her complexion was, her skin extremely fair and her hair that peculiar shade of lightness which, without being gray, is nearer silver than gold. Her eyes were bluish gray, sad, knowing and weary, as though they had seen the sorrow and futility of life from the moment of their first opening.

  “You will smoke, perhaps?” de Grandin asked as she finished her biscuit. As he extended his silver pocket lighter to her cigarette the bell shrilled imperatively and I hastened to the front door to admit a tall, dark young man whose agitated manner labeled him our patient’s husband even before he introduced himself.

  “My dear!” he cried, rushing across the study and taking the girl’s hand in his, then raising it to his lips while de Grandin and Renouard beamed approvingly.

  “Where—how—” he faltered in his question, but his worshipful glance was eloquent.

  “Donald,” the girl broke in, and though the study was almost uncomfortably warm she shuddered with a sudden chill, “it was Konstantin!”

  “Wha—what?” he stammered in incredulous, horrified amazement. “My dear, you surely can’t be serious. Why, he’s dead!”

  “No, dear,” she answered wearily, “I’m not jesting. It was Konstantin. There’s no mistaking it. He tried to kidnap me.

  “Just as I entered the hotel dining-room a waiter told me that a gentleman wanted to see me in the lobby; so, as I knew you had to finish dressing, I went out to him. A big, bearded man in a chauffeur’s leather uniform was waiting by the door. He told me he was from the Cadillac agency; said you had ordered a new car as a surprise for my birthday, but that you wanted me to approve it before they made delivery. It was waiting outside, he said, and he would be glad if I’d just step out and look at it.

  “His accent should have warned me, for I recognized him as a Russian, but there are so many different sorts of people in this country, and I was so surprised and delighted with the gift that I never thought of being suspicious. So I went out with him to a gorgeous new limousine parked about fifty feet from the porte-cochère. The engine was running, but I didn’t notice that till later.

  “I walked round the car, admiring it from the outside; then he asked if I’d care to inspect the inside of the tonneau. There seemed to be some trouble with the dome light when he opened the door for me, and I was half-way in before I realized some one was inside. Then it was too late. The chauffeur shoved me in and slammed the door, then jumped into the cab and set the machine going in high gear. I never had a chance to call for help.

  “It wasn’t till we’d gone some distance that my companion spoke, and when he did I almost died of fright. There was no light, and he was so muffled in furs that I could not have recognized his face anyway, but his voice—and those corpse-hands of his—I knew them! It was Konstantin.

  “‘Jawohl, meine liebe Frau,’ he said—he always loved to speak German to torment me—‘it seems we meet again, nicht wahr?’

  “I tried to answer him, to say something—anything—but my lips and tongue seemed absolutely paralyzed with terror. Even though I could not see, I could feel him chuckling in that awful, silent way of his.

  “Just then the driver tried to take a curve at high speed and we skidded into the curb. These gentlemen were passing and I screamed to them for help. Konstantin put his hand over my mouth, and at the touch of his cold flesh against my lips I fainted. The next I knew I was here and Doctor de Grandin was offering to call you, so—” She paused and drew her husband’s hand down against her cheek. “I’m frightened, Donald—terribly frightened,” she whimpered. “Konstantin—”

  Jules de Grandin could stand the strain no longer. During Mrs. Tanis’ recital I could fairly see his ungovernable curiosity bubbling up within him; now he was at the end of his endurance.

  “Pardonnez-moi, Madame,” he broke in, “but may one inquire who this so offensive Konstantin is?”

  The girl shuddered again, and her pale cheeks went a thought paler.

  “He—he is my husband,” she whispered between blenched lips.

  “But, Madame, how can it be?” Renouard broke in. “Monsieur Tanis, he is your husband, he admits it, so do you; yet this Konstantin, he is also your husband. Non, my comprehension is unequal to it.”

  “But Konstantin is dead, I tell you,” her husband insisted. “I saw him die—I saw him in his coffin—”

  “Oh, my darling,” she sobbed, her lips blue with unholy terror, “you saw me dead—coffined and buried, too—but I’m living. Somehow, in some way we don’t understand—”

  “Comment?” Inspector Renouard took his temples in his hands as though suffering a violent headache. “Jules, my friend, tell me I can not understand the English,” he implored. “You are a physician; examine me and tell me my faculties are failing, my ears betraying me! I hear them say, I think, that Madame Tanis has died and been buried in a grave and coffin; yet there she sits and—”

  “Silence, mon singe, your jabbering annoys one!” de Grandin cut him short. To Tanis he continued:

  “We should be grateful for an explanation, if you care to offer one, for Madame’s so strange statement has greatly puzzled us. It is perhaps she makes the pleasantry at our expense, or—”

  “It’s no jest, I assure you, sir,” the girl broke in. “I was dead. My death and burial are recorded in the official archives of the city of Paris, and a headboard, marks my grave in Saint Sébastien, but Donald came for me and married—”

  “Eh bien, Madame, either my hearing falters or my intellect is dull,” de Grandin exclaimed. “Will you repeat your statement once again, slowly and distinctly, if you please? Perhaps I did not fully apprehend you.”

  2. Inferno

  Despite herself the girl smiled. “What I said is literally true,” she assured him. A pause, then: “We hate to talk of it, for the memory horrifies us both, but you gentlemen have been so kind I think we owe you an explanation.

  “My name was Sonia Malakoff. I was born in Petrograd, and my father was a colonel of infantry in the Imperial Army, but some difficulty with a superior officer over the discipline of the men led to his retirement. I never understood exactly what the trouble was, but it must have been serious, for he averted court-martial and disgrace only by resigning his commission and promising to leave Russia forever.

  “We went to England, for Father had friends there. We had sufficient property to keep us comfortable, and I was brought up as an English girl of the better class.

  “When the War broke out Father offered his sword to Russia, but his services were peremptorily refused, and though he was bitterly hurt by the rebuff, he determined to do something for the Allied cause, and so we moved to France and he secured a noncombatant commission in the French Army. I went out as a V.A.D. with the British.

  “One night in ’16 as our convoy was going back
from the advanced area an air attack came and several of our ambulances were blown off the road. I detoured into a field and put on all the speed I could. As I went bumping over the rough ground I heard some one groaning in the darkness. I stopped and got down to investigate and found a group of Canadians who had been laid out by a bomb. All but two were dead and one of the survivors had a leg blown nearly off, but I managed to get them into my van with my other blessés and crowded on all the gas I could for the dressing-station.

  “Next day they told me one of the men—the poor chap with the mangled leg—had died, but the other, though badly shell-shocked, had a good chance of recovery. They were very nice about it all, gave me a mention for bringing them in, and all that sort of thing. Captain Donald Tanis, the shell-shocked man, was an American serving with the Canadians. I went to see him, and he thanked me for giving him the lift. Afterward they sent him to a recuperation station on the Riviera, and we corresponded regularly, or as regularly as people can in such circumstances, until—” she paused a moment, and a slight flush tinged her pallid face.

  “Bien oui,” de Grandin agreed with a delighted grin. “It was love by correspondence, n’est-ce-pas, Madame? And so you were married? Yes?”

  “Not then,” she answered. “Donald’s letters became less frequent, and—and of course I did what any girl would have done in the circumstances, made mine shorter, cooler and farther apart. Finally our correspondence dwindled away entirely.

  “The second revolution had taken place in Russia and her new masters had betrayed the Allies at Brest-Litovsk. But America had come into the war and things began to look bright for us, despite the Bolsheviks’ perfidy. Father should have been delighted at the turn events were taking, but apparently he was disappointed. When the Allies made their July drive in ’18 and the Germans began retreating he seemed terribly disturbed about something, became irritable or moody and distrait, often going days without speaking a word that wasn’t absolutely necessary.

  “We’d picked up quite a few friends among the émigrés in Paris, and Father’s most intimate companion was Alexis Konstantin, who soon became a regular visitor at our house. I always hated him. There was something dreadfully repulsive about his appearance and manner—his dead-white face, his flabby, fish-cold hands, the very way he dressed in black and walked about so silently—he was like a living dead man. I had a feeling of almost physical nausea whenever he came near me, and once when he laid his hand upon my arm I started and screamed as though a reptile had been put against my flesh.

  “When Donald’s letters finally ceased altogether, though I wouldn’t admit it, even to myself, my heart was breaking. I loved him, you see,” she added simply.

  “Then one day Father came home from the War Department in a perfect fever of nervousness. ‘Sonia,’ he told me, ‘I have just been examined by the military doctors. They tell me the end may come at any time, like a thief in the night. I want you to he provided for in case it comes soon, my dear. I want you to be married.’

  “‘But Father, I don’t want to marry,’ I replied. ‘The war’s not over yet, though we are winning, and I’ve still my work to do with the ambulance section. Besides, we’re well enough off to live; there’s no question of my having to marry for a home; so—’

  “‘But that’s just it,’ he answered. ‘There is. That is exactly the question, my child. I—I’ve speculated; speculated and lost. Every kopeck we had has gone. I’ve nothing but my military pay, and when that stops, as it must stop directly the war is won, we’re paupers.’

  “I was surprised, but far from terrified. ‘All right,’ I told him, ‘I’m strong and healthy and well educated, I can earn a living for us both.’

  “‘At what?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘Typing at seventy shillings a week? As nursery governess at five pounds per month with food and lodging? No, my dear, there’s nothing for it but a rich marriage, or at least a marriage with a man able to support us both while I’m alive and keep you comfortably after that.’

  “I thought I saw a ray of hope. ‘We don’t know any such man,’ I objected. ‘No Frenchman with sufficient fortune to do what you wish will marry a dowerless girl, and our Russian friends are all as poor as we, so—’

  “‘Ah, but there is such a man,’ he smiled. ‘I have just the man, and he is willing—no, anxious—to make you his wife.’

  “My blood seemed to go cold in my arteries as he spoke, for something inside me whispered the name of this benefactor even before Father pronounced it: Gaspardin Alexis Konstantin!

  “I wouldn’t hear of it at first; I’d sooner wear my fingers out as seamstress, scrub tiles upon my knees or walk the pavements as a fille de joie than marry Konstantin, I told him. But though I was English bred I was Russian born, and Russian women are born to be subservient to men. Though I rebelled against it with every atom of my being, I finally agreed, and so it was arranged that we should marry.

  “Father hurried me desperately. At the time I thought it was because he didn’t want me to have time to change my mind, but—

  “It was a queer wedding day; not at all the kind I’d dreamed of. Konstantin was wealthy, Father said, but there was no evidence of wealth at the wedding. We drove to and from the church in an ancient horse-drawn taximeter cab and my father was my only attendant. An aged papa with one very dirty little boy as acolyte performed the ceremony. We had only the cheap silver-gilt crowns owned by the church—none of our own—and not so much as a single spray of flowers for my bridal bouquet.”

  “The three of us came home together and Konstantin sent the concierge out for liquor. Our wedding breakfast consisted of brandy, raw fish and tea! Both Father and my husband drank more than they ate. I did neither. The very sight of Konstantin was enough to drive all desire of food away, even though the table had been spread with the choicest dainties to be had from a fashionable caterer.

  “Before long, both men were more than half tipsy and began talking together in low, drunken mutterings, ignoring me completely. At last my husband bade me leave the room, ordering me out without so much as looking in my direction.

  “I sat in my bedroom in a sort of chilled apathy. I imagine a condemned prisoner who knows all hope of reprieve is passed waits for the coming of the hangman as I waited there.

  “My half-consciousness was suddenly broken by Father’s voice. ‘Sonia, Sonia!’ he called, and from his tone I knew he was beside himself with some emotion.

  “When I went into the dining-room my father was trembling and wringing his hands in a perfect agony of terror, and tears were streaming down his cheeks as he looked imploringly at Konstantin. ‘Sonia, my daughter,’ he whispered, ‘plead with him. Go on your knees to him, my child, and beg him—pray him as you would pray God, to—’

  “‘Shut up, you old fool,’ my husband interrupted. ‘Shut up and get out—leave me alone with my bride.’ He leered drunkenly at me.

  “Trembling as though with palsy, my father rose humbly to obey the insolent command, but Konstantin called after him as he went out: ‘Best take your pistolet, mon vieux. You’ll probably prefer it to le peloton d’exécution.’

  “I heard Father rummaging through his chest in the bedroom and turned on Konstantin. ‘What does this mean?’ I asked. ‘Why did you say he might prefer his own pistol to the firing-party?’

  “‘Ask him,’ he answered with a laugh, but when I attempted to join my father he thrust me into a chair and held me there. ‘Stay where you are,’ he ordered. ‘I am your master, now.’

  “Then my British upbringing asserted itself. ‘You’re not my master; no one is!’ I answered hotly. ‘I’m a free woman, not a chattel, and—’

  “I never finished. Before I could complete my declaration he’d struck me with his fist and knocked me to the floor, and when I tried to rise he knocked me down again. He even kicked me as I lay there.

  “I tried to fight him off, but though he was so slightly built he proved strong as a prize-fighter, and my efforts at defense were futil
e. They seemed only to arouse him to further fury, and he struck and kicked me again and again. I screamed to my father for help, but if he heard me he made no answer, and so my punishment went on till I lost consciousness.

  “My bridal night was an inferno. Sottish with vodka and drunk with passion, Konstantin was a sadistic beast. He tore—actually ripped—my clothing off; covered me with slobbering, drunken caresses from lips to feet, alternating maudlin, obscene compliments with scurrilous insults and abuse, embracing and beating me by turns. Twice I sickened under the ordeal and both times he sat calmly by, drinking raw vodka from the bottle and waiting till my nausea passed, then resumed my torment with all the joy a mediæval Dominican might have found in torturing a helpless heretic.

  “It was nearly noon next day when I woke from what was more a stupor of horror and exhaustion than sleep. Konstantin was nowhere to be seen, for which I thanked God as I staggered from the bed and sought a nightrobe to cover the shameless nudity he had imposed on me.

  “‘I’ll not stand it,’ I told myself as, my self-respect somewhat restored by the garment I’d slipped on, I prepared a bath to wash the wounds and bruises I’d sustained during the night.

  “Then all my new-found courage evaporated as I heard my husband’s step outside, and I cringed like any odalisk before her master as he entered—groveled on the floor like a dog which fears the whip.

  “He laughed and tossed me a copy of the Paris edition of The Daily Mail. ‘You may be interested in that obituary,’ he told me, ‘the last paragraph in the fourth column.’

  “I read it, and all but fainted as I read, for it told how my father had been found that morning in an obscure street on the left bank. A bullet wound in the head pointed to suicide, but no trace of the weapon had been found, for thieves had taken everything of value and stripped the body almost naked before the gendarmes found it.