“Check an’ double check, as th’ felly says,” Costello nodded. “’Twas just past dark this evenin’ whilst th’ warders wuz goin’ through th’ State Asylum, seein’ everything wuz shipshape for th’ night, sor, that Doctor Sun did his disappearin’ act. He’d been meek as anny lamb ever since they took him to th’ bughouse, an’ th’ orderlies down there had decided he warn’t such a bad actor, afther all. Well, sor, th’ turnkey passed his door, an’ this Doctor Sun invites him in to see a drawin’ he’s made. He’s a clever felly wid his hands, for all his bein’ crippled, an’ th’ boys at th’ asylum is always glad to see what he’s been up to makin’.
“Th’ pore chap didn’t have no more chance than a sparry in th’ cat’s mouth, sor. Somewhere th’ Chinese divil had got hold of a table-knife an’ ground it to a razor edge. One swipe o’ that across th’ turnkey’s throat an’ he’s floppin’ round th’ floor like a chicken wid its head cut off, not able to make no outcry for th’ blood that’s stranglin’ him. A pore nut ’cross th’ corridor lets out a squawk, an’ Doctor Sun ups an’ cuts his throat as cool as ye’d pare a apple for yer luncheon, sor. They finds this out from another inmate that’s seen it all but had sense enough in his pore crazy head to keep his mouth shut till afther it’s all over.
“Ye know th’ cell doors ain’t locked, but th’ different wards is barred off from each other wid corridors between. This Doctor Sun takes th’ warder’s uniform cap as calm as ye please and claps it on his ugly head, then walks to th’ ward door an’ unlocks it wid th’ keys he’s taken from th’ turnkey. Th’ guard on duty in th’ corridor don’t notice nothin’ till Sun’s clear through th’ door; then it’s too late, for Sun stabs ’im to th’ heart before he can so much as raise his club, an’ beats it down th’ corridor. There’s a fire escape at th’ other end o’ th’ passage—one o’ them spiral things that works like a slide inside a sheet-iron cylinder, ye know. It’s locked, but Sun has th’ key, an’ in a moment he’s slipped inside, locked th’ door behind him an’ slid down faster than a snake on roller skates. He’s into th’ grounds an’ over th’ wall before they even know he’s loose, an’ he must o’ had confederates waitin’ for him outside, for they heard th’ roar of the car runnin’ like th’ hammers o’ hell whilst they’re still soundin’ th’ alarm.
“O’ course th’ State Troopers an’ th’ local police wuz notified, but he seems to ’a’ got clean away, except—”
“Yes, except?” de Grandin prompted breathlessly, his little, round blue eyes sparkling with excitement.
“Well, sor, we don’t rightly know it wuz him, but we’re suspectin’ it. They found a trooper run down an’ kilt on th’ highway over by Morristown, wid his motorcycle bent up like a pretzel an’ not a whole bone left in his body. Looks like Sun’s worrk, don’t it, sor?”
“Assuredly,” the Frenchman nodded. “Is there more to tell?”
“Nothin’ except he’s gone, evaporated, vanished into thin air, as th’ sayin’ is, sor; but we figured he’s still nursin’ a grudge agin Inspector Renouard an’ you, an’ maybe come to settle it, so we come fast as we could to warn ye.”
“Your figuring is accurate, my friend,” de Grandin answered with another smile. “May we trespass on your good nature to ask that you escort Monsieur and Madame Tanis home? I should not like them to encounter Doctor Sun Ah Poy, for he plays roughly. As for us—Renouard, Friend Trowbridge and me—we shall do very well unguarded for tonight. Good Doctor Sun has shot his bolt; he will not he up to other tricks for a little time, I think, for he undoubtlessly has a hideaway prepared, and to it he has gone. He would not linger here, knowing the entire gendarmerie is on his heels. No. To hit and run, and run as quickly as he hits, will be his policy, for a time, at least.”
5. Desecration
“Doctor de Grandin—gentlemen!” Donald Tanis burst into the breakfast room as de Grandin, Renouard and I were completing our morning meal next day. “Sonia—my wife—she’s gone!”
“Eh? What is it you tell me?” de Grandin asked. “Gone?”
“Yes, sir. She rides every morning, you see, and today she left for a canter in the park at six o’clock, as usual. I didn’t feel up to going out this morning, and lay abed rather late. I was just going down to breakfast when they told me her horse had come back to the stable—alone.”
“Oh, perhaps she had a tumble in the park,” I suggested soothingly. “Have you looked—”
“I’ve looked everywhere,” he broke in. “Soldiers’ Park’s not very large, and if she’d been in it I’d have found her long ago. After what happened last night, I’m afraid—”
“Morbleu, mon pauvre, you fear with reason,” de Grandin cut him short. “Come, let us go. We must seek her—we must find her, right away, at once; without delay, for—”
“If ye plaze, sor, Sergeant Costello’s askin’ for Doctor de Grandin,” announced Nora McGinnis, appearing at the breakfast room door. “He’s got a furrin gentleman wid him,” she amplified as de Grandin gave an exclamation of impatience at the interruption, “an’ says as how he’s most partic’lar to talk wid ye a minit.”
Father Pophosepholos, shepherd of the little flock of Greeks, Lithuanians and Russians composing the congregation of St. Basil’s Church, paused at the doorway beside the big Irish policeman with uplifted hand as he invoked divine blessing on the inmates of the room, then advanced with smiling countenance to take the slim white fingers de Grandin extended. The aged papa and the little Frenchman were firmest friends, though one lived in a thought-world of the Middle-Ages, while the other’s thoughts were modern as the latest model airplane.
“My son,” the old man greeted, “the powers of evil were abroad last night. The greatest treasure in the world was ravished from my keeping, and I come to you for help.”
“A treasure, mon père?” de Grandin asked.
Father Pophosepholos rose from his chair, and we forgot the cheap, worn stuff of his purple cassock, his broken shoes, even the pinchbeck gold and imitation amethyst of his pectoral cross as he stood in patriarchal majesty with upraised hands and back-thrown head. “The most precious body and blood of our blessed Lord,” he answered sonorously. “Last night, between the sunset and the dawn, they broke into the church and bore away the holy Eucharist.” For a moment he paused, then in all reverence echoed the Magdalen’s despairing cry: “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him!”
“Ha, do you say it?” The momentary annoyance de Grandin had evinced at the old priest’s intrusion vanished as he gazed at the cleric with a level stare of fierce intensity. “Tell me of the sacrilege. All—tell me all. Right away; at once, immediately. I am all attention!”
Father Pophosepholos resumed his seat and the sudden fire which animated him died down. Once more he was a tired old man, the threadbare shepherd of a half-starved flock. “I saw you smile when I mentioned a treasure being stolen from me,” he told de Grandin gently. “You were justified, my son, for St. Basil’s is a poor church, and I am poorer still. Only the faith which is in me sustains me through the struggle. We ask no help from the public, and receive none; the rich Latins look on us with pity, the Anglicans sometimes give us slight assistance; the Protestant heretics scarcely know that we exist. We are a joke to them, and, because we’re poor, they sometimes play mischievous pranks on us—their boys stone our windows, and once or twice when parties of their young people have come slumming they have disturbed our services with their thoughtless laughter or ill-bred talking during service. Our liturgy is only meaningless mummery to them, you see.
“But this was no childish mischief, not even the vandalism of irreverent young hoodlums!” his face flushed above its frame of gray beard. “This was deliberately planned and maliciously executed blasphemy and sacrilege!
“Our rubric makes no provision for low mass, like the Latins’,” he explained, “and daily celebration of the Eucharist is not enjoined; so, since our ceremony of consecration is a lengthy one, we custo
marily celebrate only once or twice a week, and the pre-sanctified elements are reserved in a tabernacle on the altar.
“This morning as I entered the sanctuary I found everything in disorder. The veils had been torn from the table, thrown upon the floor and fouled with filth, the ikon of the Virgin had been ripped from the reredos and the tabernacle violated. They had carried off the elements together with the chalice and paten, and in their place had thrust into the tabernacle the putrefying carcass of a cat!” Tears welled in the old man’s eyes as he told of the sacrilege.
Costello’s face went brick-red with an angry flush, for the insult put upon the consecrated elements stung every fiber of his nature. “Bad cess to ’em!” he muttered. “May they have th’ curse o’ Cromwell!”
“They took my chasuble and cope, my alb, my miter and my stole,” the priest continued, “and from the sacristy they took the deacon’s vestments—”
“Grand Dieu, I damn perceive their game!” the little Frenchman almost shouted. “At first I thought this might be but an act of wantonness performed by wicked boys. I have seen such things. Also, the chalice and the paten might have some little value to a thief; but this is no mere case of thievery mixed with sacrilege. Non. The stealing of the vestments is conclusive proof.
“Tell me, mon père,” he interrupted himself with seeming irrelevance, “it is true, is it not, that only the celebrant and the deacon are necessary for the office of consecration? No subdeacon is required?”
The old priest nodded wonderingly.
“And these elements were already consecrated?”
“They were already consecrated,” the clergyman returned. “Presanctified, we call it when they are reserved for future services.”
“Thank God, no little one then stands in peril,” de Grandin answered.
“Mon père, it gives me greatest joy to say I’ll aid in tracking down these miscreants. Monsieur Tanis, unless I am more greatly mistaken than I think, there is direct connection between your lady’s disappearance and this act of sacrilege. Yes, I am sure of it!” He nodded several times with increasing vigor.
“But, my dear fellow,” I expostulated, “what possible connection can there be between—”
“Chut!” he cut me short. “This is the doing of that villain Konstantin! Assuredly. The wife he has again abducted, though he has not attempted to go near the husband. For why? Pardieu, because by leaving Monsieur Donald free he still permits the wife one little, tiny, ray of hope. With vilest subtlety he holds her back from the black brink of despair and suicide that he may force her to compliance to his will by threats against the man she loves. Sacré nom d’un artichaut, I shall say yes! Certainly; of course.”
“You—you mean he’ll make Sonia go with him—leave me—by threats against my life?” young Tanis faltered.
“Précisément. That and more, I fear, Monsieur,” de Grandin answered somberly.
“But what worse can he do than that? You—you don’t think he’ll kill her, do you?” the husband cried.
The little Frenchman rose and paced the study a moment in thoughtful silence. At last: “Courage, mon brave,” he bade, putting a kindly hand on Tanis’ shoulder. “You and Madame Sonia have faced perils—even the perils of the grave—before. Take heart! I shall not hide from you that your present case is as desperate as any you have faced before; but if my guess is right, as heaven knows I hope it is not, your lady stands in no immediate bodily peril. If that were all we had to fear we might afford to rest more easily; as it is—”
“As it is,” Renouard cut in, “let us go with all celerity to St. Basil’s church and look to see what we can find. The trail grows cold, mon Jules, but—”
“But we shall find and follow it,” de Grandin interrupted. “Parbleu, we’ll follow it though it may lead to the fire-doors of hell’s own furnaces, and then—”
The sharp, insistent ringing of the telephone broke through his fervid prophecy.
“This is Miss Wilkinson, supervisor at Casualty Hospital, Doctor Trowbridge,” a professionally precise feminine voice informed me. “If Detective Sergeant Costello is at your office, we’ve a message for him. Officer Hornsby is here, about to go on the table, and insists we put a message through to Sergeant Costello at once. We’ve already called him at headquarters, and they told us—”
“Just a minute,” I bade. “It’s for you, Sergeant,” I told Costello, handing him the instrument.
“Yes,” Costello called into the mouthpiece. “Yes; uh-huh. What? Glory be to God!”
He swung on us with flushing face and blazing eyes. “’Twas Hornsby,” he announced. “He wuz doin’ relief traffic duty out at Auburndale an’ Gloucester Streets, an’ a car run ’im down half an hour ago. There wuz no witnesses to th’ accident, an’ Hornsby couldn’t git th’ license number, but just before they struck ’im he seen a felly ridin’ in th’ car.
“You’ll be rememberin’ Hornsby wuz in th’ raidin’ party that captured this here Doctor Sun?” he asked de Grandin.
The Frenchman nodded.
“Well, sor, Hornsby’s got th’ camera eye. He don’t forget a face once he’s seen it, even for a second, an’ he tells me Doctor Sun wuz ridin’ in th’ car that bowled ’im over. They run ’im down deliberate, sor, an’ Sun Ah Poy was ridin’ wid a long, tall, black-faced felly wid slantin’ eyebrows an’ a pan like th’ pictures ye see o’ Satan in th’ chur-rches, sor!”
“And what was this one doing with his pan?” Renouard demanded. “Is it that—”
“Pan,” Costello shouted, raising his voice as many people do when seeking to make clear their meaning to a foreigner, “’twas his pan I’m speaking of. Not a pan; his pan—his mush—his map—his puss, ye know.
“Pas possible! The miscreant held a pan of mush for his cat to eat, and a map, also, while his motor car ran down the gendarme?”
“Oh, go sit in a tree—no!” Costello roared. “It’s his face I’m afther tellin’ ye of. Hornsby said he had a face—a face, git me; a face is a pan an’ a pan’s a face—like th’ divil’s, an’ he wuz ridin’ in th’ same car wid this here now Doctor Sun Ah Poy that’s made his getaway from th’ asylum! Savvy?”
“Oh, mais oui,” the Frenchman grinned. “I apprehend. It is another of the so droll American idioms which you employ. Oui-da; I perceive him.”
“’Tis plain as anny pikestaff they meant to do ’im in deliberately,” Costello went on, “an’ they like to made good, too. Th’ pore felly’s collarbone is broke, an’ so is several ribs; but glory be to heaven, they wuz goin’ so fast they bumped ’im clean out o’ th’ road an’ onto th’ sidewalk, an’ they kep’ on goin’ like th’ hammers o’ hell widout waitin’ to see how much they’d hurt ’im.”
“You hear, my friends?” de Grandin cried, leaping to his feet, eyes flashing, diminutive, wheat-blond mustache twitching with excitement like the whiskers of an angry tomcat. “You heard the message of this gloriously devoted officer of the law who sends intelligence to Costello even as he waits to go upon the operating-table? What does it mean? I ask. No, I demand what does it mean?
“Sun Ah Poy rides in a car which maims and injures the police, and with him rides another with a face like Satan’s. Mordieu, mes amis, we shall have hunting worthy of our utmost skill, I think.
“Sun Ah Poy and Konstantin have met and combined against us! Come, my friends, let us take their challenge.
“Come, Renouard, my old one, this is more than mere police work. The enemy laughs at our face, he makes the thumb-nose at us and at all for which we stand. Forward to the battle, brave comrade. Pour la France!”
6. Allies Unawares
Four of us—de Grandin, Renouard, Donald Tanis and I—sat before my study fire and stared gloomily into the flames. All day the other three, accompanied by Costello, had combed the city and environs, but neither sign nor clue, trail nor trace of the missing woman could they find.
“By heaven,” Tanis cried, striking his forehead with his hand in impote
nt fury, “it looks as if the fellow were the devil himself!”
“Not so bad a guess, mon brave,” de Grandin nodded gloomily. “Certain it is he is on friendly terms with the dark powers, and, as usual, Satan is most kindly to his own.”
“Ah bah, mon Jules,” Renouard rejoined, “you do but make a bad matter so much worse with your mumblings of Satan and his cohorts. Is it not sufficient that two poor ladies of this town are placed in deadly peril without your prating of diabolical opponents and—”
“Two ladies?” Tanis interrupted wonderingly. “Why, has he abducted some one else—”
“Bien non,” Renouard’s quick explanation came. “It is of another that I speak, Monsieur. This Konstantin, who has in some way met with Sun Ah Poy and made a treaty of alliance with him, has taken your poor lady for revenge, even as he sought to do when first we met him, but Sun Ah Poy has also reasons to desire similar vengeance of his own, and all too well we know how far his insane jealousy and lust will lead him. Regard me, if you please: As I have previously told you, I came across the world in search of Sun Ah Poy, and took him bloody-handed in commission of a crime of violence. Clear from Cambodia I trailed him, for there he met, and having met, desired a white girl-dancer in the mighty temple shrine at Angkor. Just who she was we do not know for certain, but strongly circumstantial evidence would indicate she was the daughter of a missionary gentleman named Crownshield, an American, who had been murdered by the natives at the instigation of the heathen priests and whose widowed mother had been spirited away and lodged within the temple until she knew the time of woman and her child was born. Then, we suppose, the mother, too, was done to death, and the little white girl reared as a bayadère, or temple-dancer.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 35