“And so we went and saw and were in time to stop the last obscenity of all—the defilement of the consecrated Eucharist in honor of the Devil. Yes. Of course.”
“But, Doctor de Grandin, I was the altar at that mass,” Sonia Tanis wailed, “and I did offer myself for the Devil’s service! Is there hope for such as I? Will Heaven ever pardon me? For even though I loathed the thing I did, I did it, and”—she faced us with defiant, blazing eyes—“I’d do it again for—”
“Précisément, Madame,” de Grandin interrupted. “‘For—’ That ‘for’ is your salvation; because you did the thing you did for love of him you married to save him from assassination. ‘Love conquers all,’ the Latin poet tells us. So in this case. Between your sin—if sin it were to act the part you did to save your husband’s life—and its reward, we place the shield of your abundant love. Be assured, chère Madame, you have no need to fear, for kindly Heaven understands, and understanding is forgiveness.”
“But,” the girl persisted, her long, white fingers knit together in an agony of terror, her eyes wide-set with fear, “Donald would never have consented to my buying his safety at such a price, he—”
“Madame,” the little Frenchman fairly thundered, “I am Jules de Grandin. I do not make mistakes. When I say something, it is so. I have assured you of your pardon; will you dispute with me?”
“Oh, Sonia,” the husband soothed, “it’s finished, now, there is no more—”
“Hélas, the man speaks truth, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin wailed. “It is finished—there is no more! How true, my friend; how sadly true.
“The bottle, it is empty!”
The Bleeding Mummy
Outside, the midwinter wind hurled wave after wave of a sleet-barrage against the window-panes, keening a ferocious war-chant the while. Within, the glow of sawn railway ties burning on the brass fire-dogs blended pleasantly with the shaded lamplight. Jules de Grandin put aside the copy of l’Illustration he had been perusing since dinnertime, stretched his slender, womanishly small feet toward the fire and regarded the gleaming tips of his patent leather pumps with every evidence of satisfaction. “Tiens, Friend Trowbridge,” he remarked lazily as he watched the leaping firelight quicken in reflection on his polished shoes, “this is most entirely pleasant. Me, not for anything would I leave the house on such a night. He is a fool who quits his cheerful fire to—”
The sharp, peremptory clatter of the front door knocker battered through his words, and before I could hoist myself from my chair the summons was repeated, louder, more insistently.
“I say, Doctor Trowbridge, will you come over to Larson’s? I’m afraid something’s happened to him—I hate to drag you out on such a night, but I think he really needs a doctor, and—” Young Professor Ellis half staggered into the hall as the driving wind thrust him almost bodily across the doorstep.
“I ran over to see him a few minutes ago,” he added as I slammed the door against the storm, “and as I went up his front path I noticed a light burning in an upper window, though the rest of the house was dark. I knocked, but got no answer, then went into the yard to call to him, when all of a sudden I heard him give the most God-awful yell, followed by a shriek of laughter, and as I looked up at his window he seemed to be struggling with something, though there was no one else in the room. I rang his bell a dozen times and pounded on the door, but not another sound came from the house. At first I thought of notifying the police; then I remembered you lived just round the corner, so I came here, instead. If Larson’s been taken ill, you can help; if we need the police, there’s always time to call ’em, so—”
“Eh bien, my friends, why do we stand here talking while the poor Professor Larson is in need of help?” demanded Jules de Grandin from the study door. “Have you no professional pride, Friend Trowbridge? Why do we linger here?”
“Why, you’ve only finished saying you wouldn’t budge from the house tonight,” I retorted accusingly. “Do you mean—”
“But certainly I do,” he interrupted. “Only two kinds of people can not change their minds, my friend, the foolish and the dead. Jules de Grandin is neither. Come, let us go.”
“No use getting out the car,” I murmured as we donned our overcoats. “This sleet would make driving impossible.”
“Very well, then, let us walk; but let us be about it swiftly,” he responded, fairly pushing me through the door and out into the raging night. Heads bent against the howling storm, we set out for Professor Larson’s house.
“I didn’t exactly have an engagement with Larson,” Professor Ellis admitted as we trudged along the street. “Fact is, I expect he’d about as soon have seen the devil as me, but—have you heard about his latest mummy?” he broke off.
“His what?” I answered sharply.
“His mummy. He brought it in from Africa last week, and he’s been talking about it ever since. This evening he was going to remove the wrappings, so I just ambled over to his house on the off chance he’d let me stick around.
“Larson’s a queer chap. Good man in anthropology, and all that, of course, but a lone wolf when it comes to work. He found this mummy by accident in a cleverly hidden tomb near Naga-ed-dêr, and that country was given up as thoroughly worked out thirty years ago, you know. Funny thing about it, too. While they were excavating the sepulcher two of his workmen were bitten by tomb spiders and died in convulsions. That’s unusual, for the Egyptian tomb spider’s not particularly venomous, though he’s an ugly-looking brute. They’d just about cleared the shaft of rubble and started working toward the funerary chamber when all Larson’s fellaheen ran out on him, too; but he’s a stubborn devil, and he and Foster stuck it out, with the help of such men as they could hire in the neighborhood.
“They had the devil of a time getting the mummy down the Nile, too. Half the crew of their dehabeeyah came down with some mysterious fever, and several of ’em died, and the rest deserted; and just as they were ready to sail from Alexandria, Foster, who was Larson’s assistant, came down with fever and died within three days. Larson hung on like grim death, though, and brought the mummy through—smuggled it right past the Egyptian customs men disguised as a crate of Smyrna sponges.”
“But see here,” I interrupted, “both you and Professor Larson are members of the Harrisonville Museum staff. How does it happen he’s able to treat this mummy as his personal property? Why didn’t he take it to the museum instead of his house?”
Ellis gave a short laugh. “Don’t know Larson very well, do you?” he asked. “Didn’t I say he’s a lone wolf? This expedition to Naga-ed-dêr was a fifty-fifty affair; the Museum paid half the shot, and Larson just about beggared himself to make up the difference. He had a theory there were some valuable Fifth Dynasty relics to be found at Naga, and everybody laughed at him. When he’d justified his theory he was like a spoiled kid with a stick of candy, and wouldn’t share his find with anyone; when I suggested he let me help him unwrap the thing he told me to take a running jump in the lake. I hadn’t an idea, really, he’d let me in when I called on him tonight, but when I heard him yelling and laughing and saw him jumping around like a chestnut on a griddle, I thought maybe he’d gone off his rocker, and ran to get you as quickly as I could. Here we are. We’ll probably be told to go to hell for our trouble, but he might need help.”
As he finished speaking, Ellis sounded a thunderous knock on Larson’s door. Only the skirling of the wind around the angle of the house and the flapping of an unsecured window-blind responded.
“Pardieu, either he is gravely ill or most abominably deaf, that one!” declared de Grandin, sinking his chin in the fur collar of his coat and grasping at his hat as the storm-wind all but wrenched it from his head.
Ellis turned to us in indecision. “D’ye think—” he began, but:
“Think what you please, my friends, and freeze your feet while doing,” the little Frenchman interrupted testily. “Me, I go into that house right away, immediately, this minute.” Trying the do
or and nearest window, and finding both securely fastened, he dashed his gloved band through the pane without more ado, undid the latch and raised the sash. “Do you follow, or remain behind to perish miserably with cold?” he called as he flung a leg across the sill.
De Grandin in the lead, we felt our way across the darkened drawing-room, across the hall, and up the winding staircase. Every room inside the house, save one, was black as ancient Egypt during the plague of darkness, but a thin stream of light trickling out into the hall from beneath Professor Larson’s study door led our footsteps toward his sanctum as a lighthouse guides a ship to port upon a starless night. “Larson!” Ellis called softly, rapping on the study door. “Larson, are you there?”
No answer came, and he seized the door-knob, giving it a tentative twist. The handle turned in his grasp, but the door held firm, for the lock had been shot from the inside.
“One side, if you will be so kind, Monsieur,” requested Jules de Grandin, drawing as far back as the width of the hall permitted, then dashing himself forward like a football player battering toward the goal. The flimsy door fell before his rush, and the darkened hall was flooded with a freshet of dazzling light. For a moment we paused on the threshold, blinking owlishly; then:
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed.
“For Gawd’s sake!” came Ellis’ rejoinder.
“Eh bien, I rather think it is the devil’s,” Jules de Grandin murmured.
The room before us was a chaos of confusion, as though its contents had been stirred with a monster spoon in the hands of a maliciously mischievous giant. Furniture was overturned; some of the chair covers had been ripped open, as though a ruthless, hurrying searcher had cut the upholstery in search of hidden valuables; pictures hung crazily upon the walls.
In the middle of the study, beneath the glare of a cluster of electric lights, stood a heavy oaken table, and on it lay a mummy-case stripped of its cover, a slender, China-tea-colored form swathed in crisscrossed linen bandages, reclining on the table by the case.
Close to the baseboard of the wall beneath the window crouched a grotesque, unhuman thing, resembling a farmer’s cast-off scarecrow or a hopelessly outmoded tailor’s dummy. We had to look a second time and strain our unbelieving eyes before we recognized Professor Larson in the crumpled form.
Stepping daintily as a cat on a shower-splashed pavement, de Grandin crossed the room and sank to one knee beside the huddled form, drawing his right glove off as he knelt.
“Is—is he—” Ellis whispered hoarsely, halting at the word of which laymen seem to have a superstitious fear.
“Dead?” de Grandin supplied. “Mais oui, Monsieur; like a herring. But he has not been so long. No; I should hazard a guess that he was still living when we left the house to come here.”
“But—isn’t there something we can do? There must be something—” Ellis asked tremulously.
“But certainly; we can call the coroner,” de Grandin answered. “Meanwhile, we might examine this.” He nodded toward the mummy lying on the table.
Ellis’ humane concern for his dead colleague dropped from him like a worn-out garment as he turned toward the ancient relic, the man eclipsed completely by the anthropologist. “Beautiful—superb!” he murmured ecstatically as he gazed at the unlovely thing. “See, there’s no face-mask or funerary statue, either on the mummy or the case. Fifth Dynasty work, as sure as you’re alive, and the case is—I say, do you see it?” he broke off, pointing excitedly at the open cedar coffin.
“See it? But certainly,” de Grandin answered sharply. “But what is it you find extraordinary, if one may ask?”
“Why, don’t you see? There’s not a line of writing on that mummy-case! The Egyptians always wrote the titles and biographies of the dead upon their coffins, but this one is just bare, virgin wood. See”—he leant over and tapped the thin, hard shell of cedar—“there’s never been a bit of paint or varnish on it! No wonder Larson kept it to himself. Why, there’s never been a thing like this discovered since Egyptology became a science!”
De Grandin’s glance had wandered from the coffin to the mummy. Now he brushed past Ellis with his quick, cat-like step and bent above the bandaged form. “The égyptologie I do not know so well,” he admitted, “but medicine I know perfectly. What do you make of this, hein?” His slender forefinger rested for a moment on the linen bands encircling the desiccated figure’s left pectoral region.
I started at the words. There was no doubt about it. The left breast, even beneath the mummy-bands, was considerably lower than the right, and faintly, but perceptibly, through the tightly bound linen there showed the faintest trace of brown-red stain. There was no mistaking it. Every surgeon, soldier and embalmer knows that telltale stain at sight.
Professor Ellis’ eyes opened till they were nearly as wide as de Grandin’s. “Blood!” he exclaimed in a muted voice. “Good Lord!” Then:
“But it can’t be blood; it simply can’t, you know. Mummies were eviscerated and pickled in natron before desiccation; there’s no possibility of any blood being left in the body—”
“Oh, no?” the Frenchman’s interruption was charged with sarcasm. “Nevertheless, Monsieur, de Grandin is too old a fox to be instructed in the art of sucking eggs. Friend Trowbridge”—he turned to me—“how long have you been dealing pills to those afflicted with bellyache?”
“Why,” I answered wonderingly, “about forty years, but—”
“No buts, my friend. Can you, or can you not recognize a blood-stain when you see it?”
“Of course, but—”
“What, then, is this, if you will kindly tell us?”
“Why, blood, of course; anyone can tell that—”
“Précisément—it is blood, Monsieur Ellis. The good and most reliable Doctor Trowbridge corroborates me. Now, let us examine the coffin of this so remarkable mummy which, despite your pickling in natron and your desiccation, can still shed blood.” With a wave of his hand he indicated the case of plain, unvarnished cedar-wood.
“By George, this is unusual, too!” Ellis cried, bending above the coffin. “D’ye see?”
“What?” I queried, for his eyes were shining with excitement as he gazed into the violated casket.
“Why, the way the thing’s fastened. Most mummy-case lids are held in place by four little flanges—two on each side—which sink into mortises cut in the lower section and held in place by hardwood dowels. This has eight, three on each side and one at each end. H’m, they must have wanted to make sure whoever was put in there couldn’t break loose. And—great Scott, will you look there!” Excitedly he pointed to the bottom of the case.
Once more I looked my wonderment. The abnormalities which struck his practised eye were quite invisible to me.
“See how they’ve lined the case with spices? I’ve opened several hundred mummy-cases, but I never saw that before.”
As he had said, the entire bottom of the coffin was strewn with loose spices to a depth of four inches or so. The aromatics had crumbled to a fine powder, but the mingled clove and cinnamon, aloes and thyme gave off a pungent, almost suffocating aroma as we bent above the bathtub-like coffin.
De Grandin’s small blue eyes were very round and bright as he glanced quickly from me to Ellis, then back again. “I damn think this explains it,” he announced. “Unless I am much more mistaken than I think I am, this body never was a mummy, at least not such a mummy as the old embalmers customarily produced. Will you assist me?” He bowed invitingly to Ellis, placing his hands beneath the mummy’s shoulders at the same time.
“Take the feet, if you please, Monsieur,” he bade, “and lift it gently—gently, if you please—it must be put exactly where it was until the coroner has viewed the room.”
They raised the bandaged form six inches or so above the table, then set it down again, and astonishment was written on their faces as they finished.
“What is it?” I asked, completely mystified by their glances of mutual understanding.
“It weighs—” began de Grandin, and:
“Sixty pounds, at least!” completed Ellis.
“Well?”
“Well, be everlastingly consigned to Satan’s lowest subcellar!” rejoined the little Frenchman sharply. “It is not well at all, my friend; it is completely otherwise. You know your physiology; you know that sixty percent or more of us is water, simply H20, such as is found in rivers, and on the tables of Americans in lieu of decent wine. Mummification is dehydration—the watery contents of the body is removed and nothing left but bone and desiccated flesh, a scant forty per cent of the body’s weight in life. This body is a small one; in life it could have weighed scarcely a hundred pounds; yet—”
“Why, then, it must have been only partly mummified,” I interrupted, but he cut in with:
“Or not at all, my friend. I damn think that we shall find some interesting disclosures when these wrappings are removed. A bleeding mummy, and a mummy which weighs more than half its lifetime weight—yes, the probabilities of a surprise are great, or I am more mistaken than I think.
“Meantime,” he turned toward the door, “there is the routine of the law to be complied with. The coroner must be told of Monsieur Larson’s death, and there is no need for us to burn these lights while we are waiting.”
Bowing politely to us to precede him, he switched off the study lights before closing the door and followed us to the lower hall where the telephone was located.
“I simply can’t imagine how it happened,” Professor Ellis murmured, striding nervously across his late colleague’s drawing-room while we waited the advent of the coroner. “Larson seemed in the pink of condition this afternoon, and—good Lord, what’s that?”
The sound of a terrific struggle, like that of two men locked in a death-grip, echoed through the quiet house.
Thump—thump—thump! Heavy, pounding footsteps banged upon the floor above our heads; then crash! came a smashing impact, as of overturning furniture, a momentary pause, a strident scream and the sudden crescendo of a wild, discordant laugh. Then silence once again.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 38