The Best of Jules de Grandin

by Seabury Quinn

  “‘It is she!’ Colonel Putnam whispered tensely. ‘It is she, my own little daughter, in her very flesh, and these’—he pointed to the other two—‘were her attendants in that former life.’

  “‘Look!’ He lifted the lid from the center coffin and revealed a slender form closely wrapped in overlying layers of dust-colored linen. ‘There she stands, exactly as the priestly craftsmen wrapped her for her long, long rest, three thousand years ago! Now all is prepared for the great work I purpose; only the contents of that parcel you brought were needed to call the spirits of my daughter and her servants back to their earthly tenements, here, tonight, in this very room, Hawkins!’

  “‘Henry Putnam,’ my father cried, ‘do you mean to say you intend to play with this Devil’s business? You’d really try to call back the spirit of one whose life on earth is done?’

  “‘I would; by God, I will!’ Colonel Putnam shouted.

  “‘You shan’t!’ Father told him. ‘That kind of thing is denounced by the laws of Moses, and mighty good sense he showed when he forbade it, too!’

  “‘Fool!’ Colonel Putnam screamed at him. ‘Don’t you know Moses stole all his knowledge from the priesthood of Egypt, to which I belonged? Centuries before Moses was, we knew the white arts of life and the black arts of death. Moses! How dare you quote that ignorant charlatan and thief?’

  “‘Well, I’ll have no part in any such Devil’s mummery,’ Father told him, but Colonel Putnam was like a madman.

  “‘You shall!’ he answered, drawing a revolver from his pocket. ‘If either of you tries to leave this room I’ll shoot him dead!”

  The girl stopped speaking and covered her face with her hands. “If we’d only let him shoot us!” she said wearily “Maybe we’d have been able to stop it.”

  De Grandin regarded her compassionately. “Can you continue, Mademoiselle?” he asked gently. “Or would you, perhaps, wait till later?”

  “No, I might as well get it over with,” she answered with a sigh. “Colonel Putnam ripped the cover off the package Father had brought and took out seven little silver vessels, each about as large as a hen’s egg, but shaped something like a pineapple—having a pointed top and a flat base. He set them in a semicircle before the three coffins and filled them from an earthenware jug which was fitted with a spout terminating in a knob fashioned like a woman’s head crowned with a diadem of hawks’ wings. Then he lighted a taper and blew out the oil-lamp which furnished the only illumination for the room.

  “It was deathly still in the darkened room; outside we could hear the crickets cheeping, and their shrill little cries seemed to grow louder and louder, to come closer and closer to the window. Colonel Putnam’s shadow, cast by the flickering taper’s light, lay on the wall like one of those old-time pictures of the Evil One.

  “‘The hour!’ he breathed. ‘The hour has come!’

  Quickly he leaned forward, touching first one, then another of the little silver jars with the flame of his taper.

  “The room’s darkness yielded to an eery, bluish glow. Wherever the fire came in contact with a vase a tiny, thin, blue flame sprang up.

  “Suddenly the corner of the room where the mummy-cases stood seemed wavering and rocking, like a ship upon a troubled ocean. It was hot and sultry in the house, shut in as it was by the thick pine woods, but from somewhere a current of cold—freezing cold!—air began to blow. I could feel its chill on my ankles, then my knees, finally on my hands as I held them in my lap.

  “‘Daughter, little daughter—daughter in all the ages past and all the ages yet to be, I call to you. Come, your father calls!’ Colonel Putnam intoned in a quavering voice. ‘Come. Come, I command it! Out of the illimitable void of eternity, come to me. In the name of Osiris, Dread Lord of the Spirit World, I command it. In the name of Isis, wife and sister of the Mighty One, I command it! In the names of Horus and Anubis, I command it!’

  “Something—I don’t know what—seemed entering the room. The windows were tight-latched; yet we saw the dusty curtains flutter, as though in a sudden current of air, and a light, fine mist seemed to obscure the bright blue flames burning in the seven silver lamps. There was a creaking sound, as though an old and rusty-hinged door were being slowly opened, and the lids of the two mummy-cases to right and left of the central figure began to swing outward. And as they moved, the linen-bandaged thing in the center coffin seemed to writhe like a hibernating snake recovering life, and stepped out into the room!

  “Colonel Putnam forgot Father and me completely. ‘Daughter—Gretchen, Isabella, Francesca, Musepa, T’ashamt, by whatever name or names you have been known throughout the ages, I charge you speak!’ he cried, sinking on his knees and stretching out his hands toward the moving mummy.

  “There came a gentle, sighing noise, then a light, tittering laugh, musical, but hard and metallic, as a thin, high voice replied. ‘My father, you who loved and nurtured me in ages gone, I come to you at your command with those who served me in the elder world; but we are weak and worn from our long rest. Give us to eat, my father.’

  “‘Aye, food shall ye have, and food in plenty,’ Colonel Putnam answered. ‘Tell me, what is it that ye crave?’

  “‘Naught but the life-force of those strangers at your back,’ the voice replied with another light, squeaking laugh. ‘They must die if we would live—’ and the sheeted thing moved nearer to us in the silver lamps’ blue light.

  “Before the Colonel could snatch up the pistol which had fallen from his hand, Father grabbed it, seized me with his free hand and dragged me from the house. Our car was waiting at the door, its engine still going, and we jumped in and started for the highroad at top speed.

  “We were nearly out of the woods surrounding Putnam’s house—the same woods I drove you through this afternoon—I happened to look back. There, running like a rabbit, coming so fast that it was actually overtaking our speeding car, was a tall, thin man, almost fleshless as a skeleton, and aptly dressed in some dust-colored, close-fitting kind of tights.

  “But I recognized it! It was one of those things from the mummy-cases we’d seen in Colonel Putnam’s parlor!

  “Dad crowded on more speed, but the dreadful running mummy kept gaining on us. It had almost overtaken us when we reached the edge of the woods and I happened to remember Father still had Colonel Putnam’s pistol. I snatched the weapon from his pocket and emptied it at the thing that chased us, almost at pointblank range. I know I must have hit it several times, for I’m a pretty good shot and the distance was too short for a miss, even allowing for the way the car was lurching, but it kept right on; then, just as we ran out into the moonlight at the woodland’s edge, it stopped in its tracks, waved its arms at us and—vanished.”

  De Grandin tweaked the sharply waxed ends of his little wheat-blond mustache. “There is more, Mademoiselle,” he said at length. “I can see it in your eyes. What else?”

  Miss Hawkins cast a startled look at him, and it seemed to me she shuddered slightly, despite the warming glow of the fire.

  “Yes,” she answered slowly, “there’s more. Three days after that a party of young folks came up here on a camping-trip from New York. They were at the Ormond cabin down by Pine Lake, six of ’em; a young man and his wife, who acted as chaperons, and two girls and two boys. The second night after they came, one of the girls and her boy friend went canoeing on the lake just at sundown. They paddled over to this side, where the Putnam farm comes down to the water, and came ashore to rest.”

  There was an air of finality in the way she paused. It was as if she had announced, “Thus the tale endeth,” when she told us of the young folks’ beaching their canoe, and de Grandin realized it, for, instead of asking what the next occurrence was, he demanded simply:

  “And when were they found, Mademoiselle?”

  “Next day, just before noon. I wasn’t with the searching-party, but they told me it was pretty dreadful. The canoe paddles were smashed to splinters, as though they’d used them as cl
ubs to defend themselves and broken them while doing so, and their bodies were literally torn limb from limb. If it hadn’t been there was no evidence of any of them being eaten, the searchers would have thought a pair of panthers had pounced on them, for their faces were clawed almost beyond recognition, practically every shred of clothing ripped off them, and their arms and legs and heads completely separated from their bodies.”

  “U’m? And blood was scattered all around, one imagines?” de Grandin asked.

  “No! Not a single drop of blood was anywhere in sight. Job Denham, the undertaker who received the bodies from the coroner, told me their flesh was pale and dry as veal. He said he couldn’t understand it, but I—”

  She halted in her narrative, glancing apprehensively across her shoulder at the window; then, in a low, almost soundless whisper. “The Bible says the blood’s the life, doesn’t it?” she asked. “And that voice we heard in Colonel Putnam’s house told him those mummies wanted the vital force from Dad and me, didn’t it? Well, I think that’s the answer. Whatever it was Colonel Putnam brought to life in his house three days before was what set on that boy and girl in Putnam’s woods, and it—they—attacked them for their blood.”

  “Have similar events occurred, Mademoiselle?”

  “Did you notice the farm land hereabouts as we drove over?” she asked irrelevantly.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Well, it’s old land; sterile. You couldn’t raise so much as a mortgage on it. No one’s tried to farm it since I can remember, and I’ll be seventeen next January.”

  “U’m; and so—”

  “So you’d think it kind of funny for Colonel Putnam suddenly to decide to work his land, wouldn’t you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And with so many men out of work hereabouts, you’d think it queer for him to advertise for farmhands in the Boston papers, wouldn’t you?”

  “Précisément, Mademoiselle.”

  “And for him to pay their railway fare up here, and their bus fare over from the station, and then get dissatisfied with ’em all of a sudden, and discharge ’em in a day or two—and for ’em to leave without anybody’s knowing when they went, or where they went; then for him to hire a brand-new crew in the same way, and discharge them in the same way in a week or less?”

  “Mademoiselle,” de Grandin answered in a level, almost toneless voice, “we consider these events somewhat more than merely queer. We think they have the smell of fish upon them. Tomorrow we shall call upon this estimable Putnam person, and he would be well advised to have a credible explanation in readiness.”

  “Call on Colonel Putnam? Not I.” the girl rejoined. “I wouldn’t go near that house of his, even in daylight, for a million dollars!”

  “Then I fear we must forego the pleasure of your charming company,” he returned with a smile, “for we shall visit him, most certainly. Yes, of course.

  “Meantime,” he added, “we have had a trying day; is it agreeable that we retire? Doctor Trowbridge and I shall occupy the bunks in this room; you may have the inner room, Mademoiselle.”

  “Please,” she pleaded, and a flush mantled her face to the brows, “please let me sleep out here with you. I’d—well, I’d be scared to death sleeping in there by myself, and I’ll be just as quiet—honestly, I won’t disturb you.”

  She was unsupplied with sleeping-wear, of course; so de Grandin, who was about her stature, cheerfully donated a pair of lavender-and-scarlet striped silk pajamas, which she donned in the adjoining room, expending so little time in process that we had scarcely had time to doff our boots, jackets and cravats ere she rejoined us, looking far more like an adolescent lad than a young woman, save for those absurd pink-coral ear-studs.

  “I wonder if you’d mind my using the ’phone?” she asked as she pattered across the rough-board floor on small and amazingly white bare feet. “I don’t think it’s been disconnected, and I’d like to call Dad and tell him I’m all right.”

  “By all means, do so,” bade de Grandin as he hitched the blanket higher on his shoulder. “We can understand his apprehension for your safety in the circumstances.”

  The girl raised the receiver from the old-fashioned wall fixture, took the magneto crank in her right hand and gave it three vigorous turns, then seven slow ones.

  “Hello? Dad?” she called. “This is Audrey; I’m—oh!” The color drained from her cheeks as though a coat of liquid white were sprayed across her face. “Dad—Dad—what is it?” she cried shrilly; then slowly, like a marionette being lowered by its strings, she wavered totteringly a moment, let fall the telephone receiver and slumped in a pathetic little heap upon the cabin floor.

  De Grandin and I were out of bed with a bound, the little Frenchman bending solicitously above the fainting girl, I snatching at the telephone receiver.

  “Hullo, hullo?” I called through the transmitter. “Mr. Hawkins?”

  “Huh—hoh—huh-hoh-huh!” the most fiendish, utterly diabolical chuckle I ever heard came to me across the wire. “Huh—hoh—huh-hoh-huh!”

  Then click! the telephone connection broke, and though I repeated the three-seven ring I’d heard the girl give several times, I could obtain no answer, not even the faint buzzing which denotes an open wire.

  “My father! Something dreadful has happened to him, I know!” moaned the girl as she recovered consciousness. “Did you hear it, too, Doctor Trowbridge?”

  “I heard something, certainly; it sounded like a poor connection roaring in the wire,” I lied. Then, as hopeful disbelief lightened in her eyes: “Yes, I’m sure that’s what it was, for the instrument’s quite dead, now.”

  Reluctantly reassured, Audrey Hawkins clambered into bed, and though she moaned once or twice with a little, whimpering sound, her buoyant youth and healthily tired young muscles stood her in good stead, and she was sleeping peacefully within an hour.

  Several times, as de Grandin and I lay in silence, waiting for her to drop off, I fancied I heard the oddly terrifying squeaking sounds we’d noticed earlier in the evening, but I resolutely put all thought of what their probable origin might be from my mind, convinced myself they were the cries of nocturnal insects, and—lay broad awake, listening for their recurrence.

  “What was it that you heard in the telephone, Friend Trowbridge?” the little Frenchman asked me in a whisper when her continued steady, even breathing had assured us that our youthful guest was sound asleep.

  “A laugh,” I answered, “the most hideous, hellish chuckle I’ve ever listened to. You don’t suppose her father could have laughed like that, just to frighten—”

  “I do not think Monsieur her father has either cause for laughter or ability to laugh,” he interrupted. “What it is that haunts these woods I do not surely know, my friend, though I suspect that the crack-brained Colonel Putnam let loose a horde of evil elementals when he went through that mummery at his house last summer. However that may be, there is no doubt that these things, whatever be their nature, are of a most unpleasant disposition, intent on killing any one they meet, either from pure lust for killing or in order to secure the vital forces of their victims and thus increase their strength in a material form. It is my fear that they may have a special grudge against Monsieur Hawkins and his daughter, for they were the first people whose lives they sought, and they escaped, however narrowly. Therefore, having failed in their second attempt to do the daughter mischief this afternoon, they may have wreaked vengeance on the father. Yes, it is entirely possible.”

  “But it’s unlikely,” I protested. “He’s over in Bartlesville, ten miles away, while she’s right here; yet—”

  “Yes, you were saying—” he prompted as a sudden unpleasant thought forced itself into my mind and stopped my speech.

  “Why, if they’re determined to do mischief to either Hawkins or his daughter, haven’t they attempted to enter this house, which is so much nearer than her home?”

  “Eh bien, I thought you might be thinking that,” he answ
ered dryly. “And are you sure that they have made no attempt to enter here? Look at the door, if you will be so good, and tell me what it is you see.”

  I glanced across the cabin toward the stout plank door and caught the ruddy reflection of the firelight on a small, bright object lying on the sill. “It looks like your hunting-knife,” I told him.

  “Précisément, you have right; it is my hunting-knife,” he answered. “My hunting-knife, unsheathed, with its sharp point directed toward the door-sill. Yours is at the other entrance, while I have taken the precaution to place a pair of heavy shears on the window-ledge. I do not think I wasted preparations, either, as you will probably agree if you will cast your eyes toward the window.”

  Obediently, I glanced at the single window of the room, then stifled an involuntary cry of horror; for there, outlined against the flickering illumination of the dying fire, stood an evil-looking, desiccated thing, skeleton-thin, dark, leather-colored skin stretched tightly as drum parchment on its skull, broken teeth protruding through retracted lips, tiny sparks of greenish light glowing malevolently in its cavernous, hollow eye-sockets. I recognized it at a glance; it was a mummy, an Egyptian mummy, such as I had seen scores of times while walking through the museums. And yet it was no mummy, either, for while it had the look of death and unnaturally delayed decay about it, it was also endued with some kind of dreadful life-in-death; for its little, glittering eyes were plainly capable of seeing, while its withered, leathery lips were drawn back in a grin of snarling fury, and even as I looked, they moved back from the stained and broken teeth in the framing of some phrase of hatred.

  “Do not be afraid,” de Grandin bade. “He can look and glare and make his monkey-faces all he wishes, but he can not enter here. The shears and knives prevent him.”

  “Y-you’re sure?” I asked, terror gripping at my throat.

  “Sure? To be sure I’m sure, He and his unpleasant playfellows would have been inside the cabin, and at our throats, long since, could they have found a way to enter. The sharpened steel, my friend, is very painful to him. Iron and steel are the most earthly of all metals, and exercise a most uncomfortable influence on elementals. They can not handle it, they can not even approach it closely, and when it is sharpened to a point it seems to be still more efficient, for its pointed end appears to focus and concentrate radiations of psychic force from the human body, forces which are highly destructive to them. Knowing this, and suspecting what it is that we have to do with from the story Mademoiselle Hawkins told us, I took precautions to place these discouragers at doors and window before we went to bed. Tiens, I have lain here something like an hour, hearing them squeak and gibber as they prowled around the house; only a moment since I noticed that thin gentleman peering in the window, and thought you might he interested.”