“She’s coming out of anesthesia,” I warned; “shall I ring for a—”
“S-s-sst! Be quiet!” de Grandin commanded, leaning toward the writhing girl, his little eyes agleam, lips drawn back from his small, white teeth in a smile which was more than half a snarl.
Slowly, almost tentatively, a little puff of gray-white, smoke-like substance issued from the moaning girl’s left side, grew larger and denser, whirled spirally above her, seemed to blossom into something globular—a big and iridescent bubble-thing in which the pale malignant features of the incubus took form.
“Now for the test, by blue!” de Grandin murmured fiercely.
With a leap he crossed the room, swung back the door and jumped across the threshold to the corridor, reappearing in the twinkling of an eye with—of all things!—a vacuum sweeper in his hand. He set the mechanism going with a quick flick of the trigger, and as the sharp, irritable whine of the motor sounded, sprang across the room, paused a moment by the bed and thrusting his hand beneath his jacket drew forth his heavy Kukri knife and passed it with a slashing motion above the girl’s stiff, quivering form. The steel sheared through the ligament of tenuous, smoke-like matter connecting the gleaming bubble-globe to Zita’s side, and as the sphere raised itself, like a toy balloon released from its tether, he brought the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner up, caught the trailing, gray-white wisp of gelatinous substance which swung pendent in the air and—sucked it in.
The droning motor halted in its vicious hornet-whine, as though the burden he had placed on it were more than it could cope with; then, sharply, spitefully, began to whir again, and, bit by struggling bit, the trail of pale, pellucid stuff was sucked into the bellows of the vacuum pump.
A look of ghastly fright and horror shone upon the face within the bubble. The wide mouth opened gaspingly, the heavy-lidded eyes popped staringly, as though a throttling hand had been laid on the creature’s unseen throat, and we heard a little whimpering sound, so faint that it was scarcely audible, but loud enough to be identified. It was like the shrieking of someone in mortal torment heard across a stretch of miles.
“Ha—so? And you would laugh at Jules de Grandin’s face, Monsieur?” the little Frenchman cried exultantly. “You would make of him one louse-infested monkey? Yes? Parbleu, I damn think we shall see who makes a monkey out of whom before our little game is played out to a finish. But certainly!
“Ring the bell, Friend Trowbridge,” he commanded me. “Bid them take her to the operating room and infuse a quart of artificial serum by hypodermoclysis. Doctor Brundage is in readiness; he knows what to do.
“Now, come with me, if you would see what you shall see,” he ordered as I made the call. “Leave Mademoiselle with them; they have their orders.”
Twisting the connecting hose of the vacuum cleaner into a sharp V, he shut the current off; then, always the urbane Parisian, he motioned me to precede him through the door.
Down to the basement we hastened, and paused by the great furnace which kept the building well supplied with boiling water. He thrust the cleaner’s plug into an electric wall fixture and: “Will you be kind enough to open up that door?” he asked, nodding toward the furnace and switching on the power in his motor.
As the machine once more began to hum he pressed the trigger sharply downward, reversing the motor and forcing air from the cleaner’s bellows. There was a short, sharp, sputtering cough, as though the mechanism halted in its task, then a labored, angry groaning of the motor as it pumped and pumped against some stubborn obstacle. Abruptly, the motor started racing, and like a puff of smoke discharging from a gun, a great gray ring shot from the cleaner’s nozzle into the superheated air of the furnace firebox. For an instant it hovered just above the gleaming, incandescent coals; then with an oddly splashing sound it dropped upon the fire-bed, and a sharp hissing followed while a cloud of heavy steam arose and spiraled toward the flue. I sickened as I smelled the acrid odor of incinerating flesh.
“Très bien. That, it appears, is that,” announced de Grandin as he shut the motor off and closed the furnace door with a well-directed kick. “Come, let us go and see how Mademoiselle Zita does. They should be through with the infusion by this time.”
5. Release
ZITA SZEKLER LAY UPON her bed, her bandaged hands upon her bosom. Whether she was still under anesthesia or not I could not tell, but she seemed to be resting easily. Also, strangely, there was not the dreadful pallor that had marked her when we left; instead, her cheeks were faintly, though by no means feverishly, flushed and her lips were healthy pink.
“Why, this is incredible,” I told him. “She’s been through an experience fit to make a nervous wreck of her, the pain she suffered must have been exquisite, she’s had extensive hemorrhages; yet—”
“Yet you forget that Doctor Brundage pumped a thousand cubic centimeters of synthetic serum into her, and that such heroic measures are almost sovereign in case of shock, collapse, hemorrhage or coma. No, my friend, she lost but little blood, and what she lost was more than compensated by the saline infusion. It was against the loss of life-force I desired to insure her, and it seems the treatment was effective.”
“Life-force? How do you mean?”
He grinned his quick, infectious elfin grin and, regardless of institutional prohibitions, produced a rank-smelling Maryland and set it glowing. “Ectoplasm,” he replied laconically.
“Ec—what in the world—”
“Précisément, exactement, quite so,” he answered with another grin. “Regard me, if you please: This Czerni person’s soul was earthbound, as we know. It hung about the Szekler house, ever seeking opportunity for mischief, but it could accomplish little; for immaterial spirits, lacking physical co-operation of some sort, can not accomplish physical results. At last there came the chance when Madame Szekler induced her husband and child to attend that séance. Mademoiselle Zita was ill, nervous, run down, not able to withstand her assaults. Not only was he able to force himself into her mind to make her do his bidding, but he was able to withdraw from her the ectoplasmic force which supplied him with a body of a kind.
“This ectoplasm, what is it? We do not surely know, any more than we know what electricity is. But in a vague way we know that it is a solidification of the body’s emanations. How? Puff out your breath. You can not see it, but you know that something vital has gone out of you. Ah, but if the temperature were low enough, you could not only feel your breath, you could see it, as well. So, when conditions are favorable, the ectoplasm, at other times unseen, becomes visible. Not only that, by a blending of the spiritual entity with its physical properties, it can become an almost-physical body. A materialization, we should call it, a ‘manifestation’ the Spiritists denominate it.
“Why did he do this? For two reasons. First, he craved a body of some sort again; by materializing, he could make himself seen by Colonel Szekler, whom he desired to plague. He had become a sort of semi-human once again, so far physical that physical means had to be taken to combat him.
“Last night, when I flung the holy water on him, and nothing happened, I said, ‘Mon Dieu, I am lost!’ Then I counseled me, ‘Jules de Grandin, do not be dismayed. If holy things are unavailing, it is because he has become physical, though not corporeal, and you must use physical weapons to combat him.’
“‘Very good, Jules de Grandin, it shall be that way,’ I say to me.
“Thereupon I planned my scheme of warfare. He was too vague, too subtle, too incorporeal to be killed to death with a sword or pistol. The weapons would cut through him but do him little harm. ‘Ah, but there is always one thing that will deal with such as he,’ I remind me. ‘Fire, the cleansing fire, regarded by the ancients as an element, known by the moderns as the universal solvent.’
“But how to get him to the fire? I could not bring the fire to him, for fear of hurting Mademoiselle Zita. I could not take him to the fire, for he would take refuge in her body if I attempted to seize him. Then I remembered: When he ma
terialized in her room the bubble which enclosed his evil face wavered in the air.
“‘Ah-ha, my evil one,’ I say, ‘I have you at the disadvantage. If you can be blown by the wind you can be sucked by in air-current. It is the vacuum sweeper which shall be your hearse to take you to the crematory. Oh, yes.’
“So then I know that we must lie in wait for him with our vacuum sweeper all in readiness. It may take months to catch him, but catch him we shall, eventually. But there is another risk. We must sever his materialized form from Mademoiselle Zita’s body, and we can not put the ectoplasm back. And so I decide that we must have some saline solution ready to revive her from the shock of losing all that life-force. This seemed a condition which could not be overcome, but this wicked Czerni, by his very wickedness, provided us with the solution of our problem. By injuring Mademoiselle Zita, he made them bring her to this hospital, the one place where we should have everything ready to our hand—the sweeper, the fire which should consume him utterly, the saline solution and facilities for its quick administration. Eh bien, my friend, but he did us the favor, that one.
“But her hands, man, her hands,” I broke in. “How—”
“It is a stigma,” he replied.
“A stigma—how—what—”
“Perfectly. You understand the phenomenon of stigmata? It is akin to hypnotism. In the psychological laboratory you have seen it, but by a different name. The hypnotist can bid his subject’s blood run from his hand, and the hand becomes pale and anemic; you have seen the blood transferred from one arm to another; you have seen what appears to be a wound take form upon the skin without external violence, merely the command of the hypnotist.
“Now, this Czerni had complete possession of Mademoiselle Zita’s mind while she slept. He could make her do all manner of things, think of all manner of things, feel all manner of things. He had only to give her the command: ‘Your hands have been beaten to a pulp, smashed by merciless mauls upon a chopping-block—you are wearing the red gauntlets!’ and, to all intents, what he said became a fact. Just as the scientific hypnotist makes his subject’s blood reverse itself against the course of nature, just as he makes what appears to be a bleeding cut appear upon uninjured skin—then heals it with a word—so could Czerni make Mademoiselle Zita’s hands take on the appearance of wearing the red gauntlets without the use of outside force. Only a strong will, animated by a frightful hate, and operating on another will whose resistance had completely broken down could do these things; but do them he did. Yes.
“When Colonel Szekler told me how his daughter became red-gauntleted while lying in her bed, where she could not possibly have been injured by external force, I knew that this was what had happened, and so sure was I of my diagnosis that I staked my life upon it. Now—”
“You’re crazy!” I broke in.
“We shall see,” he answered with a smile, crossed to the bed and placed a second pillow under Zita’s head, so that she was almost in a sitting posture.
“Mademoiselle,” he called softly while he stroked her forehead gently, “Mademoiselle Zita, can you hear me?” He pressed his thumbs transversely on her brow, drawing them slowly outward with a stroking motion, then, with fingers on her temples, bore his thumbs against her throat below the ears. “Mademoiselle,” he ordered in a low, insistent voice, “it is I, Jules de Grandin. I am the master of your thought, you can not think or act or move without my permission. Do you hear?”
“I hear,” she answered in a sleepy voice.
“And you obey?”
“And I obey.”
“Très bon. I bid you to forget all which the evil Czerni told you; to unlock your mind from the prison of his dominance—to restore your hands to their accustomed shape. Your hands are normal, unharmed in any way; they have never been scarred or hurt, not even scratched.
“Mademoiselle, in what condition are your hands?”
“They are normal and uninjured,” she replied.
“Bien! Triomphe! Now, let us see.”
With a pair of surgical shears he cut away the bandages. I held my breath as he drew away the gauze, but I wondered as the lower layers were drawn apart and showed no stain of blood.
The final layer was off. Zita Szekler’s hands lay on the counterpane, smooth, white, pink-tipped, without a mark, or scar, or blemish.
“Merciful heavens!” I exclaimed. “This is a miracle, no less.
“Here, I say, de Grandin, where are you going, to call Colonel Szekler?”
“Not I,” he answered with a chuckle. “Do you call him, good Friend Trowbridge. Me, I go to find that cocksure-of-his-diagnosis Doctor Teach and make him pay his wager.
“Morbleu, how I shall enjoy drinking him beneath the table!”
The Jest of Warburg Tantavul
WARBURG TANTAVUL WAS DYING. Little more than skin and bones, he lay propped up with pillows in the big sleigh bed and smiled as though he found the thought of dissolution faintly amusing.
Even in comparatively good health the man was never prepossessing. Now, wasted with disease, that smile of self-sufficient satisfaction on his wrinkled face, he was nothing less than hideous. The eyes, which nature had given him, were small, deep-set and ruthless. The mouth, which his own thoughts had fashioned through the years, was wide and thin-lipped, almost colorless, and even in repose was tightly drawn against his small and curiously perfect teeth. Now, as he smiled, a flickering light, lambent as the quick reflection of an unseen flame, flared in his yellowish eyes, and a hard white line of teeth showed on his lower lip, as if he bit it to hold back a chuckle.
“You’re still determined that you’ll marry Arabella?” he asked his son, fixing his sardonic, mocking smile on the young man.
“Yes, Father, but—”
“No buts, my boy”—this time the chuckle came, low and muted, but at the same time glassy-hard—“no buts. I’ve told you I’m against it, and you’ll rue it to your dying day if you should marry her; but”—he paused, and breath rasped in his wizened throat—“but go ahead and marry her, if your heart’s set on it. I’ve said my say and warned you—heh, boy, never say your poor old father didn’t warn you!”
He lay back on his piled-up pillows for a moment, swallowing convulsively, as if to force the fleeting life-breath back, then, abruptly: “Get out,” he ordered. “Get out and stay out, you poor fool; but remember what I’ve said.”
“Father,” young Tantavul began, stepping toward the bed, but the look of sudden concentrated fury in the old man’s tawny eyes halted him in midstride.
“Get—out—I—said,” his father snarled, then, as the door closed softly on his son:
“Nurse—hand—me—that—picture.” His breath was coming slowly, now, in shallow labored gasps, but his withered fingers writhed in a gesture of command, pointing to the silver-framed photograph of a woman which stood upon a little table in the bedroom window-bay.
He clutched the portrait as if it were some precious relic, and for a minute let his eyes rove over it. “Lucy,” he whispered hoarsely, and now his words were thick and indistinct, “Lucy, they’ll be married, spite of all that I have said. They’ll be married, Lucy, d’ye hear?” Thin and high-pitched as a child’s, his voice rose to a piping treble as he grasped the picture’s silver frame and held it level with his face. “They’ll be married, Lucy dear, and they’ll have—”
Abruptly as a penny whistle’s note is stilled when no more air is blown in it, old Tantavul’s cry was hushed. The picture, still grasped in his hands, fell to the tufted coverlet, the man’s lean jaw relaxed and he slumped back on his pillows with a shadow of the mocking smile still in his glazing eyes.
Etiquette requires that the nurse await the doctor’s confirmation at such times, so, obedient to professional dictates, Miss Williamson stood by the bed until I felt the dead man’s pulse and nodded; then with the skill of years of practice she began her offices, bandaging the wrists and jaws and ankles that the body might be ready when the representative of Martin�
�s Funeral Home came for it.
MY FRIEND DE GRANDIN was annoyed. Arms akimbo, knuckles on his hips, his black-silk kimono draped round him like a mourning garment, he voiced his complaint in no uncertain terms. In fifteen little so small minutes he must leave for the theatre, and that son and grandson of a filthy swine who was the florist had not delivered his gardenia. And was it not a fact that he could not go forth without a fresh gardenia for his lapel? But certainly. Why did that sale chameau procrastinate? Why did he delay delivering that unmentionable flower till this unspeakable time of night? He was Jules de Grandin, he, and not to be oppressed by any species of a goat who called himself a florist. But no. It must not be. It should not be, by blue! He would—
“Axin’ yer pardon, sir,” Nora McGinnis broke in from the study door, “there’s a Miss an’ Mr. Tantavul to see ye, an’—”
“Bid them be gone, ma charmeuse. Request that they jump in the bay—Grand Dieu”—he cut his oratory short—“les enfants dans le bois!”
Truly, there was something reminiscent of the Babes in the Wood in the couple who had followed Nora to the study door. Dennis Tantavul looked even younger and more boyish than I remembered him, and the girl beside him was so childish in appearance that I felt a quick, instinctive pity for her. Plainly they were frightened, too, for they clung hand to hand like frightened children going past a graveyard, and in their eyes was that look of sick terror I had seen so often when the X-ray and blood test confirmed preliminary diagnosis of carcinoma.
“Monsieur, Mademoiselle!” The little Frenchman gathered his kimono and his dignity about him in a single sweeping gesture as he struck his heels together and bowed stiffly from the hips. “I apologize for my unseemly words. Were it not that I have been subjected to a terrible, calamitous misfortune, I should not so far have forgotten myself—”
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 58