“By the time the estimable Monsieur Snead had finished telling me these things he could impart no further information. He was, as I have heard it described, ‘stewed like a dish of prunes,’ for all the while he talked I kept his tongue well oiled with whisky. Accordingly I bid him farewell and pushed my research elsewhere. I searched the files of the journals diligently, endeavoring to find some clue to the vanishment of Mademoiselle Fagan. Cordieu, I think I found it! Read this, if you will be so good.”
Adjusting my pince-nez I scanned the clipping which he handed me:
GIRL FALLS UNCONSCIOUS WITH
STRANGE MALADY
Collapses on Roadway Near Hackensack—
Absence of Disease Symptoms
Puzzles Doctors
Hackensack, N.J., Sept. 17—Police and doctors today are endeavoring to solve the mystery of the identity and illness of an attractive young woman who collapsed on the roadway near here shortly after noon today, and has lain unconscious in the Ellis Clinic ever since.
She is described as about 30 years old, five feet two inches tall, and with fair complexion and red hair. Her hands and feet showed evidences of unusual care, and both finger- and toe-nails were dyed a brilliant scarlet. In her upper left eye-tooth was a small diamond set in a gold inlay.
She wore a ring with an oval setting of green stone, gold earrings in her pierced ears, and an imitation pearl necklace. Her costume consisted of a blue and white polka-dot dress, white fabric gloves, a black sailor hat with a small feather, and black patent leather pumps. She wore no stockings.
Alec Carter and James Heilmann, proprietors of an antique shop facing on the road, saw the young woman walking slowly toward Hackensack, staggering slightly from side to side. She fell in the roadway across from their store, and when they reached her she was unconscious. Failing to revive her by ordinary first aid methods, they placed her in an automobile and took her to the Ellis Clinic, which was the nearest point where medical aid could be secured.
Physicians at the clinic declared they could find no cause for her prolonged unconsciousness, as she was evidently neither intoxicated nor under the influence of drugs, and exhibited no symptoms of any known disease.
Nothing found upon her offered any clue to her identity.
“Well?” I demanded as I put the clipping down.
“I do not think it was,” he answered. “By no means; not at all. Consider, if you please:
“Mademoiselle Bushrod’s accident had occurred two weeks before, she had been given up by local surgeons; Augensburg, who was at the Ellis Clinic at the time, had just accepted her case.
“This strange young woman with the pretty hands drops down upon the roadway almost coincidentally with Mademoiselle Virginia’s advent at the clinic. Do you not begin to sniff the odor of the rodent?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
“Very well, then, listen: The mysterious young woman was undoubtlessly the Fagan girl, whose disappearance occurred about this time. What was the so mysterious malady which struck her down, which had no symptoms, other than unconsciousness? It was merely that she had been once again put under the hypnotic influence, my friend. You will recall that the professor could control her almost as well when at a distance as when he stared into her eyes? Certainly. Assuredly. She had become so used to his hypnosis that his slightest word or wish was law to her; she was his slave, his thing, his chattel, to do with as he pleased. Unquestionably he commanded her to walk along that road that day, to fall unconscious near the Ellis Clinic; to lie unconscious afterward, eventually to die. Impossible? Mais non. If one can tell the human heart to beat more slowly, and make it do so, under power of hypnosis, why may one not command it to cease beating altogether, still under hypnotic influence? So far as the young Fagan person was concerned, she had no thought, no will, no power, either mentally or physically, which the professor could not take from her by a single word of command. No, certainly.
“We were told Mademoiselle Bushrod’s accident came from a tire blow-out, n’est-ce-pas? I do not think it did. I inquired—most discreetly, I assure you—at and near the Ellis Clinic, and discovered that Monsieur the hypnotist visited that institution the very day that she was hurt, had a long conference with Doctor Augensburg in strictest privacy and—when he came he bore a small, high-powered rifle. He said he had been snake-hunting. Me, I think the serpent which he shot was the tire of Mademoiselle Bushrod’s car. That was the blow-out which caused her car to leave the road and crush her hands, my friend!
“Now, again: This Professor of the Devil, as he called himself appropriately, visited Doctor Augensburg at several times. He was in the room where the unknown woman lay on more than one occasion. He was at the clinic on the day when Augensburg operated on Mademoiselle Bushrod’s hands—and on that day, not fifteen minutes before the operation was performed, the unknown woman died. She had been sinking slowly for some days; her death occurred while orderlies were wheeling our poor Mademoiselle Virginia to the operating-room.
“You will recall she was unknown; that she was given shelter in an institution which maintains no beds for charity or emergency patients? But did you know that Augensburg paid her bill, and demanded in return that he be given her unclaimed body for anatomical research, that he might seek the cause of her ‘strange’ death? No, you did not know it, nor did I; but now I do, and I damn think that in that information lies the answer to our puzzle.
“I do not have to tell you that the period between somatic death—the mere ceasing to live—and molecular, or true death, when the tissue-cells begin to die, is often as long as three or four hours. During this period the individual body-cells remain alive, the muscles react to electrical stimuli, even the pupils of the eye can be expanded with atropine. She had suffered no disease-infection, this unknown one, her body was healthy, but run down, like an unwound clock. Moreover, fifteen minutes after her death, her hands were, histologically speaking, still alive. What easier than to make the transplantation of her sound, live hands to Mademoiselle Bushrod’s wrists, then chop and maim her body in the autopsy room in such a way that none would be the wiser?
“And what of these transplanted hands? They were part and parcel of a hypnotic subject, were they not, accustomed to obey commands of the hypnotist immediately, even to have steel knitting-needles run through them, yet feel no pain? Yes, certainly.
“Very well. Are it not entirely possible that these hands which the professor have commanded so many times when they were attached to one body, will continue to obey his whim when they are rooted to another? I think so.
“In his fine story, your magnificent Monsieur Poe tells of a man who really died, yet was kept alive through hypnosis. These hands of Mademoiselle Fagan never really died, they were still technically alive when they were taken off—who knows what orders this professor gave his dupe before he ordered her to die? Those hands had been a major vanity of hers, they were skilled hands, strong hands, beautiful hands—hélas, dishonest hands, as well—but they formed a large part of their owner’s personality. Might he not have ordered that they carry on that personality after transplantation to the end that they might eventually lead the poor Mademoiselle Bushrod to entire ruin? I think so. Yes.
“Consider the evidence: Mademoiselle Bushrod is tone-deaf, yet we heard her play exquisitely. She had no skill and no experience in billiards, yet we saw her shoot a brilliant game. For why should she, whose very nature is so foreign to the act, steal merchandise from a shopkeeper?
“Yet she tells us that she caught herself in such a crime. Whence comes this odd desire on her part to have her nails so brightly painted, a thing which she abhors? Last of all, how comes it that she, who is in nowise noted for her strength, can twist a silver table fork into a corkscrew?
“You see,” he finished, “the case is perfect. I know it can not possibly be so; yet so it is. We can not face down facts, my friend.”
“It’s preposterous,” I replied, but my denial lacked conviction.
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He read capitulation in my tone, and smiled with satisfaction.
“But can’t we break this spell?” I asked. “Surely, we can make this Professor What’s-his-Name—”
“Not by any legal process,” he cut in. “No court on earth would listen to our story, no jury give it even momentary credence. Yet”—he smiled a trifle grimly—“ there is a way, my friend.”
“What?” I asked.
“Have you by any chance a trocar in your instruments?” he asked irrelevantly.
“A trocar? You mean one of those long, sharp-pointed hollow needles used in paracentesis operations?”
“Précisément. Tu parles, mon vieux.”
“Why, yes, I think there’s one somewhere.”
“And may one borrow it tonight?”
“Of course, but—where are you going at this hour?”
“To Staten Island,” he replied as he placed the long, deadly, stiletto-like needle in his instrument case. “Do not wait up for me, my friend, I may be very late.”
HORRIFIED SUSPICION, GROWING RAPIDLY to dreadful certainty, mounted in my mind as I scanned the evening paper while de Grandin and I sipped our coffee and liqueurs in the study three nights later. “Read this,” I ordered, pointing to an obscure item on the second page:
St. George, S.I, September 30—The body of George Lothrop, known professionally on the stage as Prof. Mysterioso, hypnotist, missing from his rooming-house at Bull’s Head, S.I., since Tuesday night, was found floating in New York bay near the St. George ferry slip by harbor police this afternoon.
Representatives of the Medical Examiners’ office said he was not drowned, as a stab wound, probably from a stiletto, had pierced his left breast and reached his heart.
Employees at the side show at Coney Island, where Lothrop formerly gave exhibitions as a hypnotist, said he was of a sullen and quarrelsome disposition and given to annoying women. From the nature of the wound which caused his death police believe the husband or admirer of some woman he accosted resented his attentions and stabbed him, afterward throwing his body into the bay.
De Grandin read the item through with elevated brows. “A fortunate occurrence, is it not?” he asked. “Mademoiselle Bushrod is now freed from any spell he might have cast on her—or on her hands. Hypnotic suggestion can not last, once the hypnotist is dead.”
“But—but you—that trocar—” I began.
“I returned it to your instrument case last Tuesday night,” he answered. “Will you be good enough to pour me out a little brandy? Ah, thank you, my friend.”
Witch-House
STREET LIGHTS WERE COMING on and the afterglow was paling in the west beneath the first faint stars as we completed our late dinner and moved to the veranda for coffee and liqueurs. Sinking lazily into a wicker deck chair, Jules de Grandin stretched his womanishly small feet out straight before him and regarded the gleaming tips of his brightly polished calfskin pumps with every evidence of satisfaction.
“Morbleu,” he murmured dreamily as he drained his demitasse and set his cigar glowing before he raised his tiny glass of kaiserschmarnn, “say what you will, Friend Trowbridge, I insist there is no process half so pleasant as the combination of digestion and slow poisoning by nicotine and alcohol. It is well worth going hungry to enjoy—ah, pour l’amour d’une souris verte, be quiet, great-mouthed one!” he broke off as the irritable stutter of the ’phone bell cut in on his philosophizing. “Parbleu, the miscreant who invented you was one of humankind’s worst enemies!”
“Hullo, Trowbridge,” hailed a voice across the wire, “this is Friebergh. Sorry to trouble you, but Greta’s in bad shape. Can you come out right away?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I replied, not especially pleased at having my postprandial breathing-spell impinged on by a country call. “What seems to be the matter?”
“I wish I knew,” he answered. “She just came home from Wellesley last week, and the new house seemed to set her nerves on edge. A little while ago her mother thought she heard a noise up in her bedroom, and when she went in, there was Greta lying on the floor in some sort of fainting-fit. We don’t seem able to rouse her, and—”
“All right,” I interrupted, thinking regretfully of my less than half-smoked cigar, “I’ll be right out. Keep her head low and loosen any tight clothing. If you can make her swallow, give her fifteen drops of aromatic ammonia in a wine-glassful of water. Don’t attempt to force any liquids down her throat, though; she might strangle.”
“And this Monsieur Friebergh was unable to give you any history of the causal condition of his daughter’s swoon?” de Grandin asked as we drove along the Albemarle Road toward the Friebergh place at Scandia.
“No,” I responded. “He said that she’s just home from college and has been nervous ever since her arrival. Splendid case history, isn’t it?”
“Eh bien, it is far from being an exhaustive one, I grant,” he answered, “but if every layman understood the art of diagnosis we doctors might be forced to go to work, n’est-ce-pas?”
THOUGH GRETA FRIEBERGH HAD recovered partial consciousness when we arrived, she looked like a patient just emerging from a lingering fever. Attempts to get a statement from her met with small response, for she answered slowly, almost incoherently, and seemed to have no idea concerning the cause of her illness. Once she murmured drowsily, “Did you find the kitten? Is it all right?”
“What?” I demanded. “A kitten—”
“She’s delirious, poor child,” whispered Mrs. Friebergh. “Ever since I found her she’s been talking of a kitten she found in the bathroom.
“I thought I heard Greta cry,” she added, “and ran up here to see if she were all right. Her bedroom was deserted, but the bathroom door was open and I could hear the shower running. When I called her and received no answer I went in and found her lying on the floor. She was totally unconscious, and remained so till just a few minutes ago.”
“U’m?” murmured Jules de Grandin as he made a quick inspection of the patient, then rose and stalked into the bathroom which adjoined the chamber. “Tell me, Madame,” he called across his shoulder, “is it customary that you leave the windows of your bathroom screenless?”
‘“Why, no, of course not,” Mrs. Friebergh answered. “There’s an opaque screen in—good gracious, it’s fallen out!”
The little Frenchman turned to her with upraised brows. “Fallen, Madame? It was not fastened to the window-casing, then?”
“Yes, it was,” she answered positively. “I saw to that myself. The carpenters attached it to the casing with two bolts, so that we could take it out and clean it, but so firmly that it could not be blown in. I can’t understand—”
“No matter,” he broke in. “Forgive my idle curiosity, if you please. I’m sure that Doctor Trowbridge has completed his examination, now, so we can discuss your daughter’s ailment with assurance.”
To me he whispered quickly as the mother left the room: “What do you make of the objective symptoms, mon ami? Her pulse is soft and frequent, she has a fluttering heart, her eyes are all suffused, her skin is hot and dry, her face is flushed and hectic. No ordinary fainting-fit, you’ll say? No case of heat-prostration?”
“No-o,” I replied as I shook my head in wonder, “there’s certainly no evidence of heat-prostration. I’d be inclined to say she’d suffered an arterial hemorrhage, but there’s no blood about, so—”
“Let us make a more minute examination,” he ordered, and rapidly inspected Greta’s face and scalp, throat, wrists and calves, but without finding so much as a pin-prick, much less a wound sufficient to cause syncope.
“Mon Dieu, but this is strange!” he muttered. “It has the queerness of the devil, this! Perhaps she bled internally, but—ah-ha, regardez-vous, mon vieux!”
Searching further for some sign of wound, he had unfastened her pajama jacket, and the livid spot he pointed to seemed the key which might unlock the mystery that baffled us. Against the smooth white flesh beneath the gentle
swell of her left breast there showed a red and angry patch, such as might have shone had a vacuum cup been pressed some time against the skin, and in the center of the ecchymosis were four tiny punctures spaced so evenly apart that they seemed to make an almost perfect square three-quarters of an inch or so in size.
The discolored spot with its core of tiny wounds seemed insignificant to me, but the little Frenchman looked at it as though he had discovered a small, deadly reptile coiled against the girl’s pale skin.
“Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu!” he murmured softly to himself. “Can such things be here, in New Jersey, in the twentieth centennial of our time?”
“What are you maundering about?” I asked him irritably, “She couldn’t possibly have lost much blood through these. Why, she seems almost drained dry, yet there’s not a spot of blood upon those punctures. They look to me like insect bites of some kind; even if they were wide open they’re not large enough to leak a cubic centimeter of blood in half an hour.”
“Blood is not entirely colloidal,” he responded slowly. “It will penetrate the tissues to some slight extent, especially if sufficient suction be employed.”
“But it would have required a powerful suction—”
“Précisément, and I make no doubt that such was used, my friend. Me, I do not like the look of this at all. No, certainly.” Abruptly he raised his shoulders in a shrug. “We are here as physicians,” he remarked. “I think a quarter-grain of morphine is indicated. After that, bed-rest and much rich food. Then, one hopes, she will achieve a good recovery.”
“HOW IS SHE, TROWBRIDGE?” Olaf Friebergh asked as we joined him in the pleasant living-room. He was a compact, lean man in his late fifties, but appeared younger, and the illusion of youth was helped by the short mustache, still quite dark, the firm-cheeked, sunburned face and hazel eyes which, under clear-cut brows, had that brightness which betokens both good health and an interest in life.
“Why, there’s nothing really serious the matter,” I answered. “She seems quite weak, and there’s something rather queer—”
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 65