Running to the very edge of the platform, with exaggeratedly short steps, they slipped their sandals off and dropped to their knees, lowering their foreheads to the floor in greeting to the guests; then, rising, drew up in rank before the musician, tittering with a loud, forced affectation of coy gayety and hiding their faces behind the flowing sleeves of their kimonos, as though in mock-modesty.
Again the master clapped his hands, the musician began a titillating tune on her banjo, and the dance was on. More like a series of postures than a dance it was, ritualistically slow and accompanied by much waving of hands and fluttering of fans.
The master of ceremonies began crooning a low, singsong tune in time with the plink-plink of the banjo. “Chonkina-chonkina,” he chanted; then with a slapping clap of his hands:
“Hoi!”
Dance and music came to a frozen stop. The four girls held the posture they had when the call came, assuming the strained, unreal appearance of a motion picture when the film catches in the projecting reel.
For a moment there was a breathless silence, then a delighted roar from the audience; for the fourth girl, caught with one foot and hand upraised, could not maintain the pose. Vainly she strove to remain stone still, but despite her efforts her lifted foot descended ever so slightly.
A guttural command from the show-master, and she paid the forfeit, unfastening her girdle and dropping it to the floor.
A wave of red mantled her throat and face to the very rim of her golden mask as she submitted, but the forced, unnatural smile never left her painted lips as the music and dance began afresh at the master’s signal.
“Hoi!” Again the strident call, again the frozen dance, again a girl lost and discarded a garment.
On and on the bestial performance went, interminably, it seemed to me, but actually only a few minutes were required for the poor, bewildered girls, half fainting with shame and fear of torture, to lose call after call until at last they danced only in their cotton tabi, and even these were discarded before the audience would cry enough and the master release them from their ordeal.
Gathering up their fallen clothes, sobbing through lips which still fought valiantly to retain their constrained smiles, the poor creatures advanced once more to the platform’s edge, once more knelt and touched their brows to the floor, then ran from the stage, only the fear of punishment holding their little baked feet to the short, sliding steps of their artificial run rather than a mad dash for sanctuary from the burning gaze and obscene calls of the onlookers.
“Dieu de Dieu,” de Grandin fumed, “will not the troopers ever come? Must more of this shameless business go on?”
A moment later the showman was speaking again: “Let us now give undivided attention to the next number of our program,” he was announcing suavely.
Something white hurtled through the archway behind him, and a girl clothed only in strings of glittering rhinestones about throat, wrists, waist and ankles was fairly flung out upon the stage, where she cowered in a perfect palsy of terror. Her hands were fettered behind her by a six-inch chain attached to heavy golden bracelets, and an odd contrivance, something like a bit, was fastened between her lips by a harness fitted over her head, making articulate outcry impossible. Behind her, strutting with all the majesty of a turkey-cock, came a man in the costume of a South American vaquero—loose, baggy trousers, wide, nail-studded belt, patent leather boots and broad-brimmed, low-crowned bat of black felt. In his hand was a coiled whip of woven leather thongs—the bull-whip of the Argentine pampas.
“God and the devil!” swore de Grandin, his teeth fairly chattering in rage. “I know it; it is the whipping dance—he will beat her to insensibility—I have seen such shows in Buenos Aires, Friend Trowbridge, but may Satan toast me in his fires if I witness it again. Come, my friend, it is time we taught these swine a lesson. Do you stand firm and beat back any who attempt to pass. Me, I go into action!”
Like some ponderous engine of olden times he strode forward, the joints of his armor creaking with unwonted use.
For a moment guests and servants were demoralized by the apparition descending the stairs, for it was as if a chair or sofa had suddenly come to life and taken the field against them.
“Here, wash all thish, wash all thish?” demanded a maudlin young man with drunken truculence as he swaggered forward to bar the Frenchman’s way, reaching for his hip pocket as he spoke.
De Grandin drew back his left arm, doubled his iron-clad fingers into a ball and dashed his mailed fist into the fellow’s face.
The drunken rake went down with a scream, spewing blood and teeth from his crushed mouth.
“Awai, a bhut!” cried one of the servants in terror, and another took up the cry: “A bhut! a bhut!”
Two of the men seized long-shafted halberds from an ornamental stand of arms and advanced on the little Frenchman, one on each side.
Clang! The iron points of their weapons rang against his visor-bars, but the fine-tempered, hand-wrought steel that had withstood thrust of lance and glaive and flying cloth-yard arrow when Henry of England led his hosts to victory at Agincourt held firm, and de Grandin hardly wavered in his stride.
Then, with halberd and knife and wicked, razor-edged scimitar, they were on him like a pack of hounds seeking to drag down a stag.
De Grandin strode forward, striking left and right with mailed fists, crushing a nose here, battering a mouth there, or smashing jaw-bones with the ironshod knuckles of his flailing hands.
My breath came fast and faster as I watched the struggle, but suddenly I gave a shout of warning. Two of the Hindus had snatched a silken curtain from a doorway and rushed de Grandin from behind. In an instant the fluttering drapery fell over his head, shutting out sight and cumbering his arms in its clinging folds. In another moment he lay on his back, half a dozen screaming Indians pinioning his arms and legs.
I rushed forward to his rescue, but my movement was a moment too late. From the front door and the back there came a sudden, mighty clamor. The thud of gun-butts and riot sticks on the panels and hoarse commands to open in the law’s name announced the troopers had arrived at last.
Crash! The front door splintered inward and four determined men in the livery of the State Constabulary rushed into the hall.
A moment the Hindus stood at bay; then, with waving swords and brandishing pikes they charged the officers.
They were ten to four, but odds were not with numbers, for even as they sprang to the attack there sounded the murderous r-r-r-rat-tat-tat of an automatic rifle, and the rank of yelling savages wavered like growing wheat before a gust of summer wind, then went down screaming, while the acrid, bitter fumes of smokeless powder stung our nostrils.
“NOM D’UN PORC, MON lieutenant, you came not a moment too soon to complete a perfect night’s work,” de Grandin complimented as we prepared to set out for home. “Ten tiny seconds more and you should have found nothing but the deceased corpse of Jules de Grandin to rescue, I fear.”
From the secret closets of the house the girls’ clothing had been rescued, wire-clippers in willing hands had cut away the degrading golden masks from the captives’ faces, and Ewell Eaton, the three sorority sisters and the poor little shop-girl whose disappearances had caused such consternation to their families were ready to ride back to Harrisonville, two in the troopers’ side-cars, the rest in hastily improvised saddles behind the constables on their motorcycles.
“We did make monkeys out of ’em, at that,” the young officer grinned. “It was worth the price of admission to see those guys in their dress suits trying to bluff us off, then whining like spanked kids when I told ’em it would be six months in the work-house for theirs. Gosh, won’t the papers make hash of their reputations before this business is over?”
“Undoubtlessly,” de Grandin assented. “It is to be deplored that we may not lawfully make hash of their so foul bodies, as well. Me, I should enormously enjoy dissecting them without previous anesthesia. However, in the meantim
e—”
He drew the young officer aside with a confidential hand upon his elbow, and a brief, whispered colloquy followed. Two minutes later he rejoined me, a satisfied twinkle in his eye, the scent of raw, new whisky on his breath.
“Barbe d’un chameau, he is a most discerning young man, that one,” he confided, as he wiped his lips with a lavender-bordered silk handkerchief.
The Corpse-Master
THE AMBULANCE-GONG INSISTENCE OF my night bell brought me up standing from a stuporlike sleep, and as I switched the vestibule light on and unbarred the door, “Are you the doctor?” asked a breathless voice. A disheveled youth half fell through the doorway and clawed my sleeve desperately. “Quick quick, Doctor! It’s my uncle, Colonel Evans. He’s dying. I think he tried to kill himself—”
“All right,” I agreed, turning to sprint upstairs. “What sort of wound has he?—or was it poison?”
“It’s his throat, sir. He tried to cut it. Please, hurry, Doctor!”
I took the last four steps at a bound, snatched some clothes from the bedside chair and charged down again, pulling on my garments like a fireman answering a night alarm. “Now, which way—” I began, but:
“Tiens,” a querulous voice broke in as Jules de Grandin came downstairs, seeming to miss half the treads in his haste, “Let him tell us where to go as we go there, my old one! It is that we should make the haste. A cut throat does not wait patiently.”
“This is Dr. de Grandin,” I told the young man. “He will be of great assistance—”
“Mais oui,” the little Frenchman agreed, “and the Trump of Judgment will serve excellently as an alarm clock if we delay our going long enough. Make haste, my friend!”
“Down two blocks and over one,” our caller directed as we got under way, “376 Albion Road. My uncle went to bed about ten o’clock, according to the servants, and none of them heard him moving about since. I got home just a few minutes ago, and found him lying in the bathroom when I went to wash my teeth. He lay beside the tub with a razor in his hand, and blood was all over the place. It was awful!”
“Undoubtlessly,” de Grandin murmured from his place on the rear seat. “What did you do then, young Monsieur?”
“Snatched a roll of gauze from the medicine cabinet and staunched the wound as well as I could, then called Dockery the gardener to hold it in place while I raced round to see you. I remembered seeing your sign sometime before.”
We drew up to the Evans house as he concluded his recital, and rushed through the door and up the stairs together. “In there,” our companion directed, pointing to a door from which there gushed a stream of light into the darkened hall.
A man in bathrobe and slippers knelt above a recumbent form stretched full-length on the white tiles of the bathroom. One glance at the supine figure and both de Grandin and I turned away, I with a deprecating shake of my head, the Frenchman with a fatalistic shrug.
“He has no need of us, that poor one,” he informed the young man. “Ten minutes ago, perhaps yes; now”—another shrug—“the undertaker and the clergyman, perhaps the police—”
“The police? Surely, Doctor, this is suicide—”
“Do you say so?” de Grandin interrupted sharply. “Trowbridge, my friend, consider this, if you please.” Deftly he raised the dead man’s thin white beard and pointed to the deeply incised slash across the throat. “Does that mean nothing?”
“Why—er—”
“Perfectly. Wipe your pince-nez before you look a second time, and tell me that you see the cut runs diagonally from right to left.”
“Why, so it does, but—”
“But Monsieur the deceased was right-handed—look how the razor lies beneath his right hand. Now, if you will raise your hand to your own throat and draw the index finger across it as if it were a knife, you will note the course is slightly out of horizontal—somewhat diagonal—slanting downward from left to right. Is it not so?”
I nodded as I completed the gesture.
“Très bien. When one is bent on suicide he screws his courage to the sticking point, then, if he has chosen a cut throat as means of exit, he usually stands before a mirror, cuts deeply and quickly with his knife, and makes a downward-slanting slash. But as he sees the blood and feels the pain his resolution weakens, and the gash becomes more and more shallow. At the end it trails away to little more than a skin-scratch. It is not so in this case; at its end the wound is deeper than at the beginning.
“Again, this poor one would almost certainly have stood before the mirror to do away with himself. Had he done so he would have fallen crosswise of the room, perhaps; more likely not. One with a severed throat does not die quickly. He thrashes about like a fowl recently decapitated, and writes the story of his struggle plainly on his surroundings. What have we here? Do you—does anyone—think it likely that a man would slit his gullet, then lie down peacefully to bleed his life away, as this one appears to have done? Non, non; it is not en caractère!
“Consider further”—he pointed with dramatic suddenness to the dead man’s bald head—“if we desire further proof, observe him!”
Plainly marked there was a welt of bruised flesh on the hairless scalp, the mark of some blunt instrument.
“He might have struck his head as he fell,” I hazarded, and he grinned in derision.
“Ah bah, I tell you he was stunned unconscious by some miscreant, then dragged or carried to this room and slaughtered like a pole-axed beef. Without the telltale mark of the butcher’s bludgeon there is ground for suspicion in the quietude of his position, in the neat manner the razor lies beneath his hand instead of being firmly grasped or flung away, but with this bruise before us there is but one answer. He has been done to death; he has been butchered; he was murdered.”
“WILL YE BE SEEIN’ Sergeant Costello?” Nora McGinnis appeared like a phantom at the drawing room door as de Grandin and I were having coffee next evening after dinner. “He says—”
“Invite him to come in and say it for himself, ma petite,” Jules de Grandin answered with a smile of welcome at the big red-headed man who loomed behind the trim figure of my household factotum. “Is it about the Evans killing you would talk with us?” he added as the detective accepted a cigar and demi-tasse.
“There’s two of ’em, now, sir,” Costello answered gloomily. “Mulligan, who pounds a beat in th’ Eighth Ward, just ’phoned in there’s a murder dressed up like a suicide at th’ Rangers’ Club in Fremont Street.”
“Pardieu, another?” asked de Grandin. “How do you know the latest one is not true suicide?”
“Well, sir, here’s th’ pitch: When th’ feller from th’ club comes runnin’ out to say that Mr. Wolkof’s shot himself, Mulligan goes in and takes a look around. He finds him layin’ on his back with a little hole in his forehead an’ th’ back blown out o’ his head, an’, bein’ th’ wise lad, he adds up two an’ two and makes it come out four. He’d used a Colt .45, this Wolkof feller, an’ it was layin’ half-way in his hand, restin’ on his half-closed fingers, ye might say. That didn’t look too kosher. A feller who’s been shot through the forehead is more likely to freeze tight to th’ gun than otherwise. Certain’y he don’t just hold it easy-like. Besides, it was an old fashioned black-powder gun, sir, what they call a low-velocity weapon, and if it had been fired close against the dead man’s forehead it should ’a’ left a good-sized smudge o’ powder-stain. There wasn’t any.”
“One commends the excellent Mulligan for his reasoning,” de Grandin commented. “He found this Monsieur Wolkof lying on his back with a hole drilled through his head, no powder-brand upon his brow where the projectile entered, and the presumably suicidal weapon lying loosely in his hand. One thing more: It may not be conclusive, but it would be helpful to know if there were any powder-stains upon the dead man’s pistol-hand.”
“As far’s I know there weren’t, sir,” answered Costello. “Mulligan said he took partic’lar notice of his hands, too. But ye’re yet to hear th’
cream o’ th’ joke. Th’ pistol was in Mr. Wolkof’s open right hand, an’ all th’ club attendants swear he was left-handed—writin’, feedin’ himself an’ shavin’ with his left hand exclusively. Now, I ask ye, Dr. de Grandin, would a man all steamed up to blow his brains out be takin’ th’ trouble to break a lifetime habit of left-handedness when he’s so much more important things to think about? It seems to me that—”
“Ye’re wanted on th’ ’phone, Sergeant,” announced Nora from the doorway. “Will ye be takin’ it in here, or usin’ th’ hall instrument?”
“Hullo? Costello speakin’,” he challenged. “If its’ about th’ Wolkof case, I’m goin’ right over—glory be to God! No! Och, th’ murderin’ blackguard!
“Gentlemen,” he faced us, fury in his ruddy face and blazing blue eyes, “it’s another one. A little girl, this time. They’ve kilt a tiny, wee baby while we sat here like three damn’ fools and talked! They’ve took her body to th’ morgue—”
“Then, nom d’un charneau, why are we remaining here?” de Grandin interrupted. “Come, mes amis, it is to hasten. Let us go all quickly!”
WITH MY HORN TOOTING almost continuously, and Costello waving aside crossing policemen, we rushed to the city mortuary. Parnell, the coroner’s physician, fussed over a tray of instruments, Coroner Martin bustled about in a perfect fever of eagerness to begin his official duties; two plainclothes men conferred in muted whispers in the outer office.
Death in the raw is never pretty, as doctors, soldiers and embalmers know only too well. When it is accompanied by violence it wears a still less lovely aspect, and when the victim is a child the sight is almost heart-breaking. Bruised and battered almost beyond human semblance, her baby-fine hair matted with mixed blood and cerebral matter, little Hazel Clark lay before us, the queer, unnatural angle of her right wrist denoting a Colles’ fracture; a subclavicular dislocation of the left shoulder was apparent by the projection of the bone beneath the clavicle, and the vault of her small skull had been literally beaten in. She was completely “broken” as ever medieval malefactor was when bound upon the wheel of torture for the ministrations of the executioner.
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