“U’m? and this was when, if you please?”
“An hour ago, I’d say. I was delayed on me way home by two sick calls—not that I had to make ’em, ye understand, but there I was in the neighborhood, and the pore children were sufferin’ with the heat, as were their mother, also. What use are us old fellies who are childless for the sake o’ God if not to minister to all His sufferin’ little ones?”
“Precisely,” de Grandin agreed, raising his hat formally as he turned to leave. To me he murmured as we pursued our homeward way:
“Is it not redolent of the odor of fish, Friend Trowbridge? Half an hour before Madame Sattalea dies this cloaked man appears at another house hard on the tracks of the angel of death, and would have forced entrance had not the sturdy Irish priest barred his way. And did you also note the evil one used the same words to the good father that he addressed to the poor young Sattalea before he worked his devilish arts upon the dead woman—‘She is not dead, but sleeping’? Cordieu, I think perhaps I spoke more truly than I knew when I remarked the devil can quote Scripture for his purposes. I can not see far into this matter, but nothing I have seen so far looks good.”
A tall, rather good-looking young man with prematurely gray hair and the restrained though by no means cheerless manner of his profession rose from one of the rockers on my front porch as de Grandin and I approached the house. “Good evening, Dr. Trowbridge,” he greeted. “Old Mr. Eichelberger passed away a while ago, and the boss asked me to run over and get you to give us a certificate. There’s not much doing tonight, and I figured you’d probably be awake anyhow; I shouldn’t have minded if you couldn’t have seen me, though—I’d as lief be driving around as sitting in the office on a night like this.”
“Oh, good evening, McCrea,” I answered, recognizing the chief assistant to Coroner Martin, who is also the city’s leading funeral director. “Yes, I’ll sign the certificate for you. Dr. Renshaw helped me in the case, and was actually in attendance this evening, but I’ve been formally in charge, so the registrar will take my certificate, I suppose. We gave up hope for the poor old gentleman yesterday afternoon; can’t do much with interstitial nephritis when the patient’s over seventy, you know.”
“No, sir,” the young mortician agreed, accepting a cigarette from de Grandin’s proffered case.
As I returned from the office with the filled-in death certificate, the two of them were deeply immersed in shop talk. “Yes, sir,” McCrea was telling de Grandin, “we certainly run up against some queer things in our business. Take what happened this evening, for instance: Mr. and Mrs. Martin had gone out to see some friends, and Johnson, the regular night man, was out on a call, so I was alone in the office. A chap I knew when I was studying at Renouard’s called me up from Hackettstown, and I’d just run off when I noticed a shadow falling across the desk. I tell you, sir, I almost jumped out of my chair when I glanced up and saw the darndest-looking individual you ever saw not three feet away and smiling at me like a pussy-cat saying good evening to a canary. The screen door to the office was latched, though not locked, and anybody coming in would have been obliged to rattle the handle, you’d have thought, but there this fellow was, almost down my throat, and I hadn’t heard so much as a footstep till I saw him.
“He was an undersized little pipsqueak, bony as a shad and pale as a clown, with a funny-looking black cape, something like those trick overcoats the dukes wear in the European movies, hanging from his shoulders. Can you tie that—wearing a cape on a night like this?”
“A-a-ah?” de Grandin’s interjection was so low I could scarcely hear it, but so sharp it seemed to cut through the sultry summer darkness like a razor. “Say on, my friend; I am all attention.”
“Humph. I shouldn’t be much surprised if there’s somebody missing when they call the roll at the Secaucus asylum tomorrow morning, sir. What d’ye think this funny-looking chap wanted?”
“Cordieu, I can damn imagine,” de Grandin murmured, “but I would prefer that you tell me!”
“No, sir, you don’t,” the other replied with a chuckle. “You could sit there and guess for a month o’ Sundays, but you’d never suspect what he was up to. Listen:
“‘Good evening, sir,’ he said, grinning at me all the time as if he’d enjoy biting a hunk out of my neck; ‘are you interested in money?’
“‘Now, what’s this, a touch or a stock salesman working overtime?’ I asked myself as I looked, him over. ‘Sure, I am,’ I answered. ‘Know anyone who isn’t?’
“With that he reaches down into his pocket and fishes out a roll of bills—most of ’em yellow, too—big enough to make a hippopotamus take two bites, and sort o’ ruffled ’em through his fingers, as a professional gambler might play with the cards before commencing to shuffle. ‘I have need of a woman’s corpse in my scientific work,’ he told me, still ruffling the loose ends of the bills against his thumb. ‘If you have such an one here, and it is as yet unembalmed, I will pay you any amount you ask for it.’
“He stopped and stared hard at me with those queer eyes of his, and I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck beginning to stand up like those on a tom-cat’s tail when he sees a bulldog coming toward him. Positively, Dr. de Grandin, the fellow had me almost groggy, just looking at me, and the harder I tried to look away the harder I seemed to have to stare at him.
“‘Money, much, much money,’ he kept repeating in a kind o’ solemn singsong whisper. ‘Money to buy liquor, fine clothes, motor-cars, the favors of beautiful women—all these shall be yours if you will let me have a woman’s corpse. See, I will give you—’
“‘You and who else?’ I yelled, jumping up and reaching into the drawer where we keep a pistol for emergencies. ‘Get to hell out o’ here before I fix you so’s they’ll have to hold an inquest on you!’
“I reckon I sort o’ flew off the handle, sir, for he was a harmless sort of nut, after all, but that funny get-up of his and the soft, sneaky way he had of speaking, and those devilish, unchanging eyes of his all together just about got my goat. Honestly, I believe I’d have let him have a bullet just for luck in another minute.”
“And what time was this, if you please?” the Frenchman demanded sharply.
“Almost exactly twelve o’clock, sir. I can place it by the fact that the door had hardly shut on the lunatic when the call to take charge of Mr. Eichelberger’s remains came over the ’phone, and, of course, I entered the time up on the arrangement card. The boss came in a minute or so later and said he’d take the call himself while I came over here to get the death certificate.”
“Ah?” de Grandin breathed. Then, in a more natural tone he added: “You are doubtlessly right, my friend. Some poor one has made good his escape from the asylum, and wanders about under the delusion that he is a great scientist. Let us hope he startles no more members of your noble calling with his offers of princely bribes.”
“Not much fear of that,” the young man returned with a chuckle as he turned to descend the porch steps. “I think I put the fear o’ God into him when I flashed that gun. He may be crazy, but I don’t think he has any special craving to stop a bullet.”
“Trowbridge, mon vieux,” de Grandin almost wailed as the young embalmer entered his motor and drove off, “I shall go wild, caduc—crazy like a hatter. Behold the facts: This same damnation man in black goes first to an entrepreneur des pompes funèbres and attempts to buy a corpse; next he appears before the house where a woman lies newly dead, and would have forced an entrance. Foiled there, he crops up as if by unclean magic at the very door of Monsieur Sattalea’s house almost before we have composed poor, dead Madame Sattalea’s limbs. Mordieu, it is wicked, it is iniquitous, it is most devilishly depraved, no less! Like a carrion crow, scenting the corpse-odor from afar, he comes unerringly to the place of death, and always he asks for a female cadaver. Twice repulsed, at the third trial he meets success. What in the name of three thousand little blue devilkins does it portend?”
“If we hadn’t
seen that uncanny show at Sattalea’s I’d say McCrea was right, and the fellow’s an escaped lunatic,” I answered, “but—”
“Ah hélas, we have always that fearful ‘but’ making mock of us,” he rejoined. “When first I saw this Monsieur of the Black Cloak I liked his looks little. To one who has battled with the powers of evil as I have, there is a certain family resemblance among all those who connive with devilishness, my friend. Therefore, when I did behold that colorless, cadaverish face of his silhouetted against the evening air, I determined to follow him quietly into the Sattalea house and see what he would do. Dieu de Dieu, we did observe a very great plenty. I was wondering about him and the means he might conceivably have employed to bring about Madame Sattalea’s seeming revivement when we met the good curé and learned from him of the Black One’s attempt to break into another dead woman’s house; now, parbleu, after hearing Monsieur McCrea’s story, I am greatly afraid! What it is I fear I do not know. I am like a timid little boy who ventures into the darkened nursery; all about me are monstrous, dreadful things the nature of which I can not descry. I put forth my hand, there is nothing there; but always in the darkness, just beyond the reach of my groping fingers, leers and gibbers the undefined shadow of something terrible and formless. Cordieu, my friend, we must make a light and view this terror of the darkness face to face! It shall not play hide-and-go-seek with us. No!”
3
A MILD EPIDEMIC OF SUMMER grippe kept me fully occupied for the succeeding two weeks, and de Grandin was left largely to his own devices. Whether he sought the key to the mystery of the man in black, and under what particular door-mat he looked for it I do not know, for the little Frenchman could be as secretive at some times as he was loquacious at others, and I had no wish to excite his acid comments by bringing the matter up unasked.
One Friday afternoon when August was slowly burning out with its own intensity, we were strolling leisurely toward the City Club, intent on a light luncheon to be followed by a round of golf at the Sedgemoor links when our attention was called to a little boy. Sturdy and straight as a young live-oak he was, his bright, fair hair innocent of covering, his smooth, fair skin tanned to the rich hue of ripened fruit, the sort of lad to give every middle-aged bachelor a twinge of regret and make him wonder if his freedom had been worth while, after all. I smiled involuntarily as my eyes rested on him, but the smile froze on my lips as I noticed the expression of abject misery and fright on his little, sunburned face.
De Grandin noted the lad’s affrighted look, too, and paused in quick sympathy. “Holà, my little cabbage,” he greeted, his small blue eyes taking in every detail of the obviously terrified child, “what is it troubles you? Surely affairs can not be so dreadful?”
The lad looked at him with the trustful gaze all children instinctively bestowed on one they felt to be their friend, and his red, babyish lips trembled pitifully as great tears welled up in his eyes. “I dropped the rice, sir,” he answered simply. “Mother sent me to the grocery for it, ’cause they forgot to send it with the rest of the order, and I dropped it. The—the bag broke, and I couldn’t gather it up, though I tried ever so hard, and—she’ll beat me! She beats me every day, now.”
“Tiens, is it so?” the Frenchman replied. “Be of courage. I shall give you the price of another sack of rice and your excellent mère shall be none the wiser.”
“But she told me to hurry,” the little chap protested, “and if I’m late I’ll be whipped anyway.”
“But this is infamous!” Sudden rage flamed in de Grandin’s small round eyes. “Come, we shall accompany you. I shall explain all to your maman, and all shall be well.”
With all the confidence in the world the little boy slipped his small, brown fist into de Grandin’s slim white hand and together we walked down the street and turned into the smoothly clipped front yard of—the Sattalea cottage.
Someone was playing the piano softly as we ascended the porch steps, the haunting, eery notes of Saint Saens’ Danse Macabre falling lightly on our ears as we crossed the porch. Fearfully, on tiptoe, the lad led us toward an open French window, then paused timorously. “If he’s with her I’ll surely catch it!” he whispered, hanging back that we might precede him into the house. “He holds me while she beats me, and laughs when I cry!”
De Grandin caught his breath sharply at the little boy’s announcement, and his small face was stern as he stepped softly into the semi-darkened drawing-room. Seated on the bancal before a baby grand piano, her body swaying gently with the rhythm of the music, was a woman—Vivian Sattalea. As I glanced at her delicate, clean-cut features framed in their aureole of rose-gold hair, the carmine of her parted lips blushing vividly against the milky whiteness of her face, I could not help feeling she had undergone some fundamental change since last I saw her. True, on the former occasion she had lain at the very door of death, whereas now she seemed in abundant health, but there was something more than the difference between sickness and health in her changed countenance. Despite her desperate condition when I saw her before, there had been a look of innate delicacy and refinement in the cameo-clear outline of her face. Today there was something theatrical—professional—in her beauty. The ruddy blondness and expert arrangement of her hair, the sophisticated look in her violet eyes, the lines about her full, too-red lips were those of the woman who lives by the exploitation of her charms. And in the flare of her nostrils, the odd tightness of the flesh above her cheek-bones and the hungry curves about her petulant, yearning mouth there was betrayed a burning greed for primal atavistic emotion scarcely to be slaked though every depth of passion be plumbed to the nadir.
Even as we halted at the window, undecided how best to announce our advent, the woman abruptly ceased playing and clutched at the keyboard before her with suddenly convulsed, clenching fingers, the long, polished nails fairly clawing at the polished ivory keys like the unsheathed talons of a feline. And as her hands clenched shut she leaned backward, turning her vivid, parted lips up in a voluptuous smile. From the shadow of the piano another shadow drifted quickly, halted beside the woman and bent downward swiftly to seize her in frenzied embrace.
I gasped in amazement. Holding Vivian Sattalea’s cheeks between his hands, kissing her ripe, scarlet lips, was the man in black, the mysterious stranger who had called her errant soul back from God only knew what mystic space the night de Grandin and I pronounced her dead.
“Cordieu,” I heard the Frenchman murmur, “c’est une affaire amoureuse!”
“Your pardon, sir and madame,” he apologized after a discreet pause, “I would not for the world disturb your innocent pastime, but on the street I did meet Madame’s little son, and—”
“That sneaking brat!” the woman rasped, freeing herself from her lover’s embrace and rising to face de Grandin with furious, flaming cheeks. “I’ll teach him to spy on me and drag strangers to the house to—”
“Excuse, please, Madame, you will do nothing whatever at all concerning the little man,” de Grandin denied in a level, almost toneless voice. “When first we did encounter him in the street he told us he greatly feared a beating at your hands, and I took it on myself to guarantee him immunity. I would not have it said I have failed him.”
“We’ll see about that!” She took a swift step toward the cowering child, the cold fire of murderous hate gleaming in her eyes, but de Grandin interrupted.
“Madame,” he reminded, “you forget what it is I have said.” Quick as a striking snake his hand shot out, grasping her wrist in a paralyzing grip and halting her in mid-stride.
“Oh!” she sobbed as his steely fingers bit cruelly into her yielding flesh. “Pontou,” she turned to the black-clothed man, “will you let this insolent—”
De Grandin released her, but kept his body between her and the frightened child as he regarded the livid-faced man with cold, menacing eyes. “Monsieur,” he promised, clipping his words with metallic hardness, “should you care to resent any affront you may conceive Madame has s
uffered, I am at your service at any time and place you wish to name.”
A moment he waited, his slender body braced for the assault he fully expected, then, as the other made no move, turned a contemptuous shoulder on the woman and her companion.
“Come, mon brave,” and he took the little boy’s hand in his; “let us go. These, they are unworthy to share the company of men like us. Come away. Friend Trowbridge and I shall feed you bonbons and chocolate till you are most gloriously ill, then nurse you back to health again. We shall take you to see the animals at the zoo; we shall—”
“But see here, de Grandin,” I expostulated as I followed him to the street, “you can’t do this. It’s against the law, and—”
“My friend,” he assured me, “I have already done it. As for the law, if it would be respected it must be respectable. Any statute which compels a little man like this to live with such an unnatural parent is beneath all honest men’s contempt.”
HE WAS AS GOOD as his word. Little Aubrey Sattalea spent a glamorous afternoon with us at the zoological garden, stuffed himself to capacity with unwholesome sweetmeats and ate a dinner fit for a longshoreman that night.
The Frenchman was deep in the relation of a highly original version of the story of Cinderella as we sat on the veranda after dinner when quick, angry steps sounded on the front path. “Where’s that Frenchman, de Grandin?” a furious voice demanded as Aubrey Sattalea, senior, mounted the porch, his face working with rage. “Where’s the man who came to my house and stole my little boy—”
“Here, at your very good service, Monsieur,” de Grandin announced, rising from his chair and bowing formally, but holding his supple body poised to resist any attack the other made. “As for stealing your fine little man, I pride myself upon it. They shall no longer torture him, though you and a thousand others seek to drag him back.”
The Devil's Rosary Page 22