“But that other,” I protested. “Burying a live woman under a hearthstone—why, it’s incredible. They might have done such things in heathen times, but—”
“Hélas, Friend Trowbridge, your ecclesiastical learning is little better than your knowledge of history,” de Grandin cut in. “Those old ones, Christian as well as pagan, laid the foundations of their houses, forts and even churches in blood. Yes.
“Saint Columba, founder of the abbey of Inona, inhumed one of his monks named Oran alive beneath the walls because he feared the demons of the earth might tear the holy structure down unless appeased by human sacrifice. Later historians have endeavored to sugar-coat the facts—later writers have revised the tale of Chaperone Rouge to make the little girl and her gran’mère come forth alive from the wolf’s belly, also.
“Again, no later than 1885, was found another evidence of such deeds done by Christians. That year the parish church of Holsworthy, in north Devonshire, England, was restored. In the southwest angle-wall the workmen found a human skeleton interred; its mouth—and nose-places were stopped with mortar. The evidence was plain; it was a live-burial designed to make the walls stand firm because of human sacrifice to the earth-demons. Once more: In tearing down an ancient house in Lincolnshire the workmen found a baby’s skeleton beneath the hearth. Yes, my friends, such things were done, doubtlessly, in olden days, and our Monsieur Joshua was but reviving a dead-but-not-forgotten custom of the past when he declared he’d lay the hearthstone of his house according to the ancient rites.”
“H’m,” I reflected, “it hardly seems possible such bigotry could have obtained so late, though. Just think, the Revolutionary War began only fifteen years later, yet here was a man so intolerant that—”
“Eh bien, again you do forget, my friend,” the little Frenchman chuckled. “Your war of revolution had been fought and won, also your second war with England, and our so glorious Revolution was a fait accompli while yet the Catholics burned Protestant and Jew with fine impartiality. It was not till the year that Andrew Jackson held New Orleans from the British—1814—that the last auto da fé had been held in Spain. And not till 1829 were Catholics granted civil rights in England. Until that time they could not vote or hold a public office—yet the legislation to enfranchise them met with violent, bloody opposition. The soldiers had to be called out to put down ‘anti-Papist’ mobs. But we indulge in reminiscence unduly. It is with Monsieur Phipps’ problem we must deal.
“Tell me,” he turned to the visitor, “is this house of blood and sorrow where your wicked ancestor met death still standing, and if so, where?”
“Yes,” Phipps replied. “I’ve never been there, but it’s still owned by the family, though it’s been unoccupied for twenty-five years or more. I’m told it’s in remarkably good condition. It stands just outside the present city of Woolwich, Massachusetts.”
De Grandin drummed thoughtfully on the desk top. “I think it would be well for us to go there, my friend.”
“What, out to that old ruin, now?”
“Précisément. When water is polluted one seeks the source of the stream. It seems to me the fountainhead of the doom resting on your menfolk may be that unhallowed grave where Marguerite DuPont lies buried without benefit of clergy or the tribute of a single tear, save such as your great-uncle Obediah may have shed for her in secret.”
“CAB, SIR? TAXI? TAKE you to the best hotel in town,” a lean, lank Yankee youth challenged as we alighted from the B. & M. train and lugged our handbags from the Woolwich station.
“Holà, mon brave,” de Grandin challenged in his turn, “you know the country hereabouts, I doubt not—and the old landmarks, yes?”
“Ought to,” the other answered with a grin, “been here all my life.”
“Très bon. You are the man we seek, and none other. Can you deliver us in good condition at the old Phipps homestead—you know that place?”
An expression of blank amazement came to the Jehu’s lean, weather-stained face. The Frenchman’s request, it appeared, was comparable to that of a tourist in Naples asking to be driven to the rim of Vesuvius’ crater.
“D’ye mean ye want to go there?”
“Assuredly. It stands and may be readied, n’est-ce-pas?”
“Oh, yeah, you can git there a’ right, but—”
“But getting back is something else again, one is to understand? No matter. Do you transport us thither. We shall take responsibility for getting back.”
The youth led us to a dilapidated Ford which seemed in the last stages of paralysis agitans and took almost as much coaxing as a balky mule to get underway.
For half an hour we drove through wide well-kept streets and along a smooth highway, finally headed up a rutted clay road to the cedar-pillared entrance of a weed-choked park. “This is as far’s I go,” our driver announced as he brought the limping vehicle to a halt.
“But no, it is that we desire assistance with the luggage,” de Grandin protested, only to meet with a determined shake of the head.
“Not me, Mister. I contracted to bring ye here, an’ I done it, but nothin’ was said about my goin’ into that place, an’ I ain’t a-goin’—”
“Eh, what is it you tell me?” de Grandin tweaked the ends of his mustache. “Is it a place of evil reputation?”
“Is it? Say, brother, you couldn’t get th’ State Militia to camp there overnight. ’Course, I don’t believe in ghosts or nothin’ like that, but—”
“Mais certainement, so much is evident,” de Grandin’s features creased in one of his quick elfin smiles, “but you would not test your disbelief too strongly, is it not? Very well, we thank you for the transportation. As to that in which you disbelieve so staunchly, we shall endeavor to cope with it unaided, and with the burden of our luggage, also.”
The old Phipps mansion was, as Edwin Phipps had told us, in remarkably good repair for its age and the neglect it had suffered during the past quarter-century. The door that pierced the centre of the building was of adz-cut timber, roughly smoothed with a jack-plane and hung on massive “Holy Lord” hinges of hand-wrought iron. It seemed strong enough to withstand a siege supported by anything less than modern artillery.
Edwin produced a key of hammered brass massive enough to have locked the Bastille, fitted it to the iron-rimmed keyhole and shot back the bolts. Hardly conscious that I did so, I wondered that the lock should work so smoothly after years of disuse.
“Entrez,” de Grandin stood aside and waved us forward; “the great adventure is begun, my friends.”
The room we entered was like the setting of a stage. Obviously it was originally intended as both entrance-hall and living room, possibly as dining room as well. Lofty and paneled in some sort of age-darkened wood, with a fireplace large enough to drive a limousine through, it gave that impression of immensity and chill one gets in going through a Continental cathedral. A broad staircase, balustraded in hand-wrought oak, ran to a gallery whence three doors, one to the right, two to the left, gave off. There were also doors letting through the right wall of the hall, but none to the left. At the stairway’s foot, by way of newel post, stood a massive bronze cannon, muzzle down, evidently the spoil of some raid led by old Joshua against the French, for engraved on its breech were the Bourbon arms and a regal crown surmounting a flourishing capital L. In the centre of the hall was a great table of Flemish oak; several straight-backed chairs, faded and mouldering with age, stood sentry against the walls. Before the monstrous fireplace, almost on the hearthstone, yawned a massive armchair upholstered in tattered Spanish leather. I wondered if this could be the “great chair” in which old Joshua sat when the midwife came to call him to his son, and to the doom pronounced on him and his by Marguerite DuPont.
De Grandin glanced about the place and shook his shoulders as if a chill more bitter than that of the December day had pierced his fur-lined greatcoat. “Pour l’amour d’un bouc, a little fire would help this place immensely,” he murmured. “Phipps, my fri
end, do you dispose our belongings as seems good to you. Trowbridge, mon vieux, by your leave you and I will sally forth in search of fuel for yonder fireplace.”
We had included a pair of Boy Scout axes in our outfit, and in a few minutes cut a plentiful supply of dry wood from the fallen trees in the grove behind the house.
“How is it with your nose, my friend?” he asked as we stacked our forage by the rear door—the very door where Obediah Phipps had taken Marguerite DuPont’s burden on his shoulders.
“My nose?” I looked inquiringly at him.
“Précisément. Your nose, your proboscis; the thing with which you smell.”
“I hadn’t noticed anything wrong—”
“So? Did you detect a strange smell in the house?”
“H’m. There’s that mingling of dust and dry leather, mildew and decay you always smell in old houses, particularly those that have been shut up a long—”
“Mais non, it was not that. I can not quite place it, and I am puzzled. It is a sort of blending of the odours of naphtha and linseed oil—”
“About the only place you’re likely to smell that would be a printshop. Printer’s ink is made of—”
“Mordieu!” he slapped me on the shoulder. “Tu parles, mon vieux! L’imprimerie—the printing-office, yes! The place where they spread ink containing linseed oil and naphtha and the good God knows what else on the type, then wash it off with benzine. Why should there be a smell like that in this old house, I ask to know?” He eyed me fiercely, almost accusingly.
“Haven’t the slightest idea. I hadn’t noticed it. Perhaps your nose played tricks on you. These old houses are as full of strange smells as—”
“As my poor head shall be of maggots until the mystery is solved,” he supplied. “No matter; we can give it our attention in the morning. Meanwhile we have our work to do, and me, I am most vilely hungry.
“Mille pardons, little one,” he murmured almost humbly as he crossed the wide slate hearthstone to lay logs in the fireplace, “we do not tread upon your grave with wanton feet.”
DINNER WAS A SIMPLE meal: Fried eggs and bacon and potatoes washed down with strong boiled coffee, tinned biscuit thickly spread with Camembert and a bottle of Saint Estephe which de Grandin had insisted on bringing. Camp cots were set up on the freestone floor of the great hall, and we rolled ourselves in several thicknesses of blankets before ten o’clock had sounded on de Grandin’s little travelling timepiece. “Bonne nuit, mes braves,” the little Frenchman murmured sleepily. “Let us sleep like the clear conscience; we have much to do tomorrow.”
The fire had died down to a sullen smouldering embers, and shadows once more held dominion in the great cold hall when I awakened with a start. Had I been dreaming, or had there been a Presence bending over me? I wondered as I opened sleepy eyes and looked about. Whatever it had been, it had not been hostile, I knew. Just for a moment I had sensed something, something white and misty, bending above me, a pleasant, comforting something like a mother soothing her child in the night—smooth, calming hands passing lightly over my features, a gentle murmuring voice, a faintly familiar scent breathed through the darkness.
“Trowbridge, mon ami,” de Grandin’s whisper came, “did you see—did you feel it?”
“Ye-es, I think so—” I began, but stopped abruptly at the sound from Edwin Phipps’s cot.
“Ug—ou!” Half exclamation, half frightened, strangling cry it was, and in the quarter-light we saw him rear upright in his blankets, wrestling with a thing invisible to us.
“It—something tried to choke me!” he gasped as de Grandin and I rushed to his aid. “I was asleep and dreamed someone—a woman, I think—bent over me, stroking my cheeks and forehead, then suddenly it—whatever it was—seemed to change, to go as savage as a lunatic, and grasped me by the throat. Lord, I thought I was a dead pigeon!”
He rose from his cot, accepted a sip of brandy from de Grandin’s flask, and felt his neck gingerly. “’Spect it was a dream,” he murmured with a shamefaced grin, “but ‘such stuff as dreams are made on’ is mighty solid hereabouts if it were.”
I was about to make some soothing commonplace remark when de Grandin’s minatory hiss and upraised finger cut me short. Distinctly through the outside darkness came the echo of a shot, a second one, and a woman’s wailing, terrified scream, both curiously faint and far-away seeming.
We waited tensely a moment, then, as the woman’s cry repeated, de Grandin snatched up his coat and tiptoed to the front door. As he flung it open the muffled quality of the sounds was explained. While we slept before the fire a sleet-storm had come up, and though there was but little wind the icy dribble fell with a hiss almost menacing as that of a snake.
An indistinct form blundered through the sleet-stabbed dark; it was not well-defined—a sort of something mantled in light-colored draperies weaving to and fro as if it lacked the sense of sight, or followed a zigzagging trail. Now and again it stopped with raised arms, then bowed above the ice-glazed ground and criss-crossed back and forth, clashing into shrubs, caroming from tree to bush to broken garden ornament. “What is it?” I asked uneasily. There was that about the lurching form which made me unwilling to see it at close quarters.
“Parbleu, it is a woman!” Jules de Grandin exclaimed, and even as he answered came the faint, exhausted hail:
“Help! Help; please help me!”
Together the Frenchman and I dashed into the storm, seized the half-fainting girl and dragged her to the shelter of the house.
“Thanks!” she gasped as we brought her into the hall. “I think I’d have been done for in another moment. If—you—hadn’t—” her voice broke, and she slumped down, an inert wet huddle on the freestone floor.
“Grand Dieu, Friend Trowbridge, see; it is that she is wounded!” cried de Grandin as he bent to raise her. “Assistez-moi, s’il vous plaît.”
On the left sleeve of her suede trench coat showed a spot of angry red, and as I helped him take away the garment I saw the leather was pierced by two small holes, one at the rear of the sleeve, the other at the front. Obviously, a bullet-wound.
Working quickly, we removed her overcoat and Fair Isle sports vest, then washed and bandaged the wound as best we could. For lack of better styptic we made a pack of boric acid powder, of which we fortunately had a small can, and crushed aspirin tablets, thus approximating Senn’s first-aid dressing. For bandages we requisitioned three clean handkerchiefs from de Grandin’s dressing-case, and tore a towel lengthwise to knot it round her neck for a sling.
“How comes it, Mademoiselle, that you flee wounded through the storm?” de Grandin asked as he lowered the glass of brandy-and-water from her lips. “What sacré bête has done this monstrous thing?”
The girl gave him a smile that was half grin, and wrinkled her nose at him. “I only wish I knew,” she answered. “If I could get him up my alley—” She broke off with a wince of pain, then took command of herself again.
“Joe Darnley and I were driving home from Branchmoore when this storm came down on us like a circus tent collapsing. Something went wrong with the gadget that works the jiggermacrank just as we came to the lane leading here. The storm had got us all confused, and neither of us knew just where we were, so while he got out to tinker with the thingununy in the engine I took the flash and looked for landmarks. Just as he got the doololly fixed and we were ready to start, another car came rushing down the road—no lights, either!—and someone in it shouted for us to get the hell out o’ there. Guess we didn’t move fast enough, for they started shooting, and I felt something like a blow from a fist, then a hornet-sting, on my left arm. It hurts like fury, too!” She made a little face, then turned to de Grandin with a brave effort at a smile.
“Joe Darnley’s a swine. The contemptible thing stepped on the gas and left me there, wounded and lost. I screamed for help and started to run—not in any special direction; just run, that’s all. Presently I saw your light and—here I am.” She gave the Frenchma
n another friendly smile, then seemed to stiffen with sudden frightened realization.
“I say, this is the old Phipps house, isn’t it? Who—who are you? I thought this place was deserted—I’ve always heard it was haunted by—” She broke off with another effort at a smile, but it was not highly successful.
“Eh bien,” de Grandin chuckled, “the story is a long one, Mademoiselle. However, we are here quite lawfully, I assure you. Permittez-moi. This is Monsieur Edwin Phipps, one of the owners of the property; this is Dr. Samuel Trowbridge, of Harrisonville, New Jersey. I am Jules de Grandin of Paris and elsewhere, and all of us are at your service.”
She nodded in frank friendliness. “It’s no mere figure of speech when I say I’m glad to meet you. My name’s DuPont—Marguerite DuPont, of Woolwich, Massachusetts. I’m assistant at the public library, and very much in debt to you gentlemen for services rendered.”
“Good gracious!” I exclaimed.
“Marguerite DuPont!” young Phipps repeated in a sort of awed whisper.
“Sacré nom d’un fromage bleu!” swore Jules de Grandin.
She looked at us with puzzled resentment. “What’s the matter? DuPont’s a good name, isn’t it?”
“Good?” de Grandin echoed. “O, la la! It is an excellent-good name, indeed!” Then:
“Your pardon, Mademoiselle. The name DuPont is intimately connected with the tragedy of this old house, and with the bloody doom that dogs the family that owns it. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day after that, when you are feeling stronger, we shall explain in detail. Now, if you please, you shall lie down and rest, and we shall take especial pains that no harm comes to one of your name in this place, of all others.”
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