THE SHOCK WAS ALMOST more than Mrs. Dalky could bear. Both de Grandin and I were busy for upward of an hour with sedatives and soothing words. Meanwhile her condition simplified the Frenchman’s program, for a policewoman who also held a nurse’s license was installed beside her bed with orders to turn away all callers, and a plainclothes man was posted in the hall.
“And now, mon vieux,” de Grandin told the butler, “you will please get me at once the formal coat and waistcoat Monsieur Dalky wore to the Pancoast funeral this afternoon. Hasten; my time is short and my temper shorter!”
Feverishly he turned the dead man’s pockets out. In the lower left waistcoat was a tiny wad of crumpled rice-paper, the kind of thin, gray-white stuff which Eastern merchandise is wrapped in. Across it, roughly scrawled in red was the grotesque figure of a pointing man, a queer-looking figure in tight trousers and a conical cap, pointing with clenched fists at a row of smaller figurines. Obviously three of the smaller characters were men, their bifurcated garments proclaimed as much. Two more, judging by the crudely pictured skirts, were women. Two of the male figures had toppled over, the third and the two women stood erect.
“Ha, the implication here is plain. You see it?” de Grandin asked excitedly. “It was a warning, though the poor Dalky knew it not, apparently. Observe”—he tapped the two prone figures with his finger tip—“here lie the Pancoasts, père et fils. There, ready for the sacrifice is Madame Pancoast, and here is Monsieur Dalky, the sole remaining man. The last one in the group, the final woman, is who? Who but Madame Dalky, my friends? All, all are designed to die, and two are already dead, according to this drawing. Yes.” He glared across the room as though in challenge to an invisible personage. “Ha, Monsieur Murderer, you may propose, but Jules de Grandin will dispose of this case and of you. I damn think I shall take you in your own trap and call your vengeance down on your own head. May Satan serve me stewed with parsley if I do not so!”
5. Allura
“SURE, IT WAS AN elegant job Coroner Martin did on Misther Dalky,” Sergeant Costello commented as he stretched his feet to the fire of birch logs crackling on my study hearth and drew appreciatively at the cigar de Grandin gave him. “Were ye mindin’ th’ way he’d patched th’ pore gentleman’s face up so y’ed never notice how th’ haythen murtherer done ’im in, Doctor Trowbridge, sor?”
I nodded. “Martin’s a clever man at demi-surgery,” I answered. “one of the best I’ve ever seen, and—”
“Excuse me, sor.” Nora McGinnis, who is nominally my cook and household factotum, but who actually rules both my house and me with a hand of iron, appeared in the study doorway, “there’s a lady in th’ consultin’-room askin’ to see Doctor de Grandin.”
“Me?” the Frenchman asked. “You are sure? I do not practise medicine here; it must be Doctor Trowbridge whom she—”
“Th’ divil a bit,” Nora contradicted. “Sure, she’s askin’ fer th’ little gentleman wid light hair an’ a waxed mustache, an’ Doctor Trowbridge has nayther light nor anny kind o’ hair, nor does he wax his mustache.”
“You win, ma belle, certainly it is I,” de Grandin answered with a laugh and rose to follow her.
A moment later he rejoined us, walking softly as a cat, his little round blue eyes alight with excitement. “Trowbridge, Costello, my friends,” he whispered almost soundlessly, “come quietly, comme une souris, and see who is within. Adhere your ears to the keyhole, my friends, and likewise your eyes; I would that you should hear, as well as see!” He turned and left us and, as quietly as we could, we followed through the passage.
The writing-lamp burned on my office desk, its emerald shade picking out a spot of glowing green in the shadows of the room, and de Grandin moved it deftly so that its light fell full upon the visitor, yet left his face in dusk. At the door between the surgery and consulting-room we paused and watched the tables. Despite myself I started as my eyes rested on the face turned toward the Frenchman.
Devoid of rouge or natural coloring, save for the glowing carmine of the painted lips, the face was pale as death’s own self and the texture of the fine white skin seemed more that of a Dresden blond than a brunette, although the hair beneath the modishly small hat was almost basalt-black. The nose was delicate, with slender nostrils that seemed to palpitate above the crimson lips. The face possessed a strange, compelling charm, its ivory pallor enhanced by the shadow of the long, silken lashes that lay against the cheeks, half veiling, half revealing purple eyes which slanted downward at the outer corners, giving the countenance a quaint, pathetic look. “It’s she!” I murmured, forgetting that Costello could not understand, since he had never looked on her before. But I recognized her instantly. When first I saw her, she had walked with Harold Pancoast, an hour or less before he met his tragic death.
“It is my uncle, sir,” she told de Grandin as we halted at the door. “He suffers from an obscure disease he contracted in the Orient years ago. The attacks are more violent at changes of the season—spring and autumn always affect him—and at present he’s suffering acutely. We’ve had several doctors already, but none of them seems to understand the case. Then we heard of you.” She folded her slender pale hands in her lap and looked placidly at him, and it seemed to me there was an odd expression in her gaze, like that of a person just aroused and still heavy with sleep, or one suffering from a dose of some narcotic drug.
The little Frenchman twisted the waxed tips of his diminutive blond mustache, obviously much pleased. “How was it they bade you come to me, Mademoiselle?” he asked.
“We heard—my uncle heard, that is—that you were a great traveler and had studied in the clinics of the East. He thought if anyone could give him relief it would be you.” There was a queer, indefinable quality to her speech, her words were short, close-clipped, and seemed to stand out individually, as though each were the expression of a separate thought, and her semivowels and aspirates seemed insufficiently stressed.
For a long moment de Grandin studied her, and I thought I saw a look of wondering speculation in his face as he gazed directly into her luminous dark-blue eyes. Then: “Very well, Mademoiselle, I will come,” he assented. “Do but wait a moment while I write out this prescription—” he took a pad of notepaper from the corner of the blotter and drew it towards him.
Crash! The atmosphere seemed shattered by the detonation and the room was plunged in sudden darkness.
I leaped forward, but a sharp, warning hiss from de Grandin stopped me in my tracks, and next instant I felt his little hand against my shoulder, pushing me insistently back to my hiding-place. Hardly had I regained the shelter of the door when the lights in the ceiling chandelier snapped on, flooding the room with brightness. Amazement almost froze me as I looked.
Calm and unmoved as a graven image the girl sat in her chair, her mild, impersonal gaze still fixed on Jules de Grandin. No charge in expression or attitude had taken place, though the desk lamp lay shattered on the floor, its shade and bulbs smashed into a thousand fragments.
“Right away, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin remarked, as though he also were unaware of any untoward happening. “Come, let us go.”
A long, black taxicab, its tonneau banded with squares of alternate gold and red, stood waiting at the curb before my door. The engine must have been running all the while, for de Grandin and the girl had hardly entered before it was away, traveling at a furious pace.
“Howly Moses, Trowbridge, sor, can’t ye tell me what it’s all about?” Costello asked as we re-entered the consulting-room and gazed upon the havoc.
“I’m afraid not,” I returned, “but it looks as though a twenty-dollar lamp has been ruined, and—” I stopped, gazing at the two white spots upon my green desk-blotter. One was a woman’s visiting card, engraved in neat block letters:
MISS ALLURA BATA
The other was a scribbled note from Jules de Grandin:
Friend Trowbridge:
In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird, and I am
not caught napping by their ruse. I think the murderer suspects I am too hot upon his trail, and has decided to dispose of me; but his chances of success are small. Await me. I shall return.
J. DE G.
“Lord knows I hope his confidence is justified,” I exclaimed fervently. The thought of my little friend entering the lair of the pitiless killer appalled me.
“Wurra, if I’d ’a’ known it he’d never gone off wid her unless I went along,” Costello added. “He’s a good little divil, Doctor Trowbridge, sor, an’ if they do ’im injury, I’ll—”
“Merci, my friend, you are most complimentary,” de Grandin’s laughing voice came from the doorway. “You did think I had the chance of the sparrow in the cat’s mouth, hein? Eh bien, I fear this sparrow proved a highly indigestible morsel, in that event. Yes.
“If by any chance you should go to a corner, not so far away, my friend, you will find there a taxicab in a most deplorable state of disrepair. It is not healthy for the chauffeur to try conclusions with a tree, however powerful his motor may be. As for that one—” he paused, and there was something more of grimness than merriment in his smile.
“Where is he?” Costello asked. “If he tried any monkey-business—”
“Tiens, he surely did,” de Grandin interrupted, “but with less success than a monkey would have had, I think. As for his present whereabouts”—he raised his narrow shoulders in an expressive shrug—“let us be charitable and say he is in heaven, although I fear that would be too optimistic. Perhaps I should have waited, but I had but little time to exercise my judgment, and so I acted quickly. I did not like the way he put speed to his motor the moment we had entered it, and as he was increasing the distance between you and me with each turn of his wheels, I acted on an impulse and struck him on the head. I struck him very hard, I fear, and struck him with a blackjack. It seemed to bother him considerably, for he lost control of his wheel immediately and ran into a tree. The vehicle stopped suddenly, but he continued on. The windshield intervened, but he continued on his way. Yes. He was a most unpleasant sight when last I looked at him.
“It took but half my eye,” he continued, “to tell me the fellow was a foreigner, an Indian or Burmese. The trap was evidently well oiled, but so was I. Alors, I did escape.
“Eh bien, they are clever, those ones. It was a taxicab I entered, a new and pretty taxicab with lines of red and gold squares round its tonneau. The wrecked car from which I crawled a few minutes later had no such marks. No. By a device easily controlled from the driver’s cab a shutter, varnished black to match the body of the car, could be instantly raised over the red and golden checkers, thus transforming what was patently a taxicab into a sumptuous private limousine. Had I not come back, you might have searched long for the taxi I was last seen in, but your search would have been in vain. It was a taxi, so the maid thought, which bore poor Madame Pancoast to her death, and it was a taxi, according to the officer, from which the death-knife was hurled at Monsieur Dalky, but neither of them could identify it accurately, and if instant chase had been given in either instance, the vehicle could have changed its identity almost while the pursuers watched, and gotten clean away. A clever scheme, n’est-ce-pas?”
“Well, sor, I’ll be—” began Costello.
“Where’s the girl?” I interrupted.
He looked at us with something like wonder in his eyes. “Do you recall how she sat stone-still, and seemed to notice not at all when I hurled your desk-lamp to the floor, and plunged the room in darkness?” he asked irrelevantly. “You saw that, for all she seemed to notice, nothing had happened, and that she took up the conversation where we left off when I turned on the lights again?”
“Yes, but where is—”
“Parbleu, you have as yet seen nothing, or at the most, but very little,” he returned. “Come.”
The girl sat calmly on the sofa in the study, her lovely, violet eyes staring with bovine placidity into the fire.
The little Frenchman tiptoed in and took up his position before her. “Mademoiselle?” he murmured questioningly.
“Doctor de Grandin?” she asked, turning her odd, almost sightless gaze on him.
“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
“I’ve come to see you about my uncle. He suffers from an obscure disease he contracted in the Orient years ago. The attacks are most violent at changes of the season—spring and autumn always affect him—and at present he is suffering acutely. We’ve had several doctors already, but none of them seems to understand the case. Then we heard of you.”
Sergeant Costello and I looked at her, then at each other in mute astonishment. Obviously unaware that she had seen him before, the girl had stated her errand in the precise words employed in the consulting-room not half an hour earlier.
The Frenchman looked at me above her head and his lips formed a single soundless word: “Morphine.”
I regarded him questioningly a moment, and he repeated the silent disyllable, holding his hand beside his leg and going through the motion of making an injection at the same time, then glancing significantly at the girl.
I nodded understandingly at last and went to fetch the drug. She seemed not to be aware of what transpired as I took a fold of skin between my thumb and finger, pinched it lightly, and thrust the needle in.
“We heard—my uncle heard, that is—that you were a great traveler and had studied in the clinics of the East,” she was telling de Grandin as I shot the plunger home, and still repeating her message parrotwise, word for word as she had delivered it before, she fell asleep beneath the power of three-quarters of a grain of alkaloid of somniferum.
6. The Death-Dealer
“AND NOW, MY EXCELLENT one,” de Grandin told Costello as he and I returned from putting the unconscious girl to bed, “I would that you telephone headquarters and have them send us two good men and a chien de police without delay. We shall need them, I damn think, and that without much waiting, for the spider will be restless when the fly comes not, and will undoubtlessly be seeking explanations here.”
“Be dad, sor, if he comes here lookin’ for flies he’ll find a flock o’ horseflies, an’ th’ kind that can’t be fooled, at that!” Costello answered with a grin as he picked up the ’phone.
“NOW, MES AMIS, YOU can not be too careful,” de Grandin warned the two patrolmen who answered Costello’s summons. “This is a vicious one we deal with, and a clever one, as well. He thinks no more of murder than you or I consider the extermination of a bothersome gnat, and he is also quick and subtle. Yes. It is late for anyone to call. Should a visitor mount the steps, one of you inquire his business, but let the other keep well hidden and have his pistol ready. At the first hostile move you shoot, and shoot to hit. Remember, he has already killed three men and a defenseless woman. No mercy is deserved by such as he.”
The officers nodded understandingly, and we disposed our forces for defense. Costello, de Grandin and I were to join the policemen alternately on the outside watch, relieving each other every hour. The two remaining in the house were to stay in the room where the girl Allura lay in drugged sleep, for the Frenchman had a theory the killer would attempt to find her if he managed to elude the guard outside. “She who was bait for us will now be bait for him,” he stated as he concluded arrangements. “Let us proceed, my friends, and remember what I said, let no false notions of the preciousness of life delay your hands—he is troubled with no such scruples, I assure you.”
Midnight passed and one o’clock arrived, still no indications of the visitant’s approach. Costello had gone to join the outside guard, I lounged and yawned in the armchair by the bed where Allura lay, de Grandin lighted cigarette from cigarette, beat a devil’s tattoo on his chair-arm and gazed impatiently at his watch from time to time.
“I’m afraid it’s no use, old chap,” I told him. “This fellow probably took fright when his messenger and chauffeur failed to return—he’s very likely putting as much distance between himself and us as possible this very minut
e. If—”
Bang! the thunderous detonation drowned my voice as an explosion, almost under our window, shook the air. I leaped to my feet with a cry, but:
“Not the window, my friend—keep away, it is death!” de Grandin warned, seizing me by the arm and dragging me back. “This way—it is safest!”
As we raced downstairs the sharp, staccato discharge of a revolver sounded, followed by a mocking laugh. The Frenchman opened the front door, and dropping to his hands and knees glanced out into the night. Another pistol shot, followed by a cry of pain, sounded from the farther end of the yard; then the deep, ferocious baying of the police dog and a crashing in the rhododendron bushes told us contact of some sort had been made with the enemy.
“D’je get hit, Clancy?” called one of the policemen, charging across the lawn.
“Never mind me, git him!” the other cried, and his mate rushed toward the thicket where the savage dog was worrying something. A nightstick flashed twice in the rays of a street lamp, and two dull, heavy thuds told us the locust club struck flesh both times.
“Here he is, Sergeant!” the patrolman called. “Shall I bring ’im in?”
“Sure, let’s have a look at him,” Costello answered. “Are ye hurt bad, Clancy?”
“Not much, sir,” the other answered. “He flang a knife or sumpin at me, but Ludendorff jumped ’im so quick it spoilt his aim. I could do with a bit o’ bandage, though.”
While Costello and the uninjured policeman dragged the infuriated dog from the unconscious man and prepared to bring him into the house, de Grandin and I assisted Clancy to the surgery. He was bleeding profusely from a long crescent-shaped incised wound in the right shoulder, but the injury was superficial, and a first-aid pack of boric and salicylic acid held in place by a figure-eight bandage quickly reduced the hemorrhage.
“I’ll say he’s cute, sir,” Clancy commented as de Grandin deftly pinned the muslin bandage into place. “We none o’ us suspected he was anywheres around—he must ’a’ walked on his hands, for he surely didn’t make no footsteps we could hear—when all of a sudden we heard sumpin go bang! alongside th’ house, an’ a flare o’ fire like a Fourth o’ July rocket went up. I yanks out me gun an’ fires, like you told us, an’ then some one laughs at me, right behind me back, an’ sumpin comes whizzin’ through th’ air like a little airplane an’ I feels me shoulder getting numb an’ blood a-runnin’ down me arm.
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