“Human sight is fallible. A skilled physician looking at the blue-hued face of one who dies from nitrobenzol poisoning might be misled to think that he had died of heart failure. But chemistry makes no mistakes. When this and that is mixed with that and this, reactions are invariable. There is no room for argument. So when I tell you that I made a test of the young undertaker’s blood and found that be was dead of nitrobenzol poisoning I do not make a statement which can be debated.” He paused, then, earnestly: “The same tests prove your gran’père died of nitrobenzol poisoning, Monsieur.”
“What?” Elwood looked to me for confirmation or denial.
I nodded. “We can’t explain it, Elwood, but undoubtedly the tests were positive. It was poison and not heart disease that killed them both.”
Elwood Shervers’ patronizing manner vanished like a morning mist before the rising sun. “Good Lord!” he almost wailed. “If that’s so, what’s to hinder them from killing me?”
“Only Jules de Grandin, my young friend.”
“Then what do you advise, sir? I’ll do anything in reason—”
“Ha, the fear of death, like fear of God, is the beginning of wisdom, it appears. Your behavior is a matter of concern, Monsieur. Walk, ride, play golf, do exactly as you please, but always in the company of others. Meanwhile, at home, be careful not to stand by any opened door or window, and permit no one to interview you while you are alone. You comprehend? It is not a rigorous routine.”
“Oh, I say, you must be spoofing, aren’t you? If someone’s out to do me in, as you seem sure he is, why should I give ’em opportunity to slip the old stiletto in my back by walking in the street, yet keep away from open doors and windows in the house? Are they like the influenza, coming in on drafts?”
“Mais oui, they are as subtle as la grippe, but infinitely more deadly, I assure you. This evening we shall call upon you. If they run true to form your periods of greatest danger will be between sunset and daybreak.”
“Right-ho, I’ll follow through with your prescription, Doctor, and we’ll gather round the festive board for dinner about seven.”
DINNER WAS NOT WHAT might be called a jovial meal. Shervers forked vaguely at the food upon his plate and I did little more than play with mine. De Grandin, as always appreciative of good food, did full justice to the soup and fish and roast and kept Ordway, Shervers’ butler, occupied with the chablis bottle and the claret cruet. But time and time again I caught his keen glance straying to the long windows at the north end of the room. As for me, my eyes were hardly turned away from them, for the observation he had made as we drove over ran insistently against my inner ears: “We do not know in what guise death will come but we are certain it will try to enter through the windows.”
At last we had completed the ordeal by food and moved into the little drawing-room where Ordway brought us coffee, chartreuse and cigars. The room was rather small, not more than twenty long by eighteen feet in width, and in its furnishings one read the Shervers family’s traits and history. A few examples of Georgian mahogany were almost lost among an assemblage of more exotic pieces, a Dutch-Chinese highboy, a teakwood table set with tortoise-shell, Chinese panels, Japanese prints, old Russian and Greek ikons, carved Italian candlesticks, books bound in Persian covers, Bokhara rugs upon the floor. In the bow window was a tabouret of Chinese red and on it a tall vase of Peking blue held a bouquet of summer roses. Above a fireplace fashioned in Damascus tiles was crossed a pair of swords, that worn by Eustace Shervers when he fought with Farragut at Mobile Bay and the one his father wore when he served the guns that blasted back the Sepoy Mutineers at Lucknow.
Shervers filled his chartreuse glass and his hand shook so the green liqueur slopped over and dripped down on the silver tray. “Damn!” he muttered, then, half peevishly, half challengingly to de Grandin: “You’re certain that my ancestor’s connection with the execution of the mutineers is what’s behind all this?”
“I am convinced of it, Monsieur.”
“Well, I’m convinced you’re off your rocker. Of course, I don’t know much about these Hindoo Johnnies, but they can’t be quite as fierce as you make out. There were some of ’em at school with me in England, and they seemed as mild as milk-and-water. Suppose my great-great-grandfather did officiate at antemortem exercises for some of ’em, that was a hundred years ago, almost, and you’d hardly think these crumpets would retain a grudge that long. Why, they always seemed a cross between white rabbits and black guinea-pigs to me. Nothing vindictive about ’em.”
There was something almost pitying in the look de Grandin gave him. “Mild-mannered, did you say, Monsieur? Bien oui, so is the serpent when he lies at ease and suns himself upon a rock; so is the tiger, in repose. Have you never stood before a tiger’s den at the menagerie and wondered how the lovely, sleepy-seeming creature lying there like an enlarged edition of the fireside tabby-cat could he considered fierce and dangerous?
“My friend, if you had said these so demure ones were bred from cobras crossed with tigers you would have come much nearer to the truth than when you said they seemed like cross-breeds of the rabbit and the guinea-pig. Your father’s grandsire’s father knew the breed much better, I assure you. He had been born and reared in India, he knew of Nana Sahib and the things he did at Cawnpore.”
“Nana?” echoed Elwood. “I always thought that was a woman’s name. Didn’t Zola write a novel—”
“Morbleu—and you have been to school! Attend me, if you please, while I amend your education: Nana Sahib was the leader of the mutineers at Cawnpore. After he had put the British garrison to death with most revolting tortures, he forced two hundred Englishwomen and their children into a small cellar, then sent professional butchers in to kill them. Parbleu, for upward of two hours their cries and screams and prayers for mercy filled that dismal cellar while the ruthless killers slaughtered them as if they had been sheep, sparing neither infirm beldame, tender toddling babe nor young and lovely maiden. There we have a sample of the so mild manners of the crossbred guinea-pigs and rabbits which you spoke of. It was an act of useless cruelty this Nana Sahib did; he knew the British under Havelock were almost within striking distance of his trenches. He ordered these assassinations only that his innate lust for cruelty and blood might be appeased. Now hear me, if you please”—he thrust a finger rigid as a bayonet at our host—“these ones we have to deal with, I believe, are lineal descendants of the men who carried out the bloody Nana’s orders, or others very like them. India sleeps, you think? Mais certainement, but while she sleeps she dreams a dream of vengeance. The recollection of the crushing defeat fifty thousand Englishmen administered to almost as many million Indians rankles in her racial consciousness like a splinter in a festered sore. They owe a debt of deep humiliation to the English, and every Briton killed is so much interest on the long-delayed account. You comprehend? It is more than merely probable that you and yours have been marked for assassination since the day the guns your grandsire served blew captured mutineers to bits in vengeance for the Massacre at Cawnpore. Yes, certainly. Of course.”
The look upon young Shervers’ face reminded me of that a half-grown child might wear while listening to an adult tell a tale of Santa Claus. He drained his pousse-café glass at a gulp. “I think you’re talking rot,” he growled. “Furthermore, I’d just as lief be killed by those assassins whom you talk about as smother here with all the windows down.” He glared defiantly at de Grandin, then rose and crossed to the bow-window. “I’m goin’ to let some air in here.”
“Don’t!” I cried, and:
“Insensé, imbécile, nigaud!” de Grandin shouted. “Nom d’un sacré nom, you will destroy yourself completely!”
With an impatient gesture Elwood threw the curtains back, ran up the lace-edged blind and raised the sash.
Something like a long-drawn, venomous hiss—yet strangely like a cough—came to us from the outside darkness. There was a flash of white eyes in a swarthy face, the gleam of white teeth in a
smile of gloating triumph, and the window-shade cord swayed as though a light breeze blew it.
Shervers staggered backward, both hands raised to clutch his throat, then stumbled crazily as though a cord had stretched across the floor to snare his feet, and dropped full length, face-upward, on the Mosul carpet.
Crash—tinkle! The shattering of splintered glass accompanied the roar de Grandin’s pistol made as he snatched the weapon from his dinner jacket pocket and fired point-blank at the momentary silhouette of the dark face and evil smile that showed outside the window. A mocking laugh responded and the tap of fleeing feet came back to us from the brick walk that circled round the house and let into the alley.
“See to him—artificial respiration!” de Grandin cried as he vaulted through the window in pursuit of the dark visitant.
I turned the fainting man face-downward, rolled my dinner coat into a wad and thrust it underneath his chest, then began applying Schaefer’s method, pressing firmly down upon the costal margins, swinging back, then bearing down again, counting twenty rapidly between each alternating pressure. “Ordway!” I shouted. “Ordway, bring some brandy and water!”
“Yes, sir?” The butler tiptoed through the doorway, his disapproval of my rowdy manners written plainly on his smoothly shaven face. “Did something happen?”
“Nothing much,” I answered tartly. “Only someone nearly murdered Mr. Elwood. Get some water and brandy, and be quick about it!”
It might have been five minutes, though it seemed much longer, before the boy began to breathe in shuddering sighs instead of stifled gasps. I bent my arm behind his shoulders, raised him and poured brandy mixed with water down his throat. “Easier now?” I asked.
He shuddered as though he were chilled. “He—he seemed waiting out there for me—popped right up in my face! It”—he coughed and retched—“it was like fire—like smoke—like something that exploded in my face!”
A grisly feeling of malaise came over me. “He seemed waiting out there for me”—the words the dying funeral director gasped when we helped him from the window where he had been stricken! I had the eerily uncomfortable feeling that small red ants were running up my spine and neck and through my hair. “Ordway,” I called again, “see to Mr. Elwood. Give him a sip of brandy every few minutes, and fan him steadily with something. I’ll be back directly.”
Climbing through the window I looked around for Jules de Grandin. There was no sign of him. “Hi, de Grandin!” I called. “Where are you?”
“Ohé, mon vieux—à moi!” the hail came from the rear of the garden. “Come and see the fish that we have caught!”
The gleam of his white shirt-front guided me to where he sat upon the grass, a cigarette between his lips, a smile of utter satisfaction with himself upon his face. Thirty feet or so away something writhed upon the shadowed lawn and cursed venomously in a whining voice with thick-tongued words. “Good heavens, what is it?” I asked.
For answer he drew out his pocket flashlight and shot its beam upon his quarry. In the diffused circle of pale orange light I saw an undersized dark man, emaciated as a mummy, sparsely bearded, turbaned. There was something horribly reminiscent of a June-bug on a string about the way he clawed a little distance on the grass, then stopped abruptly with a cry or curse of pain and slipped back, as if he had been pinioned by a tether of elastic. Then I saw. Biting cruelly on his left leg were the saw-toothed jaws of a steel trap, and anchoring the trap was a strong chain made fast to a stout peg.
“Good Lord, man! What—” Involuntarily, I stepped forward to release the tortured prisoner.
“Keep back, my friend!” de Grandin warned. “Retirez vous!”
The warning came a thought too late. As I leant forward the trapped man roused upon an elbow, pursed his lips and blew his breath into my face. I stepped backward, choking. Overwhelmingly powerful, the fumes of some gas, hot and scalding-bitter, stung my throat and nostrils, strangling me. The world seemed whirling like a carousel gone crazy, blindness fell upon me, but it was a blindness shot with bursting lights. My head seemed swelling to the burstingpoint. Dully, I felt, yet scarcely felt, the impact of my fall. Half senseless, I realized I lay upon my back, weak, limp and sick as though anesthetized with ether, yet with slowly rising consciousness returning.
“Wha—what?” I gasped, then choked and coughed and gasped again.
“C’est un empoisonneur vicieux!” I felt my wrists seized in a firm grip as Jules de Grandin pumped my arms up and down vigorously. Gradually the breath refilled my lungs, the dizziness subsided, and I sat up, staring round me in bewilderment. “You said it was a vicious poisoner—”
“Mais oui. I did, indeed, my friend. He is just that, the naughty fellow. Everything is all clear now, but there remain some things to be attended to.” Methodically he cut a long switch from a lilac bush and stripped its leaves off. “Behold how I apply the antidote,” he ordered as he advanced upon the prisoner and struck him a cruel cut with the peeled withe.
I watched in a paralysis of fascination. Oddly, repulsively, the pantomime was more like the torture of a snake than the torment of a man. The wretched creature on the ground writhed and wriggled like a serpent, clawed the grass, whined and hissed. Time and time again he tried to reach de Grandin, rearing up upon his elbows, thrusting forth his head and blowing at him with a hissing sibilation.
“Sa-ha!” The little Frenchman leaped back nimbly, as from a physical attack, and struck and struck the prisoner again, now on his skull-thin face, now across the writhing shoulders or the twisting back, now on the legs.
The poor wretch slowly weakened in his efforts to defend himself. Between the pain of merciless beating and the torture of the steel trap clamped about his ankle, he was tiring rapidly, but de Grandin was relentless. “Blow, breathe at me, exhale, diablotin!” and the swish and clapping impact of his lash gave punctuation to his orders.
“Stop it, man!” I cried, almost sickened at the spectacle.
The look he turned on me made me shrink back, a hand involuntarily raised in defense. Once as a lad I’d tried to take a baby chick from my pet cat, and the recollection of the transformation of my gentle playmate to a snarling small edition of a tiger had never quite been banished from my mind. It was such a transformation that I witnessed now. His lips curled back in a snarl that bared his small, sharp teeth, his little blond mustache reared upward like the whiskers of a furious tomcat, de Grandin seemed an incarnation of the god of vengeance.
“Keep clear!” he ordered savagely. “This affair is mine, to handle as my judgment dictates.”
I retreated. It would have taken one far bolder than I was to try to take his prey away from him.
Cut—lash! His whip descended on the groveling man until it seemed that he desisted more from weariness than mercy. At last he threw the switch aside and stood looking at the trembling, sobbing wretch stretched on the grass before him. “I think that is enough,” he told me matter-of-factly. “His venom-sac should be exhausted now.”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“Tout à l’heure,” he cut me short. “At present we have duties to perform, my friend.” Twisting his handkerchief into a cord he bound the prisoner’s wrists securely at his back; then: “Put your foot down here, if you will be so good,” he ordered, pointing to an arm of the steel trap, and rested his foot on the other prong, heaving downward at the saw-toothed jaws and releasing the man’s ankle from their grip.
“Go, march, en avant!” he commanded, digging the muzzle of his pistol in the captive’s back and pushing him toward the house. To me:
“Will you be kind enough to telephone the police and inform them that we have a tenant ready for the bastille?”
All spirit seemed to have been whipped out of our prisoner. The demoniacal gleam had faded from his eyes, his shoulders sagged, once or twice he shuddered and shook as if with overmastering sobs. “Jo hoegha so hoegha—what is written must come to pass!” he muttered.
“Beard o
f a green goat, never have you said a truer word, my wicked one!” de Grandin agreed as he thrust his pistol deeper in the small of the man’s back.
“BUT NO, MY FRIENDS,” he told us as, highball glass in hand, he faced us in the Shervers’ little drawing-room, “it was all most beautifully simple, or, more exactly, beautifully complex.”
Resting his glass on the mantelpiece he spread his finger fanwise and ticked the first point off upon his thumb.
“To commence at the beginning: It seemed strange to me when Doctor Trowbridge first related how the Shervers family was being stricken by heart disease in series. Such things do occur, of course, but they are of sufficient unusualness to excite our wonder. However, I was but mildly interested until that day we came here to the funeral and saw young Monsieur Oldham, the mortician, die. His death seemed due to heart disease, but there were certain things about it which rang warning bells inside my brain. His face was cyanotic—blue-hued—which is evidence of heart failure, but not the sort of evidence which excludes all other diagnoses. Also, about him, on his linen, in his breath, there was a subtle, faint perfume. Not of l’eau de Cologne, not parfum social, but of bitter almonds—crushed peach kernels. Why?
“That odor is found in a number of strong poisons, in prussic acid, in its deadly volatile derivative, hydrocyanic gas. But these kill very quickly. The young man had seemed well and strong—then he was dead. He could not have committed suicide by such means, and it seemed impossible anyone had killed him; yet he was very dead, and my experiments were later to convince me that he died from breathing fumes of nitrobenzol. However, we anticipate.
“When we called upon your venerable ancestor and saw his father’s portrait on the wall, I found a basis for these deaths, but still I did not see the way the murders were committed.
“It is a matter of historic record that some of those who helped to execute the Sepoy Mutineers—and their children and their children’s children—died in circumstances so unusual as to point to vengeance killings, and in some instances these were of a nature which precluded anything but magic having been involved.” Elwood Shervers gave vent to a snort of incredulity; de Grandin stared him down as a master might stare down a noisy pupil in the class room, and proceeded:
Black Moon Page 9
