“Ha, that was a trick you had not thought of, Monsieur le Cadavre!” De Grandin thrust the tip of his sword into the fast-crumbling remnants of the lich, stirring them as he might have stirred a coal-fire with a poker. “You were invulnerable to my steel, for you had no life in you to be let out with a sword, but fire you could not stand against. Oh, no, my old and very naughty one, you could kill poor Monsieur Joe-Louis the Louse, you could frighten poor Mademoiselle Edina, and wound her most sorely in the shoulder, but me you could not overcome, for Jules de Grandin is one devilish clever fellow and more than a match for all the mummies ever made in Egypt. Yes, certainly; of course!
“And now, my friends,” he turned to us, “there is unfinished business on the agendum. Let us have some pointed conversation with this so offensive Monsieur Loftus.”
A BRASS KNOCKER HUNG on the door of Number 18 Crescent Terrace, and de Grandin seized its ring and beat a thunderous tattoo. For some time there was no response, but finally a shuffling step came in the hall, and the door opened a few inches. The man who stared at us was big in every way, tall, broad and thick. His fat checks hung down like the dewlaps of a hound, his little mouth was red and full-lipped, like that of a spoiled child or wilful woman, and he stared at us through the thick lenses of rimless spectacles with that expression of vague but vast kindliness which extreme short-sightedness often confers. “Yes?” he asked in a soft oleaginous voice.
“Monsieur Loftus, one assumes?” de Grandin countered.
The man looked at him searchingly. “Oh, so it’s you?” he replied. “You’re the man who came here today—”
“Assurément, Monsieur, and I have returned with these gentlemen of the police. We would speak with you if you can spare us a few minutes. If you find it inconvenient—eh bien, we shall speak with you nevertheless.”
“With me? About what?”
“Oh, various matters. The matter of the so abominable mummy you endowed with pseudo-life by means of certain charms you learned as a member of la Société de la Résurrection Esotérique, by example. Also about the death of Monsieur Joe-Louis the Louse which was occasioned yesternight by that same mummy, and of the attack on Mademoiselle Edina Laurace by your utterly detestable mummy-creature—”
The fat face looking at us underwent sudden transformation. The childish, peevish mouth began to twist convulsively and little streams of saliva dribbled from its corners. “You can’t do anything to me!” Loftus exclaimed. “I deny everything. I never had a mummy; never raised it from the dead; never sent it out to kill—who would believe you if you tried to bring me into court on such a charge? No judge would listen to you; no jury would convict me—”
“Silence, cochon!” cried de Grandin sharply. “Go up the stairs and pack a valise. We take you to the Bureau de Police all soon.”
The fat man stepped back, looking at him with an almost pitying smile. “If you wish to make a fool of yourself—”
“Allez vous-en!” the Frenchman pointed to the stairs. “Go pack your things, or we shall take you as you stand. Your execrable mummy we have burned to ashes. For you the fire of the electric chair awaits. Yes.”
As Loftus turned to mount the stairs the little Frenchman whispered to Costello: “He has right, by damn it! He could not be convicted in a modern court of law, especially in this country. We might as well charge him with riding on a broomstick or turning himself into a wolf.”
“Be dad, sor, ye’ve got sumpin’ there,” Costello admitted gloomily. “We seen th’ whole thing wid our own ten eyes; we seen ye fight wid it an’ finally make a bonfire out o’ it, but if we tried to tell it to a judge he’d have all five o’ us in th’ bughouse quicker’n ye could say ‘Scat!’ so he would.”
“Précisément. For that reason I ask that you will go out on the porch and await me. I have a plan.”
“I don’t see how ye’re goin’ to work it, sor—”
“It is not necessary that you see, my friend. Indeed, it is far better that you do not. Be swift and do as I say. In a moment he will be among us; then it will be too late.”
We filed out the door and waited on the little roofless porch before the house. “If this ain’t screwy,” Dogherty began but got no further, for a sharp cry, half of protest, half of terror, sounded from the house, and we rushed back into the vestibule. The door had swung to behind us and the lock had snapped, so while Costello and Dogherty beat on it Schmelz and I raced to a window.
“We’re coming!” I called as Sergeant Schmelz broke the glass, thrust his hand through the opening and undid the lock. “We’re coming, de Grandin!”
Costello and Dogherty forced the front door as Schmelz and I broke through the window, and the four of us charged into the hall together. “Howly Mither!” exclaimed Costello. Loftus lay at the foot of the stairs as oddly and grotesquely lifeless as an over-stuffed scarecrow. His head was bent at an utterly impossible angle, and his arms and legs splayed out from his gross body, unhinged and nastily limp at knees and elbows.
De Grandin stood above him, and from the expression on his face I could not determine whether laughter fought with weeping or weeping with laughter. “Je suis desolée—I am completely desolated, my friends!” he told us. “Just as Monsieur Loftus was about to descend the stairs his foot slipped and he fell heavily. Hélas, I fear his neck is broken. Indeed, I am quite sure of it. He are completely dead. Is it not deplorable?”
Costello looked at Jules de Grandin, Jules de Grandin looked at Costello, and nothing moved in either of their faces. “Ye wouldn’t ’a’ helped him be any chanct, would ye, sor?” the Irishman asked at length.
“Helped him, mon lieutenant? Alas, no. He was below me when he fell. I could not possibly have caught him. It is unfortunate, disastrous, most regrettable—but that is how things are. Yes.”
“Yes, sor,” Costello answered in a toneless, noncommittal voice. “I had a hunch that’s how things would turn out.
“Schmelz, Dogherty, why th’ divil are ye standin’ there gapin’ like ye’d never seen a dead corpse before, an’ ye both members o’ th’ hommyside squad? Git busy ye omadhauns. Tellyphone th’ coroner an’ tell him we’ve a customer for him.
“An’ now, sor, what’s next?” he asked de Grandin.
“Eh bien, my old and rare, what should men do when they have finished a good day’s work?”
“Sure, Dr. de Grandin, sor, ye’d never be advisin’ that we take a wee dhrap o’ th’ potheen, would ye?”
They exchanged a long, solemn wink.
Three in Chains
THE MURMUR OF VOICES sounded from the drawing room as I let myself in wearily after a hard afternoon at the hospital. An interne might appreciate two appendectomies and an accouchement within the space of four hours, but an interne would need the practice and be thirty years my junior. I was dog-tired and in no mood to entertain visitors. As silently as I could I crept down the hall, but:
“Trowbridge, mon vieux,” de Grandin hailed as I passed the partly opened door on tiptoe, “à moi, s’il vous plaît. This is of interest, this.” Putting the best face I could upon the matter I joined him.
“May I present Monsieur and Madame Jaquay?” he asked, then with a bow to the callers, “Monsieur, Madame, Dr. Trowbridge.”
The young man who stepped forward with extended head had fine, regular features crowned by a mass of dark hair, a broad, low forehead and deep greenish-hazel eyes set well apart beneath straight brows. The woman seated on the sofa was in every way his feminine counterpart. Close as a skullcap her short-cropped black hair, combed straight back from her forehead and waved in little ripples, lay against her small well-shaped head; her features were so small and regular as to seem almost insignificant by reason of their very symmetry. The dead-white pallor of her skin was enhanced by her lack of rouge and the brilliant lipstick on her mouth, while the greenness of her hazel eyes was rendered more noticeable by skillfully applied eye shadow which gave her lids a faintly violet-green tinge and a luster like that of worn
silk.
I shook hands with the young man and bowed to the girl—she was little more—then looked at them again in wonder. “Mr. and Mrs. Jaquay?” I asked. “You look more like—”
“Of course, we do,” the girl cut in. “We’re twins.”
“Twins—”
“Practically, sir. Our mothers were first cousins, and our fathers were first cousins, too, though not related to our mothers, except by marriage. We were born in the same hospital within less than half an hour of each other, and grew up in adjoining houses. We went to school, high school and college together, and were married the day after graduation.”
“Is it not entirely charming?” Jules de Grandin demanded.
I was becoming somewhat nettled. Tired as I was I had no wish to interview two-headed calves, Siamese twins, cousins married to each other and like as grains of sand on the seashore or other natural phenomena. “Why, yes, of course,” I agreed, “but—”
“But there is more—parbleu, much more!—my old and rare,” the little Frenchman assured me. To the young man he ordered: “Tell him what you have told me, mon jeune. Mordieu, but you shall see his eyes pop like those of an astonished toad-frog!”
I dropped into a chair and tried my best to assume a look of polite interest as young Jaquay ran his hand over his sleek hair, cast a look of appeal at de Grandin and began hesitantly. “Georgine and I came here three months ago. Our Uncle, Yancy Molloy, made us sole beneficiaries of his will and Tofte House—perhaps you know the place?—was part of our inheritance. There were a few repairs to be made, though the place was in extraordinarily good condition for so old a structure, and we’ve been living there a little over two months. We’ve become very much attached to it; we’d hate to have to leave.”
“Then why not stay?” I answered somewhat ungraciously. “If the house is yours and you like it—”
“Because it’s haunted, sir.”
“What!”
He colored slightly, but went on: “It’s haunted. We didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary for the first few days we lived there, then gradually both Georgine and I began to—well, sir, to feel alien presences there. We’d be reading in the library or sitting at table, or just going about our affairs in the house when suddenly we’d have that strange, uncanny feeling you have when someone stares fixedly at the back of your neck.
“When, we’d turn suddenly as we always did at first, there’d be no one there of course, but that odd, eerie sensation of being constantly and covertly watched persisted. Instead of wearing off it grew stronger and stronger till we could hardly bear it.”
“U’m?” I commented, taking quick stock of our callers, noting their small stature, their delicacy of form and feature . . . their double cousinship amounted almost to inbreeding, fertile ground for neuroses to sprout in. “I know that feeling of malaise you refer to, and the fact that you both experienced it seems diagnostic. You young folks of today burn the candle at both ends. There’s no need to hurry so; save a few sensations to be probed when you’re past forty. These visual, sensory and circulatory symptoms aren’t at all unusual. You’ll have to take it easier, get much more rest and a lot more sleep. If you can’t sleep I’ll give you some trional—”
“But certainly,” de Grandin cut in. “And the trional will surely stop the sound of clanking chains and dismal, hollow groans.”
“What?” I turned on him. “Are you trying to tell me—”
“Not at all, by no means, my old one. But Monsieur Jaquay was endeavoring to do so when you interrupted with your prattle of the so odious trional. Say on, Monsieur,” he ordered our guest.
“We were getting pretty much on edge from this feeling of being watched so constantly,” young Jaquay continued, “but it wasn’t till last week we heard anything. We’ve made some pleasant friends in Harrisonville, sir, and been going out quite a bit. Last Saturday we’d been to New York on a party with Steve and Mollie Tenbroeck and Tom and Jennie Chaplin—dinner at the Wedgewood Room, to Broadway to see ‘Up in Central Park,’ then to Copacabana for supper and dancing. It must have been a little after three when we got home.
“Georgine had gone to bed, and I was in the bathroom washing my teeth when I heard her scream. I ran into the bedroom with the dentrifice suds still on my lips, and there she was, huddled in bed with the covers drawn up to her chin, pushing against the headboard as if she were trying to force herself through it. ‘Something touched me!’ she chattered. ‘It was like an ice-cold hand!’
“Well—” he smiled apologetically—“you know how it is, sir. ‘What?’ I asked.
“‘I don’t know. I was almost asleep when it put its clammy fingers on me!’
“We’d had several rounds of cocktails both dinner and supper, and Burgundy with dinner and champagne at supper, but both of us were cold sober—well, not more than pleasantly exhilarated—when we got home. ‘You’re nuts,’ I told her.
“And just as I spoke something went wrong with the lights. They didn’t go out all at once. That could have been explained by a blown-out fuse or a short circuit in the feed line. This was different. The lamp began to grow dim slowly, as if a rheostat were being turned off. It was possibly a half-minute before the room was dark, but when the darkness came it was terrific. It pressed down on us like a great blanket, then it seemed to smother us completely—more completely than a thousand black cloths. You know that wild, unreasoning feeling of panic you have when you choke at table? This was like it. I was not only blinded, but bound and gagged as well. I tried to call to Georgine. The best that I could do was utter a choked, strangling gasp. I tried to go to her; it was like trying to wade waist-deep through a strong tide. The blackness in that room seemed liquefied, almost solidified.
“Then we heard it. At first it was no more than a whisper, like the sighing of a storm heard miles away, but getting louder, stronger, every second, like a storm that rushes toward you. Then the sigh changed to a moan and the moan became a howl, and the howl rose to a screech, and then rose to a piercing shriek that stabbed our eardrums like a needle. It rose and rose, spiraling upward till it seemed no human throat could stand the strain of it. Then it stopped suddenly with a deep, guttural gurgle, as if all that dreadful geyser of sound were being sucked down into a drainpipe. The silence that followed was almost worse than the noise. It was as if we had suddenly been stricken stone-deaf.
“I could feel the perspiration trickling down my forehead and into my eyes, but the sweat seemed turned to ice as the silence was smashed by the clanking of a chain. At first it was no more than a light clinking sound, as if some tethered beast stirred in the darkness. But like the shriek it increased in volume till it seemed some chained monster were straining at his iron leash, striving with a strength past anything that man or beast knows to break loose from its fetters.”
Jaquay halted in his narrative to draw a handkerchief from his breast pocket and pass it over his brow. His wife was sobbing on the sofa, not violently, but with soft, sad little sounds, like those a frightened child might make.
“And then, Monsieur?” de Grandin prompted.
“Then the lights flashed on, not slowly, as they had gone off, but with a sudden blaze of blinding brightness, and there we were in our bedroom and everything was just the same. Georgine was cowering against the headboard of the bedstead, and I was standing at the bathroom door blinking like a fool in the sharp, dazzling light, with the dentifrice suds still on my lips and running down my chin to dribble on the floor.”
“And there have been more—manifestations?”
Georgine Jaquay answered in her charmingly modulated contralto. “Not so—so violent, sir. George and I were pretty badly shaken by what happened Saturday night, or more precisely Sunday morning, but we were both very tired and dropped off to sleep before we realized it. Next day was bright and sunny and we’d almost succeeded in convincing ourselves the experience of the night before was nothing but a sort of double nightmare when that sensation of being watched became
stronger than ever. Only now it seemed somehow different.”
“Hein?”
“Yes, sir. As if whoever—or whatever—watched us were gloating. Our uneasiness increased as the afternoon wore on; by bedtime we were in a pretty sorry state, but—”
“Ah, but you had the hardihood, the courage, n’est-ce-pas, Madame? You did not let it drive you from your home?”
“We did not,” Gcorgine Jaquay’s small mouth snapped shut like a miniature steel trap on the denial. “We hadn’t any idea what it was that wanted to get rid of us, but we determined to face up to it.”
“Bravissimo! And then?”
“I don’t know how long we’d been sleeping. Perhaps an hour; perhaps only a few minutes, but suddenly I wakened and sat bolt-upright, completely conscious. I had a feeling of sharp apprehension, as if an invisible alarm-bell were sounding a warning in my brain. There was no moon, but a little light came through the bedroom windows, enough for me to distinguish the furniture. Everything seemed as usual, then all at once I noticed the door. It showed against the further wall in a dark oblong. Dark. Dark like a hole. Somehow the comparison made me breathe faster. I could feel the pulses racing in my wrists and throat. The door had been shut—and locked—when we went to bed. Now it swung open, and I had a feeling unseen eyes were staring at me from the hallway while mine sought helplessly to pierce the darkness. Then I heard it. Not loud this time, but a sort of whimpering little moan, such as a sick child might give, and then the feeble clanking of a chain, as if whatever were bound by it moved a little, but not much.
“I sat there staring helplessly into the dark while every nerve in my body seemed tauntened to the breaking point, and listened to that hopeless moaning and the gentle clanking of that chain for what seemed like an hour. Then, very softly, came a woman’s voice.”
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