“Mon brave!” de Grandin exclaimed delightedly. “My old and peerless one, mon homme sensé. Parbleu, I damn think next to Jules de Grandin you are the cleverest man alive! Come, let us drink to that!”
Lottë
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” THE orchestra leader stepped to the edge of his dais, “Pablo and Francesca.” On the heels of his announcement brass and woodwinds sounded a long chord, the hot erotic rhythm of a rumba started and a young man and woman glided out upon the dance floor of the Gold Room.
Jules de Grandin nibbled at a morsel of pink peppermint, washed it down with a sip of black coffee and wiped his lips with a quick brushing motion, taking care not to disturb a blond hair of his trimly-waxed mustache. “Come, Friend Trowbridge, if you are finished let us call for l’addition and depart,” he suggested. “Me, I have dined most excellently well, but this—” he glanced at the dancers circling on the polished oak—“cela m’ennuie. I am bored, me.”
I nodded sympathetically. When one is on the shadowed side of fifty and hasn’t danced in almost thirty years the tortions of a dance team leave him rather cold. Besides, the curtain at the Cartaret would rise in twenty minutes and a decent respect for the comfort of others demanded we be in our seats when the house lights lowered. “Right with you,” I agreed. “Soon as we can get that waiter’s eye—”
“Grand Dieu des petits porcs verts!” his exclamation slashed through my words. Some small bright object, a prism from the chandelier above the dance floor, I thought, had flashed down like a minuscule meteor and crashed like a missile against the sleekly pomaded hair of the male dancer.
With me at his heels the small Frenchman wove his way between the tables and slipped across the polished oak boards of the dance floor. The blow had been surprisingly heavy for so small a projectile, and the young man was unconscious when we reached him. “Do not make yourself uneasy, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin whispered to his distrait partner. “We are physicians. We shall give him the assistance. He cannot be hurt badly—
“Hola, mon brave,” he sank to his knees beside the young man. “You are making the recovery, no? Ah, that is good. That is very good, indeed!” as the youngster’s lids fluttered up and he attempted to rise. “Non, restez tranquille, you will be completely well in one small moment.” As a waiter passed he raised a finger. “A little brandy, if you please, and some ice water.”
“Lottë,” the patient whispered, then, recovering his poise, “What happened? Did I fall—”
“You did, indeed, Monsieur,” de Grandin assured as he held the pony of cognac to the young man’s lips, then dipped the napkin in the bowl of ice water and laid the cold compress on the knot already forming over the boy’s right temporal bone. “So, rest easily a moment.” Methodically he took the patient’s pulse, pursed his lips, then nodded shortly. “No bones are broken, nor is the skin ruptured. I would not suggest that you dance again tonight, but if you continue to improve—”
Mr. Melton, the hotel manager, had elbowed his way through the circling crowd. “What happened?” he demanded. “Was he drunk? I won’t have drinkin’ among the help on duty or off. Get your traps packed and get out!” he ordered the young dancer curtly.
“Monsieur, I should not be too hasty were I in your most undoubtlessly tight shoes,” de Grandin advised coldly. “The young man was stricken by a pendant falling from the chandelier. Dr. Trowbridge and I both saw it, and if he should decide to take legal action—”
“Oh, there won’t be any trouble,” Melton interrupted hastily. “Everything will be all right. Feel up to finishing the act, Paul?”
“Yeh, I—I guess so,” answered the young man as he got to his feet a little unsteadily, shook his head like a fighter who has taken a heavy punch, and smiled reassuringly at his partner.
“Très bien,” de Grandin nodded. “I do not think that you have received much hurt, Monsieur, but if you are not well entirely in the morning you should see a physician. If—” he glanced coldly at Melton—“there should be complications with the hotel, do not hesitate to call on me for testimony.”
He handed a card to the young man, bowed formally to the girl and led the way from the dining room.
“Friend Trowbridge, it is that I am puzzled,” he confided as we drove toward the theatre.
“How’s that?” I answered.
“That young man, Monsieur Pablo. You did observe his injury, n’est-ce-pas?”
“Of course, it was a simple bruise of the right temporal region with moderate ecchymosis. Nothing serious, I’d say, though it was surprising that so light an object as a pendant from the chandelier could have caused so much injury. I’ve seen bruises like that made by clubs or blackjacks—”
“Précisément. You have right there, my friend. But did you see him take his hurt?”
“Now that you mention it, no. I saw the missile hurtle through the air and saw him stagger and fall, but—”
“Exactement. But did you note the relative positions of Monsieur Pablo and the chandelier at the time?”
“No–o—”
“Ah-ha! That is enigma Number One. He was not under the fixture when he was struck. No. He was fifteen—possibly twenty—feet from it. The broken prism had to travel obliquely a distance of at least ten feet in order to strike him. What do you make from that, hein? Is it not against the laws of gravity?”
“You’re sure?”
“But of course. Did not I see it?”
“It couldn’t have been a strong draft—”
“Mais non. A wind sufficient to have hurled a bit of glass that distance, and with force enough to strike a man unconscious, would have to be of hurricane velocity.”
“Ye-es. I suppose so.”
“Indubitably. Moreover, when the so unfortunate young man revived from his swoon, what did he say?”
“I’m not sure, but it sounded like a woman’s name—Lottë.”
“You have entirely right, my old. And did it not seem to you he was frightened?”
“Well, now you speak of it, it did. But—”
“No buts, if you will be so kind. Now for enigma Number Two: The young man was unconscious from a sudden violent blow, n’est-ce-pas? That means he had sustained a shock, which as you know amounts to relaxation or abolition of the controlling influence the nervous system exercises over vital organic functions. Yes. Pulsation should have been slowed down, and respiration much retarded. But were they? Not at all, by damn it. Au contraire, they were very much accelerated. He was frightened, very badly frightened, that one.”
“You may be right,” I agreed as I jockeyed the car into the last remaining parking space before the theatre,—but it seems to me you’re making an Alp out of an anthill.”
“NON,” HE MUTTERED MOODILY as we paused in the kitchen for a goodnight snack, “I do not understand him, me.”
“What the dickens are you maundering about?” I asked as I refilled his mug with beer. “At your confounded ghost-hunting again?”
“Not at all, by no means; quite the contrary,” he denied, his mouth half full of cheese and biscuit, a foaming beer mug halfway to his lips. “This time I seek to dodge the specter, my friend. I wish to wipe my mind as blank as a dunce-schoolboy’s slate, to dismiss all thought of the matter from my memory. But hèlas, you know this Jules de Grandin. He annoys me. He is a very curious person. When a mystery presents itself it gnaws like a maggot at his brain, nor can he dislodge it till he has found its solution. Ah bah,” he shrugged his shoulders irritably. “I shall think of it no more. Let the devil worry over it. Me, I have the craving for eight hours sleep, and if I wake before—”
The sharp, insistent clamor of the doorbell sawed through his words like an alarm clock shattering sleep, and I sighed in vexation as I glanced at my watch. “Half-past one, and some idiot with a bellyache comes for a dose of paregoric.”
A girl was standing in the vestibule, a slim slip of a thing in lustrous furs with a pale face from which dark eyes looked, dilated and frightened.
“Is Doctor—the French gentleman here?” she asked tremulously. “Étienne, the maître d’hôtel at the Gold Room said he knows about such things, and—”
“Para servir á Vá. Señorita,” broke in de Grandin in his best Spanish. In her changed costume, and with fright like a mask on her face, I had failed to recognize the girl, but as de Grandin spoke I realized she was the female member of the dance team we had seen at the Berkeley-York.
“Oh, sir,” she knotted thin hands in a gesture of entreaty which somehow did not seem theatrical, “please help us! Étienne told us you know all about such things and—may I bring Paul in? He’s waiting in the taxi.”
For the first time I noticed a cab parked at the curb, and at de Grandin’s nod she dashed across the porch and down the steps and front walk, the spool heels of her sling-back sandals clattering on the cement.
She leant into the cab’s darkness a moment, then emerged slowly, helping a young man to climb from the machine, steadying him with both arms as he tottered drunkenly up the walk. “Let me,” I offered, taking the unsteady man’s free arm. “He must have had a greater shock than we’d supposed.”
De Grandin seized the patient’s other arm and motioned to the girl to precede us and open the consulting-room door. “So,” he murmured as we eased the young man into an armchair. “That is good, Señor. Very good, indeed. Now, let us have a look—que diable?” With quick, practiced fingers he had felt the youngster’s head, examining not only the discolored area on the right temple, but feeling for an evidence of skull-fracture or contre-coup lesion. “What is it, Señor? You seem in fair condition physically, yet—” Abruptly he lowered his hands, felt the boy’s neck just below the hairline, then took the patient’s right hand in his own. I noticed how the lad’s slim fingers closed convulsively upon the Frenchman’s, clinging to them as a drowning man might grasp at a twig. An interne could have diagnosed nervous exhaustion bordering on neurasthenia.
“Strychnine?” I suggested.
“Brandy,” he corrected. “A large dose, if you please, at least four ounces, Friend Trowbridge. Five or six would be more better. Fear is gnawing at his nerves like a starved wolf. We must relax him, break his inhibitions down, before we can determine what our treatment should be.”
I brought the cognac and de Grandin held the goblet to the patient’s mouth. “A little, so small sip,” he directed. “Très bon. Now another—and another. Let them prepare the way for that which follows. Now, all at once, Señor. Gulp him, swallow him. Down with him all!”
The patient made a face as if he had ingested raw quinine instead of old cognac, but his reaction to the liquor was almost instantaneous. The hands which had been tensely clasped on the chair arms relaxed gradually, color seeped into his pale cheeks, and the drawn lines round his mouth became a little slack.
De Grandin beamed with satisfaction. “Esta mejor?” he asked.
The young man looked at him and the ghost of a smile hovered on his lips. “You needn’t use that Spig talk to me, sir. I’m an American,” he answered.
“American? Mon Dieu! But your names—”
“Oh, that!” the girl broke in with the suspicion of a giggle. “Pablo and Francesca are just our stage names. We’re really Paul and Frances Fogarty.”
“Irish?”
“As Paddy’s pig, sir. Our accent—when we use it—is assumed for strictly business purposes, and is as phony as our stage names.”
The little Frenchman grinned delightedly. “Parbleu, you carry it off well, mes amis. One would swear you are from Argentina, or, perhaps Mexico.” He glanced appreciatively from one of them to the other.
They were, as he had said, extremely “South of the Border” in appearance. Paul Fogarty wore dinner clothes of extreme cut, trousers fitted snugly at the waist and hips with a series of vertical tucks and flowing to bell bottoms like those of a sailor, satin waistcoat drawn so tightly as to suggest a corset, and a jacket with sloping, close-fitting shoulders. His hair, worn rather long, was trained down his cheeks in sideburns and brushed straight back from the brow, plastered sleekly with pomade till it fitted his head like a skullcap of black patent leather.
The girl, too, was perfectly in character. Her hair was so intensely black it seemed to give off blue lights like a grackle’s throat and, defiant of the current fashion, it was cut short as a boy’s. Like a boy’s, too, it was parted far on the left side and plastered down with bandoline till it gleamed in the lamplight. Close-clipped mannish sideburns descended her cheeks before her ears and were rendered more conspicuous by the heavy pendants of green jade that dangled from the small pierced lobes almost to her shoulders. Her dull-black satin gown clung to her narrow figure with such sheath-tightness that it had to be slit at the sides to give her room to step—and incidentally display slim, silk-smooth legs and miniature feet in high-arched sandals. The dress was long-sleeved and high-necked at the front, but left her back exposed almost down to the coccyx. The jade earrings and the synthetic emerald buckles of her sandals were her only ornaments, the carmine of her painted lips and the green lacquer on her toe and fingernails were the sole spots of color in her ensemble. She was not beautiful or even pretty. Her features were too small and too irregular, but she was seductive in a strange way. She had little animal appeal, but her slender, almost boyish body, pale, thin face and scarlet lips had an appeal at once attractive and almost terrifying, like that of the fabled sirens—Circe in a Paris frock, Medea with Rue de la Paix accessories.
“You are perhaps Monsieur and Madame Fogarty?” de Grandin asked, “or is it Monsieur and Mademoiselle?”
“Monsieur and Madame, if you want it that way,” the girl answered, as she gave him a languishing glance from dark eyes. Few women could resist de Grandin. “We’re husband and wife. That’s what’s the matter.”
“Comment?” he answered sharply. “‘The matter,’ Madame? Is it that you do not love each other?”
“No, sir, it’s not that. We love each other till it hurts, but—”
“Ah-ha! That twenty-times-accursed but! What is it, Madame Fogarty? Perhaps I can help you—”
“Did I say anything when I came out of it at the Gold Room?” young Fogarty cut in.
De Grandin turned to face him almost fiercely. “You did, indeed, Monsieur. You said, if I do not make the mistake, ‘Lottë.’ I assumed at the time you called upon Madame your wife. A man does such things in the half light of returning consciousness sometimes.”
“That’s the answer,” Fogarty returned dryly. “I know it sounds as nutty as a pecan roll, but I’m—we’re both—convinced she’s at the bottom of the trouble. Étienne told us—”
“One moment, if you please,” de Grandin raised a slim white hand. “The estimable Étienne can wait. It is of yourselves I wish to know. Begin at the beginning if you please, Monsieur, and omit nothing. If we are to help you we must know all, and all does not imply a part, or even most, but everything. He dropped into a chair, lit a cigarette and crossed his knees, staring at our visitor like a cat at a rat-hole.
“Okay, sir, if you want my life history,” young Fogarty took a deep breath and an Irish grin broke through his carefully cultivated Latin exterior. “I’m a dancer; always been a dancer; never did anything else and never wanted to. Grampaw Donnally said that I was born with jingle-boxes in both feet, and I guess he hit it right, for I’ve never seen the time when music didn’t make me want to prance. Before I’d left kindergarten I could do an Irish jig as well as anyone, by the time I’d reached grade school I’d learned to imitate George M. Cohan, Frisco and Pat Rooney. I was on the program every time there was an entertainment at church or school, and by the time I’d reached fourteen I was copping prizes regularly at amateur nights in the vaudeville houses.
“But I was a lousy student, and nothing but the truant officers kept me in school till I was sixteen, then I ran away and shipped on a freighter for South America, jumped ship at Buenos Aires and hung around until I managed to get a job as bus boy in the Ca
fé 25 de Mayo. In six months I’d picked up enough Spanish to be promoted to waiter. One night I got the orchestra leader drunk and chiseled a dance job out of him.
“That started it. They billed me under the name of Pablo, as an exponent of las Danzas de América del Norte, and my act went over pretty well, especially my imitations of Frisco’s soft-shoe routines. But I knew it couldn’t last, so every centavo made above bare living expenses went into dancing lessons and I learned the works—tango, rumba, bolero, lulu-fardo, maxixe and seguidilla, as well as most of the folk dances. I even took some ballet instruction, but that, like fencing lessons, was more for poise than actual use. Within a year I spoke Argentine Spanish well enough to pass for a native—among foreigners—and had a spot in the floor show at El Centro. While I was working there a German vaudeville agent named Hanns Ewers saw me and offered me a job at the Café Zur Nekke in Berlin.
“It was there I met Lottë. I’d dropped into the Rixdorfer on my night off, thinking I might see some other act that would give me ideas, when she came on. I’d never seen anything like her. She was tall, tall as a tall man, slightly built, and with the small, cold, regular features that distinguish Saxon women from Prussians or Bavarians. In contrast to her cold, almost contemptuous face, her hair was flaming red. I don’t mean russet or that shade of sepia we usually call red, but true flame-color, like molten copper in a crucible, and I knew instinctively that if she let it down it would reach to her knees. She had that white, almost transparent skin that sometimes goes with hair like that, and there was a bright, powdery dust of small gold freckles on her high cheekbones. Her eyes were a hot tortoise-shell, and in them I could see desire straining like a hound at the leash. There are people like that, you know. People to whom music, especially percussion, is intoxicating as an aphrodisiac, whose emotions almost burst the bounds of restraint when they dance. Lottë was one of them. She was drunk with the rhythm of the music, driven almost to frenzy by the movements of her own body.
Black Moon Page 55
