“Then what are we to do? Must Paul and I separate—”
He held a slim hand up for silence. “Permit me, Madame. I think, I concentrate; I cogitate.”
At length: “I would suggest you spend the night apart, my friends. The farther the better. One of you should take the train for Philadelphia and stop at some hotel. The other should remain here. Tomorrow night, if all goes well, we shall attempt an experiment. I make no promises, but we shall see what we shall see. Yes. This Fraulein Lottë Dalberg has affronted me. She has thrown a knife at me. I am insulted, and I do not suffer insult placidly. If one thing fails we shall essay another, and another until we strike upon the proper one. Yes, I have said it, me.”
IT WAS SHORTLY AFTER four o’clock next afternoon when we knocked at the door of the suite occupied by Paul and Frances Fogarty at the Berkeley-York. “And how were things last night?” de Grandin asked as Paul let us in.
“A little better, thank you,” answered Fogarty. “I went to Philadelphia as you suggested. Fran stayed here, and aside from a bad dream I had no trouble.”
“A bad dream? Like what, Monsieur Paul?”
“I dreamed I was some place, I don’t quite know where, but it was probably a mountain top, for everything was shrouded in a heavy mist, and yet there was a wind blowing. It was intensely cold, and I felt very lonely. At last I couldn’t stand it any longer and called for Fran.”
“And then?”
“I got no answer, but when I called a second time I saw a figure coming slowly toward me through the fog. When it came closer I saw it was Lottë. She was wearing a long scarlet robe, and her hair, as red as the silk of her gown, hung down about her. Her arms were bare, so were her head and feet, and every time she took a step a flash of flame came from the ground where she had trod, and a little puff of yellow smoke accompanied it. It had an odd, nose-tickling smell, like that you get when you put a match to your cigarette before the sulphur has quite burned away.”
“U’m,” Jules de Grandin commented. “One need not be a Freud or Jung or Stekel to interpret the symbolism of that dream. What next, if you please?”
“I tried to run away, but had no power to move. It was as if I’d suddenly been turned to stone. No, not quite that, either. It was more as if I’d suddenly been paralyzed. I was entirely conscious, but powerless to move. I couldn’t even shut my eyes, or take them off her as she walked toward me with a kind of gloating smile on her face. But I could feel my heart beating and the breath hissing in my throat. A bird must feel something like that when a snake creeps up on it.
“She came up to me and put both hands on my shoulders, while she looked straight in my eyes. ‘I’m burning, Pablo,’ she told me, ‘burning for you. Soon I shall burn with you.’ Then she kissed me.
“I felt her mouth against my mouth and the light nip of her sharp teeth on my lips, and a mist as red as blood—red as her robe and her hair—blinded me. I felt as if I were sinking into some dream-scented fog, half conscious, half unconscious, like a patient on the operating table when the ether is applied and the doctor tells him to begin counting: One-two-three. Then suddenly the fog caught fire, and I was burning, too. Flames leaped and roared and hissed about me, stripping the skin off my flesh and the flesh from my bones. The agony of it was almost past endurance, and yet—yet—”
“Précisément. Monsieur,” de Grandin supplied. “And yet you found the torment in a sense delightful. Even the damned in hell have some pleasures. One takes it that you awoke then?”
“I woke up in what seemed a raging fever, yet I was shaking as with a severe chill.”
“And not one little minute too soon, either, mon jeune. Me, I think that was no ordinary dream you had. It was a vision, and one which might well have ended in disaster. Tell me,” his face showed sudden concern, “you did not speak to her, you did not make her any promise, or declare your love or express rapture at the embrace?”
“No, sir.”
“That is good. That is very fortunate, indeed. Poor, weak, finite human nature has its limitations, and the powers of hell are very strong. It seems that not content with doing you physical injury this vile one now would steal away your soul. She is a very naughty person, that one.”
Abruptly he turned to Frances Fogarty. “Madame!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Attend me, if you please.” From his waistcoat pocket he drew a short length of silken cord from which dangled a bright silver disc about the size of a dime. “See him,” he ordered. “Is he not a pretty thing?”
Slowly, like a pendulum, he swung the bright disc back and forth. Frances watched it, fascinated. “Sleep, Madame Françoise,” he commanded softly “Sleep. The clock is ticking; tick—tock; tick—tock. Slowly, very slowly, it is counting off the second, ma petite. Tick—tock. You are weary, very, very weary; you are tired, you long for sleep. Sleep is what you most desire, it is not? Tick—tock; tick—tock!”
The girl’s eyes wavered back and forth following the arc of the bright disc, but as he droned his monotone they became heavy lidded, finally closed. Her slender bosom rose and fell convulsively a time or two, then regular soft breathing told us she was sleeping. He bent above her, pressing gentle fingers on her lids. “You are asleep, Madame Françoise?”
“I am asleep,” she answered drowsily.
He turned from the girl to her husband “It is expedient that you join her, Monsieur Paul.”
“You mean you want to hypnotize me?”
“Perfectly.”
“O.K. I’ll take a chance.” He dropped into a chair beside his wife, settled his head comfortably and smiled tiredly. “Hope this works, sir,” he muttered.
Once more de Grandin swung the shining silver disc, once more his soothing monotone commanded sleep. In something less than five minutes Paul was slumbering peacefully.
“Madame Françoise?” the Frenchman called softly. No answer came, and he repeated the summons. At last a sleepy little murmur like the whimper of a half-roused child responded. “The hypnosis is deep,” he whispered, then aloud to the girl, “I am your master am I not, Madame Françoise?”
“You are my master.”
“You will obey my command?”
“I will obey you.”
“Then I command you to forget all thought of Lottë Dalberg. Dismiss her from your mind and memory, utterly, completely, wholly. As far as you are concerned there was never any such person. Her name if heard will evoke no memories pleasant or unpleasant. It will be the name of a stranger, never heard before. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“You will obey?”
A long pause followed, then: “Madame Françoise, who is Lottë Dalberg?” he asked sharply.
“Lottë Dalberg?” she said sleepily. “I never heard of her. Should I know her?”
“No, emphatically no, my little.”
He swung round to the sleeping Paul and repeated the commands he had given Frances. Then, five minutes later, “Who was Lottë Dalberg, Monsieur Paul?” he asked.
“She was—” the young man seemed to grope for an answer, then, slowly, like one trying to recall a half-forgotten snatch of poetry—“she was a German girl whom I met in Berlin. I loved her—hated her—”
“Non, par la barbe d’un bouc vert, you shall not say it!” de Grandin cut in savagely. “Attend me, Monsieur Paul: She was no one. She never had existence. There was never such a person. Do you understand?”
“I—I think so.”
“Good. Now, who was Lottë Dalberg, Monsieur Paul?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think; think hard, my Paul. Who was she? Do not you recall your days and nights together in Berlin, the kisses and the vows of never-dying love?”
“No.”
“You cannot recall her?”
“Who?”
“What was her name?”
“Whose name?”
“Très bien.” He turned to me, his little round blue eyes agleam. “I damn think tha
t does it—”
“What’s that?” I interrupted, seizing him by the elbow and spinning him around. “There, on the wall?”
Something like a water-stain was forming on the green-painted plaster. It grew, expanded, lengthened, widened till it was the silhouette of a female figure standing on tiptoe facing us. Tiny lines of red like veins began to show within the outline of the stain. Some were heavy, some lighter, and together they traced out a pattern like a line drawing crudely executed in red pigment.
The thing was like a five-pointed star, the widely outspread legs its lower points, the upstretched, outspread arms its upper ones, the head, thrust forward, the apex. Now we could see the snaky locks of red hair rippling unbound down the brow and neck and shoulders, reaching almost to the knees; the long and tapered arms uplifted as in evocation, the wide-opened and staring eyes, glaring at us in malevolent fury.
“Hola,” de Grandin greeted mockingly. “Comment vous portez-vous, aujourd’hui, Fraulein Lottë?—how are you?”
The red-etched picture seemed to struggle to free itself from the wall. Grotesquely, horribly, it was like some enormous beetle enmeshed on a sheet of flypaper. He laughed sarcastically. “It is no use, Fraulein. Two dimensions are the most you can achieve; soon there will be none.”
He dropped his bantering tone, and voice and eyes were hard as he proceeded: “Unquiet spirit of the unrepentant dead, go forth. You have said to the grave, ‘Thou art my lover, in thy arms will I lie,’ and to Death, ‘Thou art my father and my mother.’ The cord of memory and fear by which you held these ones is broken; your power over them is ended. Save in the memories of those who hate you and the records of the court that tried and sentenced you to death there is no thought or mention of your name. Oblivion has claimed you. You are swallowed up, wiped out; extinct. Now get you gone to that place prepared for you, and may your scarlet sins find pardon in the end. Avaunt, be gone; te conjuro, abire ad tuum locum.”
The simulacrum on the wall began to fade like a picture projected from a magic lantern when the light behind it dims, became a featureless shadow, a dull, amorphous stain—nothing.
“Bien,” de Grandin dusted one hand on the other. “That is indubitably that, Friend Trowbridge.”
To the sleeping couple he called softly: “Monsieur and Madame, sleep until the time has come to rise and work, but forget all that has transpired. You never heard of Lottë Dalberg, have no recollection of the persecution with which she plagued you, never have you seen or heard of Jules de Grandin or his friend Dr. Samuel Trowbridge. All, all has been forgotten, mes amis. Adieu.”
He opened the door softly and we stepped out into the hall.
“NO,” HE DENIED AS we finished dinner that night, “I would not call it intuition, my friend. It was rather tentative and impractical. Consider, if you please:
“This thing which haunted Monsieur Fogarty was in the nature of a poltergeist, but it were not a true one. While it moved furniture and hurled light objects it had none of the droll mischievousness of the true poltergeist, who, while he often proves annoying, even dangerous, is a species of a ghostly clown who plays his Puckish tricks without much rhyme or reason. This naughty one had a very definite reason for everything she did; she was unquestionably bent on persecuting Monsieur Fogarty, perhaps eventually on killing him. Because she sought to do him physical injury by physical means she resorted to the form of poltergeist, and so the pattern of her actions—and her limitations—were those of that species of a ghost.
“Very well. We determined Madame Françoise was the agent through which the so wicked Fraulein Lottë operated, the reservoir of her supply of teleplasm without which she had no power for violence. Très bien. What then?
“It is an axiom of the occultist that this teleplasm is what you call ideoplastic, that is, it takes its appearance, its seeming, from the thoughts of those among whom it operates. Both Monsieur and Madame Fogarty knew and hated Lottë Dalberg, and with excellent reason. That gave her a hold on their minds. When she appeared to Monsieur Paul in Philadelphia last night she was knocking at the door of his subconscious, seeking to insinuate herself into his brain as well as do him bodily injury through external force.
“Now, I ask me, ‘Jules de Grandin, are you afraid of the spirit of this most unpleasant young woman who has died upon the gallows for her murders and undoubtlessly is most uncomfortable at present for her other sins?’ ‘Damn no, Jules de Grandin,’ I reply to me. ‘I am ashamed of you that you should ask such a question.’
“Very well, suppose we hypnotize this poor, tormented couple, make them not afraid, even not aware, of Lottë Dalberg. What then?
“Hypnotism, in the last analysis, is nothing but the substitution of the operator’s mind for that of the subject. In a measure, by fear and memory, the revenant had substituted her intelligence for that of Monsieur Paul and Madame Françoise. So what did I do? I thrust my mind into their brains, pardieu, and made them unafraid and even unaware of her. Thereafter, she had no place to go. She could not make them fear her, they had completely forgotten her. It was as if she had been trespassing in their brain-house when pouf! along comes Jules de Grandin and evicts her.
“But though they had forgotten her in their hypnotic sleep I had not. I thought of her, and there was still sufficient teleplasm to enable her to take feeble form as a picture on the wall. She was a fearsome, frightening sight, n’est-ce-pas? Ha, but she chose the wrong one for her frightening! Me, I told her which was what in no uncertain terms. I told her all her power was gone, that she was as forgotten as last year’s bird’s nest. Her last remaining ligamentary tie with earth was snapped. She had no place to go but outer darkness.”
“You don’t think she’ll come back?”
“I do not, my friend. What was it that she said to Monsieur Paul in his vision? ‘I burn’? Parbleu, I think that is exactly what she does.
“And me, I also burn. My throat is dry, my tongue is parched, my lips are all afire. Will you not have the goodness to refill my glass, Friend Trowbridge?”
Eyes in the Dark
“I AGREE ENTIRELY,” JULES de Grandin nodded vigorously. “Too many of our profession wear blinders. This prejudice against Chiropractic is pig-ignorant as that shown against anesthesia when Simpson introduced it, or the abuse heaped on your own illustrious Holmes when he contended puerperal fever is infectious. Me, I think—mordieu, watch him! He will not live to grow old that one!”
Dodging drunkenly from the curb, a man had run into the roadway almost directly in the path of our car, and, as I clamped my brakes on frenziedly, fell sprawling to the pavement.
He lay face downward on the asphalt when we reached him, both arms extended to full length like those of a diver when he hits the water, and no clothing-dummy flung into the street could have been limper. “I’m sure we didn’t hit him!” I exclaimed as we bent over the prostrate figure. “There was no jar—”
“You have right, my friend,” de Grandin cut in. “I saw him fall a full three feet from the wheels but”—he looked up bleakly—“nevertheless, he is dead.”
“Dead?” I echoed incredulously.
“Comme un maquereau,” he agreed. “Completely; utterly.”
“But—”
“I think that we had better save our buts for the inquest, Friend Trowbridge. It would be well if we called the police—”
“How? We can’t just leave him lying here, nor can we move him, and where would we find a telephone?”
He rose and dusted the knees of his trousers. “I think I see a gleam of light on that doorway. Perhaps they have a ’phone.”
The neighborhood was strange to me. We had been visiting the Westervelt Clinic to observe the effect of a course of chiropractic treatments on a neurasthenic for whom potassium iodide and sodium salicylate had proved about as efficacious as so much distilled water. The old house occupied by the Clinic stood in what was little better than a slum and the old street through which we drove had seen better days, but not for a
long time. Most of the houses were old brownstone fronts that had been elegant homes but now were shabby, run down at the heel, like gentlefolk in reduced circumstances. Signs announcing furnished rooms showed in most of the windows; on window-sills were half-filled milk bottles and the oddments common to “light housekeeping” apartments. Although it was but little after ten o’clock no lights showed in the blank-eyed windows. Either everyone had gone to bed or residents of the block economized on electricity.
However, as I followed the line of his pointed finger I saw a faint gleam seeping from the house before which we had stopped. A dull pattern of reds and blues lay on its white marble stoop where light shone dimly through the little panels of its stained-glass door, and though the place showed the air of decay that sat like a blight on the neighborhood it seemed a little better than its mates. None of its window lights had been broken and patched, it bore no card announcing rooms to let; the very curtains which obscured the light within seemed to announce it still maintained some sort of aloofness from the forthright poverty of the locality.
I started toward the dimly lighted door, but a sharp ejaculation from de Grandin halted me. “What is it?”
He had turned the dead man’s face toward him and was staring at a small wound on the forehead with a look of fascination. “One cannot surely say,” he answered softly, “but— What do you make of him, hein?”
“Why, when he fell he struck his brow—”
“On what, one asks to know? What is there in the street on which he could have cut himself?” As I bent to inspect the wound he added: “And if he cut himself when he fell, why should his injury take this form, hein?” With a wisp of paper napkin from the glove compartment of the car he wiped the corpse’s brow, revealing not a straight or jagged cut, but three distinct incisions in the skin, clear-cut as if made with a needle or knife-point.
“Great Scott!” I exclaimed. “It looks like shorthand.”
“It does, indeed,” he agreed, “but it is not. Unless I miss my guess it is an Arabic inscription, perhaps Hindustani. I cannot be quite sure which.”
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