“‘Ah, but I saw you, chéri; I have watched you as you made your solemn rounds like a watchman of the night. Ohé, but it was hard to wait until the sun went down to greet you, mon petit!’
“She laughed again, and her mirth was mellowly musical as the gurgle of cool water poured from a silver vase.
“‘How could you have seen me?’ I demanded. ‘Where were you all this time?’
“But here, of course,’ she answered naively, resting one hand against the graystone slab that sealed the tomb.
“I shook my head bewilderedly. The tomb, like all the others in the deeply recessed wall, was of rough cement incrusted with small seashells, and its sides were straight and blank without a spear of ivy clinging to them. A sparrow could not have found cover there, yet…
“Julie raised herself on tiptoe and stretched her arms out right and left while she looked at me through half-closed, smiling eyes. ‘Je suis engourdie—I am stiff with sleep,’ she told me, stifling a yawn. ‘But now that you are come, mon cher, I am wakeful as the pussy-cat that rouses at the scampering of the mouse. Come, let us walk in this garden of mine.’ She linked her arm through mine and started down the grassy, grave-lined path.
“Tiny shivers—not of cold—were flickering through my cheeks and down my neck beneath my ears. I had to have an explanation…the snake, her declaration that she watched me as I searched the cemetery—and from a tomb where a beetle could not have found a hiding-place—her announcement she was still stiff from sleeping, now her reference to a half-forgotten graveyard as her garden.
“‘See here, I want to know—’ I started, but she laid her hand across my lips.
“‘Do not ask to know too soon, mon coeur,’ she bade. ‘Look at me, am I not veritably elegante?’ She stood back a step, gathered up her skirts, and swept me a deep curtsy.
“There was no denying she was beautiful. Her tightly curling hair had been combed high and tied back with a fillet of bright violet tissue which bound her brows like a diadem and at the front of which an aigret plume was set. In her ears were hung two beautifully matched cameos, outlined in gold and seed-pearls, and almost large as silver dollars; a necklace of antique dull-gold hung round her throat, and its pendant was a duplicate of her ear-cameos, while a bracelet of matte-gold set with a fourth matched anaglyph was clasped about her left arm just above the elbow. Her gown was sheer white muslin, low cut at front and back, with little puff-sleeves at the shoulders, fitted tightly at the bodice and flaring sharply from a high-set waist. Over it she wore a narrow scarf of violet silk, hung behind her neck and dropping down on either side in front like a clergyman’s stole. Her sandals were gilt leather, heelless as a ballet dancer’s shoes and laced with violet ribbons. Her lovely, pearl-white hands were bare of rings, but on the second toe of her right foot there showed a little cameo which matched the others which she wore.
“I could feel my heart begin to pound and my breath come quicker as I looked at her, but:
“‘You look as if you’re going to a masquerade,’ I said.
“A look of hurt surprise showed in her eyes. ‘A masquerade?’ she echoed. ‘But no, it is my best, my very finest, that I wear for you tonight, mon adoré. Do not you like it; do you not love me, Edouard?’
“‘No,’ I answered shortly, ‘I do not. We might as well understand each other, Julie. I’m not in love with you and I never was. It’s been a pretty flirtation, nothing more. I’m going home tomorrow, and—’
“‘But you will come again? Surely you will come again?’ she pleaded. ‘You cannot mean it when you say you do not love me, Edouard. Tell me that you spoke so but to tease me—’
“A warning hiss sounded in the grass beside my foot, but I was too angry to be frightened. ‘Go ahead, set your devilish snake on me,’ I taunted. ‘Let it bite me. I’d as soon be dead as—’
“The snake was quick, but Julie quicker. In the split-second required for the thing to drive at me, she leaped across the grass-grown aisle and pushed me back. So violent was the shove she gave me that I fell against the tomb, struck my head against a small projecting stone, and stumbled to my knees. As I fought for footing on the slippery grass, I saw the deadly, wedge-shaped head strike full against the girl’s bare ankle and heard her gasp with pain. The snake recoiled and swung its head toward me, but Julie dropped down to her knees and spread her arms protectingly about me.
“‘Non, non, grand’tante!’ she screamed; ‘not this one! Let me—’ Her voice broke on a little gasp, and with a retching hiccup she sank limply to the grass.
“I tried to rise, but my foot slipped on the grass and I fell back heavily against the tomb, crashing my brow against its shell-set cement wall. I saw Julie lying in a little huddled heap of white against the blackness of the sward, and, shadowy but clearly visible, an aged, wrinkled Negress with turbaned head and cambric apron bending over her, nursing her head against her bosom and rocking back and forth grotesquely while she crooned a wordless melody. Where had she come from? I wondered idly. Where had the snake gone? Why did the moonlight seem to fade and flicker like a dying lamp? Once more I tried to rise, but slipped back to the grass before the tomb as everything went black before me.
“The lavender light of early morning was streaming over the tomb-walls of the cemetery when I waked. I lay quiet for a little while, wondering sleepily how I came there. Then, just as the first rays of the sun shot through the thinning shadows. I remembered. Julie! The snake had bitten her when she flung herself before me. She was gone; the old Negress—where had she come from?—was gone, too, and I was utterly alone in the old graveyard.
“Stiff from lying on the ground, I got myself up awkwardly, grasping at the flower-shelf projecting from the tomb. As my eyes came level with the slab that sealed the crypt, I felt the breath catch in my throat. The crypt, like all its fellows, looked for all the world like an old oven set into a brick wall overlaid with peeling plaster. The sealing-stone was probably once white, but years had stained it to a dirty gray, and time had all but rubbed its legend out. Still, I could see the faint inscription carved in quaint, old-fashioned letters, and disbelief gave way to incredulity, which was replaced by panic terror as I read:
Ici repose malheureusement
Julie Amelie Marie d’Ayen
Nationde de Paris France
Née le 29 Aout 1788
Décédée a la N O le 2 Juillet 1807
“Julie! Little Julie whom I’d held in my arms, whose mouth had lain on mine in eager kisses, was a corpse! Dead and in her grave more than a century!”
* * * *
The silence lengthened. Ned stared miserably before him, his outward eyes unseeing, but his mind’s eye turned upon that scene in old Saint Denis Cemetery. De Grandin tugged and tugged again at the ends of his mustache till I thought he’d drag the hairs out by the roots. I could think of nothing which might ease the tension till:
“Of course, the name cut on the tombstone was a piece of pure coincidence,’ I hazarded. “Most likely the young woman deliberately assumed it to mislead you—”
“And the snake which threatened our young friend, he was an assumption, also, one infers?” de Grandin interrupted.
“N-o, but it could have been a trick. Ned saw an aged Negress in the cemetery, and those old Southern women have strange powers—”
“I damn well think that you hit the thumb upon the nail that time, my friend,” the little Frenchman nodded, “though you do not realize how accurate your diagnosis is.” To Ned: “Have you seen this snake again since coming North?”
“Yes,” Ned replied, “I have. I was too stunned to speak when I read the epitaph, and I wandered back to the hotel in a sort of daze and packed my bags in silence. Possibly that’s why there was no further visitation there. I don’t know. I do know nothing further happened, though, and when several months had passed with nothing but my memories to remind me of the incident, I began to think I’d suffered from some sort of waking nightmare. Nella and I went ahead with prep
arations for our wedding, but three weeks ago the postman brought me this—”
He reached into an inner pocket and drew out an envelope. It was of soft gray paper, edged with silver-gilt, and the address was in tiny, almost unreadable script:
M. Edouard Minton,
30 Rue Carter ci 30,
Harrisonville, N. J.
“Um?” de Grandin commented as he inspected it. “It is addressed à la française. And the letter, may one read it?”
“Of course,” Ned answered. “I’d like you to.”
Across de Grandin’s shoulder I made out the hastily-scrawled missive:
Adoré
Remember your promise and the kiss of blood that sealed it. Soon I shall call and you must come. Pour le temps et pour l’éternité,
Julie.
“You recognize the writing?” de Grandin asked. “It is—”
“Oh, yes,” Ned answered bitterly. “I recognize it; it’s the same the other note was written in.”
“And then?”
The boy smiled bleakly. “I crushed the thing into a ball and threw it on the floor and stamped on it. Swore I’d die before I’d keep another rendezvous with her, and—” He broke off and put trembling hands up to his face.
“The so mysterious serpent came again, one may assume?” de Grandin prompted.
“But it’s only a phantom snake,” I interjected. “At worst, it’s nothing more than a terrifying vision—”
“Think so?” Ned broke in. “D’ye remember Rowdy, my airedale terrier?”
I nodded.
“He was in the room when I opened this letter, and when the cottonmouth appeared beside me on the floor he made a dash for it. Whether it would have struck me I don’t know, but it struck at him as he leaped and caught him squarely in the throat. He thrashed and fought, and the thing held on with locked jaws till I grabbed a fire-shovel and made for it; then, before I could strike, it vanished.
“But its venom didn’t. Poor old Rowdy was dead before I could get him out of the house, but I took his corpse to Doctor Kirchoff, the veterinary, and told him Rowdy died suddenly and I wanted him to make an autopsy. He went back to his operating-room and stayed there half an hour. When he came back to the office he was wiping his glasses and wore the most astonished look I’ve ever seen on a human face. ‘You say your dog died suddenly—in the house?’ he asked.
“‘Yes,’ I told him; ‘just rolled over and died.’
“‘Well, bless my soul, that’s the most amazing thing I ever heard!’ he answered. ‘I can’t account for it. That dog died from snake-bite; copperhead, I’d say, and the marks of the fangs show plainly on his throat.’”
“But I thought you said it was a water moccasin,” I objected. “Now Doctor Kirchoff says it was a copperhead.”
“Ah hah!” de Grandin laughed a thought unpleasantly. “Did no one ever tell you that the copperhead and moccasin are of close kind, my friend? Have not you heard some ophiologists maintain the moccasin is but a dark variety of copperhead?” He did not pause for my reply, but turned again to Ned:
“One understands your chivalry, Monsieur. For yourself you have no fear, since after all at times life can be bought too dearly, but the death of your small dog has put a different aspect on the matter. If this never-to-be-sufficiently-anathematized serpent which comes and goes like the boîte à surprise—the how do you call him? Jack from the box?—is enough a ghost-thing to appear at any time and place it wills, but sufficiently physical to exude venom which will kill a strong and healthy terrier, you have the fear for Mademoiselle Nella, n’est-ce-pas?”
“Precisely, you—”
“And you are well advised to have the caution, my young friend. We face a serious condition.”
“What do you advise?”
The Frenchman teased his needlepoint mustache-tip with a thoughtful thumb and forefinger. “For the present, nothing,” he replied at length. “Let me look this situation over; let me view it from all angles. Whatever I might tell you now would probably be wrong. Suppose we meet again one week from now. By that time I should have my data well in hand.”
“And in the meantime—”
“Continue to be coy with Mademoiselle Nella. Perhaps it would be well if you recalled important business which requires that you leave town till you hear from me again. There is no need to put her life in peril at this time.”
* * * *
“If it weren’t for Kirchoff’s testimony I’d say Ned Minton had gone raving crazy,” I declared as the door closed on our visitors. “The whole thing’s wilder than an opium smoker’s dream—that meeting with the girl in New Orleans, the snake that comes and disappears, the assignation in the cemetery—it’s all too preposterous. But I know Kirchoff. He’s as unimaginative as a side of soleleather, and as efficient as he is unimaginative. If he says Minton’s dog died of snake-bite, that’s what it died of, but the whole affair’s so utterly fantastic—”
“Agreed,” de Grandin nodded; “but what is fantasy but the appearance of mental images as such, severed from ordinary relations? The ‘ordinary relations’ of images are those to which we are accustomed, which conform to our experience. The wider that experience, the more ordinary will we find extraordinary relations. By example, take yourself: You sit in a dark auditorium and see a railway train come rushing at you, Now, it is not at all in ordinary experience for a locomotive to come dashing in a theater filled with people, it is quite otherwise; but you keep your seat, you do not flinch, you are not frightened. It is nothing but a motion picture, which you understand. But if you were a savage from New Guinea, you would rise and fly in panic from this steaming, shrieking iron monster which bears down on you. Tiens, it is a matter of experience, you see. To you it is an everyday event, to the savage it would be a new and terrifying thing.
“Or, perhaps, you are at the hospital. You place a patient between you and the Crookes’ tube of an X-ray, you turn on the current, you observe him through the fluoroscope and pouf! his flesh all melts away and his bones spring out in sharp relief. Three hundred years ago, you would have howled like a stoned dog at the sight and prayed to be delivered from the witchcraft which produced it. Today you curse and swear like twenty drunken pirates if the Rontgenologist is but thirty seconds late in setting up the apparatus. These things are ‘scientific,’ you understand their underlying formula, therefore they seem natural. But mention what you please to call the occult and you scoff, and that is but admitting that you are opposed to something which you do not understand. The credible and believable is that to which we are accustomed, the fantastic and incredible is what we cannot explain in terms of previous experience. Voilà, c’est très simple, n’est-ce-pas?”
“You mean to say you understand all this?”
“Not at all by any means; I am clever, me, but not that clever. No, my friend, I am as much in the dark as you, only I do not refuse to credit what our young friend tells us. I believe the things he has related happened exactly as he has recounted them. I do not understand, but I believe. Accordingly, I must probe, I must sift, I must examine this matter. We see it now as a group of unrelated and irrelevant occurrences, but somewhere lies the key which will enable us to make harmony from this discord, to gather these stray, tangled threads into an ordered pattern. I go to seek that key.”
“Where?”
“To New Orleans, of course. Tonight I pack my portmanteaux, tomorrow I entrain. Just now”—he smothered a tremendous yawn—“now I do what every wise man does as often as he can. I take a drink.”
* * * *
Seven evenings later, we gathered in my study, de Grandin, Ned and I, and from the little Frenchman’s shining eyes I knew his quest had been productive of results.
“My friends,” he told us solemnly, “I am a clever person, and a lucky one, as well. The morning after my arrival at New Orleans I enjoyed three Ramos fizzes, then went to sit in City Park by the old Dueling-Oak and wished with all my heart that I had taken four. And while I sat in
self-reproachful thought, sorrowing for the drink that I had missed, behold, one passed by whom I recognized. He was my old schoolfellow, Paul Dubois, now a priest in holy orders and attached to the Cathedral of Saint Louis.
“He took me to his quarters, that good, pious man, and gave me luncheon. It was Friday and a fast day, so we fasted. Mon Dieu, but we did fast! On Creole gumbo and oysters a la Rockefeller, and baked pompano and little shrimp fried crisp in olive oil, and chicory salad and seven different kinds of cheese and wine. When we were so filled with fasting that we could not eat another morsel, my old friend took me to another priest, a native of New Orleans whose stock of local lore was second only to his marvelous capacity for fine champagne. Morbleu, how I admire that one! And now, attend me very carefully, my friends. What he disclosed to me makes many hidden mysteries all clear.
“In New Orleans there lived a wealthy family named d’Ayen. They possessed much gold and land, a thousand slaves or more, and one fair daughter by the name of Julie. When this country bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon and your army came to occupy the forts, this young girl fell in love with a young officer, a Lieutenant Philip Merriwell. Tenez, army love in those times was no different than it is today, it seems. This gay young lieutenant, he came, he wooed, he won, he rode away, and little Julie wept and sighed and finally died of heartbreak. In her lovesick illness she had for constant company a slave, an old mulatress known to most as Maman Dragonne, but to Julie simply as grand’tante, great-aunt. She had nursed our little Julie at the breast, and all her life she fostered and attended her. To her little white ‘mamselle’ she was all gentleness and kindness, but to others she was fierce and frightful, for she was a ‘conjon woman,’ adept at obeah, the black magic of the Congo, and among the blacks she ruled as queen by force of fear, while the whites were wont to treat her with respect and, it was more than merely whispered, retain her services upon occasion. She could sell protection to the duelist, and he who bore her charm would surely conquer on the field of honor; she brewed love-drafts which turned the hearts and heads of the most capricious coquettes or the most constant wives, as occasion warranted; by merely staring fixedly at someone, she could cause him to take sick and die, and—here we commence to tread upon our own terrain—she was said to have the power of changing to a snake at will.
The Occult Detective Megapack: 29 Classic Stories Page 85
