“Ye mean ye kilt somebody in my house—in my house, givin’ th’ place a bad name an’ ruinin’ me business?” the landlady demanded shrilly. “I’ll have th’ law on ye fer this, so help me—’
“Ye’ll be feelin’ me take me hand off’n th’ side o’ yer face if ye don’t shut up an’ quit interferin’ wid a officer o’ th’ law in th’ performance o’ his dooty!” Costello told her sharply. “Go on, go lay down somewheres an’ give yer tongue a rest till we’ve finished wid this business. We need no wimmin to tell us how to do our wor-rk, so we don’t.”
The majesty of the law vindicated and the landlady effectually squelched, the sergeant turned once more to de Grandin. “We seen a felly runnin’ down th’ street when we got to th’ corner, sor,” he reported, “an’ whilst we didn’t have nothin’ agin him, exactly, I thought it best to run ’im in on general principles. Fellies runnin’ loose at midnight when some one’s made a monkey out o’ th’ police force will bear investigatin’, I’m afther thinkin’, sor.”
“Exactement,” the Frenchman nodded in agreement. “What sort of person is your prisoner?”
“Why, I should say he’s kin to them—to these pore fellies that ye kilt,” Costello answered. “Dark like them, he is, an’ kind o’ slim, an’ snooty as a sparry full o’ worms; talkin’ about his rights, an’ how he’ll have me broke, an’ bein’ sarcastical as th’ very divil an’ all.”
“Comment? I know his kind. What answer did you give to his abuse?” The anticipatory gleam kindling in the little Frenchman’s small, blue eyes burst into sudden flame of merriment as Costello answered simply:
“Bedad, I sloughed ’im in th’ jaw, sor!”
NEITHER OF US WAS much surprised to recognize Costello’s prisoner as the slender, patrician Hindoo we had seen in the theater in company with the men de Grandin had disposed of. With a badly swelling eye, dress clothes sadly disarranged and a pair of handcuffs on his wrists, the fellow was put to it to maintain his air of lofty hauteur, but sustain it he did, glancing now and again at Costello with venomous hatred mingled with fear, at de Grandin and me with unaffected scorn.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked in faultless, Oxonian English. “I refuse to answer questions or to go with you until I see my lawyer.”
“Easy on, laddie buck,” Costello cautioned. “Ye’ll go where we bid ye, an’ no questions asked, or I’ll know th’ reason why. As for answerin’ what we ask, I’m afther thinkin’ ye’ll talk a-plenty, an’ be glad to. Come on!”
THE LIGHT BURNED BRIGHTLY in Coroner Martin’s operating-room, casting back reflections from the white-tiled walls, the terrazzo floor and the gleaming porcelain of the embalming-tables. Shrouded with a sheet, a bulky object occupied the center of the room, and toward it de Grandin walked like a demonstrator of anatomy about to address his class.
“Messieurs,” he began, “I have here Exhibit A, as they say in the courtroom—the statue of the Great God Siva, taken from the lobby of the Issatakko theater this afternoon.
“Trowbridge, mon vieux, you will recall the deceased flies we found upon the statue’s pedestal? Bon. Me, I have analyzed their corpses and found them dead from formaldehyde poisoning. Very good.
“Doctor Trowbridge,” again he turned to me, for all the world like counsel examining a witness, “can you recall an odor which we descried about that statue when we looked at it?”
“Why, yes,” I answered. “It was formalin. I thought it odd, but—”
“We have no great concern with buts,” he cut in quickly. “Behold—”
With a sweep of his hand he tore the sheet from the statue and pointed dramatically to the glistening, dark-hued composition of which the thing was made. “A month or so ago two young women of the Issatakko Ballet Russe disappeared,” he told us. “They impersonated the god Siva in the spectacle of the Yogi’s Death. No one has seen them since; no one knows where they are gone, or where they are at present.
“Ha, is it so? No, tête-bleu, it is not! They are here, my friends—behold them!”
Snatching up a heavy wooden maul he dealt the statue a sudden vicious blow, repeated it; rained stroke on stroke upon it.
“Look out, you’ll break it, man!” I cried, shocked by his act of vandalism.
“Bon Dieu, but I intend to!” he panted, striking savagely again at the image’s arm. A black, shining flake, four inches long by two in width, detached itself from the bent arm of Siva, fell to the hard-tiled floor with a tinkling, metallic sound, and in the opening thus made there showed, dull, livid, but glistening strangely in the strong light of the operating-room, an arm of human flesh!
The gruesome work went on. Flake after flake of shining, black veneer was chipped away and slowly, horribly, there came to view the naked body of a woman.
“Behold, my friends,” de Grandin ordered, his voice a sibilant, knife-sharp whisper, “behold the core—the heart of Siva!”
As disclosure followed on disclosure I felt a tightening in my throat, an odd, cold, prickling sensation in my scalp and at the back of my neck. A four-inch-long incision had been made in the girl’s thigh, thus opening the great femoral artery. The hemorrhage must have been terrific, death following almost instantly. Thereafter the body was seated with folded legs in the attitude assumed by Siva in the ballet, fine steel wires were wound about the limbs to hold them in position where necessary, and the body pumped full of dilute formaldehyde, thus preserving it and imparting a lasting rigidity. A second pair of arms, severed from their owner’s body close to the trunk, had been similarly embalmed and sewn into the armpits of the seated girl, thus supplying the four pectoral limbs required for the sitting dance, and, the monstrous effigy finally molded out of human flesh, the whole was coated with a shell of quick-hardening varnish composed of silicate and gypsum, colored black with bitumen.
“Had not the varnish cracked a little and some of the formalin which was lodged between it and the flesh leaked out, we never should have known,” de Grandin told us as he finished peeling off the coating from the statue’s “heart” of human flesh. “But so intent on lasting preservation was the miscreant that he oversaturated the tissues with the formalin. Alors, a little of it found its way through the little, so small crack in the plaster coating, the busybody little flies must come exploring, must stick their noses into it—must die.
“I see them lying dead. ‘Have not they chosen a most queer place to die?’ I ask me. ‘Other flies buzz at will about this theater lobby, other little flies walk with impunity upon the statue’s head, its hands, its feet; but those who settle here upon its base, parbleu, they die all suddenly.’
“And then I smell the odor of formaldehyde. ‘Que diable?’ I ask me. ‘Formaldehyde, what is it doing here? In the medical dissecting-room, yes; in the preparation room of embalmers, again yes; in the lobby of a theater, in the statue of the Great God Siva—mille nons, it is not right or proper!’
“I look upon this statue. It are too perfect. It are not a work of art, it are, rather, an exact copy—no, a counterfeit—of life. ‘Business of the monkey has been made by some one, I damn think,’ I tell me. But yet I am not sure. And so I take those most unfortunate flies’ small corpses and subject them to analysis. All are dead of formalin. Now I am nearly almost certain.
“And so I go to make examination of that statue once again. I take with me a little hammer and a chisel. While no one looks, I chip a bit of it away. Ha, what is it that I see? Flesh, cordieu; woman’s flesh—dead woman’s flesh!
“Ah ha, ah-ha-ha, I apprehend it all, now. I know where those two missing girls have gone—one is the body, one is the missing arms of Siva!
“I lay my trap tonight. Once more the dance of Siva is performed, but now the police are on guard; the dancers cannot be molested. Nevertheless, I know in my own head that an attempt will be made to do them harm, and so I go to watch.
“It are even as I think. This man here draws the red herring across the trail; he fools Costello and the others to
run down to the corner while his powder-squibs go pop-pop-pop! While they are there his helpers find an entrance to Mademoiselle Hélène’s house and would have slain her with a snake if Doctor Trowbridge and I had not been there.
“Ha, but we are there, and I kill them all, I kill their snake, I kick their so carefully laid plans upside down, as the cow knocks over the filled milk-bucket. Yes, certainly. Their plans are nicely made but in them they have overlooked one thing.
“That thing is Jules de Grandin!”
“You lie!” the prisoner cried, almost in a scream. “You didn’t kill them; you’re lying!”
“You say so?” de Grandin asked sarcastically. “Monsieur Martin, will you have your young men bring what waits without to us?”
Coroner Martin stepped to the door and beckoned silently.
Without a word three of his assistants came single-file through the door, each trundling a wheeled bier freighted with a sheeted form. As they passed him, de Grandin snatched the sheets away, disclosing the bodies of the Hindoos he had killed in the rooming-house.
“And now, Monsieur,” he asked in a gentle voice, bowing with mock courtesy to the prisoner, “do you still have doubts of my veracity?”
The fellow stared at the three corpses in horror. His eyes seemed starting from his head as, in a choking voice, he croaked:
“Yes, yes, I did it; I killed them as you said, the wantons, defilers of the gods. I executed them for blasphemy, and I’d have killed that other pate-faced harlot, too, if you had not been here, you—” he glared insanely at de Grandin for a moment, then raised his manacled hands to his face.
“Sang de Dieu, but I say you shall not!” the little Frenchman shouted, leaping on the man as a cat might pounce upon a mouse, wrestling with him violently a moment, then springing back triumphantly, a little, jet-black pill displayed between his thumb and fingertip.
“Could he have swallowed this he would have died at once,” he told us. “As it is, we shall have the pleasure of seeing him decently and legally put to death for the vile, unconscionable murderer of women that he is.
“Meantime—” His little, round blue eyes swept us one by one, finally came to rest upon Costello. “Mon sergent, I am most vilely and unsupportably dry,” he complained. “You are well acquainted with the best speakeasies which the city boasts. Will not you, of your charity, take me where I can relieve this torment of a thirst?”
The Bleeding Mummy
OUTSIDE, THE MIDWINTER WIND hurled wave after wave of a sleet-barrage against the window-panes, keening a ferocious war-chant the while. Within, the glow of sawn railway ties burning on the brass fire-dogs blended pleasantly with the shaded lamplight. Jules de Grandin put aside the copy of l’Illustration he had been perusing since dinnertime, stretched his slender, womanishly small feet toward the fire and regarded the gleaming tips of his patent leather pumps with every evidence of satisfaction. “Tiens, Friend Trowbridge,” he remarked lazily as he watched the leaping firelight quicken in reflection on his polished shoes, “this is most entirely pleasant. Me, not for anything would I leave the house on such a night. He is a fool who quits his cheerful fire to—”
The sharp, peremptory clatter of the front door knocker battered through his words, and before I could hoist myself from my chair the summons was repeated, louder, more insistently.
“I say, Doctor Trowbridge, will you come over to Larson’s? I’m afraid something’s happened to him—I hate to drag you out on such a night, but I think he really needs a doctor, and—” Young Professor Ellis half staggered into the hall as the driving wind thrust him almost bodily across the doorstep.
“I ran over to see him a few minutes ago,” he added as I slammed the door against the storm, “and as I went up his front path I noticed a light burning in an upper window, though the rest of the house was dark. I knocked, but got no answer, then went into the yard to call to him, when all of a sudden I heard him give the most God-awful yell, followed by a shriek of laughter, and as I looked up at his window he seemed to be struggling with something, though there was no one else in the room. I rang his bell a dozen times and pounded on the door, but not another sound came from the house. At first I thought of notifying the police; then I remembered you lived just round the corner, so I came here, instead. If Larson’s been taken ill, you can help; if we need the police, there’s always time to call ’em, so—”
“Eh bien, my friends, why do we stand here talking while the poor Professor Larson is in need of help?” demanded Jules de Grandin from the study door. “Have you no professional pride, Friend Trowbridge? Why do we linger here?”
“Why, you’ve only finished saying you wouldn’t budge from the house tonight,” I retorted accusingly. “Do you mean—”
“But certainly I do,” he interrupted. “Only two kinds of people can not change their minds, my friend, the foolish and the dead. Jules de Grandin is neither. Come, let us go.”
“No use getting out the car,” I murmured as we donned our overcoats. “This sleet would make driving impossible.”
“Very well, then, let us walk; but let us be about it swiftly,” he responded, fairly pushing me through the door and out into the raging night. Heads bent against the howling storm, we set out for Professor Larson’s house.
“I DIDN’T EXACTLY HAVE AN engagement with Larson,” Professor Ellis admitted as we trudged along the street. “Fact is, I expect he’d about as soon have seen the devil as me, but—have you heard about his latest mummy?” he broke off.
“His what?” I answered sharply.
“His mummy. He brought it in from Africa last week, and he’s been talking about it ever since. This evening he was going to remove the wrappings, so I just ambled over to his house on the off chance he’d let me stick around.
“Larson’s a queer chap. Good man in anthropology, and all that, of course, but a lone wolf when it comes to work. He found this mummy by accident in a cleverly hidden tomb near Naga-ed-dêr, and that country was given up as thoroughly worked out thirty years ago, you know. Funny thing about it, too. While they were excavating the sepulcher two of his workmen were bitten by tomb spiders and died in convulsions. That’s unusual, for the Egyptian tomb spider’s not particularly venomous, though he’s an ugly-looking brute. They’d just about cleared the shaft of rubble and started working toward the funerary chamber when all Larson’s fellaheen ran out on him, too; but he’s a stubborn devil, and he and Foster stuck it out, with the help of such men as they could hire in the neighborhood.
“They had the devil of a time getting the mummy down the Nile, too. Half the crew of their dehabeeyah came down with some mysterious fever, and several of ’em died, and the rest deserted; and just as they were ready to sail from Alexandria, Foster, who was Larson’s assistant, came down with fever and died within three days. Larson hung on like grim death, though, and brought the mummy through—smuggled it right past the Egyptian customs men disguised as a crate of Smyrna sponges.”
“But see here,” I interrupted, “both you and Professor Larson are members of the Harrisonville Museum staff. How does it happen he’s able to treat this mummy as his personal property? Why didn’t he take it to the museum instead of his house?”
Ellis gave a short laugh. “Don’t know Larson very well, do you?” he asked. “Didn’t I say he’s a lone wolf? This expedition to Naga-ed-dêr was a fifty-fifty affair; the Museum paid half the shot, and Larson just about beggared himself to make up the difference. He had a theory there were some valuable Fifth Dynasty relics to be found at Naga, and everybody laughed at him. When he’d justified his theory he was like a spoiled kid with a stick of candy, and wouldn’t share his find with anyone; when I suggested he let me help him unwrap the thing he told me to take a running jump in the lake. I hadn’t an idea, really, he’d let me in when I called on him tonight, but when I heard him yelling and laughing and saw him jumping around like a chestnut on a griddle, I thought maybe he’d gone off his rocker, and ran to get you as quickly as I cou
ld. Here we are. We’ll probably be told to go to hell for our trouble, but he might need help.”
As he finished speaking, Ellis sounded a thunderous knock on Larson’s door. Only the skirling of the wind around the angle of the house and the flapping of an unsecured window-blind responded.
“Pardieu, either he is gravely ill or most abominably deaf, that one!” declared de Grandin, sinking his chin in the fur collar of his coat and grasping at his hat as the storm-wind all but wrenched it from his head.
Ellis turned to us in indecision. “D’ye think—” he began, but:
“Think what you please, my friends, and freeze your feet while doing,” the little Frenchman interrupted testily. “Me, I go into that house right away, immediately, this minute.” Trying the door and nearest window, and finding both securely fastened, he dashed his gloved band through the pane without more ado, undid the latch and raised the sash. “Do you follow, or remain behind to perish miserably with cold?” he called as he flung a leg across the sill.
DE GRANDIN IN THE lead, we felt our way across the darkened drawing-room, across the hall, and up the winding staircase. Every room inside the house, save one, was black as ancient Egypt during the plague of darkness, but a thin stream of light trickling out into the hall from beneath Professor Larson’s study door led our footsteps toward his sanctum as a lighthouse guides a ship to port upon a starless night. “Larson!” Ellis called softly, rapping on the study door. “Larson, are you there?”
No answer came, and he seized the door-knob, giving it a tentative twist. The handle turned in his grasp, but the door held firm, for the lock had been shot from the inside.
“One side, if you will be so kind, Monsieur,” requested Jules de Grandin, drawing as far back as the width of the hall permitted, then dashing himself forward like a football player battering toward the goal. The flimsy door fell before his rush, and the darkened hall was flooded with a freshet of dazzling light. For a moment we paused on the threshold, blinking owlishly; then:
The Dark Angel Page 48
