“Excuse me, gentlemen, if you’re quite finished with these relics, I’ll take them, now,” Professor Hodgson interrupted. “This little séance has been interesting, but you must admit nothing sufficiently authentic to be incorporated in our archives has been developed here. I fear we shall have to label these bones and ornaments as belonging to an unidentified body found by Doctor Larson at Naga-ed-dêr. Now, if you don’t mind I shall get—”
“Get anywhere you wish, Monsieur, and get there quickly,” de Grandin broke in furiously. “You have presided over relics of the dead so long your brain is clogged with mummy-dust. As for your heart—mort d’un rat mort, I do not think you have one!
“As for me,” he added with a sudden smile, “I return at once to Doctor Trowbridge’s. This poor young lady’s tragic fate affects me deeply, and unless some urgent business interferes, I plan to drown my sorrow—morbleu, I shall do more. Within the hour I shall be most happily intoxicated!”
The Door to Yesterday
DINNER WOULD BE READY in fifteen minutes, and we were to have lobster Cardinal, a thing Jules de Grandin loved with a passion second only to his fervor for La Marseillaise. Now he was engaged in the rite of cocktail-mixing, intent upon his work as any alchemist brewing an esoteric philtre. “Now for the vermouth,” he announced, decanting a potion of amber liquid into the tall silver shaker half filled with gin and fine-shaved ice with all the care of a pharmacist compounding a prescription. “One drop too little and the cocktail she is spoiled; one little so small drop too much, and she is wholly ruined. Ah—so; she is now precisely perfect, and ready for the shaking!” Slowly, rhythmically, he began to churn the shaker up and down, gradually increasing the speed in time with the bit of bawdy ballad which he hummed:
Ma fille, pour pénitence,
Ron, ron, ron, petit patapon,
Ma fille, pour pénitence,
Nous nous embrasserons—
“Captain Chenevert; Misther Gordon Goodlowe!” announced Nora McGinnis, my household factotum, from the study doorway, annoyance at having strangers call when dinner was about to be served showing on her broad Irish face.
On the heels of her announcement came the callers: Captain Chenevert; a big, deep-chested young man attired in that startling combination of light and dark blues in which the State of New Jersey garbs its gendarmerie; Mr. Goodlowe, a dapper, slender little man with neatly cropped white hair and short-clipped white mustache, immaculate in black mohair jacket and trousers, his small paunch trimly buttoned underneath a waistcoat of spotless linen.
“Sorry to interrupt you, gentlemen,” Captain Chenevert apologized, “but there have been some things happening at Mr. Goodlowe’s place which no one can explain, and one of my men got talking with a member of your local force—Detective Sergeant Costello—who said that Doctor de Grandin could get to the bottom of the trouble if anybody could.”
“Eh, you say the good Costello sent you?” de Grandin asked, giving the cocktail mixer a final vigorous shake. “He should know better. Me, I am graduated from the Sûreté; I no longer take an interest in criminal investigation.”
“We understood as much,” the captain answered. “That’s why we’re here. If it had been a matter of ordinary crime-detection, or an extraordinary one, I think that we could handle it; but it’s something more than that, sir.” He paused and grinned rather sheepishly; then: “This may sound nutty to you, but I’m more than half convinced there’s something supernatural about the case.”
“Ah?” De Grandin put the cocktail shaker by. “U’m?” He flung a leg across the table-corner and, half sitting, half standing, regarded the visitors in turn with a fixed, unwinking stare. “Ah-ha? This is of interest,” he admitted, breaking open a blue packet of Maryland cigarettes and setting one of the malodorous things aglow. “Proceed, if you please, gentlemen. Like the ass of Monsieur Balaam, I am all ears.”
Mr. Goodlowe answered: “Last year my brother, Colonel Clarke Clay Goodlowe, sold his seat on the stock exchange and retired from active business,” he began. “For some years he had contemplated returning to Kentucky, but when he finally gave up active trading in the market he found that he’d become acclimated to the North—reckon the poor fellow just couldn’t bear to get more than an hour or two away from Wall Street, as a matter of fact—so he built himself a home near Keyport. He moved there with his daughter Nancy, my niece, last April, and died before he’d been there quite a month.”
De Grandin’s slender, jet-black eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch nearer the line of his honey-colored hair. “Very good, Messieurs,” he answered querulously. “Men have died before—men have been dying regularly since Mother Eve and Father Adam partook of the forbidden fruit. What is there so extraordinary in this especial death?”
“I didn’t see my brother’s body—” Mr. Goodlowe began.
“But I did!” Captain Chenevert broke in. “Every bone from skull to metatarsus was broken, and the whole form was so hammered out of shape that identification was almost impossible.”
“Ah?” de Grandin’s small blue eyes flickered with renewing interest. “And then—”
Mr. Goodlowe took up the narrative: “My niece was almost prostrated by the tragedy, and as I was in England at the time it was impossible for me to join her right away. Accordingly, Major Derringer, a rather distant kinsman, and his wife came up from Lexington to attend the funeral and make such preliminary arrangements as were necessary until I could come home.
“The day following the funeral, Major Derringer was found on the identical spot where my brother’s body was discovered—dead.”
“Crushed and mauled almost out of resemblance to anything human,” Captain Chenevert supplied.
“Mrs. Derringer was taken severely ill as a result of her husband’s dreadful death,” Mr. Goodlowe added. “She was put to bed with special nurses in attendance day and night, and while the night nurse was out of the room for a moment she rose and slipped through the window, wandered across the lawn in her nightclothes, and—”
The thing was like an antiphon. De Grandin looked inquiringly at Captain Chenevert as Mr. Goodlowe paused, and the trooper nodded grimly.
“The same,” he snapped. “Same place, same dreadful mutilation—everything the same, except—”
“Yes, parbleu, except—” de Grandin prompted sharply as the young policeman paused.
“Except that Mrs. Derringer had bled profusely where compound fractures of her ribs had forced the bones through her sides, and on the tiled floor of the loggia near the spot where she was found was the trail of a great snake marked in blood.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed.
“By damn-it,” murmured Jules de Grandin, “this is truly such a case as I delight in, Monsieur le Capitaine. If you gentlemen will be good enough to join us at dinner, I shall do myself the honor of accompanying you to this so strange house where guests are found all crushed to death and serpents write their autographs in blood. Yes, certainly; of course.”
PROSPECT HILL, THE LATE Colonel Goodlowe’s house, was a reproduction of an English country seat done in the grand manner. Built upon a rise of ground, heading a little valley in the hills, it was a long, low red-brick mansion flanked by towering oaks and chestnut-trees. Leveled off before the house was a wide terrace paved with tesselated tiles and bordered by a stone balustrade punctuated at regular intervals by wide-mouthed urns of stone in which petunias blossomed riotously. A flight of broad, low steps ran down through succeeding terraced levels of smooth-shaved lawns to a lake where water-lilies bloomed and several swans swam lazily. Across a stretch of greensward to the left was a formal garden where statued nymphs stooped to beds of clustering roses which drenched the air with almost drugging sweetness. Low, colonnaded loggias, like cloisters, branched off from the house at either side, the left connecting with the rose-garden, the right leading to a level square of grass in which was set a little summer-house of red brick and wrought iron.
“One moment, if you pl
ease,” de Grandin ordered as we clambered from the car before the house. “Show me, if you will be so good, Monsieur le Capitaine, exactly where it was they found Madame Derringer and the others. We might as well prepare ourselves by making a survey of the terrain.”
We walked across the lawn toward the little summer-house, and Captain Chenevert halted some six feet from the loggia. “I’d say we found ’em here,” he answered. “U’m, yes; just about here, judging by the—” He paused a moment, as though to orient himself, then stepped forward to the green-tile paving of the loggia, drawing an electric flashlight from his blouse pocket as he did so.
The long summer twilight had almost faded into night, but by such daylight as remained, aided by the beam of Captain Chenevert’s torch, we could descry, very faintly, a sinuating, weaving trail against the gray-green of the tiles. I recognized it instantly. There is no boy brought up in the country districts before the coming of the motor-car had caused earth roads to give way to hard-surfaced highways who can not tell a snake-track when he sees it in the dust!
But never had I seen a track like this. In form it was a duplicate of trails which I had seen a thousand times, but in size—it might have been the mark left by a motor-lorry’s wheel. Involuntarily I shuddered as I beheld the grisly thing, and Captain Chenevert’s hand stole instinctively to the walnut stock of the revolver which dangled in its holster from his belt. Gordon Goodlowe, scion of a dozen generations of a family who chose death in preference to dishonor, held himself in check by almost superhuman force. Jules de Grandin showed no more emotion than if he were in a museum viewing some not-especially interesting relic of the past.
“U’m?” he murmured softly to himself, studying the dull, reddish-brown tracing with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. “He must have been the bisaïeul of the serpents, this one.” He raised his narrow shoulders in a shrug, and:
“Come, let us go in,” he suggested. “Perhaps there is more to see inside.”
Mr. Goodlowe cleared his throat angrily, but Captain Chenevert laid a quick hand on his elbow. “S-s-sh!” he cautioned softly. “Let him handle this his own way. He knows what he’s about.”
AN AGED, BUT BY no means decrepit colored butler met us at the door. In one hand he held an old fashioned candle-lamp, in the other a saucer containing grains of wheat.
“What the devil?” Mr. Goodlowe snapped. “Has the electric power gone off again, Julius?”
“Yes, sir,” said the colored man, his words, despite the native softness of his voice, having a peculiar intonation revealing that his mother tongue was not the English of the South. “The current has been gone since six o’clock this afternoon, and the telephone has been out of order for some time, as well.”
“Dam’ poor service!” muttered Goodlowe, but:
“How long’s it been since your light and telephone died before?” sharply queried Captain Chenevert.
I saw the Negro shiver, as though he felt a sudden draft of gelid air. “Not since Madame Derringer—” he began, but the captain shut him off.
“That’s what I thought,” he answered; then, to de Grandin, in a whisper:
“Something dam’ funny about this, sir. Their electric light all died the night Mrs. Derringer was—er—died, and the telephone went dead at the same time. Same thing happened on both previous occasions, too. D’ye mind if I pop over to the barracks and put in a trouble call? I’ve got my motorcycle parked out in the yard.”
De Grandin had been studying the butler with that intent, unwinking stare of his, but now turned to the trooper with a nod. “By all means,” he replied. “Go there, and go quickly, my friend. Also return as quickly as may be with one of your patrol cars, if you please. Park it at the entrance of the grounds, and approach on foot. It may be we shall be in need of help, and I would have it that our reinforcements come unannounced, if possible.”
“O.K.,” the other answered, and turned upon his heel.
“How’s Miss Nancy, Julius?” Mr. Goodlowe asked. “Feeling any better?”
“No, sir, I’m afraid she’s not,” the butler replied, and again it seemed to me that he shivered like a man uncomfortable with cold, or in mortal terror.
Jules de Grandin’s gaze had scarcely left the Negro since he saw him first. Now, abruptly, he addressed him in a sudden flow of queer, outlandish words, vaguely reminiscent of French, but differing from it in tone and inflection, no less than in pronunciation, as the argot of the slums differs from the language of polite society.
The Negro started violently as de Grandin spoke to him, glanced shamefacedly at the plate of wheat he held, then, keeping his eyes averted, answered in the same outlandish tongue. Throughout the dialogue was constantly repeated a queer, harsh-sounding word: “loogaroo,” though what it meant I had no faintest notion. At length:
“Bon,” de Grandin told the butler; then, to Mr. Goodlowe and me: “He says that Mademoiselle your niece is feeling most unwell, Monsieur, and that he thinks it would be well if we prescribed for her. He and his wife have attempted to assist her, but she has fallen into a profound stupor from which they can not rouse her, and it was while attempting to summon a physician from Keyport that he discovered the telephone had gone out of order. Have we your permission to attend Mademoiselle?”
“Yes, of course,” Mr. Goodlowe answered, and, as we followed the butler up the wide, balustraded stairway:
“Dam’ West Indian niggers—I can’t think why Clarke had ’em around. I’ll be gettin’ rid of ’em in short order, as soon as I can get some of our servants up here from the South. Why the devil couldn’t he have told me about Nancy?”
“Perhaps because he had no opportunity,” de Grandin answered with a mildness wholly strange to him. “I surmised that he came from Haiti or Martinique by his accent and by—no matter. Accordingly, I addressed him in his native patois, and he responded. I must apologize for breaking in upon your conversation, but there were certain things I wished to know, and deemed it best to ask him quickly, before he fully understood the nature of my mission here.”
“Humph,” responded Mr. Goodlowe. “Did you find out what you wanted?”
“Perfectly, Monsieur. Forgive me if I do not tell you what it is. At present I have no more than the vaguest of vague suspicions, and I should not care to make myself a laughing-stock by parading crazy theories unbacked by any facts.”
Plainly, Mr. Goodlowe was unimpressed with Jules de Grandin as an investigator, and it was equally plain that he had in mind setting forth his dissatisfaction in no uncertain terms, but our advent at his niece’s bedroom door cut off all further conversation.
“Miss Nancy—oh, Miss Nancy!” the butler called in a soft, affectionate tone, striking lightly on the panels with his knuckles.
No answer was forthcoming, and, waiting a moment, the old Negro opened the door and held his candle high, standing aside to permit us to pass.
In the faint, yellow light of half a dozen candles flickering in wall-sconces we descried a girl lying still as death upon the tufted mattress of a high, four-poster bed. Her eyes were closed, her hands were folded lightly on her breast, and on her skin was the ghastly, whitish-yellow pallor of the moribund or newly dead. Small gouts of perspiration lay like tiny beads of limpid oil upon her forehead; a little ridge of glistening globules of moisture had formed upon her upper lip.
“My God, she’s dead!” cried Mr. Goodlowe, but:
“Not dead, but sleeping—though not naturally,” de Grandin answered. “See, her breast is moving, though her respirations are most faint. Attend her, Friend Trowbridge.”
Placing his finger-tip against her left radial artery, he consulted the dial of the diminutive gold watch strapped against the under side of his left wrist, motioning me to take her right-hand pulse.
“Great heavens!” I exclaimed as I felt the feeble throbbing in her wrist. “Why, her heart’s beating a hundred and twenty, and—”
“I make it a hundred and twenty-six,” he interrupted. “What diagnosis w
ould you make from the other signs, my friend?”
“Well,” I considered, lifting the girl’s eyelids and holding a candle to her face, we have pallor of the body surface, subnormal temperature, rapid pulse and weak respiration, together with dilated pupils—acute coma induced by anemia of the brain, I’d say.”
“Consequent on cardiac insufficiency?” he added.
“That’s my guess.”
“Perfectly. Mine also,” he agreed.
“A little brandy ought to help,” I hazarded, but:
“Undoubtlessly,” he acquiesced, “but we shall not administer it.
“Monsieur,” he turned to Mr. Goodlowe, “will you be good enough to leave us? We must take measures for Mademoiselle’s recovery, and”—he raised his brows and shoulders in a shrug—“it would be better if you left us with the patient.”
Obediently, our host turned from the room, and as the door swung to upon him:
“Dépêchez, mon vieux!” de Grandin told the butler, who at his signaled order, had remained in the room. “Cords, if you please; make haste!”
Lengths of linen were snatched down from the windows, quickly twisted into bandages, then bound about the girl’s wrists and ankles, finally knotted to the uprights of the bed. Last of all, several bands were passed completely around her body and the bed, binding her as fast upon the mattress as ever criminal was lashed upon the rack.
“Whatever are you doing?” I asked him angrily as he knotted a final cincture. “This is positively inhuman, man.”
“I fear it is,” he admitted; then, turning to the butler:
The Dark Angel Page 52
