“Summon your wife to stand guard, mon brave, and bid her call us instantly if Mademoiselle awakes and struggles to be free. You understand?”
“Parfaitement, M’sieu,” returned the other.
“What the deuce does it mean?” I demanded as we descended the stairs. “First you interrogate that servant in some outlandish gibberish; then you lash that poor, sick girl to her bed, as though she were a violent maniac—that’s the damnedest treatment for anemic coma I ever saw! Now—”
“Cordieu, my friend, unless I am much more mistaken than I think, that is the damnedest anemic coma that I ever saw, as well!” he broke in. “Anon I shall explain, but—ah, here is the good Monsieur Goodlowe; there are things which he can tell us, too.” We entered the library where Mr. Goodlowe paced furiously before the fireless fireplace, a long cigar, unlighted, in his mouth.
“There you are!” he barked as we entered the room. “How’s Nancy?”
De Grandin shook his head despondently. “She is not so good, Monsieur,” he answered sadly. “We have done what we could for her at present, and the butler’s wife sits watching by her bed; meanwhile, we should like to ask you several things, if you will kindly answer.”
“Well?” Goodlowe challenged.
“How comes it that Monsieur your brother had servants from the French West Indies in his service, rather than Negroes from his native state?”
“I don’t see that has any bearing on the case,” our host objected, “but if you’re bound to have the family pedigree—”
“Oh, yes, that would he most helpful,” de Grandin assured him with a smile.
The other eyed him narrowly, seeking to determine whether he spoke ironically, and at length:
“Like most Kentuckians, our family came from Virginia,” he returned. “Greene Clarke, our maternal great-grandfather, was a ship-owner in Norfolk, trading principally with the West Indies—it was easier to import sugar from Saint Domingue, as they called it then, than to bring it through the Gulf from Louisiana; so he did a thriving trade with the islands. Eventually, he acquired considerable land holdings in Haiti, and put a younger brother in charge as overseer. The place was overrun and burned when the Blacks revolted, but our great-granduncle escaped and later, when Christophe set up stable government, the family re-acquired the lands and farmed them until the Civil War. The Virginia branch of the family always kept up interest in the West Indian trade, and Clarke, in his younger days, spent considerable time in both Haiti and Martinique. It was on one of his sojourns in Port au Prince that he acquired Julius and Marie as household servants. They came with him to the States and were in his service more than forty years. They’ll not be here much longer, though. I don’t like West Indian niggers’ impudent ways, and I’m going to give ’em the boot as soon as I can get a couple of our servants up here.”
De Grandin nodded thoughtfully; then:
“You have no record of your ancestor’s activities in Haiti before the Blacks’ revolt?” he asked.
“No,” Mr. Goodlowe answered shortly.
“Ah? A pity, Monsieur. Perhaps we might find in that some explanation of the so strange deaths which seem to curse this house. However—but let it pass for the present; we must seek our explanation elsewhere, it would seem.”
He busied himself lighting a cigarette, then turned once more to Mr. Goodlowe. “Captain Chenevert should be here shortly,” he announced. “It might be well if you accompany him when he leaves, Monsieur. Unless I misread the signs, the malign genius which presides over this most unfortunate house is ready for another manifestation, and you are in all probability the intended victim. We may foil it and learn something which will enable us to thwart it permanently in your absence; if you remain—eh bien, who can say what may occur?”
Mr. Goodlowe eyed him coldly. “You’re suggesting that I run away?” he asked.
“Ah, no; by no means, Monsieur, merely that you make a temporary retreat while Friend Trowbridge and I fight a rear-guard engagement. You can not help us by your presence. Indeed, your being here may prove a great embarrassment.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” our host returned, “but I can’t agree to any such arrangement. I’ve called you in to solve this case at Captain Chenevert’s suggestion, and against my own best judgment. If I’m to pay you, I must at least demand that you put me in possession of all facts you know—or think you know. Thus far your methods have been more those of the fortune-telling charlatan than the detective, and I must say I’m not impressed with them. Either you will handle the case under my direction, or I will write you a check for services to date and call another into consultation.”
De Grandin’s little, round blue eyes flashed ominously, with a light like winter ice reflecting January moonlight. His thin lips drew away from his small, white teeth in a smile which held no mirth, but he controlled his fiery temper by an almost superhuman effort. “This case intrigues one, Monsieur Goodlowe,” he answered stiffly. “It is not on your account that I hesitate to leave it; but rather out of love for mastering a mystery. Be so good as to listen attentively, if you please:
“To begin, when first I saw your butler I thought I recognized in him the earmarks of the Haitien. Also, I noted that he bore a saucer filled with wheat when he responded to our knock. Now, in Haiti, as I know from personal experience, the natives have a superstition that when an unclean spirit comes to haunt a place, protection can be had if they will scatter grains of rice or wheat before the door. The visitant must pause to count the scattered grain, they think, and accordingly daylight will surprise him before the tale is told. The Quashee, or Haitien blacks, refer indifferently to various unpleasant members of the spirit world as ‘loogaroo,’ which is, of course, a corruption of loup-garou, or werewolf.
“Very well. I drew my bow at random and addressed your man in Haitien patois, and instantly he answered me. He told me much, for one who bears himself addressed in the language of his childhood in a strange land will throw away reserve and give full vent to his emotions. He told me, by example, that he was in the act of scattering grain about the house, and especially upon the stairs and in the passage leading to Mademoiselle Nancy’s room, because he was convinced that the loogaroo which had already made ’way with three members of your family was planning a fresh outrage. For why? Because, by blue, on each occasion previously the electric light inside the house had died for no apparent reason, and all outside connections by telephone had similarly died. Captain Chenevert, who had made investigation of the deaths, noted this coincidence, also, and remarked upon it. He is now gone to report the failure of your light and telephone to the proper parties.
“But something else, of even greater interest, your butler disclosed. The day before her father’s death, the day Monsieur Derringer died so strangely, and immediately preceding Madame Derringer’s so tragic death, Mademoiselle Nancy exhibited just such signs of illness as she showed today—dullness, listlessness, headache; finally a heavy stupor almost simulating death, from which no one could rouse her. Never before—and he has known her all her life—had she shown signs of such an illness. Indeed, she was always a most healthy young lady, not subject to the customary feminine ills of headache, biliousness or stomach-sickness. Alors, he was of opinion that these sinking-fits of hers were connected in some manner with the advent of the loogaroo.
“I must admit I think he reasoned wisely. When Doctor Trowbridge and I examined her, your niece showed every sign of anemic coma; this in a lady who has always been most healthy, is deserving of remark; especially since she shows no evidence of cardiac deficiency intervening these strange seizures. You comprehend?”
“I comprehend you’ve let yourself be fooled by the bestial superstitions of an ignorant savage!” Mr. Goodlowe burst out disgustedly. “If this is a sample of the way you solve your cases, sir, I think we’d better call it quits and—”
“M’sieu, M’sieu l’Médecin, dépêchez-vous—Ma’mselle est—” the urgent whisper cut him short as an elderly Negr
ess, deeply wrinkled but still possessing the fine figure and graceful carriage of the West Indian black, appeared at the library door.
“We come—at once, immediately, right away!” de Grandin answered, turning unceremoniously from Mr. Goodlowe and hastening up the stairs.
“Detain him without, my friend,” he whispered with a nod toward Goodlowe as we reached the sickroom door. “Should he find her bound, he may ask questions, even become violent, and I shall be too busy to stop my work and slay him.”
Accordingly, I blocked the bedroom door as best I could while the little Frenchman and the Negress hastened to the bed.
Nancy Goodlowe was stirring, but not conscious. Rather, her movements were the writhings of delirium, and, like a patient in delirium, she seemed endowed with supernatural strength; for the strong bandages which bound her wrists had been thrown off, and the surcingle of cotton which held her to the bed was burst asunder.
“Morbleu, what in Satan’s name is this—” began de Grandin, then, abruptly:
“But, gloire de Dieu, what is that?”
He brushed past the bed, leant out the window and pointed toward the patch of smooth-shaven lawn before the loggia red-brick-and-iron summer-house. What seemed to be a jet of vapor rising from a broken steam-pipe was whirling like a dust-swirl above the grass plot, rotating still more swiftly; at length concrescing and solidifying. An optical illusion it doubtless was, but I could have sworn the gyrating haze took form and substance as I gazed and became, beneath my very eyes, the image of a great white snake.
“Here, damn you, what d’ye mean by this?” Mr. Goodlowe burst past me into the girl’s bedroom and snatched furiously at the cotton bindings which half restrained his niece upon the bed. “By gad, sir, I’ll teach you to treat gentlewomen this way!” he stormed; then, surprisingly:
“Ah?”
Raising furious eyes to de Grandin as the little Frenchman peered out the window, he had caught sight of the ghastly, whirling wreath of vapor on the lawn.
The thing by now had definitely assumed a serpent’s form. And it was a moving serpent; a serpent which circumvoluted in a giant ring, rearing and swaying its ugly, wedge-shaped head from side to side; a serpent which made loops and figure-eights upon the moonlit lawn, and described great, flowing triangles which melted into squares and hexagons and undulating, coiling mounds, an ever-changing, never-hastening, never-resting figure of activity.
“Ah?” Mr. Goodlowe repeated, horror and blank incredulity in the querying monosyllable.
We saw his face. The eyes were staring, glassy, void of all expression as the eyes of one new-dead; his jaw hung down and his mouth was open, round and expressionless as the entrance to a small, empty cave. His breath sounded stertorously, like a snore. For a moment he stood thus; then, hands held before him like a sleep-walker, or a person playing blind man’s bluff, he turned, shambled down the hall and began a slow and halting descent of the stairs.
“Loogaroo—loogaroo—Ayida Oueddo!” gibbered the Negro servant, her horror-glazed eyes rolling in a very œstrus of fear as she gazed alternately at the whirling thing upon the lawn, the struggling girl upon the bed, and Jules de Grandin.
“Silence!” cried the Frenchman; then, clearing the space between the window and the bed at a single leap; “Mademoiselle Nancy, awake!” he ordered, seizing the girl’s shoulders and shaking her furiously from side to side as a terrier might shake a rat.
For a moment they struggled thus, seemingly engaged in a wrestling bout, but finally the girl’s dark eyes opened and she looked him in the face.
De Grandin’s little, round blue eyes seemed starting from his head, the veins along his temple swelled and throbbed as he leant abruptly forward till his nose and that of Nancy Goodlowe nearly touched. “Attend me—carefully!” he commanded in a voice which sounded like a hiss. “You will go back to sleep, a simple, restful, natural sleep, and both your waking and subconscious minds shall be at rest. You will awake when daylight comes, and not before. I, Jules de Grandin, order it. You comprehend? Sleep—sleep—sleep!” he finished in a low and crooning voice, swaying the girl’s shoulders to and fro, as one might rock a restless child.
Slowly she sank back on her pillow, composed herself as quietly as a tired little girl might do, and in a moment seemed to fall asleep, all traces of the delirium which had held her in its grip a moment since departed.
“Oh!” Involuntarily the exclamation broke from me. The writhing, twisting serpent on the lawn had vanished, and I could not rightly say whether what remained was a wraith of whirling vapor or a spot of bright moonlight which seemed to move as the shadow of some wind-blown bough swept over it.
“Come, my friend,” de Grandin ordered sharply, snatching at my elbow as he dashed from the room. “We must find him.”
Mr. Goodlowe had left the house and crossed the intervening lawn by the time we reached the door. As we came up with him he stood a few feet from the place where we had seen the great white snake, staring about him with puzzled, wide, lack-luster eyes.
“Wha—what am I doing here?” he faltered as the Frenchman caught him by the shoulder and administered a gentle shake.
“Do not you remember, Monsieur?” de Grandin asked. “Do you not recall the thing you saw out here—the thing which beckoned you to come, and whose summons you obeyed?”
Goodlowe looked vaguely from one of us to the other. “I—I seem to have some recollection of some one—something—which called me out,” he answered in a sleepy, faltering voice, “but who it was or what it was I can’t remember.”
“No?” de Grandin returned curiously. “Eh bien, perhaps it is as well, or better. You are tired, Monsieur. I think you would do better if you slept, as we should, also. Tomorrow we shall talk about this case at length.”
Docile as a sleepy child, our fiery-tempered host permitted us to lead him to the house and assist him into bed.
De Grandin made a final tour of inspection, noted the light, natural sleep in which Nancy Goodlowe lay, then followed Julius to the room assigned us. Clad in lavender pajamas, mauve dressing-gown and purple kid slippers, he sat beside the window, gazing moodily out upon the moonlit lawn, lighting one vile-smelling French cigarette from the glowing stump of another, muttering unintelligibly to himself from time to time, like one who makes a mental calculation of a puzzling problem in arithmetic.
“For goodness’ sake, aren’t you ever coming to bed?” I asked crossly. “I’m sleepy, and—”
“Then go to sleep, by all means,” he shot back sharply. “Sleep, animal; rest yourself in swinish ease. Me, I am a sentient human being; I have thoughts to think and plans to make. When I have done, then I shall rest. Until that time you will oblige me by not obtruding yourself upon my meditations.”
“Oh, all right,” I answered, turning on my side and taking him at his word.
GORDON GOODLOWE WAS IN a chastened mood next morning. While he had no clear recollections of the previous evening’s events, there was a haunting fear at the back of his mind, a sort of nameless terror which dogged his footsteps, yet evaded his memory as fancied images half seen from the tail of the eye dissolve into nothingness when we turn about and seek to see them by direct glance.
Miss Goodlowe remained in bed, apparently suffering from no specific illness, but in a greatly weakened state. “I think she’ll be all right, with rest and a restricted diet,” I ventured as de Grandin and I left her room, but:
“Non, my friend, you have wrong,” the little Frenchman told me with a vigorous shake of his head. “Tonight, unless I much mistake my diagnosis, she will have another seizure, and—”
“You’ll hypnotize her again?” I interjected.
“By blue, not by any means!” he broke in. “Me, this evening I shall be a spectator at the show, though not, perhaps, an idle one. No, on second thought I am decided I shall be quite active. Yes, certainly.”
When Captain Chenevert arrived with assurances that “trouble-shooters” of the electric and telepho
ne companies could find no mechanical reason for the failure of service in the Goodlowe house, and when, by trial, we found both electric light and telephone in perfect working order, de Grandin showed no surprise. Rather, he seemed to take the mystery of alternating failure and function in the service as confirmation of some theory he had formed.
Shortly after noon, accompanied by Julius, the butler, he made a hurried trip in Captain Chenevert’s police car, returning before dinner time with a covered tin pail filled with something which splashed as he bore it to the kitchen and put it near the stove, where it would remain warm, but not become really hot.
I passed a rather dismal day. Mr. Goodlowe was in such a state of nervous fear that he seemed incapable of carrying on a conversation; Miss Goodlowe lay quietly in bed, refusing food, and answering questions with a gentle patience which reminded me of a convalescent child; de Grandin bustled about importantly. Now in conference with Captain Chenevert, now with Julius, now delving into some old family records which he found in the library. By dinner time I was in a state where I would have welcomed a game of cribbage as a pastime.
Our host excused himself shortly after dinner, and the young police captain, de Grandin and I were left alone with cigars and liqueurs on the terrace. “You’re sure you’ve got some dope on it?” Chenevert asked suddenly, flinging his cigar away with nervous petulance, then selecting another from the humidor and lighting it with quick, spasmodic puffs.
“None but the feeble-minded are sure, of that I am indubitably sure,” de Grandin answered, “but I think I have at least sufficient evidence to support an hypothesis.
“This house, I found by inquiries which I made in the city, was largely built of second-hand materials; the owner wished that weathered bricks be used, and considerable search was necessary to procure materials of a proper age and quality. The brick and iron work of which that little summer-house is built, by example, came from a demolished structure on the outskirts of Newark, a house once used to restrain the criminally insane. You apprehend the significance of that?”
The Dark Angel Page 53
