“Jodo!” whispered Cardener, rolling his head listlessly from side to side, like one who seeks to rouse himself from an unpleasant dream.
“Jodo!” she repeated in an awed and breathless whisper. “He never called me that! Way back, when we were children, Lonny and I gave each other ‘intimate names,’ and I never told mine to a soul, not my parents, nor my husband. How—”
“Jodo—Beth dear,” the half-unconscious man repeated, his fingers searching gropingly for something. “Are you here? I can’t see you, dear, but—”
“Lonny!” Incredulous, unbelieving joy was in the woman’s tones, and:
“Beth, Beth dearest!” Cardener started forward, eyes opening and closing rapidly, as though he had come suddenly from darkness into light. “Beth, they told me you’d be waiting for me—are you really here?”
“Here! Yes, my dear, my very dearest; I am here!” she cried, and sank down to her knees, gathering his head to her bosom and rocking gently back and forth, as though it were a nursing baby. “Oh, my dear, my dear, however did you come?”
“I’m dead?” he queried timidly. “Is this heaven or—”
“Heaven? Yes, if I and all my love can make it so, my darling!” Beth Cardener broke in, and stopped his wondering queries with her kisses.
“NOW, WHAT THE DEVIL does it mean?” I asked as we drove slowly home after taking Doctor Obeyid to his house in Melton Street.
Jules de Grandin raised his elbows, brows and shoulders in a shrug which seemed to say there are some things even a Frenchman can not understand. “You know as much as I, my friend,” he returned. “You saw it with your own two eyes. What more is there which I can tell you?”
“A lot of things,” I countered. “You said yourself that once before you’d seen—”
“Assuredly I had,” he acquiesced. “Me, I see many things, but do I know their meaning? Not always. Par example: I say to you, ‘Friend Trowbridge, I would that you should drive me here or there,’ and though you put your foot on certain things and wiggle certain others with your hands, I do not know what you are doing, or why you do it. I only know that the car moves, and that we arrive, at length, where I have wished to go. You comprehend?”
“No, I don’t,” I answered testily. “I’d like to know how it comes that Lawrence Cardener, who, as we know, was a thorough-going villain if ever there was one, exchanged, or seemed to exchange personalities with the brother whom he sent to death in the electric chair at the very moment of that brother’s execution—and how that scar appeared upon his head. His wife vouched for the fact that it wasn’t there before.”
The little Frenchman twisted the needle-points of his sharply waxed, wheat-blond mutache until I thought that he would surely prick his finger on them. “I can not say,” he answered thoughtfully, “because I do not know. The Arabs have a saying that the soul grows on the body like a flower on the stalk. They may be right. Who knows? What is the soul? Who knows, again? Is it that vague, indefinite thing which we call personality? Perhaps.
“Suppose it is; let us assume the flower-analogy again. Let us assume that, as the skilful gardener takes the blossom from the living rose and grafts it on the living dogwood tree, and thereby makes a rose-tree, one skilled in metaphysics can take the soul from out a body at the instant of dissolution and transplant it to another body from which the soul has just decamped, and thereby create a new and different individual, composed of two distinct parts, a soul, or personality, if you please, and a body, neither of which was originally complementary to the other. It sounds strange, insane, but so would talk of total anesthesia or radio have sounded two hundred years ago. As for the scar, that is comparatively simple. You have seen persons under hypnotism lose every drop of blood from one arm or hand, or become completely anemic in one side of the face; you know from medical history, though you may not have seen it, that certain hysterical religious persons develop what are called stigmata—simulations of the bleeding wounds of the Savior or the martyred saints. That is mental in inception, but physical in manifestation, n’est-ce-pas? Why, then, could not an outward and physical sign of personality be transferred as easily as the inward and spiritual reality? Pardieu, I damn think that it could!”
“But will this ‘spiritual graft’ endure?” I wondered. “Will this transformation of Larry Cardener into Lonny Cardener last?”
“Le bon Dieu knows,” he answered. “Me, I most greatly hope so. If it does not, I shall have to make my promise good and give her that mercuric cyanide. Time will tell.”
TIME DID. A YEAR had passed, and the final summer hop was being given at the Sedgemoor Country Club. The white walls of the clubhouse shone like an illuminated monument in the dusky blue of the late September night, lights blazed from every window and colored globes decorated the overhanging roofs of the broad verandas which stretched along the front and rear of the building. In the grounds Chinese lanterns gleamed with rose, blue, violet and jade, rivaling the brilliance of the summer stars. Jazz blared from the commodious ballroom and echoed from the big yellow-and-red striped marquee set up by the first green. Jules de Grandin and I sat on the front piazza and rocked comfortably in wide wicker chairs, the ice-cubes in our tall glasses clinking pleasantly.
“Mordieu, my friend,” the Frenchman exclaimed enthusiastically, “this what do you call him? zhu-leep?—he is divine; magnificent. He is superb; I would I had a tubful of him in which to drown my few remaining sorrows!” He sucked appreciatively at the twin straws, thrust between the feathery mint-stalks, then, abruptly: “Mort de ma vie, my friend, look—behold them!” He pointed up excitedly.
From where we sat a little balcony projecting from the upper floor was plainly in our line of vision. As the little Frenchman pointed, I saw a man arrayed in summer dancing-clothes, step out upon the platform and light a cigarette. As he snapped his lighter shut, he raised his left hand and brushed his short, close-cropped mustache with the knuckle of his bent forefinger. He blew a long cone of gray smoke between his lips, and turned to some one in the room behind him. As the light struck on his face, I recognized him. It was Lawrence Cardener, beyond a doubt, but Lawrence Cardener strangely altered. His hair, once iron-gray, was now almost uniformly brown, save where a single streak of white ran, plume-like backward from his forehead.
A woman joined him on the balcony. She was tall, slender, dark; her little, piquant face framed in clusters of curling ringlets. Her lips were red and smiling, her lovely arms and shoulders were exposed by the extreme décolleté of her white-crepe evening gown. I knew her; Beth Cardener, but a different woman from the one whose suicide we had balked twelve months before. This Beth was younger, more girlish in face and carriage, and plainly, she was happy. He turned and offered her his case, then, as she chose a cigarette, extended his lighter. She drew the smoke into her lungs, expelled a fine stream from her mouth, then tossed the cigarette away. As it fell to earth in a gleaming, flery arc, the man tossed his out after it and put his hands upon her shoulders. Her own white hands, fluttering like homing doves, flew upward, clasped about his neck, and drew his face to hers. Their lips approached and merged in a long, rapturous kiss.
“Tête bleu, my friend,” de Grandin cried, “I damn think I can keep my mercuric cyanide; she has no use for it, that one!” He rose, a thought unsteadily, and beckoned me. “Come, let us leave them to each other and their happiness,” he ordered. “Me, I very greatly desire several more of those so noble mint zhu-leeps. Yes.”
The Thing in the Fog
“TIENS, ON SUCH A night as this the Devil must congratulate himself!” Jules de Grandin forced his chin still deeper in the upturned collar of his trench-coat, and bent his head against the whorls of chilling mist which eddied upward from the bay in token that autumn was dead and winter come at last.
“Congratulate himself?” I asked in amusement as I felt before me for the curbstone with the ferrule of my stick. “Why?”
“Why? Pardieu, because he sits at ease beside the cozy fires of hell, a
nd does not have to feel his way through this eternally-to-be-execrated fog! If we had but the sense—
“Pardon, Monsieur, one of us is very clumsy, and I do not think that it is I!” he broke off sharply as a big young man, evidently carrying a heavier cargo of ardent spirits than he could safely manage, lurched against him in the smothering mist, then caromed off at an unsteady angle to lose himself once more in the enshrouding fog.
“Dolt!” the little Frenchman muttered peevishly. “If he can not carry liquor he should abstain from it. Me, I have no patience with these—grand Dieu, what is that?”
Somewhere behind us, hidden in the curtains of the thick, gray vapor, there came a muffled exclamation, half of fright, half of anger, the sound of something fighting threshingly with something else, and a growling, snarling noise, as though a savage dog had leapt upon its prey, and, having fleshed its teeth, was worrying it; then: “Help!” The cry was muffled, strangled, but laden with a weight of helpless terror.
“Hold fast, my friend, we come!” de Grandin cried, and, guided by the sounds of struggle, breasted through the fog as if it had been water, brandishing his silver-headed sword-stick before him as a guide and a defense.
A score of quick steps brought us to the conflict. Dim and indistinct as shadows on a moonless night, two forms were struggling on the sidewalk, a large one lying underneath, while over it, snarling savagely, was a thing I took for a police dog which snapped and champed and worried at the other’s throat.
“Help!” called the man again, straining futilely to hold the snarling beast away and turning on his side the better to protect his menaced face and neck.
“Cordieu, a war-dog!” exclaimed the Frenchman. “Stand aside, Friend Trowbridge, he is savage, this one; mad, perhaps, as well.” With a quick, whipping motion he ripped the chilled-steel blade from the barrel of his stick and, point advanced, circled round the struggling man and beast, approaching with a cautious, cat-like step as he sought an opportunity to drive home the sword.
By some uncanny sense the snarling brute divined his purpose, raised its muzzle from its victim’s throat and backed away a step or two, regarding de Grandin with a stare of utter hatred. For a moment I caught the smoldering glare of a pair of fire-red eyes, burning through the fogfolds as incandescent charcoal might burn through a cloth, and:
“A dog? Non, pardieu, it is—” began the little Frenchman, then checked himself abruptly as he lunged out swiftly with his blade, straight for the glaring, fiery eyes which glowered at him through the mist.
The great beast backed away with no apparent haste, yet quickly enough to avoid the needle-point of Jules de Grandin’s blade, and for an instant I beheld a row of gleaming teeth bared savagely beneath the red eyes’ glare; then, with a snarling growl which held more defiance than surrender in its throaty rumble, the brute turned lithely, dodged and made off through the fog, disappearing from sight before the clicking of its nails against the pavement had been lost to hearing.
“Look to him, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin ordered, casting a final glance about us in the mist before he put his sword back in its sheath. “Does he survive, or is he killed to death?”
“He’s alive, all right,” I answered as I sank to my knees beside the supine man, “but he’s been considerably chewed up. Bleeding badly. We’d best get him to the office and patch him up before—”
“Wha—what was it?” our mangled patient asked abruptly, rising on his elbow and staring wildly round him. “Did you kill it—did it get away? D’ye think it had hydrophobia?”
“Easy on, son,” I soothed, locking my hands beneath his arms and helping him to rise. “It bit you several times, but you’ll be all right as soon as we can stop the bleeding. Here”—I snatched a handkerchief from the breast pocket of my dinner coat and pressed it into his hand—“hold this against the wound while we’re walking. No use trying to get a taxi tonight, the driver’d never find his way about. I live only a little way from here and we’ll make it nicely if you’ll lean on me. So! That’s it!”
THE YOUNG MAN LEANED heavily upon my shoulder and almost bore me down, for he weighed a good fourteen stone, as we made our way along the vapor-shrouded street.
“I say, I’m sorry I bumped into you, sir,” the youngster apologized as de Grandin took his other arm and eased me somewhat of my burden. “Fact is, I’d taken a trifle too much and was walkin’ on a side hill when I passed you.” He pressed the already-reddened handkerchief closer to his lacerated neck as he continued with a chuckle: “Maybe it’s a good thing I did, at that, for you were within hearing when I called because you’d stopped to cuss me out.”
“You may have right, my friend,” de Grandin answered with a laugh. “A little drunkenness is not to be deplored, and I doubt not you had reason for your drinking—not that one needs a reason, but—”
A sudden shrill, sharp cry for help cut through his words, followed by another call which stopped half uttered on a strangled, agonizing note; then, in a moment, the muffled echo of a shot, another, and, immediately afterward, the shrilling signal of a police whistle.
“Tête bleu, this night is full of action as a pepper-pot is full of spice!” exclaimed de Grandin, turning toward the summons of the whistle. “Can you manage him, Friend Trowbridge? If so I—”
Pounding of heavy boots on the sidewalk straight ahead told us that the officer approached, and a moment later his form, bulking gigantically in the fog, hove into view. “Did anny o’ yez see—” he started, then raised his hand in half-formal salute to the vizor of his cap as he recognized de Grandin.
“I don’t suppose ye saw a dar-rg come runnin’ by this way, sor?” he asked. “I wuz walkin’ up th’ street a moment since, gettin’ ready to report at th’ box, when I heard a felly callin’ for help, an’ what should I see next but th’ biggest, ugliest baste of a dar-rg ye iver clapped yer eyes upon, a-worryin’ at th’ pore lad’s throat. I wus close to it as I’m standin’ to you, sor, pretty near, an’ I shot at it twict, but I’m damned if I didn’t miss both times, slick as a whistle—an’ me holdin’ a pistol expert’s medal from th’ department, too!”
“U’m?” de Grandin murmured. “And the unfortunate man beset by this great beast your bullets failed to hit, what of him?”
“Glory be to God; I plumb forgot ’im!” the policeman confessed. “Ye see, sor, I wuz that overcome wid shame, as th’ felly says, whin I realized I’d missed th’ baste that I run afther it, hopin’ I’d find it agin an’ maybe put a slug into it this time, so—”
“Quite so, one understands,” de Grandin interrupted, “but let us give attention to the man; the beast can wait until we find him, and—mon Dieu! It is as well you did not stay to give him the first aid, my friend, your efforts would have been without avail. His case demands the coroner’s attention.”
He did not understate the facts. Stretched on his back, hands clenched to fists, legs slightly spread, one doubled partly under him, a man lay on the sidewalk; across the white expanse of evening shirt his opened coat displayed there spread a ruddy stickiness, while his starched white-linen collar was already sopping with the blood which oozed from his torn and mangled throat. Both external and anterior jugulars had been ripped away by the savagery which had torn the integument of the neck to shreds, and so deeply had the ragged wound gone that a portion of the hyoid bone had been exposed. A spate of blood had driveled from the mouth, staining lips and chin, and the eyes, forced out between the lids, were globular and fixed and staring, though the film of death had hardly yet had time to set upon them.
“Howly Mither!” cried the officer in horror as he looked upon the body. “Sure, it were a hound from th’ Divil’s own kennels done this, sor!”
“I think that you have right,” de Grandin nodded grimly, “Call the department, if you will be so good. I will stand by the body.” He took a kerchief from his pocket and opened it, preparatory to veiling the poor, mangled face which stared appealingly up at the fog-bound night, but:
>
“My God, it’s Suffrige!” the young man at my side exclaimed. I left him just before I blundered into you, and—oh, what could have done it?”
“The same thing which almost did as much for you, Monsieur,” the Frenchman answered in a level, toneless voice. “You had a very narrow escape from being even as your friend, I do assure you.”
“You mean that dog—” he stopped, incredulous, eyes fairly starting from his face as he stared in fascination at his friend’s remains.
“The dog, yes, let us call it that,” de Grandin answered.
“But—but—” the other stammered, then, with an incoherent exclamation which was half sigh, half groaning hiccup, slumped heavily against my shoulder and slid unconscious to the ground.
De Grandin shrugged in irritation. “Now we have two of them to watch,” he complained. “Do you recover him as quickly as you can, my friend, while I—” he turned his back to me, dropped his handkerchief upon the dead man’s face and bent to make a closer examination of the wounds in the throat.
I took the handkerchief from my overcoat pocket, ran it lightly over the trunk of a leafless tree which stood beside the curb and wrung the moisture from it on the unconscious man’s face and forehead. Slowly he recovered, gasped feebly, then, with my assistance, got upon his feet, keeping his back resolutely turned to the grisly thing upon the sidewalk. “Can—you—help—me—to—your—office?” he asked slowly, breathing heavily between the words.
I nodded, and we started toward my house, but twice we had to stop; for once he became sick, and I had to hold him while he retched with nausea, and once he nearly fainted again, leaning heavily against the iron balustrade before a house while he drew great gulps of chilly, fog-soaked air into his lungs.
The Dark Angel Page 61
