“Teeth!” Traherne exploded in amazement. “D’ye mean to tell me you suspected someone had bitten them?”
“Some one—or some thing,” the Frenchman answered earnestly. “Now I think the contrary, therefore I am greatly puzzled.
“Come, my friend, when doctors quarrel patients die; let us not be stubborn. I will forego the garlic in the sickroom, for a time, at least; also I shall not insist upon their sleeping with their windows closed. Do you, for your part, seek for trusty nurses who shall watch them day and night, and we shall watch them closely, too. Do you agree?”
They shook hands upon their mutual understanding.
BUT THE PATIENTS FAILED to show improvement. Sorensen seemed to grow no weaker, but his strength did not return, while within a week his niece became so utterly exhausted that the mere performance of the vital functions seemed to put too great a tax upon her waning strength. Saline infusions, finally liberal blood transfusions, were resorted to, and while these gave her temporary help, she soon lapsed back to semi-coma.
De Grandin and Traherne were desperate. “Trowbridge, mon vieux,” the Frenchman told me, “there is something evil here. We have exhausted every remedy of science. Now I am convinced our treatment must pursue another pattern. Will you watch with us tonight?”
We chose the upstairs sitting-room for our headquarters. Sorensen’s room lay a dozen steps beyond it to the right, his niece’s was scarcely farther at the left, and we could reach either or both in twenty seconds. We made inspections of the patients every hour, and each succeeding visit heightened our morale, for both seemed resting easily, and each time the nurses reported they had shown no sign of restlessness.
“Mordieu, but it would seem whatever lies behind this thing knows we are here, and holds its hand in fear,” de Grandin told us as the tall clock in the lower hall struck two. “This is the time when vitality is lowest, and accordingly—”
His words were broken by a strangling, choking cry which echoed through the darkened house. “Monsieur Sorensen!” he exclaimed as, with Traherne and me at his heels, he leaped across the threshold of the sitting-room and raced the little distance to Sorensen’s room.
The room, which had been dimly lighted by a night lamp, was dark as Erebus, and when we found the switch and pressed it, a sharp metallic click, but no light, followed.
“Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu!” de Grandin swore. “Ten thousand small blue devils! What has happened to the lights in this infernal place?”
A rasping, gurgling sound, as of water gushing down a drain, or a man fighting desperately for breath, came through the darkness from Sorensen’s bed, and with a string of curses which would have shamed a stevedore, de Grandin groped his way across the room, snatched a pocket flashlight from his pocket and played its beam upon the sick man.
Sorensen lay upon his bed, his bedclothes kicked to the floor, hands clenched in a rigidity like that of death, fingers digging deep into the mattress. His pajama coat was open at the throat, and on the white skin of his neck, just below the line of tan, was a ruby disk where warm blood welled up from a tiny wound. His eyes were open, staring, wide, and on his sun-burned face was such a look of mortal terror as is seldom seen outside the fantasies of a nightmare.
“Mademoiselle!” de Grandin challenged sharply. “Where in blazing hell’s accursed name is that sacré garde-malade?” His flashlight swung around, picking up successive objects in the sickroom, coming finally to rest upon the rocking-chair where sat Sorensen’s night nurse.
A chilling sense of cold, as though a freezing wind had blown upon me, made me catch my breath as the flashlight’s gleam illumined her. She did not stir. She sat there rigidly, as though she had been carven out of wood. Her head was held uncomfortably downward, as though she listened to something far away; her neck was fixed and firm as though she had been in a trance. She was, to all intents, turned to stone. There was no special look upon her face, no fear, no terror; nothing that might be expected of a woman. in her plight, but she sat fixed, immovable, utterly unconscious of the world about her.
“Mademoiselle!” de Grandin cried again.
His hand upon her shoulder brought her back to instant consciousness, and she rose quickly, winking in the strong light of his pocket torch.
“W-why, what’s happened?” she demanded.
“Happened?” Doctor Traherne almost shouted. “What’s happened? Nothing, only your patient almost died while you sat dozing in your chair!”
“I haven’t been asleep,” the girl denied vehemently. “Marshall brought me coffee a few minutes ago, and I drank a little, but just as I put the cup down you came shouting here, and—”
“Softly, mes amis,” de Grandin bade, holding up his hand for silence. “Do not chide her, Friend Traherne, she is not culpable. And you, Mademoiselle, what of the coffee which the little black one brought you? Where is it, if you please?”
“Here,” she answered, pointing to a half-filled cup upon the table by her chair.
He picked the little vessel up, smelled it cautiously, then, dipping the tip of his forefinger into the brown liquid, put it to his tongue. “Mais non,” he shook his head in disappointment; then, to the girl:
“You say the Negro butler brought you this?”
“Yes, sir; he’s very thoughtful. He brings me coffee every night about this time.”
“U’m, one wonders. Let us have a talk with him.”
He strode across the darkened room and gave the call-bell button a sharp push.
While we waited for the servant to arrive we made a quick examination of the lights. All were in working order, but each bulb had been twisted in its socket until it just missed contact with the feed line, making the switch entirely useless. “Parbleu, it seems there has been business of the monkey here,” de Grandin told us as he screwed the bulbs in place. “Now, if we can but—”
“You rang, sir?” asked the colored butler, appearing at the bedroom door as silently as a disembodied spirit from the mists of limbo.
“Emphatically,” the Frenchman said. “You brought coffee to the nurse a little time ago?”
“Yes, sir,” the black answered, and I thought I caught the sparkle of sardonic humor in his eye. “I bring coffee to both Miss Tuthill and Miss Angevine about this time each night.”
“Eh, and drug it, one surmises?” snapped de Grandin.
The servant turned to the nurse, his manner a curious compound of respect and insolence. “How much coffee did you drink, Miss Tuthill?” he asked.
“Not more than half a cup,” she answered.
“And is this the cup?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” his impudence was superb as he reached out his hand, took up the half-filled cup and drained it at a gulp.
He looked the little Frenchman in the eye, a smile of half-concealed amusement on his face. “If the coffee is drugged, as you suspect, it surely ought to act on me—sir,” he announced, just enough pause between the statement and the title of respect to give his words a tone of insolent bravado.
“Sit down, my little one,” de Grandin answered with surprising calmness. “We shall see what we shall see anon.” He bent above Sorensen, bandaging his wounded throat. “By the way,” he flung across his shoulder casually, “you are not American, are you?”
“No, sir,” said the butler.
“No? Where is it you were born, then?”
“Barbados, sir.”
“U’m? Very well. I apologize if I have accused you wrongfully. That will be all, at present.”
INSPECTION OF JOYCE SORENSEN’S room showed the girl sleeping peacefully and the nurse alertly wakeful. “Have you had your coffee yet, Mademoiselle?” de Grandin asked.
“No,” Miss Angevine replied. “Marshall hasn’t brought it yet. I wish he’d hurry, it helps a lot.”
The little Frenchman gazed at her reflectively a moment; then: “Mademoiselle,” he ordered, “I desire that you join Miss Tuthill in Monsieur Sorensen’s room. H
e is decidedly unimproved, and it is best that both of you stay with him. I shall undertake to watch your patient.”
“What—” I began, but his upraised hand checked my question.
“Quickly, my friend,” he bade, “behind the lounge!”
“Eh? Behind—”
“Species of an artichoke, conceal yourself with speed, and if you would not die in great discomfort, be sure you make no sound or move which might betray your presence. Me, I shall be the bait, you the silent spectator.” He crossed the room and rang the bell; then, as he resumed his seat beside the sick girl’s bed: “Remember,” he repeated, “on no account are you to move until I give the signal, no matter how great you deem the provocation.”
“You rang, sir?” Marshall asked, appearing in the doorway with his silent, ghost-like tread.
“Yes, I should like a cup of coffee, if you please. The nurse is feeling indisposed, and I have taken her responsibility.”
Something like a gleam of triumph flickered in the little black man’s eyes, but it died as quickly as it came, and with a murmured, “Very good, sir,” he vanished in the darkness of the hall.
Five minutes later he returned with a silver tray containing coffee-pot and cup.
De Grandin rose and strode across the room, pausing beside the bed and gazing thoughtfully at the sleeping girl. His back was toward the servant; the opportunity to drug his coffee was perfect, made to order, it appeared to me.
But nothing untoward happened. The butler placed the tray upon the table, stood demurely waiting further orders, then, as de Grandin failed to turn, withdrew with his usual silent tread.
Ignoring my presence completely, the Frenchman resumed his chair, drank his coffee at a draft, and picked up a magazine.
Eight, ten, a dozen minutes passed. Nothing happened. Then suddenly the tomb-like quiet of the room was broken by a gentle guttural sound. I looked out from my ambuscade in fascinated horror. De Grandin’s head had fallen forward, the magazine had slipped down to the floor. He was asleep—and snoring.
About to leave my place and seize him by the shoulder, I felt, rather than heard, the butler’s quick approach, and hastily retreated to my hiding-place.
Stepping softly as a cat, the servant came into the room, bearing a tray with pot and cup exactly duplicating those which stood upon the table at de Grandin’s side. Quickly he exchanged the new utensils for the old, poured out a half-cup of fresh coffee, and arranged the things so carefully that, had I not observed the substitution, I should have been prepared to swear that the cup upon the table was the one from which de Grandin had refreshed himself.
These preliminaries finished, the fellow bent and looked into de Grandin’s face; then, satisfied the Frenchman was asleep, he turned and tiptoed to the bed where Joyce Sorenson lay. For a moment he stood looking at her and a smile of wicked malice flickered on his features.
“Broken heart for broken heart, wasted life for wasted life, tears for tears and blood for blood,” he murmured. “Thus shall Mamba be avenged.”
Drawing a short, wide-bladed knife from underneath his jacket he ripped the girl’s silk sleeping-robe from neck to hem with a single quick slash.
There was something devilish in his deftness. Bending close, he drew apart the lips of the slit robe, and gently blew upon the girl’s white body. Locked in the thrall of deep, exhaustive sleep, she flinched from the current of his breath, turning slightly from him, and as she did so he tweaked the silk robe gently, pulling an inch or so of it from underneath her. Again and again he repeated the maneuver, slowly, patiently forcing her across the bed, bit by little bit withdrawing the nightrobe, till at last she had shed the garment utterly and lay there like a lovely statue hewn from ivory.
I saw a spot of bright blood form and grow as he pierced the skin below her left breast with the sharp point of his knife, and had flexed my muscles for a spring when his next move struck me stone-still, with amazement.
From beneath his jacket he drew forth something like a bundle of coarse moss, dangled it before him from a silken cord and began to swing it through the air. Faster and faster, till it whirled round his head like a wheel of light, he swung the odd-appearing thing; then, as he reduced its speed and dangled it above the blood-spot on the girl’s bared breast, I saw that closely twisted tendrils had worked open, and assumed the form of two capital Y’s joined together at the base. Leaning quickly downward he dropped the object on the red-dyed wound which jeweled the whiteness of the girl’s uncovered breast, and my eyes almost started from my head in horror as I saw the tiny thing begin to show a dreadful sort of change.
One of the branches of the lower Y had touched the drop, of ruby blood which welled up from the tiny wound he had inflicted on Joyce Sorensen, and like a blotter—or a leech—it drank the ruddy fluid up, slowly swelling, growing, taking on the form of life. Like a tiny balloon, inflated by a gentle flow of breath, the shriveled Y-bars filled out gradually, took on the form of human arms and legs; a head appeared between the outspread branches of the upper Y, and, balanced like a ballet dancer on one toe, a small, black human form pirouetted over Joyce Sorensen’s heart.
Strangely life-like, oddly human in form it was, yet with something of the plant about it, too, so that as I gazed in fascination I could not determine whether it was a minute black dwarf which resembled some obscene variety of flower, or some dreadful flower which presented an indecent parody of humanity.
The sleeping girl stirred distressfully, moaning as if in torment, and her hands twitched spasmodically. It seemed as though the dancing horror balanced over her were forcing realization of its presence down through her unconsciousness.
“Trowbridge, mon vieux, take him, seize him, do not let him pass!” With a bound de Grandin was out of his chair, every trace of sleep gone from him. He leaped across the room, hands outstretched to seize the black.
With a snarl of bestial fury the little fellow dodged, hurling himself toward the door. I squirmed from my concealment and put myself in his path. As he ran straight at me I let drive my fist, catching him squarely on the point of the jaw and knocking him backward to de Grandin’s waiting arms.
“Bête, chien, chameau!” the Frenchman whispered fiercely as he seized the undersized man’s elbows in an iron grip and forced them to his sides. He slipped his hands down the butler’s forearms, gripped him by the wrists and bent his arms upward in a double hammerlock. “Thou species of a spider, thou ninety-nine-times-damned example of a dead and rotten fish, take that flower of hell from Mademoiselle, and see that not a root is left to fester in her wound!” he ordered.
The little black man snarled like a trapped cat. “You think that you can make me?” he demanded. “Kill me, French oppressor, cut me in pieces, break my arms and drag my heart from out my breast, but you cannot save the woman. Tomorrow they will find her as she lies, unclothed for all to look on, bloodless and breathless—”
De Grandin bent the speaker’s twisted arms a half-inch nearer to his shoulders. “You think so?” he demanded. “Par les plumes d’un coq, we shall see if you are right!”
Tiny gouts of perspiration glistened on the little black man’s forehead, his mouth drew taut with agony and his eyes thrust forward in their sockets like a frog’s as de Grandin slowly tightened his torturing grip upon his arms. Step by step he forced his prisoner toward the bed, hissing epithets in mingled French and English in his car.
As they reached the couch where Joyce Sorensen lay, the captive dropped upon his knees with a short gasp of anguish.
“Let me go,” he begged. “Let me go, you French beast. I’ll take the flower off of her.”
De Grandin eased his grip upon one arm. “Do it with one hand,” he ordered.
“I need both.”
The Frenchman twisted the bent arms again and the butler crumpled to the floor unconscious.
“Water, if you please, Friend Trowbridge,” he commanded. “I am too fully occupied to get it.”
I snatched a carafe f
rom the table and dashed a glassful of chilled water in the prisoner’s face.
“And now, my little truant out of hell,” de Grandin whispered softly as the captive winced beneath the shock of the cold liquid and his eyelids fluttered upward, “you will please remove that thirty-thousand-times-accursed thing from Mademoiselle, or I shall surely twist your arms from off your body and thrust them piecemeal down your throat!” Once again he bent his prisoner’s arms until I thought that he would surely crack the bones.
One wrist freed, the black man reached out, seized the gyrating black thing and lifted it carefully from the wound in Joyce Sorensen’s breast. Like a blow up bladder punctured with a pin, the infernal thing began to wilt immediately. In thirty seconds it had shrunk to half its former size; before a minute passed it had shriveled in upon itself, and was nothing but a ball of moss-like fiber from the fraying ends of which there dripped small drops of ruddy moisture.
“Bien,” announced de Grandin as he eased his hold upon his prize. “Trowbridge, my friend, go and bid the nurse return, if you will he so kind. Me, I have a few important questions I would ask of this one—and I think I shall elicit better answers if I ask them in the privacy of the garage. I shall rejoin you soon.”
“HOLA, MES ENFANTS!” SMILING in complete self-approval, Jules de Grandin joined us in Sorensen’s upstairs sitting-room. “The germ which caused this new disease our colleague Traherne found has been isolated. Morbleu, he is completely isolated in the poste de police—unless they put him in restraint in the hospital. I fear I was a trifle rough with him before his story was completed.
“Then it was a germ disease—” Traherne began, but de Grandin interrupted with a laugh.
“Mais oui, mon brave,” he chuckled. “A small and wholly vicious germ which traveled on two legs, and bore with him the strangest orchid any botanist could dream of. Attend me, if you please:
A Rival from the Grave Page 31
