A Rival from the Grave

by Seabury Quinn

  I had a momentary feeling of uncertainty. Were these three sane and grownup people whom I listened to, these men and woman who talked of a dead woman’s stealing jewelry, discussing what she might have and what she might not take, or were they children playing gruesome make-believe or inmates of some psychopathic ward in some mysterious way brought to my study?

  “Don’t you think we’d better have a glass of sherry and some biscuit?” I suggested, determined to negotiate the conversation back to sanity.

  DE GRANDIN SIPPED HIS sherry thoughtfully, taking tiny bites of biscuit in between the drinks, more for the sake of appearance than from any wish for food. At length: “Where are the pearls which were abstracted from Madame your wife’s throat?” he asked Taviton.

  “I put them in the safe deposit vault,” the other answered. “They’re still there, unless—”

  “Quite so, Monsieur, one understands. It is highly probable they are still there, for these prankish tricks Madame la Revenante is fond of playing seem concerned more with your personal annoyance than your valuables. I would that you have imitations of those pearls made just as quickly as you can. Be sure they are the best of duplicates, and match the gems they copy both in weight and looks. You apprehend?”

  “Yes, of course, but why—”

  “Tiens, the less one says, the less one has cause for regret,” the Frenchman answered with a smile.

  ALTHOUGH I HAD RETIRED from obstetrics several years before, there were times when long association with a family made me break my resolution. Such a case occurred next evening, and it was not till after midnight that I saw the red and wrinkled voyageur on life’s way securely started on his earthly pilgrimage and his mother safely out of danger. The house was dark and quiet as I put my car away, but as I paused in the front hall I saw a stream of light flare from beneath the pantry door.

  “Queer,” I muttered, walking toward the little spot of luminance; “it’s not like Nora to go off to bed with those lights burning.”

  A blaze of brightness blinded me as I pushed back the door. Seated on the kitchen table, a cut loaf of bread and a partially dismembered cold roast pheasant by his side, was Jules de Grandin, a tremendous sandwich in one hand, a glass of Spanish cider bubbling in the other. Obviously, he was very happy.

  “Come in, mon vieux,” he called as soon as he could clear his mouth of food. “I am assembling my data.”

  “So I see,” I answered. “I’ve had a trying evening. Think I’ll assemble some, too. Move over and make room for me beside that pheasant, and pour me a glass of cider while you’re at it.”

  “Mon Dieu,” he murmured tragically, “is it not enough that I come home exhausted, but I must wait upon this person like a slave?” Then, sobering, he told me:

  “I am wiser than I was this morning, and my added wisdom gives me happiness, my friend. Attend me, if you please. First to Monsieur Martin’s I did go all haste, and asked him the condition of the body of that pretty but extremely naughty lady who pursues Monsieur and Madame Taviton. He tells me it showed signs of slight desiccation when they opened up the casket to retrieve the pearls, that it was like any other body which had been embalmed, then sealed hermetically in a metallic case. Is that not encouraging?”

  “Encouraging?” I echoed. “I don’t see how. If a corpse buried eighteen months doesn’t look like a corpse, how would you expect it to look—like a living person?”

  His eyes, wide and serious, met mine above the rim of his champagne glass. “But certainly; what else?” he answered, quite as if I’d asked him whether three and two made five.

  “You recall how I compared myself to an analyst last night? Bon, this is the first step in my analysis. I cannot say with certainty just what we have to fight, but I think that I can say with surety what it is not we find ourselves opposed to. You asked me jestingly if I had thought to find a body seemingly alive and sleeping in that casket. Frankly, I shall say I did. Do you know what that would have portended?”

  “That Martin was either drunk, crazy or a monumental liar,” I answered without hesitation.

  “Non, not at all, unfortunately. It would have meant that we were dealing with a vampire, a corpse undead, which keeps itself sustained by sucking live men’s blood. There lay a dreadful danger, for as you doubtless know, those whom the vampire battens on soon die, or seem to die, but actually they enter in that half-world of the dead-alive, and are vampires in their turn. From such a fate, at least, Monsieur and Madame Taviton are safe. Eh bien, I have but started on my work. It is now incumbent on me to determine what it is we fight. I was considering the evidence when you came in:

  “From what we know of Madame Taviton the first, she was a person of strong passions. Indeed, her whole existence centered on her appetites. It was not for nothing that the Fathers of the Church classed lust among the seven deadly sins. And she had so surrendered to her passions that she might be called one single flaming, all-consuming lust wrapped in a little envelope of charming flesh. Tiens, the flesh is dead, snuffed out of life in all its charm of evil beauty, but the lust lives on, quenchless as the fires of hell. Also hate survives, and hate is a very real and potent force. As yet this evil thing of lust and hate and vanity has not found strength to take material form, but that will come, and soon, I think, and when it comes I fear she will be bent on working mischief. Hatred is a thing that gains in strength while it feeds upon itself.”

  “But according to Taviton she came first as a perfume, then made him feel her fierce sadistic kisses,” I objected. “That’s pretty near materialization, isn’t it?”

  “Near, but not quite,” he answered. “Everything which this one wants she takes. When she came as a perfume she had not strength to make her presence physically felt, but by willing him to smell the scent she turned his thoughts on her. Thoughts are things, my friend, make no mistake concerning that. Once Monsieur Taviton was thinking of her, she was able from the psychoplasm he thus generated to construct the invisible but able-to-be-felt body with which she fondled and caressed him, ever concentrating his thoughts more strongly on her memory, thus gaining greater strength.”

  “I don’t follow you,” I countered. “You say she made him think of her, and merely from that—”

  “Entirely from that, mon vieux. This psychoplasm, which we cannot certainly define any better than we can electricity, is something generated by the very act of thinking. It is to the mind what ectoplasm is to the body. Apparently it is more substantial than mere vibrations from the body, and seems, rather, to be an all-penetrating and imponderable emanation which is rapidly dissipated in the atmosphere, but in certain circumstances may be collected, concresced and energized by the will of a skilled spiritualist medium—or an active discarnate intelligence. Generally in such cases it becomes faintly luminous in a dark room; again, when very strongly concentrated, it may be made the vehicle to transmit force—to hurl a jar of roses or snatch a strand of pearls, by example.”

  “Or to inflict a bite?”

  “Most especially to inflict a bite,” he nodded. “That adds fuel to the ready-blazing fire, more power to the dynamo which already hums with power-generation. The Scriptures speak more categorically than is generally realized when they affirm the blood is the life. With the imbibition of the emanations of big rich, warm blood she gained the strength to make it possible for her to thrust herself between him and his bride upon their wedding night, to choke poor Madame Agnes senseless, and to play the sadist wanton with him after death as she had done so many times in life. But her very wanton wickedness shall put her in our power, I damn think.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She follows such a pattern that her acts can be predicted with a fair degree of certainty. She hates poor Madame Agnes so that she will go to any length to plague her. She stole her pearls, she stole her emeralds. Now the pearls have been recovered. If Madame Agnes were to put them on again, do not you think that she could come and try to repossess them?”

  “It’s p
ossible.”

  “Possible, pardieu? It is more than possible; it is likely!”

  “Well—”

  “Yes, my friend, I think that it is well. Ghostly manifestations, materializations of spirit-forms, are peculiarly creatures of the darkness and the twilight. Bright sunlight seems to kill them as it kills spore-bearing germs. So do certain forms of sound-vibration, the sonorous notes of church bells and of certain kinds of gongs, for instance. High-frequency electric currents, the emanations of radium salt or the terrific penetrative force of Roentgen rays should have the same effect, n’est-ce-pas?”

  “I suppose so, but I can’t say that I understand.”

  “No matter, that is not essential, But if you will wait I’ll show you what I mean before you are much older. Meantime, the hour is late, the bottle empty and I have much to do tomorrow. Come let us go to bed.”

  “ALL IS PREPARED,” HE informed me the next night at dinner. “I had some little difficulty in assembling my armament, but at last I have it all complete. We are ready to proceed at your convenience.”

  “Proceed? Where?”

  “To Monsieur Taviton’s. He telephoned me that the imitation pearls are ready, and—corbleu, I think that we shall see what we shall see tonight!”

  The Tavitons were waiting for us in their drawing-room. Always poised and calm, Agnes nevertheless displayed something of that look of mingled hope and apprehension shown by relatives when someone dear to them has undergone a major operation. Looking at her pleading eyes, I almost expected to hear the old familiar “How is he doing, Doctor?” as I took her hand in greeting. Frazier was plainly on the rough edge of collapse, his movements jerky, eyes furtive, voice sharpened to the point of shrillness.

  “You’re sure that it will work?” he asked de Grandin.

  “As sure as one can be of anything—which is, hélas, not very sure at all,” the Frenchman answered. “However, we can make the effort, eh, my friend?”

  “What—” I began, but he motioned me to silence.

  “Madame,” he bowed to Agnes in his courtly foreign fashion, “you are ready?”

  “Quite, Doctor,” she replied, rising to cross the hall and spin the handles of the wall-safe. The tumblers clicked, the little door fell open, and from the strongbox she removed a long jewel-case of night-black plush. For a moment she regarded it half fearfully, then snapped it open, drew out the strand of gleaming pearls it held and clasped it round her throat.

  “Why, those are surely not an imi—” I began when a brutal kick upon my shin warned me de Grandin wished me to keep silent.

  Scarcely whiter than their wearer’s slender throat, the sea-gems glinted luminously as Agnes joined us in the drawing-room, cast an apprehensive glance around, then sank down in a chair beside the empty fireplace.

  “Brandy or cream?” she asked matter-of-factly, busying herself with the coffee service on the table at her knee.

  “Brandy, s’il vous plaît,” de Grandin answered, rising to receive his cup and snapping off the light-switch as he did so.

  We were playing at the social amenities, but the very air was pregnant with expectancy. The rumble of a motor truck bound for the Hudson Tunnels seemed louder than an earthquake’s roar; the howling of a dog in the next yard was eery as the wailing of a banshee. I could hear the little French-gilt clock upon the mantelpiece beat off the seconds with its sharp, staccato tick, and in the hall beyond the more deliberate rhythm of the floor clock. In my waistcoat pocket I could hear my own watch clicking rapidly, and by concentrating on the varied tempos I could almost make them play a fugue. Autumn was upon us; through the open window came a gust of chilling air, fog-laden, billowing out the silk-net curtains and sending a quick shiver down my neck and spine. De Grandin took a lump of sugar in his spoon, poured brandy over it and set the flame of his briquette against it. It burned with a ghastly, bluish light. The dog in the next yard howled with a quavering of terror, his ululation rising in a long crescendo.

  The strain was breaking me. “Confound that brute—” I muttered, rising from my chair, then cut my malediction off half uttered, while a sudden prickling came into my scalp and cheeks, and a lump of superheated sulfur seemed thrust in my throat. At the farther corner of the room, like a pale reflection of the alcoholic flare which burned above de Grandin’s coffee cup, another light was taking form. It was like a monster pear, or, more precisely, like a giant waterdrop, and it grew bright and dim with slow and pulsing alternations.

  I tried to speak, but found my tongue gone mute; I tried to warn de Grandin with a sign, but could not stir a muscle.

  And then, before I had a chance to repossess my faculties, it struck. Like a shot hurled from a catapult something sprang across the room, something vaguely human in its shape, but a dreadful parody on humankind. I heard Frazier give a startled cry of terror and surprise as the charging horror dropped upon his shoulders like a panther on a stag, flinging him against the floor with such force that his breath escaped him in a panting gasp.

  Agnes’ scream was like an echo of her husband’s startled cry, but the spirit of the little girl who dared the snake to save her youthful sweetheart still burned gallantly. In an instant she was over Frazier, arms outstretched protectingly, eyes wide with horror, but steady with determination.

  A laugh, light, titillating, musical, but utterly unhuman, sounded in the dark, and the visitant reached out and ripped the pearls from Agnes’ throat as easily as if they had been strung on cobweb. Then came the ripping sound of rending silk, the flutter of torn draperies, and Agnes crouched above her man as nude as when the obstetrician first beheld her, every shred of clothes rent off by the avenging fury.

  Birth-nude, across the prostrate body of the man they faced each other, one intent on horrid vengeance, one on desperate defense.

  Agnes’ lissome body was perfection’s other self. From slender, high-arched feet to narrow, pointed breasts and swaying golden hair she was without a flaw, as sweetly made and slender as a marble naiad carved by Praxiteles.

  Her opponent was incarnate horror. Hideous as a harpy, it still was reminiscent of Elaine as an obscene caricature recalls the memory of a faithful portrait. Where red-gold hair as fine as sericeous web had crowned Elaine’s small head, this phantom wore an aureole of flickering tongues of fire—or hair which blew and fluttered round the face it framed in the blast of some infernal superheated breeze. The eyes, which glowed with virid phosphorescence, started forward in their sockets, lids peeled away until it seemed that they had broken with the pressure of the eyeballs. The mouth was squared in a grimace of fury, and the white, curved teeth gleamed pale against the blowzed and staring lips like dead men’s bones drowned in a pool of blood. Fingers, strictly speaking, there were none upon the hands, but a thick and jointless thumb and two bifurcations of the flesh made beast-paws at the end of either wrist, curved claws like vultures’ talons growing at their tips. Upon each heel there grew a horny, spur-like knob, and the knotty-jointed toes were mailed with claws like digits of some unclean carrion fowl. The body was well formed and comely, but the breasts were long and pendulous, like pyriform excrescences hanging half-deflated from the thorax.

  I put my hand across my eyes to shut the horrid vision out, for in an instant I was sure the dreadful, claw-armed thing would tear the quivering flesh from Agnes’ bones as it had rent the clothing from her body.

  A rumbling, like the moving of a heavy piece of furniture, sounded at my back, and as I turned around I saw de Grandin trundling a dental X-ray stand across the floor. As an artillerist prepares his piece for action, the Frenchman swung the lens of his contrivance into line, and next instant came a snapping crackle as the high potential current set the cathode rays to darting through the Crookes’ tube.

  “Ha, Madame la Revenante, you see that Jules de Grandin is prepared!” he announced, the elation of the killer who takes pleasure in his task shining in his small blue eyes and sounding in his voice.

  As the Roentgen ray fell on th
e clawing horror it let out a shriek that pierced my eardrums like a white-hot wire.

  As though the devilish form were painted on the atmosphere and de Grandin held a powerful eraser, it was wiped away—obliterated utterly—while he turned the flanged lens of his apparatus back and forth, up and down, like a gardener directing water from a hose.

  The last faint vestige of the dreadful apparition vanished, and he snapped down the trigger which controlled the current.

  “Look to Madame Agnes, my friend, elle est nue comme la main!” he commanded, rushing from the room to seize the telephone, dial a number in hot haste and call, “Allo, is Monsieur Martin there? Très bien, Monsieur, proceed at once, we wait on you!”

  I advanced a step toward Agnes, mute with sheer embarrassment, but I might have been a chair or sofa, for all the notice she gave me. Unconscious of her nudity as though the very beauty of her body were sufficient raiment, she bent above her husband and clasped his head against her bosom. “My dear,” she murmured crooningly, like a mother who would soothe her fretful babe, “my poor, sweet, persecuted dear, it’s all right now. She’s gone, belovèd, gone for ever; nothing more shall come between us now!”

  “Come away, thou species of a cabbage plant!” de Grandin’s whisper sounded in my ear. “That conversation, it is sacred. Would you eavesdrop, cochon? Have you no delicacy, no decency at all, cordieu?”

  WITH DUE REVERENCE JULES de Grandin raised the bottle with its green-wax seal flaunting the proud N of the Emperor and poured a scant two ounces of the ancient cognac into the bell-shaped brandy snifters. “But it was simple, once I had the cue,” he told me smilingly. “First of all, my problem was to find what sort of thing opposed us. Monsieur Martin’s assurance that the body was a naturally dead one greatly simplified my task. Very well, then, I must proceed not against a vampire or a vitalized corpse but against a thing which had a psychoplasmic body. Ha, that was not so difficult, for I knew all surely that the powerful vibrations of the Roentgen ray would batter it to nothingness if I could but contrive to lure it within range of my machine.