“Good, then. Madame Elaine is cruel, vicious, lustful. Also she is panting for revenge on Madame Agnes, and perhaps she tires of making savage love to Monsieur Frazier, and will do him violence, too. So I contrive my plan. With an imitation of the pearls we lured her to the house. She comes, all fitted with fury to wreak a horrid vengeance on Monsieur and Madame Taviton. She strikes, mon Dieu, how savagely she strikes! But so do I, by blue! I have rented from the dental dépôt a small X-ray apparatus, one which can be aimed as though it were a gun. When her fierce specter rises in our midst I meet it with my X-ray fire. I wither her, I break her up, parbleu, I utterly destroy her, me!
“Meanwhile, I have arrangements made with Monsieur Martin. He has disinterred her body, has it ready at the crematory, waiting my instructions. The minute I have triumphed with my X-ray gun, I call him on the telephone. Immediately into the retort of the crematory goes all that is mortal of Madame Elaine. Into nothingness goes that spirit-form she has constructed with such labor. Body and spirit, she is through, completed; finished! Yes, it is so.”
“But d’ye mean to tell me you can destroy a ghost with Roentgen rays?” I asked incredulously.
“Tell me, my friend,” he answered earnestly, “were you in the Taviton drawing-room this evening?”
“Why, of course, but—”
“And did you see what happened when I turned the X-ray on that spectral horror?”
“I did, but—”
“Then why ask foolish questions? Are not your own two eyes sufficient witnesses?”
Silenced, I ruminated for a moment; then: “Elaine was beautiful,” I mused aloud, “yet that thing we saw tonight was—”
“The death mask of her soul!” he supplied. “The body she was born into was beautiful, but her soul and mind were hideous. When she was no longer able to dwell in her natural body, she made herself a second body out of psychoplasm. And it matched the mind which fashioned it as a plastic cast will duplicate the model to which it is applied. The creature which the world saw while she was in the flesh was a false-face, the whitewashed outside of the reeking charnel which was she. Tonight we saw her as she truly was. Tiens, the sight was not a pretty one, I think.”
“But—”
“Ah bah!” he interrupted with a yawn. “Why speculate? I have told you all I know, and much that I surmise. Me, I am tired as twenty horses. Let us take a drink and go to sleep my friend. What greater happiness can life give tired men?”
Witch-House
STREET LIGHTS WERE COMING on and the afterglow was paling in the west beneath the first faint stars as we completed our late dinner and moved to the veranda for coffee and liqueurs. Sinking lazily into a wicker deck chair, Jules de Grandin stretched his womanishly small feet out straight before him and regarded the gleaming tips of his brightly polished calfskin pumps with every evidence of satisfaction.
“Morbleu,” he murmured dreamily as he drained his demitasse and set his cigar glowing before he raised his tiny glass of kaiserschmarnn, “say what you will, Friend Trowbridge, I insist there is no process half so pleasant as the combination of digestion and slow poisoning by nicotine and alcohol. It is well worth going hungry to enjoy—ah, pour l’amour d’une souris verte, be quiet, great-mouthed one!” he broke off as the irritable stutter of the ’phone bell cut in on his philosophizing. “Parbleu, the miscreant who invented you was one of humankind’s worst enemies!”
“Hullo, Trowbridge,” hailed a voice across the wire, “this is Friebergh. Sorry to trouble you, but Greta’s in bad shape. Can you come out right away?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” I replied, not especially pleased at having my postprandial breathing-spell impinged on by a country call. “What seems to be the matter?”
“I wish I knew,” he answered. “She just came home from Wellesley last week, and the new house seemed to set her nerves on edge. A little while ago her mother thought she heard a noise up in her bedroom, and when she went in, there was Greta lying on the floor in some sort of fainting-fit. We don’t seem able to rouse her, and—”
“All right,” I interrupted, thinking regretfully of my less than half-smoked cigar, “I’ll be right out. Keep her head low and loosen any tight clothing. If you can make her swallow, give her fifteen drops of aromatic ammonia in a wine-glassful of water. Don’t attempt to force any liquids down her throat, though; she might strangle.”
“And this Monsieur Friebergh was unable to give you any history of the causal condition of his daughter’s swoon?” de Grandin asked as we drove along the Albemarle Road toward the Friebergh place at Scandia.
“No,” I responded. “He said that she’s just home from college and has been nervous ever since her arrival. Splendid case history, isn’t it?”
“Eh bien, it is far from being an exhaustive one, I grant,” he answered, “but if every layman understood the art of diagnosis we doctors might be forced to go to work, n’est-ce-pas?”
THOUGH GRETA FRIEBERGH HAD recovered partial consciousness when we arrived, she looked like a patient just emerging from a lingering fever. Attempts to get a statement from her met with small response, for she answered slowly, almost incoherently, and seemed to have no idea concerning the cause of her illness. Once she murmured drowsily, “Did you find the kitten? Is it all right?”
“What?” I demanded. “A kitten—”
“She’s delirious, poor child,” whispered Mrs. Friebergh. “Ever since I found her she’s been talking of a kitten she found in the bathroom.
“I thought I heard Greta cry,” she added, “and ran up here to see if she were all right. Her bedroom was deserted, but the bathroom door was open and I could hear the shower running. When I called her and received no answer I went in and found her lying on the floor. She was totally unconscious, and remained so till just a few minutes ago.”
“U’m?” murmured Jules de Grandin as he made a quick inspection of the patient, then rose and stalked into the bathroom which adjoined the chamber. “Tell me, Madame,” he called across his shoulder, “is it customary that you leave the windows of your bathroom screenless?”
‘“Why, no, of course not,” Mrs. Friebergh answered. “There’s an opaque screen in—good gracious, it’s fallen out!”
The little Frenchman turned to her with upraised brows. “Fallen, Madame? It was not fastened to the window-casing, then?”
“Yes, it was,” she answered positively. “I saw to that myself. The carpenters attached it to the casing with two bolts, so that we could take it out and clean it, but so firmly that it could not be blown in. I can’t understand—”
“No matter,” he broke in. “Forgive my idle curiosity, if you please. I’m sure that Doctor Trowbridge has completed his examination, now, so we can discuss your daughter’s ailment with assurance.”
To me he whispered quickly as the mother left the room: “What do you make of the objective symptoms, mon ami? Her pulse is soft and frequent, she has a fluttering heart, her eyes are all suffused, her skin is hot and dry, her face is flushed and hectic. No ordinary fainting-fit, you’ll say? No case of heat-prostration?”
“No-o,” I replied as I shook my head in wonder, “there’s certainly no evidence of heat-prostration. I’d be inclined to say she’d suffered an arterial hemorrhage, but there’s no blood about, so—”
“Let us make a more minute examination,” he ordered, and rapidly inspected Greta’s face and scalp, throat, wrists and calves, but without finding so much as a pin-prick, much less a wound sufficient to cause syncope.
“Mon Dieu, but this is strange!” he muttered. “It has the queerness of the devil, this! Perhaps she bled internally, but—ah-ha, regardez-vous, mon vieux!”
Searching further for some sign of wound, he had unfastened her pajama jacket, and the livid spot he pointed to seemed the key which might unlock the mystery that baffled us. Against the smooth white flesh beneath the gentle swell of her left breast there showed a red and angry patch, such as might have shone had a vacuum cup been press
ed some time against the skin, and in the center of the ecchymosis were four tiny punctures spaced so evenly apart that they seemed to make an almost perfect square three-quarters of an inch or so in size.
The discolored spot with its core of tiny wounds seemed insignificant to me, but the little Frenchman looked at it as though he had discovered a small, deadly reptile coiled against the girl’s pale skin.
“Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu!” he murmured softly to himself. “Can such things be here, in New Jersey, in the twentieth centennial of our time?”
“What are you maundering about?” I asked him irritably, “She couldn’t possibly have lost much blood through these. Why, she seems almost drained dry, yet there’s not a spot of blood upon those punctures. They look to me like insect bites of some kind; even if they were wide open they’re not large enough to leak a cubic centimeter of blood in half an hour.”
“Blood is not entirely colloidal,” he responded slowly. “It will penetrate the tissues to some slight extent, especially if sufficient suction be employed.”
“But it would have required a powerful suction—”
“Précisément, and I make no doubt that such was used, my friend. Me, I do not like the look of this at all. No, certainly.” Abruptly he raised his shoulders in a shrug. “We are here as physicians,” he remarked. “I think a quarter-grain of morphine is indicated. After that, bed-rest and much rich food. Then, one hopes, she will achieve a good recovery.”
“HOW IS SHE, TROWBRIDGE?” Olaf Friebergh asked as we joined him in the pleasant living-room. He was a compact, lean man in his late fifties, but appeared younger, and the illusion of youth was helped by the short mustache, still quite dark, the firm-cheeked, sunburned face and hazel eyes which, under clear-cut brows, had that brightness which betokens both good health and an interest in life.
“Why, there’s nothing really serious the matter,” I answered. “She seems quite weak, and there’s something rather queer—”
“There’s something queer about the whole dam’ case,” he cut in almost bruskly. “Greta’s been on edge since the moment that she came here; nervous as a cat and jumpy and irritable as the very devil. D’ye suppose hysteria could have caused this fainting-fit?”
De Grandin eyed him speculatively a moment; then: “In just what way has Mademoiselle Greta’s nervousness been noticeable, Monsieur?” he asked. “Your theory of hysteria has much to recommend it, but an outline of the case might help us greatly toward a diagnosis.
Friebergh stirred his highball thoughtfully a moment; then, “D’ye know about this house?” he asked irrelevantly.
“But no, Monsieur; what has it to do with Mademoiselle your daughter?”
“Just what I’m wondering,” Friebergh answered. “Women are weird brutes, Doctor, all of ’em. You never know what fool tricks nerves will play on ’em. This place belonged to one of my remotest ancestors. You’re probably aware that this section was originally settled by the Swedes under William Usselinx, and though the Dutch captured it in 1655 many of the Swedish settlers stayed on not caring much who governed them as long as they were permitted to pursue their business in peace. Oscar Friebergh my great-great-grandfather’s half-brother, built this house and had his piers and warehouses down on Raritan Bay. It was from here he sent his ships to Europe and even to the Orient, and to this house he brought the girl he married late in life.
“Theirs was quite a romance. Loaded with silks and wine, the Good Intent, my uncle’s fastest ship, put in at Portugal for a final replenishment of victuals and water before setting sail for America on the last Sunday in June, 1672. The townsfolk were making holiday, for a company of witches and wizards, duly convicted by ecclesiastical courts, had been turned over to the secular arm for execution, and a great fire had been kindled on the Monte Sao Jorge. My uncle and the master of the ship, together with several of the seamen, were curious to see what was going on, so they ascended the hill where, surrounded by a cordon of soldiers, a perfect forest of stakes had been set up, and to each of these were tied two or three poor wretches who writhed and shrieked as the faggots round their feet took fire. The tortured outcasts’ screams and the stench of burning flesh fairly sickened the Swedish sailors, and they were turning away from the accursed place to seek the clear air of the harbor when my uncle’s attention was attracted to a little girl who fought desperately with the soldiers to break through to the flaming stakes. She was the daughter of a witch and a warlock who were even then roasting at the same stake, chained back to back as they were said to dance at meetings of the witches’ coven. The soldiers cuffed her back good-naturedly, but a Dominican friar who stood by bade them let her through to burn, since, being of the witch-folk, her body would undoubtedly burn soon or later, just as her soul was doomed to burn eternally. The sailormen protested vigorously at this, and my uncle caught the wild girl by the wrists and drew her back to safety.
“She was a thin little thing, dressed in filthy rags, half starved, and unspeakably dirty. In her arms she clutched a draggled-looking white kitten which arched its back and fluffed its tail and spat venomously at the soldiers and the priest. But when my uncle pulled the girl to him both child and kitten ceased to struggle, as if they realized that they had found a friend. The Spanish priest ordered them away with their pitiful prize, saying she was born of the witchpeople and would surely grow to witchcraft and work harm to all with whom she came in contact, but adding it was better that she work her wicked spells on Englishmen and heretics than on true children of the Church.
“My, uncle lifted the child in his arms and bore her to the Good Intent, and the moment that he set her down upon the deck she fell upon her knees and took his hands and kissed them and thanked him for his charity in a flood of mingled Portuguese and English.
“For many days she lay like death, only occasionally jumping from her bunk and screaming, ‘Padre, Madre—el fuego! el fuego!’ then falling back, hiding her face in her hands and laughing horribly. My uncle coaxed and comforted her, feeding her with his own hands and waiting on her like a nurse; so by degrees she quieted, and long before they raised the coast of Jersey off their bow she was restored to complete health and, though she still seemed sad and troubled, her temper was so sweet and her desire to please everybody so apparent that every man aboard the ship, from cabin boy to captain, was more than half in love with her.
“No one ever knew her real age. She was very small and so thin from undernourishment that she seemed more like a child than a young woman when they brought her on the Good Intent. None of the seamen spoke Portuguese, and her English was so slight that they could not ask her about her parents or her birthplace while she lay ill, and when she had recovered normal health it seemed her memory was gone; for though she took to English with surprising aptitude, she seemed unable to remember anything about her former life, and for kindness’ sake none would mention the auto da fé in which her parents perished. She didn’t even know her name, apparently, so my uncle formally christened her Kristina; using the Lutheran baptismal ceremony, and for surname chose to call her Beacon as a sort of poetical commemoration of the fire from which he saved her when her parents had been burnt, It seems she—”
“My dear chap,” I broke in, “this is an interesting story, I’ll admit, but what possible connection can it have with—”
“Be silent, if you please, my friend,” de Grandin ordered sharply. “The connection which you seek is forming like the image as the sculptor chips away the stone, or I am a far greater fool than I have reason to suspect. Say on, Monsieur,” he ordered Friebergh, “this story is of greater import than you realize, I think. You were informing us of the strange girl your uncle-several-times-removed had rescued from the Hounds of God in Portugal?”
Friebergh smiled appreciation of the little Frenchman’s interest. “The sea air and good food, and the genuine affection with which everyone on shipboard regarded her had made a great change in the half-starved, half-mad little foundling by the time the Good I
ntent came back to Jersey,” he replied. “From a scrawny little ragamuffin she had grown into a lovely, blooming girl, and there’s not much doubt the townsfolk held a carnival of gossip when the Good Intent discharged the beautiful young woman along with her cargo of Spanish wines and French silks at the quay.
“Half the young bloods of the town were out to court her; for in addition to her beauty she was Oscar Friebergh’s ward, and Oscar Friebergh was the richest man for miles around, a bachelor and well past fifty. Anyone who got Kristina for his wife would certainly have done himself a handsome favor.
“Apparently the girl had everything to recommend her, too. She was as good and modest as she was lovely, her devoutness at church service was so great it won the minister’s unstinted praise, her ability as a housekeeper soon proved itself, and my uncle’s house, which had been left to the casual superintendence of a cook and staff of Negro slaves, soon became one of the best kept and most orderly households in New Jersey. No one could get the better of Kristina in bargain. When cheating tradesmen sought to take advantage of her obvious youth and probable inexperience, she would fix her great, unfathomable eyes on them, and they would flush and stammer like schoolboys caught in mischief and own their fault at once. Besides her church and household duties she seemed to have no interest but my uncle, and the young men who came wooing met with cool reception. Less than a year from the day she disembarked, the banns for her wedding to my uncle were posted on the church door, and before the gossip which her advent caused had time to cool, she was Mistress Friebergh, and assumed a leading place in the community.
“For nineteen years they lived quietly in this house, and while my uncle aged and weakened she grew into charming, mature womanhood, treating the old man with a combination of wifely and daughterly devotion, and taking over active management of his affairs when failing sight and memory rendered him incompetent.”
A Rival from the Grave Page 39
