“One comprehends. And where is this gardien de nuit—this how do you call him?—watchman?—if you please?”
“Come here, youse!” Costello bawled, and at the hail a heavy-set, bow-legged man of thirty-five or -six came from the checkroom where evidently he had been in durance. Despite the neat gray uniform he wore, the man reminded me of something simian. His shoulders were enormous, his chest so much developed that it seemed to dwarf his abdomen; his legs were strong and heavy, but bowed almost to the point of deformity; his arms hung down quite to his knees, and his forehead was so low it made his hairline seem to rest upon his brows. As he turned his head to keep his gaze averted from the pale corpse on the door, I saw the telltale cauliflower ear which proclaimed his past experience in the prize ring.
“I wuz goin’ on me rounds, y’understan’,” he said, “just after three o’clock this mornin’—th’ three-ten box is by th’ checkroom door—an’ I had to come through there.” He jerked a thumb across his shoulder toward the panels where the dead girl hung, but kept his eyes averted. “Th’ door’s always kind o’ hard to open, y’understan,’ but tonight seems like it wuz stuck, or sumpin, an’ I has to lean me shoulder to it. Th’ office is out here, an’ th’ first thing that I thinks about is that some yegg is monkeyin’ wid th’ safe an’ one o’ his pals is holdin’ th’ door on me; so I pulls out me rod an’ jams me shoulder agin th’ door wid all me might an’ busts in here. But if they’s anybody here, they’re awful quiet, thinks I; so I flashes me light aroun’, an’ then I sees her hangin’ there—” He paused in his recital and a tremor shook his heavy frame.
“Précisément, you saw her; and then?” de Grandin prompted.
“Then I goes all haywire, I gits so deadly sick I busts out to th’ street an’ pukes; then I beats it for th’ station house. Th’ coppers brung me back, but I don’t know nothin’ about it. Honest to Gawd, I don’t!”
“Did you hear no sounds before you found the body?”
“No, sir. I don’t come on till two o’clock when th’ kitchen gang signs off, an’ dis wuz me first trip roun’ tonight. I starts off down by th’ kitchen an’ storerooms, an’ these doors is pretty thick, an’ wid th’ hangin’s an’ rugs an’ things they has here, you wouldn’t be apt to hear nothin’ much goin’ on in one end o’ th’ place when you wuz at th’ other.”
“Très bien,” de Grandin answered. “You may wait outside, my friend.” To Costello:
“Have you called the others?”
“Yis, sor. There’s a squad car wid Mike Caldes on its way here, now.”
The Frenchman nodded toward the pendent body on the door. “How long has she been dead, Friend Trowbridge?”
“H’m, not very long,” I returned. “There’s no sign of rigor mortis, and scarcely any perceptible clotting of blood around the wounds. No hypostasis apparent. My guess is that she could not have been dead much more than half an hour when the watchman found her.”
He studied the pale body thoughtfully. “Does it not seem to you that there should be more hemorrhage?” he demanded. “Those spikes are blunt and more than half an inch in thickness, and the tissues round the wounds are badly torn; yet I doubt that she has bled as much as fifteen cubic centimeters.”
“Why—er—” I temporized, but he was paying no attention.
Like a tom-cat pouncing on a mouse, he dropped upon his knees and snatched at something lying at the margin of the rug, half hidden by the shadow of the dead girl’s feet. “Tiens, what have we here?” he asked, holding his find up to the light.
“A bat’s wing,” I replied as I looked at it, “but what in heaven’s name could it be doing here?”
“God and the devil know, not I,” he answered with a shrug as he wrapped the leathery pinion in a sheet of notepaper and stowed it in an inner pocket of his jacket.
Stepping softly, almost reverently, he crossed the room and surveyed the body pendent on the door through half-closed eyes, then mounting a chair brushed back the rippling wave of bright, fair hair and put a hand beneath her chin.
“Que diable?” he exclaimed as the back-brushed tresses unveiled the pale, dead face. “What do you make of this, mon vieux?” With a well-groomed forefinger he pointed to the tip of her tongue, which, prolapsed in death, lay across her teeth and hung a quarter-inch or so beyond her lower lip. Against the pale pink of the membrane showed a ruby globule, a little gout of blood.
“Probably the poor child gnashed her tongue in torment when they nailed her to the door,” I hazarded, but:
“No, I do not think so,” he denied. “See, here is the trail of blood”—he pointed to a narrow track of red which marked the center of the tongue—“and besides, her lips have not been injured. She would have bitten them to ribbons in her agony if—ah? Observe him, if you please!”
Lowering the girl’s head he bent it downward on her chest and brushed the hair up from her neck. About three inches from the skull-base showed a tiny cross-shaped wound, its arms a scant half-inch in length. Apparently it had been made by some sharp, square instrument, and from the faintly bluish cast about the edges of the puncture I reasoned that the weapon had been forced deep into the tissues.
“Ritual, pardieu!” he murmured. “It is obvious. Of course, but—”
“What’s obvious?”
“That they hanged her on the door as part of some vile ceremony. She was dead before they touched a hammer to a spike. That drop of blood upon her tongue explains the manner of her death. They drove the lethal instrument clear through her spine, so deeply that it penetrated to her throat. She died instantly and silently; probably painlessly, as well. That accounts for the watchman’s having heard no outcry, and also for the small amount of blood she shed when they pierced her hands and feet with nails.”
“But why?” I asked. “If they’d already killed her, why should they hang her body up like this?”
“That is a question we must answer, but I fear we shall not answer it tonight,” he replied as he stepped down from the chair. “Now, if—”
A blustering bellow drowned his observation as Mike Caldes, flanked by two policemen, bustled through the vestibule.
“What’s this?—what’s all this?” he shouted. “Someone’s broken in my place? Where’s that dam’ lazy watchman? I’ll fire ‘um! Sleepin’ on th’ job an’ lettin’—” Striding forward wrathfully and glowering about him, he was almost face to face with the girl’s body before he saw it.
The change that swept across his fat and swarthy countenance would have been comic if it had not been so terrible. Perspiration spouted on his forehead, trickling down until it formed in little pools above his bushy brows. His jowls hung heavily, like the dewlaps of a hound, and his black eyes widened suddenly and shone with an unnatural brightness, as though they were reacting to a drug. His lips began to twist convulsively and his hands twitched in a perfect paroxysm of abysmal terror. For half a minute he stared mutely at the body; then a dreadful, choking cry, retched from him.
“Santissima Maria!” he sobbed, bending an arm across his eyes to shut the vision out. “Not that—not here—they can’t do this in my place! No—no—no!”
De Grandin bent a fixed, unwinking stare on him. “Be good enough to tell us more, Monsieur,” he ordered. “Who is it that did this thing which could not be accomplished in your place? You were forewarned of this?”
“No!” Caldes gasped. “Not me! I didn’t know—I didn’t think—”
The Frenchman nodded to Costello. “Take him to the office, sergent,” he commanded. “We can talk with more convenience there.”
Turning to an officer he bade: “Have them take her down with gentleness, my friend. Do not let them tear her hands and feet unnecessarily when they withdraw the nails.
“AND NOW, MONSIEUR, WE shall be grateful for such information as you have,” he said to Caldes as we joined Costello in the office. “You may speak with freedom, but you must be truthful, too, for we are most unpleasant fellows to attempt the mon
key business with.”
Caldes’ hands shook so that he had to make a number of attempts before he managed to set fire to his cigar. Finally, when he had drawn a deep whiff of pungent smoke into his lungs: “Read this,” he ordered, drawing a sheet of paper from his pocket and thrusting it into de Grandin’s hand.
“Hace abierto la ventana de su oficina mañana por la noche—leave your office window open tomorrow night,” the missive ordered. It was without signature, but the silhouette of a flying bat was appended to the legend.
“Ha!” exclaimed de Grandin. “La Murciélaga—the she-bat! It was that the poor one babbled in her delirium of fear. What does the message mean?”
Caldes squirmed uncomfortably, looked about the room as though he sought an inspiration from the frankly displayed charms of the photographed young women hanging on the walls, finally:
“I was born in Tupulo,” he answered, and we noticed that his usual boastful manner had departed. “They have societies down there, something like th’ Black Hand they used to have in Italy, only worse. When they say to do a thing you do it, no matter what it is. Down in Yucatan th’ orders of these people always have th’ picture of a bat—a female bat, la Murciélaga—on them. Everyone, from th’ alcalde down, knows what happens when you get a note with th’ picture of a bat signed to it. I’ve been up here twenty years, but when I got that letter yesterday I didn’t ask no questions—I left th’ window open like they said. That’s why I scrammed home early tonight an’ had th’ watchman come on duty late. They didn’t ask for money, or tell me to stay an’ meet ’em, so—”
“An’ I don’t suppose ye had th’ faintest idea what they wuz up to, eh?” Costello interrupted cynically.
“Dios mio, no!” exclaimed the Mexican. “How should I know they wuz goin’ to murder someone, least of all Rita, who’s an American gal, an’ never did a thing to cross ’em, far’s I know?”
“A woman came into the club just as Mademoiselle Rita was finishing her dance; it was then that she was taken ill,” mused Jules de Grandin. “Did you recognize her?”
“Who, me? No, sir. I wuz in th’ bar when Rita pulled her faintin’-fit. I didn’t know about it till they’d took her to her dressin’-room.”
“And did you later recognize anyone whom you knew to be connected with these people of the bat?”
A grimace which might have been intended for a smile, but which bore small family resemblance to it, swept over Caldes’ face, making the knife-scar on his cheek do a macabre dance. “Outsiders don’t know th’ members of th’ bat society,” he responded. “You don’t live long if you ever find out who’s a member, either. But—say, was this dame you’re speakin’ of a tall, dark woman—looked like a princess, or sumpin? If she wuz, I know her—she just blew into town, an’ lives at—
“Jesusito!” the shrill scream broke his words as he leapt from his chair, his face a writhen mask of pain and fright. Frantically he clawed at his throat, as if he slapped at some stinging insect which had lighted there. But it was no insect which he held between his fingers as he waved a trembling hand at us. It was a bit of brownish wood, no longer and no thicker than a match-stick, pointed at the tip and slightly rounded at the base.
I looked at it in mute inquiry, but de Grandin seemed to recognize it, for with a bound he dashed around the desk and seized the stricken man by the shoulders, easing him to the floor. With his thumb and forefinger he seized a fold of the smooth-shaven skin encasing Caldes’ neck and, pinching the tiny wound up, put his lips to it.
“Look out for ’em, Clancy!” Costello roared, dashing to the open window of the office and leaning out to bawl his order down the alley. “Oh, ye would, would ye?”
Snatching the revolver from his shoulder holster he leant across the window-sill and fired two shots in quick succession, and the detonation of his weapon was repeated by a third shot from the alley-mouth. Nimble as a cat despite his bulk, he clambered through the window and went racing down the brick-paved passage.
“Send someone for potassium permanganate,” de Grandin ordered as he raised his head from Caldes’ wounded throat and expelled a mouthful of blood. “Quickly, if you please; we must make haste!”
I hurried to the lobby and dispatched an officer post-haste for the permanganate, then rejoined him in the office.
Caldes lay upon the floor, lips quivering, emitting little whimpering noises. Even as I joined de Grandin he drew his legs up with a sharp, convulsive jerk, then straightened them with a sharp kick, and his heels began to beat the floor with a constantly increasing rhythm. He drew his arms across his breast, clenching his fists together, then threw them out to right and left, bowling de Grandin over and upsetting a bronze smoking-stand which stood beside the desk.
“Ar-wa-ar-war-war!” thickly the choked syllables came from his throat as he fought for breath. The man was dying of asphyxia before our eyes.
We turned him on his face and begin administering artificial respiration, but before we had more than started the man gasped once or twice, shook with a hideous spasm, then went limp beneath our hands.
“Good heavens, what was it?” I asked as de Grandin rose and began matter-of-factly to brush the dust from his knees.
“Kurare poisoning. It was a dart from a soplete, or blow-gun, which struck him in the throat. The thing was poisoned with a strychnos extract which acts like cobra venom, causing death within an hour by paralysis of the respiratory muscles. Had it struck him on a limb we could have used a tourniquet to stop the flow of poison to the blood stream. But no! The dart struck into his external jugular, and the venom spread like wildfire through his system. I think that fright increased its action, too, for he had doubtless seen men die in such a way before, and gave himself no hope when he discovered he was wounded. Usually the poison does not act so quickly—”
“I got ‘im, sor,” announced Costello jubilantly from the doorway. “Bad cess to ‘im, he tried to shoot me wid his bean-blower, so I give ‘im a dose o’ lead poisonin’ an’ Clancy let ‘im have another pill jist for—howly Mither, what’s this?”
“This, my friend, is murder,” answered Jules de Grandin evenly. “It seems he spoke more truly than he realized when he said that those who recognized the members of this gang are seldom troubled by infirmities of age. Come, let us see the other.”
Costello’s victim was an undersized dark man, thin to emaciation, swarthy-skinned, smooth-shaven save for a small black mustache, and dressed impeccably in dinner clothes. A quick search failed to show a single clue to his identity. Nothing but a pack of Violetta cigarettes, ten dollars in bills and change and a book of paper matches occupied his pockets. The maker’s labels had been taken from his clothes, his linen had apparently been worn that evening for the first time; there were no laundry marks upon it. Ten feet or so from where the man had fallen we found a tube of smoothly polished hollow reed some eighteen inches long, and beside it, like a clip of cartridges, a folded sheet of cardboard through which were thrust three four-inch splints of wood like that with which the night-club owner had been wounded. Near the window where it had fallen harmlessly to the pavement lay the dart he had blown at Costello.
“Be careful how you handle them,” de Grandin warned as Officer Clancy picked up the paper clip of darts; “a scratch from them is death!”
“Humph,” Costello murmured as he viewed the body of the murderer, “they wuzn’t takin’ any chances, wuz they, Doctor de Grandin, sor? This felly’s as bare o’ clues as Billy-be-damned. Th’ woman Mike wuz tellin’ us about is our best bet. A dame as sthrikin’ as ye tell me this one wuz ought not to be so hard to locate. If she just blew into town, like Caldes said, an’ if she’s been around enough for him to notice her, she’s likely livin’ at some swank hotel. We’ll put th’ dragnet out for her immejiately, an’ when we find her I’m afther thinkin’ she’ll have some mighty fancy answerin’ to do.”
WE WERE ENJOYING COFFEE and Chartreuse in the study after dinner the next evening when Nora McGinni
s announced: “Sergeant Costello an’ a lady’s here to see yez, sors. Shall I have ’em wait?”
“Not at all; by no means; show them in,” de Grandin bade, and, as the burly Irishman loomed in the doorway, “Welcome, mon sergent; is it news of the strange woman that you bring?”
‘Well, sor, yis an’ no, as th’ felly sez,” Costello answered with a rather sheepish grin as he beckoned to someone behind him. “This here young lady’s got a sthory which may shed some light on last night’s monkey-business.”
The girl who entered at his gesture seemed absurdly small and fragile in comparison to his great bulk, though in fact she was something over middle height. It was not until she took a seat upon the sofa at de Grandin’s invitation that I recognized her as the bubble-dancer at the Caldes cabaret. How a young female who dances naked dresses when she is not working at her trade had never been a subject of my thought, but certainly I was not prepared for any costume such as that our visitor wore. She was almost nun-like in her sheer black dinner dress of marquisette trimmed with tiny ruffles of white organdy, her corsage of gardenias, her small black hat, and her white-kid gloves. She might have been a clergyman’s daughter, or a member of the Junior League, judging from appearances.
“I’m Nancy Meigs,” she told us as she folded white-gloved hands demurely in her lap and looked at us with wide, grave, troubled eyes. “Rita Smith, the girl they killed last night, and I were pals.”
“Smith! Mon Dieu, her name was Smith, and she so beautiful!” de Grandin murmured sadly. “This English, what a language!”
“It was Los Niños de la Murciélaga—the ‘Children of the Bat’—who killed her,” Nancy added. “I was sure—”
“Perfectly, Mademoiselle, and so are we,” de Grandin interrupted, “but who are these sixty-times-accursèd ones, where may they be found, and why, especially, should they kill and crucify a young girl in New Jersey?”
A Rival from the Grave Page 44
