The impact was terrific. The jade rang like a smitten gong, a dreadful clang of sound, a shrill, high, wailing note as though it—or the ball of luminosity—had cried out in mortal anguish, a note of tortured outcry that thinned and lengthened to a sickening scream of torment. It hung and quivered in the incense-saturated air for what seemed an eternity, until I could not say if I still heard it or if tortured ear-drums held it in remembrance, and would go on remembering it till madness wiped the recollection out.
The jade was shattered in a thousand slivered fragments and the light-globe was dissolved in vapor thin as cirrous clouds that race before the rushing storm-wind, and blended with the hovering brume of incense. But a foul odor, rank and sickening as the fetor from decaying flesh, spread through the room, blotting out the perfume of the incense, bringing tears to our eyes and retchings to our stomachs.
“Barbe bleu, he had the fragrance of the rotten fish, that one!” exclaimed de Grandin as he raced across the room to fling the windows open and began to fan the air with a bath towel.
I looked at Sylvia. The invading presence had withdrawn and her lovely features were composed and calm. She lay there flaccidly, only the light flutter of her bosom telling us she was alive. I took her wrist between my thumb and forefinger. Her pulse was striking eighty clear-cut beats a minute. Normal. She was well.
They cut the silken bandages from wrists and ankles, drew her green pajamas on and tucked her in beneath the bed-clothes. Then, while I went to order broth and brandy ready for her waking, Wong and de Grandin packed their apparatus in its soft silk swaddling clothes, swept up the bits of shattered jade and drew their chairs up to the bedside.
We sat beside her till the dawnlight blushed across the eastern sky and day, advancing, trod upon the heels of night.
With the coming of the day she wakened. She lay against the heaped-up pillows, warm, relaxed and faintly smiling. One arm was underneath her head and the attitude showed her lines of gracious femininity; charming, tenderly and softly curved. Against the whiteness of the pillows and the counterpane her copper hair and fresh-blown cheeks glowed like an apricot that ripens in the sun.
But when she sat up with a sudden start her lovely color drained away and violet semicircles showed beneath her eyes. The glint of waking laughter that had kindled in her face was stilled and we could see fear flooding in her glance as blood wells through a sodden bandage. She licked dry lips with a tongue that had gone stiff, and her hands fluttered to her mouth in the immemorial, unconscious gesture of a woman sick with mortal terror. “Oh”—she began, and we heard the hot breath press against her words, as if her laboring heart were forcing it against them—“I thought—”
“Do not attempt to do so, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin told her with firm gentleness. “You have been severely ill; this is no time for thought, unless you wish to think of getting well all soon, and of the one who comes tonight—eh bien, my little pigeon, have I not seen it in his eyes? But certainly! Drink this, if you please; then compose yourself to think of Monsieur Georges and the pretty compliments that he will whisper when he sees you lying here so beautiful—and filled to overflowing with returning strength. But certainly; yes, of course!”
WE PAUSED UPON THE Dearborn porch, weary with our vigil, but happy with the happiness of men who see their plans succeed. “How did you do it—” I began, but de Grandin cut my question off half uttered.
“Those things of Doctor Wong’s were ancient things—and good things,” he explained. “For more generations than the three of us have hairs upon our heads they have served the good of mankind—the sacred incense from the very tree beneath which Buddha sat in contemplation, the oil with which the Emperors of China were anointed, the clear, pellucid jade that casts back only good reflections, the candles made from wax of bees that drew their nectar in the very fields in which Gautama walked and preached, and last of all the prayer wheel that has recorded countless holy men’s devout petitions to the Lord of Good—call Him what you will, He is the same in every heart filled with the love of man, whatever name He bears.
“Against these things, and against the ancient formulæ our friend Wong chanted, the evil one was powerless. Parbleu, they drew him forth from her as one withdraws the fish of April from the brooklet with a hook!”
“But,” I ventured doubtfully, “is there a chance he may come back to plague—”
“I hardly think so,” Doctor Wong replied. “He smashed the sacred mirror of pi yü—jade, that is—but in breaking it he also broke himself. You smelled the stench? That was his evil spirit vanishing. For almost countless generations he had occupied the flesh, first in one body then another. Dissolution—putrefaction—was long in overtaking him, but at last it sought him out. No, Doctor Trowbridge, I think the world has seen the last of Dor-je-tshe-ring, ‘The Thunderbolt.’ He has struck down his last victim, he has sucked in his last—”
“Morbleu, I am reminded by your reference to the sucking in!” de Grandin interrupted as he glanced at the small watch strapped on his wrist.
We looked at him in wonder. “Of what are you reminded, little brother?” asked Doctor Wong.
“In fifteen little minutes they will open. If we hurry, we can be among the first!”
“The first? What is it that you want?”
“Three, four, perhaps half a dozen of those magnificent old-fashioned cocktails; those with the so lovely whisky in them. Come, let us hasten!”
Flames of Vengeance
WITH INTENTLY NARROWED EYES, lips pursed in concentration, Jules de Grandin stood enveloped in a gayly flowered apron while he measured out the olive oil as an apothecary might decant a precious drug. In the casserole before him lay the lobster meat, the shredded bass, the oysters, the crab-meat and the eel. Across the stove from him Nora McGinnis, my household factotum and the finest cook in northern Jersey, gazed at him like a nun breathless with adoration.
“Mon Dieu,” he whispered reverently, “one little drop too much and he is ruined, a single drop too few and he is simply spoiled! Observe me, ma petite, see how I drop l’essence de l’olive—”
The door-bell’s clangor broke the silence like a raucous laugh occurring at a funeral service. Nora jumped a full six inches, the olive oil ran trickling from the cruet, splashing on the prepared sea-food in the sauce-pan. Small Frenchman and big Irishwoman exchanged a look of consternation, a look such as the Lord Chancellor might give the Lord Chief Justice if at the moment of anointment the Archbishop were to pour the ampulla’s entire contents on the unsuspecting head of Britain’s new-crowned king. The bouillabaisse was ruined!
“Bring him here!” bade Jules de Grandin in a choking voice. “Bring the vile miscreant here, and I shall cut his black heart out; I shall pull his so vile nose! I shall—”
“Indade an’ ye’ll not,” protested Nora. “’Tis meself as’ll take me hand off’n th’ side of ’is face—”
“I’d better leave you with your sorrow,” I broke in as I tiptoed toward the door. “It’s probably a patient, and I can’t afford to have you commit mayhem on my customers.”
“Doctor de Grandin?” asked the young man at the door. “I’ve a letter to you from—”
“Come into the study,” I invited. “Doctor de Grandin’s occupied right now, but he’ll see you in a minute.”
The visitor was tall and lean, not thin, but trained down to bone and muscle, and his face possessed that brownish tinge which tells of residence in the tropics. His big nose, high cheekbones and sandy hair, together with his smartly clipped mustache, would have labeled him a Briton, even had he lacked the careless nonchalance of dress and Oxford accent which completed his ensemble.
“Jolly good of Sergeant Costello to give me a chit to you,” he told de Grandin as the little Frenchman came into the study and eyed him with cold hatred. “I’m sure I don’t know where I could have looked for help if he’d not thought of you.”
De Grandin’s frigid manner showed no sign of thawing. “What can I do
for you, Monsieur le Capitaine—or is it lieutenant?” he asked.
The caller gave a start. “You know me?” he demanded.
“I have never had the pleasure of beholding you before,” the Frenchman answered. His tone implied he was not anxious to prolong the scrutiny.
“But you knew I was in the service?”
“Naturally. You are obviously English and a gentleman. You were at least eighteen in 1914. That assures one you were in the war. Your complexion shows you have resided in the tropics, which might mean either India or Africa, but you called the sergeant’s note a chit, which means you’ve spent some time in India. Now, if you will kindly state your business—” he paused with raised eyebrows.
“It’s a funny, mixed-up sort o’ thing,” the other answered. “You’re right in saying that I’ve been in India; I was out there almost twenty years. Chucked it up and went to farmin’; then a cousin died here in the province of New Jersey, leavin’ me a mass o’ rock and rubble and about two hundred thousand pounds, to boot.”
The look of long-enduring patience deepened on de Grandin’s features. “And what is one to do?” he rejoined wearily. “Help you find a buyer for the land? You will be going back to England with the cash, of course.”
The caller’s tanned complexion deepened with a flush, but he ignored the studied insult of the question. “No such luck. I’d not be takin’ up your time if things were simple as that. What I need is someone to help me duck the family curse until I can comply with the will’s terms. He was a queer blighter, this American cousin of mine. His great-grandfather came out to the provinces—the States, I should say—without so much as a pot to drink his beer from or a window he could toss it out of; cadet of the family, and all that, you know. He must have prospered, though, for when he burned to death he left half the bally county to his heirs at law, and provided in his will that whoever took the estate must live at least twelve months in the old mansion house. Sort o’ period of probation, you see. No member of the family can get a penny of the cash till he’s finished out his year of residence. I fancy the old duffer got the wind up at the last and was bound he’d show the heathens that their blighted curse was all a lot of silly rot.”
De Grandin’s air of cold hostility had been moderating steadily. As the caller finished speaking he leant forward with a smile. “You have spoken of a family curse, Monsieur; just what is it, if you please?”
An embarrassed look came in the other’s face. “Don’t think that I’m an utter ass,” he begged. “I know it sounds a bit thick when you put it into words, but—well, the thing has seemed to work, and I’d rather not take chances. All right for me, of course; but there’s Avis and the little chap to think of.
“Old Albert Pemberton, my great-grandfather’s brother and the founder of the family in America, left two sons, John and Albert, junior. They were willing enough to pass their year of residence, but neither of ’em finished it. John left two sons, and they died trying to live out the year at Foxcroft. So did their two sisters, and their husbands. The chap I take it from was the younger daughter’s son, and not born on the property. There’s never been a birth in the old manor house, though there have been twelve sudden deaths there; for every legatee attempting to observe the dictates of old Albert’s will has died. Yet each generation has passed the estate down with the same proviso for a year’s residence as condition precedent to inheritance. Seems as if they’re all determined to defy the curse—”
“Mille tourments, this everlasting curse; what is this seven times accursèd curse of which you speak so glibly and tell us absolutely nothing?”
For answer Pemberton reached in his jacket and produced a locket. It was made of gold, slightly larger than an old-time watch, and set with rows of seed-pearls round the edge. Snapping it open, he disclosed two portraits painted with minute detail on ivory plaques. One was of a young man in a tightly buttoned jacket of white cloth, high-collared, gilt-braided, with insignia of some military rank upon the shoulders. Upon his head he wore a military cap shaped something like the képi which the French wore in Algeria about the middle of the Nineteenth Century, hooded in a linen sheath which terminated in a neck-cloth trailing down between his shoulders. Despite the mustache and long sideburns the face was youthful; the man could not have been much more than three and twenty.
“That’s Albert Pemberton,” our visitor announced. “And that’s his wife Maria, or, as she was originally known, Sarastai.”
“Parbleu!”
“Quite so. Lovely, wasn’t she?”
She was, indeed. Her hair, so black it seemed to have the blue lights of a cockerel’s ruff within its depths, was smoothly parted in the middle and brought down each side her face across the small and low-set ears, framing an oleander-white forehead. Her wide-spaced, large, dark eyes and her full-lipped mouth were exquisite. Her nose was small and straight, with fine-cut nostrils; her chin, inclined to pointedness, was cleft across the middle by a dimple. Brows of almost startling black curved in circumflexes over her fine eyes in the “flying gull” formation so much prized by beauty connoisseurs of the early eighteen hundreds. Pearl-set pendants dangled from her ear-lobes nearly to the creamy shoulders which her low-necked gown exposed. One hand was laid upon her bosom, and the fingers were so fine and tapering that they seemed almost transparent, and were tipped by narrow, pointed nails almost as red as strawberries. She was younger than her husband by some three or four years, and her youthful look was heightened by the half-afraid, half-pleading glance that lay in her dark eyes.
“Que c’est belle; que c’est jeune!” de Grandin breathed. “And it was through her—”
Our caller started forward in his chair. “Yes! How’d you guess it?”
I looked at them in wonder. That they understood each other perfectly was obvious, but what it was they were agreed on I could not imagine.
De Grandin chuckled as he noticed my bewilderment. “Tell him, mon ami,” he bade the Englishman. “He cannot understand how one so lovely—morbleu, my friend,” he turned to me, “I bet myself five francs you do not more than half suspect the lady’s nationality!”
“Of course I do,” I answered shortly. “She’s English. Anyone can see that much. She was Mrs. Pemberton, and—”
“Non, non,” he answered with a laugh, “that is the beauty of the tropics which we see upon her face. She was—correct me if I err, Monsieur”—he bowed to Pemberton—“she was an Indian lady, and, unless I miss my guess, a high-caste Hindoo, one of those in whom the blood of Alexander’s conquering Greeks ran almost undefiled. Nest-ce-pas?”
“Correct!” our visitor agreed. “My great-great-uncle met her just before the Mutiny, in 1856. It was through her that he came here, and through her that the curse began, according to the family legend.”
Lights were playing in de Grandin’s eyes, little flashes like heat-lightning flickering in a summer sky, as he bent and tapped our caller on the knee with an imperative forefinger. “At the beginning, if you please, Monsieur,” he bade. “Start at the beginning and relate the tale. It may help to guide us when we come to formulate our strategy. This Monsieur Albert Pemberton met his lady while he served with the East India Company in the days before the Sepoy Mutiny. How was it that he met her, and where did it occur?”
Pemberton smiled quizzically as he lighted the cigar the Frenchman proffered. “I have it from his journal,” he replied. “They were great diarists, those old boys, and my uncle rated a double first when it came to setting down the happenings of the day with photographic detail. In the fall of ’56 he was scouting up Bithoor way with a detail of North Country sowars—mounted troops, you know—henna-bearded, swaggering followers of the Prophet who would cheerfully have slit every Hindoo throat between the Himalayas and the Bay of Bengal. They made temporary camp for tiffin in a patch of wooded land, and the fires had just been lighted underneath the troopers’ cook-pots when there came a sort of ominous murmur from the roadway which wound past the woodland toward the rive
r and the burning-ghats beyond. Little flickers of the flame that was about to burst into a holocaust next year were already beginning to show, and my uncle thought it best to take no chances; so he sent a file of troopers with a subadar to see what it was all about. In ten or fifteen minutes they came back, swearing such oaths as only Afghan Mussulmans can use when speaking of despised Hindoos.
“‘Wah, it is a burning, Captain Sahib,’ the subadar reported. ‘The Infidels—may Allah make their faces black!—drag forth a widow to be burnt upon her husband’s funeral pyre.’
“Now the British Raj forbade suttee in 1829, and made those taking any part in it accessories to murder. Technically, therefore, my uncle’s duty was to stop the show, but he had but twenty sowars in his detail, and the Hindoos probably would number hundreds. He was, as you Americans say, in a decided spot. If he interfered with the religious rite, even though the law forbade it, he’d have a first-class riot on his hands, and probably lose half of his command, if the whole detail weren’t massacred. Besides, his orders were to scout and bring reports in to the Residency, and he’d not be able to perform his mission if he lost too many men, or was killed in putting down a riot. On the other hand, here was a crime in process of commission under his immediate observation, and his duty was to stop it, so—”
“Morbleu, one understands!” de Grandin chuckled. “He was, as one might say, between the devil and the ocean. What did he do, this amiable ancestor of yours, Monsieur? One moment, if you please—” he raised his hand to shut off Pemberton’s reply. “I make the wager with myself. I bet me twenty francs I know the answer to his conduct ere you tell it. Bon, the wager is recorded. Now, if you please, proceed.”
A Rival from the Grave Page 58
