“‘Long life!’—on a coffin lid?”
“But yes. C’est drôle ça,” he agreed. “It seems the heathen in his blindness has hopes of immortality, and does not decorate his tombs with skulls and cross-bones, or with pious, gloomy verses in the Christian manner. However”—he raised his narrow shoulders in a shrug—“we have still the puzzle of this so cold coffin to be solved. Let us be about it, but with caution.”
With more care than the average dentist shows when he explores a tooth, he bored a small hole in the cedar with an auger, pausing every now and then to test the temperature of the small bit against his hand. Some thirty seconds later he leaped back. “I have struck nothingness; the bit is through—stand clear!” he cautioned, and a gentle hissing followed like an echo of his warning as a plume-like jet of feathery remex geysered upward from the coffin lid.
“Carbon dioxide snow!” we chorused, and:
“Tiens, it seems we shall not listen to the angels’ songs immediately,” added Jules de Grandin with a laugh.
The casket followed usual Chinese patterns. Made from a single hollowed log with top and bottom joined by dowels, it was covered with successive coats of lacquer which made it seem an undivided whole, and it was not till we searched some time that we were able to discern the line between the lid and body. A series of small auger-holes was driven in the wood, and with these for starting points we had begun the arduous task of prizing off the heavy lid when the sudden screech of brakes before the house gave warning of a new arrival.
“Take cover!” bade de Grandin, dropping down behind the massive coffin as he drew his pistol. “If they think to carry us by storm we shall be ready for—”
“Michail—Michailovitch, has it come? Proudhon and Matrona are here; we must make haste! Where are you, man?” Rattling at the knob, kicking on the panels, someone clamored at the front door furiously, then, as we gave no sign, burst out in a torrent of entreaty phrased in words that seemed entirely consonants.
De Grandin left his ambush, tiptoed down the hall and shot the bolt back from the door, leaping quickly to one side and poising with bent knees, his pistol held in readiness. The heavy door swung inward with a bang and a young man almost fell across the sill.
“Michail,” he called hysterically, “they’re here; I saw them on the road today. Has it come, Michail—oh, my God!—as he saw the coffin stripped of its enclosures standing in the glaring light from the hall chandelier—“too late; too late!” He stumbled blindly a few steps, slumped down to his knees, then crept across the polished floor, dropping head and hands upon the coffin lid and sobbing broken-heartedly. “Nikakova, radost moya!” he entreated. “Oh, too late; too late!”
“Tenez, Monsieur, you seem in trouble,” de Grandin moved from his concealment and advanced a step, pistol lowered but eyes wary.
“Proudhon!” the stranger half rose from his knees and a look of utter loathing swept his face. “You—” His furious expression faded and gave way to one of wonder. “You’re not—who are you?” he stammered.
“Eh bien, my friend, I think that we might say the same to you,” de Grandin answered. “It might be well if you explained yourself without delay. A murder has been done here and we seek the perpetrators—”
“A murder? Who—”
“Doctor Pavlovitch was murdered something like an hour ago; we are expecting the police—”
“Pavlovitch killed? It must be Proudhon was here, then,” the young man breathed. “Was this coffin like this when you found it?”
“It was not. It came after Doctor Pavlovitch was murdered. We suspected it might be connected with the crime and were about to force it when you came howling at the door—”
“Quick, then! We must take it off before—”
“One moment, if you please, Monsieur. A murder has been done and everyone about the place is suspect till he clears himself. This so mysterious parcel came while we were seeking clues, and neither it not any other thing may be removed until the police—”
“We can’t wait for the police! They wouldn’t understand; they’d not believe; they’d wait until it is too late—oh, Monsieur, I don’t know who you are, but I beg that you will help me. I must remove this coffin right away; get it to a safe place and have medical assistance, or—”
“I am Doctor Jules de Grandin and this is Doctor Samuel Trowbridge, both at your service if you can convince us that you have no criminal intent,” the little Frenchman said. “Why must you rush away this casket which was brought here but a little while ago, and why should you desire to keep its presence hidden from the officers?”
A look of desperation crossed the other’s face. He laid his forehead on the chilly coffin top again and burst into a fit of weeping. Finally: “You are educated men, physicians, and may understand,” he murmured between sobs. “You must believe me when I tell you that unless we take this coffin out at once a terrible calamity will follow!”
De Grandin eyed him speculatively. “I will take the chance that what you say is true, Monsieur,” he answered. “You have a motorcar outside? Good. Doctor Trowbridge will accompany you and guide you to our house. I shall stay and wait until the police have been notified and aid them with such information as I have. Then I shall rejoin you.”
Turning to the servant he commanded: “Help us place this box upon the motor, if you please; then hasten to the nearest neighbor’s and telephone the officers. I await you here.”
WITH THE LONG BOX hidden in the tonneau of his touring-car the young man hugged my rear fender all the way to town, and was at my side and ready to assist in packing the unwieldy case into the house almost before I shut my motor off. Once in the surgery, he crept furtively from one window to another, drawing down the blinds and listening intently, as though he were in mortal fear of spies.
“Well, now, young fellow,” I began as he completed his mysterious precautions, “what’s all this about? Let me warn you, if you’ve got a body hidden in that casket it’s likely to go hard with you. I’m armed, and if you make a false move—” Reaching in my jacket pocket I snapped my glasses-case to simulate—I hoped!—the clicking of a pistol being cocked, and frowned at him severely.
The smile of child-like confidence he gave me was completely reassuring. “I’ve no wish to run away, sir,” he assured me. “If it hadn’t been for you they might have—Jesu-Mary, what is that?” He thrust himself before the red wood coffin as though to shield it with his body as a rattle sounded at the office door.
“Salut, mes amis!” de Grandin greeted as he strode into the surgery. “I am fortunate. The gendarmes kept me but a little while, and I rode back to town with the mortician who brought in the doctor’s body. You have not opened it? Très bon. I shall be delighted to assist you.”
“Yes, let us hurry, please,” our visitor begged. “It has been so long—” a sob choked in his throat, and he put his hand across his eyes.
The wood was heavy but not hard, and our tools cut through it easily. In fifteen minutes we had forced a lengthwise girdle round the box, and bent to lift the lid.
“Nikakova!” breathed the young man as a worshipper might speak the name of some saint he adored.
“Sacré nom d’un fromage vert!” de Grandin swore.
“Good heavens!” I ejaculated.
A coat of hoarfrost fell away in flakes, and beneath it showed a glassy dome with little traceries of rime upon it. Between the lace-like meshes of the gelid veil we glimpsed a woman lying quiet as in sleep. There was a sort of wavering radiance about her not entirely attributable to the icy envelope enclosing her. Rather, it seemed to me, she matched the brilliant beams of the electric light with some luminescence of her own. Nude she was as any Aphrodite sculptured by the master-craftsmen of the Isle of Melos; a cloven tide of pale-gold hair fell down each side her face and rippled over ivory shoulders, veiling the pink nipples of the full-blown, low-set bosoms and coursing down the beautifully shaped thighs until it reached the knees. The slender, shapely feet were c
rossed like those on mediaeval tombs whose tenants have in life made pilgrimage to Rome or Palestine; her elbows were bent sharply so her hands were joined together palm to palm between her breasts with fingertips against her chin. I could make out gold-flecked lashes lying in smooth arcs against her pallid checks, the faint shadows round her eyes, the wistful, half-pathetic droop of her small mouth. Oddly, I was conscious that this pallid, lovely figure typified in combination the austerity of sculptured saint, lush, provocative young womanhood and the innocent appeal of childhood budding into adolescence. Somehow, it seemed to me, she had lain down to die with a trustful resignation like that of Juliet when she drained the draft that sent her living to her family’s mausoleum.
“Nikakova!” whispered our companion in a sort of breathless ecstasy, gazing at the quiet figure with a look of rapture.
“Hein?” de Grandin shook himself as though to free his senses from the meshes of a dream. “What is this, Monsieur? A woman tombed in ice, a beautiful, dead woman—”
“She is not dead,” the other interrupted. “She sleeps.”
“Tiens,” a look of pity glimmered in the little Frenchman’s small blue eyes, “I fear it is the sleep that knows no waking, mon ami.”
“No, no, I tell you,” almost screamed the young man, “she’s not dead! Pavlovitch assured me she could be revived. We were to begin work tonight, but they found him first, and—”
“Halte la!” de Grandin bade. “This is the conversation of the madhouse, as meaningless as babies’ babble. Who was this Doctor Pavlovitch, and who was this young woman? Who, by blue, are you, Monsieur?”
The young man paid no heed, but hastened around the coffin, feeling with familiar fingers for a series of small buttons which he pressed in quick succession. As the final little knob was pressed we heard a slowly rising, prolonged hiss, and half a dozen feathery jets of snowflakes seemed to issue from the icy dome above the body. The room grew cold and colder. In a moment we could see the vapor of our breaths before our mouths and noses, and I felt a chill run through me as an almost overwhelming urge to sneeze began to manifest itself.
“Corbleu,” de Grandin’s teeth were chattering with the sudden chill, “I shall take pneumonia; I shall contract coryza; I shall perish miserably if this continues!” He crossed the room and threw a window open, then leant across the sill, fairly soaking in the moist, warm summer air.
“Quick, shut the lights off!” cried our visitor. “They must not see us!” He snapped the switch with frenzied fingers, then leaned against the door-jamb breathing heavily, like one who has escaped some deadly peril by the narrowest of margins.
As the outside air swept through the room and neutralized the chill, de Grandin turned again to the young man. “Monsieur,” he warned, “my nose is short, but my patience is still shorter. I have had enough—too much, parbleu! Will you explain this business of the monkey now, or do I call the officers and tell them that you carry round the body of a woman, one whom you doubtless foully murdered, and—”
“No, no, not that!” the visitor besought. “Please don’t betray me. Listen, please; try to realize what I say is true.”
“My friend, you cannot put too great a strain on my credulity,” de Grandin answered. “Me, I have traveled much, seen much, know much. The thing which I know to be true would make a less experienced man believe himself the victim of hallucinations. Say on, mon vieux; I listen.”
With steamer rugs draped around our shoulders we faced each other in the light of a small, shaded lamp. Our breath fanned out in vapory cumuli each time we spoke; before us gleamed the crystal-hooded coffin, like a great memento mori fashioned out of polar ice, and as it radiated ever-growing cold I caught myself involuntarily recalling a couplet from Bartholomew Dowling:
And thus does the warmth of feeling
Turn chill in the coldness of death . . .
Till then the rush of action had prevented any inventory of our visitor. Now as I studied him I found it difficult to fit him into any category furnished by a lifetime’s medical experience. He was young, though not as young as he appeared, for pale-blond coloring and slenderness lent him a specious air of youth which was denied by drooping shoulders, trouble-lines about his mouth and deep-set, melancholy eyes. His chin was small and gentle, not actually receding, but soft and almost feminine in outline. The mouth, beneath a scarcely visible ash-blond mustache, suggested extreme sensitiveness, and he held his lips compressed against each other as though the trait of self-suppression had become habitual. His brow was wider and more high than common, his blue eyes almost childishly ingenuous. When he spoke, it was with hesitancy and with a painfully correct pronunciation which betrayed as plainly as an accent that his English came from study rather than inheritance and use.
“I am Serge Aksakoff,” he told us in his flat, accentless voice. “I met Nikakova Gapon when I was a student at the University of Petrograd and she a pupil at the Imperial Ballet Academy. Russia in 1916 was honeycombed with secret liberal societies, all loyal to the Little Father, but all intent on securing something of democracy for a land which had lain prostrate underneath the iron heel of autocrats for twenty generations. Perhaps it was the thrill of danger which we shared; perhaps it was a stronger thing; at any rate we felt a mutual attraction at first meeting, and before the summer ended I was desperately in love with her and she returned my passion.
“Our society numbered folk of every social stratum, workmen, artisans, artists and professional people, but mostly we were students ranging anywhere from twenty to sixteen years old. Two of our foremost members were Boris Proudhon and Matrona Rimsky. He was a tailor, she the mistress of Professor Michail Pavlovitch of the University of Petrograd, who as a physicist was equal to Soloviev in learning and surpassed him in his daring of experiment. Proudhon was always loudest in debate, always most insistent on aggressive action. If one of us prepared a plan for introducing social legislation in the Duma he scoffed at the idea and insisted on a show of force, often on assassination of officials whose duties were to carry out unpopular ukases. Matrona always seconded his violent proposals and insisted that we take direct and violent action. Finally, at their suggestion, we signed our names beneath theirs to a declaration of intention in which we stated that if peaceful measures failed we favored violence to gain our ends.
“That night the officers of the Okhrana roused me from my bed and dragged me to the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. They locked me in a stinking, vermin-swarming cell and left me there three weeks. Then they led me out and told me that because I was but seventeen they had decided to extend me clemency, so instead of being hanged or sent to the Siberian mines with most of my companions I was merely to be exiled to Ekaterinburg for a term of sixty months. During that time I was to be subjected to continuous surveillance, to hold no communication with my family or friends in Russia, and not engage in any occupation without express permission.”
“But you’d done nothing!” I protested. “The paper that you signed declared specifically that you favored peaceful measures; you merely said that if these measures failed—”
Aksakoff smiled sadly. “You didn’t have to be a criminal to be exiled,” he explained. “‘Political unreliability’ was sufficient cause, and the officers of the political police were sole judges of the case. You see, administrative exile, as they called it, was technically not a punishment.”
“Oh, that’s different,” I replied. “If you were merely forced to live away from home—”
“And to make a journey longer than from New York to Los Angeles dressed in prison clothes and handcuffed to a condemned felon, shuffling in irons so heavy that it was impossible to lift your feet, to be fed infrequently, and then on offal that nothing but a half-starved dog—or man—would touch,” he interrupted bitterly. “My only consolation was that Nikakova had been also granted ‘clemency’ and accompanied me in exile.
“The officer commanding our escort came from a family some of whom had also suffered exile, and this
made him pity us. He allowed us to converse an hour a day, although this was prohibited, and several times he gave us food and tea from his own rations. It was from him we learned that Proudhon and Matrona were agents provocateurs of the political police, paid spies whose duty was not only to worm their way into the confidence of unsuspecting children such as we, but to incite us to unlawful acts so we might be arrested and deported.
“Since I had no money and the Government did not care to fee me, I was graciously permitted to take service with a cobbler at Ekaterinburg, and Nikakova was allowed to do work for a seamstress. Presently I found a little cottage and she came to live with me.”
“It must have been some consolation to be married to the girl you loved, even in such terrible conditions—” I began, but the cynicism of the look he gave me stopped my well-meant comment.
“I said she came to live with me,” he repeated. “‘Politicos’ were not permitted marriage without special dispensation from the police, and this we could not get. We had no money to pay bribes. But whatever church and state might say, we were as truly man and wife as if we’d stood before the altar of St. Isaac’s and been married by the Patriarch. We pledged our love for time and all eternity kneeling on the floor of our mean cabin with a blessèd ikon for our witness, and because we had no rings to give each other I took two nails and beat them into circlets. Look—”
He thrust his hand out, displaying a thin band of flattened wire on the second shaft of the third finger.
“She had one, too,” he added, beckoning us to look upon the body in the frost-domed coffin. Through the envelope of shrouding ice we saw the dull gleam of the narrow iron ring upon one of the shapely folded hands.
“In that northern latitude the twilight lasts till after ten o’clock, and my labors with the cobbler started with the sunrise and did not end till dark,” Aksakoff continued as he resumed his seat and lit the cigarette de Grandin proffered. “There is an English saying that shoemakers’ children go unshod. It was almost literally true in my case, for the tiny wage I earned made it utterly impossible for me to purchase leather shoes, and so I wound rags round my feet and ankles. Nikakova had a pair of shoes, but wore them only out of doors. As for stockings, we hadn’t owned a pair between us since the first month of our exile.
A Rival from the Grave Page 63
