“One sees,” de Grandin tapped his cigarette case thoughtfully. “So much I have already gathered from my talks with the trades people. Now tell me, if you can, is this Monsieur All-Unknown a friend of the young Manly’s—the gentleman whose wound from gunshot you dressed this morning?”
“Not that I know,” I answered. “I’ve never seen them together. Manly’s a queer, moody sort of chap, never has much to say to anyone. How Millicent Comstock came to fall in love with him I’ve no idea. He rides well and is highly thought of by her mother, but those are about the only qualifications he has as a husband that I’ve been able to see.”
“He is very strong, that one?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I had to confess.
“Very well, then. Listen at me, if you please. You think de Grandin is a fool, hein? Perhaps yes; perhaps no. Today I do other things than talk. I go to the Comstock lady’s house and reconnoiter. In an ash can I find a pair of patent leather dress shoes, very much scratched. I grease the palm of a servant and find out they belong to that Monsieur Manly. In the trash container I make further researches, and find a white-linen dress shirt with blood on it. It is torn about the cuffs and split at the shoulder, that shirt. It, too, I find, belonged to Monsieur Manly. Me, I am like the dealer in old clothes when I talk with Madame Comstock’s servant. I buy that shirt and those shoes from him. Behold!”
From one of his parcels he drew forth a pair of dress shoes and a shirt and spread them for my inspection as if they were curios of priceless value. “In Paris we have ways of making the inanimate talk,” he asserted as he thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out a bit of folded paper. “That shirt, those shoes, I put them through the degree of the third time, and how they talk to me. Mordieu, they gabble like a pair of spinsters over the teacups!” Opening the paper he disclosed three coarse dull-brown hairs, varying from a half inch to three inches in length.
I looked at them curiously. They might have been from a man’s head, for they were too long and straight to be body-hairs, but their texture seemed too harsh for human growth. “U’m,” I commented noncommittally.
“Précisément,” he grinned. “You cannot classify them, eh?”
“No,” I admitted. “They’re entirely too coarse to have come from Manly’s head. Besides, they’re almost black; his hair is a distinct brown.”
“My friend,” he leaned toward me and stared unwinkingly into my face, “I have seen hairs like that before. So have you, but you did not recognize them. They are from a gorilla.”
“From a gor—man, you’re raving!” I jerked back. “How could a gorilla’s hair get on young Manly’s shirt?”
“You have the wrong preposition,” he corrected. “They were not on his shirt, but in it. Below the neck line, where a bullet had torn through the linen and wounded him. The hairs I found embedded in the dried blood. Look at this garment, if you please”—he held the shirt before me for inspection—“behold how it is split. It has been on a body much too big for it. I tell you, Monsieur Trowbridge, that shirt was worn by the thing—the monster—which killed that pitiful girl dead on the links last night, which attacked the young Maitland a few minutes later, and—which got paint from Madame Comstock’s house on these shoes when it climbed into that house last night.
“You start, you stare? You say to yourself, ‘This de Grandin he is crazy like the April-fish, him!’ Attend me while I prove each step in the ladder:
“This morning, while you were examining young Monsieur Manly’s wound, I was examining both him and his room. On his window sill I noted a few scratches—such scrapes as one who drags his legs and feet might make in clambering across the window ledge. I look out of the window, and on the white-painted side of the house I see fresh scratches in the paint. Also, I find scratch-marks on the painted iron pipe that carries water from the roof in rainy weather. That pipe runs down the corner of the house near Manly’s window, but too far away for a man to reach it from the sill. But if a man has arms as long as my leg, what then? Ah, then he could have made the reach most easily. Yes.
“Now, when I buy those shoes, that shirt, from Madame Comstock’s servant, I note both paint and scratches on the patent leather. Later I compare the paint on the shoes with that on the house-side. They are the same.
“Also I note the shirt, how he is blood-stained and all burst-out, as though the man who wore him suddenly expanded and burst through him. I find beast-hairs in the blood stains on the shirt. So, now, you see?”
“I’m hanged if I do,” I denied.
He bent forward again, speaking with rapid earnestness: “The Comstock servant tells me more when I quiz him. He tells me, by example, that last night the young Manly was nervous, what you call ill at ease. He complained of headache, backache, he felt what he called rotten. Yes. He went to bed early, and his fiancée went to the country club dance without him. The old madame, she, too, went to bed early.
“Ha, but later in the night—at almost midnight—the young man went for a walk, because, he said, he could not sleep. That is what he told the servant this morning, but”—he paused impressively, then went on, spacing his words carefully—“the servant had been up all night with the toothache, and while he heard the young man come in sometime after midnight, he did not hear him leave, as he certainly would have done had he gone out the door.
“And now, consider this: A policeman of the motorcycle tells me he observed the young Manly coming from that Monsieur Kalmar’s house, staggering like one drunk. He wonders, that policeman, if Monsieur Kalmar keeps so much to himself because he sells unlicenced liquor after the saloons are closed. What now, cher collègue? You say what?”
“Damn it!” I exploded. “You’re piecing out the silliest nonsense story I ever heard, de Grandin. One of us is crazy as hell, and I don’t think it’s I!”
“Neither of us is crazy, mon vieux,” he returned gravely, “but men have gone mad with knowing what I know, and madder yet with suspecting what I am beginning to suspect. Will you be good enough to drive me past the house of Monsieur Kalmar?”
A FEW MINUTES’ RUN CARRIED us to the lonely dwelling occupied by the eccentric old man whose year’s residence had been a twelve months’ mystery. “He works late, that one,” de Grandin commented as we drove by. “Observe, the light burns in his workshop.”
Sure enough, from a window at the rear of the house a shaft of bright light cut the evening shadow, and, as we stopped the car and gazed, we could see Kalmar’s bent form, swathed in a laboratory apron, passing and repassing the window. The little Frenchman looked long at the white-draped figure, as if he would imprint its image on his memory, then touched me on the elbow. “Let us go back,” he ordered softly, “and as we go I shall tell you a story.
“Before the war that wrecked the world there came to Paris from Vienna one Doctor Beneckendorff. As a man he was intolerable, but as a savant without parallel. With my own eyes I saw him do things that in an age less tolerant of learning would have brought him to the stake as a wizard.
“But science is God’s tool, my friend. It is not meant that man should play at being God. That man, he went too far. We had to put him in restraint.”
“Yes?” I answered, not particularly interested in his narrative. “What did he do?”
“Ha, what did he not do, pardieu? Children of the poor were found missing at night. They were nowhere. The gendarmes’ search narrowed to the laboratory of this Beneckendorff, and there they found not the poor missing infants, but a half-score ape-creatures, not wholly human nor completely simian, but partaking horribly of each, with fur and hand-like feet, but with the face of something that had once been of mankind. They were all dead, those poor ones, fortunately for them.
“He was adjudged mad as the June-beetle by the court, but ah, my friend, what a mentality, what a fine brain gone bad!
“We shut him up for the safety of the public, and for the safety of humanity we burned his notebooks and destroyed the serums with which he had injecte
d the human babes to turn them into pseudo-apes.”
“Impossible!” I scoffed.
“Incredible,” he agreed, “but not, unfortunately, impossible—for him. His secret entered the madhouse with him; but in the turbulence of war he escaped.”
“Good God,” I cried. “You mean this monster-maker is loose on the world?”
He shrugged his shoulders with Gallic fatalism. “Perhaps. All trace of him has vanished, but there are reports he was later seen in the Congo Belgique.”
“But—”
“No buts, my friend, if you will be so kind. To speculate is idle. We have arrived at an impasse, but presently we may find our way over, under or around it. One favor, if you will be good enough to grant it: When next you attend the young Manly, permit that I accompany you. I would have a few minutes’ talk with Madame Comstock.”
Cornelia Comstock was a lady of imposing physique and even more imposing manner. She browbeat fellow club members, society reporters, even solicitors for “causes,” but to de Grandin she was merely a woman who had information he desired. Prefacing his inquiry with the sort of bow no one but a Frenchman can achieve, he began directly:
“Madame, do you, or did you ever, know one Doctor Beneckendorff?”
Mrs. Comstock gave him a look beside which the basilisk’s most deadly glare would have been languishing. “My good man—” she began as if he were an overcharging taxi driver, but the Frenchman met her cold gaze with one equally frigid.
“You will be good enough to answer me,” he told her. “Primarily I represent the Republic of France; but I also represent humanity. Once more, please, did you ever know a Doctor Beneckendorff?”
Her cold eyes lowered before his unwinking stare, and her thin lips twitched a little. “Yes,” she answered in a voice not much more than a whisper.
“Ah. So. We make progress. When did you know him—in what circumstances? Believe me, you may speak in confidence before me and Dr. Trowbridge, but please speak frankly. The importance is great.”
“I knew Otto Beneckendorff many years ago. He had just come to this country from Europe and was teaching biology at the university near which I lived as a girl. We—we were engaged.”
“And your betrothal, for what reason was it broken, please?”
I could scarcely recognize Cornelia Comstock in the woman who regarded Jules de Grandin with wondering frightened eyes. She trembled as with a chill, and her hands played nervously with the cord of her tortoiseshell pince-nez as she replied: “He—he was impossible, sir. We had vivisectionists, even in those days—but this man seemed to torture poor, defenseless beasts for the love of it. I handed back his ring when he boasted of one of his experiments to me. He positively seemed to gloat over the memory of the poor brute’s sufferings before it died.”
“Eh bien, Madame,” de Grandin shot me a quick glance, “your betrothal, then, was broken. He left you, one assumes, but did he leave in friendship?”
Cornelia Comstock looked as if she were upon the verge of fainting as she whispered, “No, sir. No! He left me with a dreadful threat. I recall his very words—how can I ever forget them? He said, ‘I go, but I return. Nothing but death can cheat me, and when I come back I shall bring on you and yours a horror such as no man has known since the days before Adam.’”
“Parbleu,” the little Frenchman almost danced in his excitement. “We have the key to the mystery, almost, Friend Trowbridge!” To Mrs. Comstock he added, “One more little, so small question, if you please, Madame: Your daughter is betrothed to one Monsieur Manly. Tell me, when and where did she meet this young man?”
“I introduced them,” Mrs. Comstock’s hauteur showed signs of return. “Mr. Manly came to my husband with letters of introduction from an old schoolmate of his—a fellow student at the university—in Capetown.”
“Capetown, do you say, Madame? Capetown in South Africa? Nom d’un petit bonhomme! When was this, if you please?”
“About a year ago. Why—”
“And Monsieur Manly, he has lived with you how long?” his question shut off her offended protest half uttered.
“Mr. Manly is stopping with us,” Comstock answered icily. “He is to marry my daughter next month. And, really, sir, I fail to see what interest the Republic of France, which you represent, and humanity, which you also claim to represent, can have in my private affairs. If—”
“This Capetown friend,” the little Frenchman interrupted feverishly. “His name was what, and his business?”
“Really, I must decline—”
“Tell me!” He thrust forth both his slender hands as if to shake an answer from her. “It is that I must know. Nom d’un fusil! Tell me, at once!”
“We do not know his street and number,” Mrs. Comstock seemed completely cowed, “but his name is Alexander Findlay, and he’s a diamond factor.”
“Bien.” The Frenchman struck his heels together and bowed as if hinged at the hips. “Thank you, Madame. You have been most kind and helpful.”
IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT when the ’phone began to ring insistently. “Western Union speaking,” a girl’s voice announced. “Cablegram for Dr. Jules de Grandin. Ready?”
“Yes,” I answered, seizing pencil and pad from the bedside table, “Read it please.”
“‘No person named Alexander Findlay diamond factor known here no record of such person in last five years. Signed, Burlingame, Inspector of Police.’
“It’s from Capetown, South Africa,” she added as I finished jotting down her dictation.
“Very good,” I answered. “Forward a typed confirmation, please.”
“Mille tonneres!” de Grandin exclaimed as I read the message to him. “This makes the picture-puzzle complete, or very nearly so. Attend me, if you please.”
He leaped across the room and extracted a black-leather notebook from his jacket pocket. “Behold,” he consulted a notation, “this Monsieur Kalmar whom no one knows, he has lived here for ten months and twenty-six days—twenty-seven when tomorrow morning comes. This information I have from a realtor whom I interviewed in my rôle as compiler of a directory of scientists.
“The young Monsieur Manly, he has known the Comstocks for ‘about a year.’ He brought them letters from a schoolmate of Monsieur Comstock who proves to be unknown in Capetown. Parbleu, my friend, from now on Jules de Grandin turns night into day, if you will be so kind as to take him to a gun merchant from whom he may procure a Winchester rifle. Yes,” he nodded solemnly, “it is so. Vraiment.”
TIME DRIFTED BY, DE Grandin going gun in hand each night to keep his lonely vigils, but no developments in the mystery of the Humphreys murder or the attack on Paul Maitland were reported. The date of Millicent Comstock’s wedding approached, and the big house was filled to overflowing with boisterous young folks; still de Grandin kept up his lonely patron—and kept his own counsel.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE wedding day he accosted me as he came down the stairs. “Trowbridge, my friend, you have been most patient with me. If you will come with me tonight I think that I may show you something.”
“All right,” I agreed. “I haven’t the slightest notion what all this folderol’s about, but I’m willing to be convinced.”
A little after twelve we parked the car at a convenient corner and walked quickly to the Comstock place, taking shelter in the shadow of a hedge that marked the boundary of the lawn.
“Lord, what a lovely night!” I exclaimed. “I don’t think I remember ever seeing brighter moonlight—”
“H’m’m’m’m!” His interruption was one of those peculiar nasal sounds, half grunt, half whinny, which none but the true Frenchman can produce. “Attend me, if you please, my friend: No man knows what part Tanit the Moon Goddess plays in our affairs, even today when her name is forgotten by all but dusty-dry antiquaries. This we do know, however; at the entrance of life our appearance is governed by the phases of the moon. You, as a physician with wide obstetrical experience, can confirm that. Also, when the time of exit a
pproaches, the crisis of disease is often governed by the moon’s phase. Why this should be we do not know, but that it is so we know all too well. Suppose, then, the cellular organization of a body be violently, unnaturally, changed, and nature’s whole force be exerted toward a readjustment. May we not suppose that Tanit who affects childbirth and death, might have some force to apply in such a case?”
“I dare say,” I conceded, “but I don’t follow you. Just what is it you expect, or suspect, de Grandin?”
“Hélas, nothing,” he answered. “I suspect nothing, I affirm nothing, I deny nothing. I am agnostic, but also hopeful. It may be that I make a great black lutin of my own shadow, but he who is prepared for the worst is most agreeably disappointed if the best occurs.” Irrelevantly he added, “That light yonder, it shines from Mademoiselle Millicent’s chamber, n’est-ce-pas?”
“Yes,” I confirmed, wondering if I were on a fool’s errand with an amiable lunatic for company.
The merrymaking in the house had quieted, and one by one the lights went out in the upper windows. I had an almost overwhelming desire to smoke, but dared not strike a match. The little Frenchman fidgeted nervously, fussing with the lock of his Winchester, ejecting and reinserting cartridges, playing a devil’s tattoo on the barrel with his long white fingers.
A wrack of clouds had crept across the moon, but suddenly it swept away, and like a floodlight turned on the scene the bright, pearly moonlight deluged everything. “Ah,” my companion murmured, “now we shall see what we shall see—perhaps.”
As if his words had been a cue there echoed from the house a scream of such wild, frenzied terror as a lost soul might emit when summoned to eternal torment. “Ah-ha?” de Grandin exclaimed as he raised his rifle. “Will he come forth or—”
The Horror on the Links Page 3
