“Ha, do you say so?” de Grandin’s small eyes lit up expectantly. “You interest me. Assuredly you shall have such help as I can provide. Come let us enter; together we shall shake the facts from this mystery of yours as a mother shakes the stolen cookies from her enfant’s blouse, by blue!”
WILLIS RICHARDS, FINANCIAL NABOB of our small sub-metropolitan community, stood on the hearth rug of his library, a living testimonial to the truth of the axiom that death makes all men equals. For all his mop of white hair, his authoritative manner and imposing embonpoint, he was only a bereft and bewildered old man, unable to realize that in his wife’s death he had encountered something not to be remedied by his signature on a five-figured check.
“Well, Sergeant,” he asked with a pitiful attempt at his usual brusque manner, as he recognized Costello at de Grandin’s elbow, “have you found out anything?”
“No, sir,” the policeman confessed, “but here’s Dr. de Grandin of Paris, France, and he can help us out if anyone can. He’s done some mighty fine work for us before, and—”
“A French detective!” Richards scoffed. “D’ye need to get a foreigner to help you find some stolen property? Why—”
“Monsieur!” de Grandin’s angry protest brought the irate financier’s expostulation to an abrupt halt, “you do forget yourself. I am Jules de Grandin, occasionally connected with the Service de Sûreté, but more interested in the solution of my cases than in material reward.”
“Oh,” Mr. Richards’ disgust deepened, “an amateur, eh? Costello, I’m ashamed of you, bringing a dabbler into my private affairs. By George, I’ll telephone the Blynn Agency and take the whole case out o’ your hands!”
“One moment, Mr. Richards,” I broke in, relying on my position as family physician to lend strength to my statement. “This gentleman is Dr. Jules de Grandin of the Sorbonne, one of Europe’s foremost criminologists and one of the world’s greatest scientists. Criminal investigation is a phase of his work, just as military service was a phase of George Washington’s; but you can no more compare him with professional detectives than you can compare Washington with professional soldiers.”
Mr. Richards looked from de Grandin to me, then back again. “I’m sorry,” he confessed, extending his hand to the little Frenchman, “and I shall be very grateful for any help that you can give me, sir.”
“To be entirely frank,” he motioned us to seats and began pacing the floor restlessly, “Mrs. Richards’ death was not quite so natural as Dr. Trowbridge believes. Though it’s true she had been suffering from heart disease for some time, it was not heart disease alone that caused her death. She was scared to death. Literally.
“I returned from New York, where I’d been attending a banquet of my alumni association, about two o’clock day before yesterday morning. I let myself in with my latch key and went directly to my room, which adjoined my wife’s. I was beginning to undress when I heard her call, and ran into her bedroom just in time to see her fall to the floor, clutching at her throat and trying to say something about a hand.”
“Ah?” de Grandin regarded our host with his sharp cat-stare. “And then, Monsieur?”
“And then I saw—well, fancied I saw—something drift across the room, about level with my shoulders, and go out the window. I ran over to my wife, but when I reached her she was dead.”
The little Frenchman made small deprecating sounds while he looked at his well cared for nails, but otherwise he made no comment.
Richards gave him an annoyed look as he continued. “It was not till this morning that I discovered all my wife’s jewels and about twenty thousand dollars worth of unregistered securities had disappeared from the wall safe in her room.
“Of course,” he concluded, “I didn’t really see anything in the air when I ran from my room. That’s palpably absurd.”
“Quite obviously,” I agreed.
“Sure,” Costello nodded.
“Not at all,” de Grandin denied, shaking his head vigorously. “It is entirely possible your eyes did not deceive you, Monsieur. Tell us, what was it you saw?”
Mr. Richards’ annoyance deepened to exasperation. “It looked like a hand,” he snapped. “A hand with four or five inches of wrist attached to it, and no body. D’ye mean to tell me I saw anything like that?”
“Quod erat demonstrandum,” the Frenchman replied softly.
“What say?” demanded Richards testily.
“I said this is a truly remarkable case, Monsieur.”
“Well, d’ye want to take a look at my wife’s room?” Mr. Richards turned to lead the way upstairs, but again de Grandin shook his head.
“Not at all, Monsieur. The good Sergeant Costello has already seen it, he can tell me all I need to know. Me, I shall look elsewhere for the confirmation of a possible theory.”
Mr. Richards’ white thatch fairly bristled. “I’ll give you forty-eight hours to accomplish something—you and Costello. Then I’ll call up the Blynn Agency and see what real detectives can do for me.”
“You are more than generous in your allowance, Monsieur,” de Grandin replied icily.
To me, as we left the house, he confided, “I should greatly enjoy pulling that one’s fat nose, Friend Trowbridge.”
“CAN YOU COME OVER to my house at once, Doctor?” a voice hailed me as de Grandin and I entered my office.
“Why, what’s the matter, Mr. Kinnan?” I asked as I recognized the visitor.
“Huh! What isn’t the matter, Doctor? My wife’s been in hysterics since this morning, and I’m not sure I shouldn’t ask you to commit me to the asylum.”
“Pardieu, Monsieur,” de Grandin exclaimed, “this statement, he is vastly interesting, but not particularly enlightening. You will explain yourself, n’est-ce-pas?”
“Explain? What d’ye mean? How am I going to explain a thing I know’s impossible? At twenty minutes after five this morning my wife and I saw something that wasn’t there, and saw it take the Lafayette cup, to boot!”
“Sacré nom d’un petit porc!” de Grandin swore. “What is it that you say? You saw a thing that was not there and saw it take a cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette? Non, non, non! Not you, but I am of the deranged mind. Friend Trowbridge, look to me. I hear remarks this gentleman has not made!”
In spite of his own trouble Kinnan laughed at the little Frenchman’s tragic face. “I’ll be more explicit,” he promised. “The baby was fretful the entire early part of last evening, and we didn’t get to sleep till well after midnight. Along about five this morning he woke up on another rampage, and my wife and I went to the nursery to see what we could do. Our maid had gone to New York for the night, and as usual there wasn’t a drop of milk ready for the youngster, so I started to pasteurize some for him in the dining room chafing dish. I can place the time exactly, for the library clock has been running erratically of late and only yesterday I’d gotten it so it ran just ten minutes fast. Well, that clock had just struck half-past five when—like an echo of the gong—there came a crash at the window, and the pane was shattered, right before our eyes.”
“U’m?” observed de Grandin noncommittally.
“Right before our eyes, gentlemen. By a hammer.”
“Ah?” de Grandin’s interest in the narrative seemed something less than breathless.
“And whether you believe me or not, that hammer was held in a hand—a woman’s hand—and that was all! No arm, no body; just a hand—a hand that smashed that windowpane with a hammer and floated through the air as if it were attached to an invisible body, right across the room to the cabinet where the Lafayette cup was. It unlatched the cabinet door, took the cup out and floated out the window with it. How’s that for a pipe-dream? The only trouble with it is it’s true!”
“Ah? Ah-ha-ha?” de Grandin exclaimed on a rising accent.
“Oh, I don’t expect you to believe me. I’d say anyone who told me such a wild tale was a candidate for the bughouse, but—”
“Au contraire, Mon
sieur,” de Grandin denied, “I do believe you. For why? Because, mordieu, that same hand-without-body was seen at Monsieur Richards’ house the night his wife died.”
“Eh? The devil!” This time it was Kinnan who looked skeptical. “You say someone else saw that hand. Wh—why, they couldn’t!”
“Of course not,” agreed Jules de Grandin evenly. “Nevertheless, they did, and there is reason to suspect it made away with jewellery and securities. Now tell me, if you please, this Lafayette cup, what was it?”
“It’s a silver wine goblet that belonged to my great, great-grandfather, sir. Intrinsically I don’t suppose it worth more than thirty or forty dollars, but it’s valuable to us as an heirloom because Lafayette drank out of it while he was on his second visit to this country. I’ve been offered up to a thousand dollars for it by collectors.”
De Grandin beat his fingertips together in a nervous tattoo. “This are a most unusual burglar we have here, mes amis. He has a hand, but no body; he enters sick ladies’ bedrooms and frightens them to death; he breaks honest men’s windows with a hammer and steals away the cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette while they heat milk for their babies. Cordieu, he will bear investigation, this one!”
“You don’t believe me,” Kinnan declared, half truculently, half shamefacedly.
“Have I not said I do?” the Frenchman answered almost angrily. “When you have seen such things as I have seen, Monsieur—parbleu, when you have seen one half as much!—you will learn to believe many things that fools declare impossible.
“This hammer”—he rose, almost glaring at Kinnan, so intense with his stare—“Where is he? I would see him, if you please.”
“It’s over at the house,” our visitor replied, “lying right where it fell when the hand dropped it. Neither Dorothy nor I would touch it for a farm.”
“Tremendous, gigantic, magnificent!” de Grandin ejaculated, nodding vigorously as he shot out each adjective. “Come, my friends, let us hasten, let us fly. Trowbridge, my old friend, you shall attend the so excellent Madame Kinnan while I go upon the trail of this bodiless burglar, and it shall be a matter of remarkableness if I do not find him. Morbleu, Monsieur le Fantôme, when you slay poor Madame Richards with fright, that is one thing; when you steal Monsieur Kinnan’s cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette, that is also one thing, but when you think to thumb your invisible nose at Jules de Grandin—parbleu, that is entirely something else! We shall see who makes a monkey out of whom, and that without unnecessary delay.”
The hammer proved to be an ordinary one, with nickel head and imitation ebony handle, such as could be bought at any hardware store, but de Grandin pounced on it like a famished tomcat on a mouse.
“But this is wonderful, this is superb!” he almost cooed as he swathed the implement in several layers of paper and stowed it tenderly in the pocket of his great coat.
“Trowbridge, my friend,” he threw me one of his quick, enigmatic smiles, “do you attend the good Madame Kinnan. I have important duties to perform elsewhere. If possible I shall return for dinner, and if I do I pray that you will have your amiable cook prepare for me one of her so delicious apple tarts. If I should be delayed”—his little blue eyes twinkled for a moment with frosty laughter—“I shall eat that tart for my breakfast tomorrow, like a good Yon-kee.”
DINNER WAS LONG SINCE over, and the requested apple tart had been reposing on the pantry shelf for several hours when de Grandin popped from a taxicab like a jack-in-the-box from its case and rushed up the front steps, the waxed ends of his little blond mustache twitching like the whiskers of an excited cat. “Quick, quick, Friend Trowbridge,” he commanded as he laid a bulky paper parcel on the office desk, “to the telephone! Call that Monsieur Richards, that rich man who so generously allowed me forty-eight hours to recover his lost treasures, and that Monsieur Kinnan, whose so precious cup of the Marquis de Lafayette was stolen—call them both and bid them come here right away, at once, immediately!
“Mordieu!” He strode across the office with a step that was half run, half jig, “This Jules de Grandin, he is the sly, clever one. Never is the task imposed too great for him. No, of a certainty!”
“What the devil’s biting you?” I asked as I rang up the Richards house.
“Non, non,” he waved my question aside, lit a cigarette, and flung it away almost unpuffed. “Wait, I entreat you; only wait until those others come, then you shall hear about my monstrous cleverness!”
The Richards limousine, like its owner impressive in both size and upholstery, was panting before my door in half an hour, and Kinnan drove up in his modest sedan almost at the same time. Sergeant Costello, looking mystified, but concealing his wonder with the inborn reticence of the professional policeman, came into the office close on Kinnan’s heels.
“What’s all this nonsense, Trowbridge?” Mr. Richards asked. “Why couldn’t you come over to my house instead of dragging me out this hour o’ night?”
“Tut, tut, Monsieur,” de Grandin cut him short, running the admonitions so close together that they sounded like the exhaust of a miniature motor boat. “Tut, tut, Monsieur, is it not worth a short trip in the cold to have these back?” From a brown-paper parcel he produced a purple velvet case which he snapped open dramatically, disclosing an array of scintillating gems.
“These, one assumes, were once the property of Madame your wife?”
“Great Scott!” gasped Richards, reaching for the jewels. “Why, you got ’em!”
“But naturally, Monsieur.” The Frenchman deftly drew the jewellery out of Richard’s reach. “And also I have these.” From another parcel he drew a sheaf of engraved stock certificates. “You said twenty thousand dollars’ worth, I believe? Bien. There are here just twenty-one thousand dollar certificates, according to my count.
“Monsieur Kinnan,” he bowed to the other visitor, “permit that I restore to you the cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette.” The Lafayette cup was duly extracted from another package and handed to its owner.
“And now,” de Grandin lifted an oblong pasteboard box of the sort used for shoes and held it toward us as a prestidigitator might hold the hat from which he was about to extract a rabbit, “I will ask you to give me the close attention. Regardez, s’il vous plaît. Is it not this you gentlemen saw in your respective houses?”
As he withdrew the box lid we beheld lying on a bed of crumpled tissue paper what appeared to be the perfectly modeled reproduction of a beautiful hand and wrist. The thumb and fingers, tipped with long, almond-shaped nails, were exquisitely slender and graceful, and the narrow palm, where it showed above the curling digits, was pink and soft-looking as the underside of a La France rose petal. Only the smear of collodion across the severed wrist told us we gazed on something which once pulsed with life instead of a marvelously exact reproduction.
“Is this not it?” he repeated, glancing from the lovely hand to Richards and Kinnan in turn.
Each nodded a mute confirmation, but each forbore to speak, as though the sight of the eerie, lifeless thing before him had put a seal of silence on his lips.
“Très bon.” He nodded vigorously. “Now, attend me, if you please: when Monsieur Kinnan told me of the hammer which broke his window, I decided the road by which to trace this bodiless burglar was mapped out on that hammer’s handle. Pourquoi? Because this hand which frightens sick ladies to death and breaks windowpanes is one of three things. First”—he ticked off on his fingers—“it may be some mechanical device. In that case I shall find no traces. But then again it may be the ghost hand of someone who once lived, in which case, again, it is one of two things: a ghost hand, per se, or the reanimated flesh of one who is dead. Or, perchance, it is the hand of someone who can make the rest of him invisible.
“Now, then, if it is a ghost hand, either true ghost or living-dead flesh, it is like other hands, it has ridges and valleys and loops and whorls, which can be traced and recognized by fingerprint experts. Or, if a man can, by some process a
ll unknown to us, make all of him except his hand invisible, why, then, his hand, too, must leave fingerprints. Hein?
“‘Now, Jules de Grandin,’ I say to me, ‘is it not highly probable that one who steals jewels and stocks and bonds and the cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette, has stolen things before, perhaps been apprehended and fingerprinted?’
“‘Parbleu, it may be even as you say, Jules de Grandin,’ I reply to me.
“Thereupon I take that hammer from Monsieur Kinnan’s house and go with him to police headquarters. ‘Monsieur le Préfet,’ I say to the commissioner, ‘I would that you permit your identification experts to examine this hammer, and tell me, of their kindness, whose fingerprints appear thereon.’
“Bien. He is an amiable gentleman, the commissioner, and he gives the order as requested. In due time comes the report. The handle of that hammer bears the manual autograph of one Katherine O’Brien, otherwise known to the police as Catherine Levoy, and also as Catherine Dunstan. The police have a dossier for her. She was in turn a shoplifter, a decoy woman for some badger-game gentlemen, a forger and the partner of one Professor Mysterio, a theatrical hypnotist. Indeed, they tell me, she was married to this professor à l’Italienne, and with him she travelled the country, sometimes giving exhibitions, sometimes indulging in crime, as, for instance, burglary and pocket-picking.
“Now, about a year ago, while she and the professor were exhibiting themselves at Coney Island, this lady died. Her partner gave her a remarkable funeral; but the ceremonies were marred by one untoward incident—while her body lay in the mortuary some miscreant climbed through the window and removed one of her hands. In the dead of night he severed from the lovely body of that wicked woman the hand that had so often made away with others’ property. He made away with it, nor could the efforts of the police trace him, or it, to his place of hiding.
The Horror on the Links Page 15
