De Grandin’s little mustache was twitching with eagerness, like the whiskers of a tomcat before a rat-hole, but his voice was casual as he asked, “And did you notice the number of this car which so nearly wrecked you, mon petit?”
“Whassat?” the other replied suspiciously.
“Did you make note of their license plate?”
“You betcha,” the lad produced a brown-paper-backed note-book, obviously intended for emergency orders from his patrons, and thumbed through its dog-eared leaves. “Yep, here it is—Y 453-677-5344. New Jersey plate.”
“Ah, my excellent one, my incomparable little cabbage!” de Grandin restrained himself from kissing the white-aproned youth with the utmost difficulty. “My Napoleon among épiciers—behold, I shall make restitution for the fright these miscreants have given you!” From his trousers pocket he produced a billfold and extracted a five-dollar note, which he pressed into the delivery boy’s hand. “Take it, my wise one,” he urged, quite unnecessarily—“Take it and buy a plaything for one of your numerous sweethearts. Pardieu, such a well-favored youth must play the devil with the maidens’ hearts, n’est-ce-pas?” He thrust a playful finger into the astonished youngster’s ribs. “Sure,” the other responded, pocketing the bill and backing away rather hastily. “Sure, I gotta jane; d’ye think I’m a dead one?”
“Nom d’un coq, quite otherwise; you do possess the eye of Argus and the sagacity of Solon, mon brave,” de Grandin assured him, then, to me:
“Come, Trowbridge, my friend, let us fly with all celerity to the lane of which this so charming urchin has told us. Let us discover what we can see!”
We ran across the wide lawn to the tall, rank-growing privet hedge which marked the margin of the Butterbaugh place, slipped through the shrubbery, and began walking slowly, down the unpaved roadway.
“Nom de Dieu, we have it!” the Frenchman exclaimed, pointing dramatically to the soft sand at out feet. “Behold, Friend Trowbridge, where a car, even as described by the youthful Solomon, has been driven up this path and turned about at this point. Also, observe how two pairs of feet, one shod in wide-soled shoes, the other in slippers with the French heels, have walked from that car to the hedge, and—here, do you not see it?—back again, and with wider steps and deeper impressions in the earth. Parbleu, my friend, our noses are to the earth. Anon we shall bring the quarry into view!”
Slipping through the hedge, he ran at top speed to the house, entered one of the open French windows and called excitedly for Costello.
“Quick, mon vieux,” he urged when the sergeant came in answer to his repeated hails, “we must delay the expedition. I would that you broadcast by telephone an alarm to all towns and villages in the direction of Morristown to have a touring car bearing the New Jersey license Y 453-677-5344 stopped at all costs. It must be delayed, it must be held, it must be impeded until I arrive!”
Costello regarded him in open-mouthed wonder, but proceeded to telephone headquarters to post a general lookout for the wanted car.
“An’ now, Dr. de Grandin, sor,” he whispered, “if you’d be good enough to lend me a bit of a hand in questionin’ these here servants, I believe we could git somethin’ outa them. They’re beginnin’ to weaken.”
“Ah, bah,” de Grandin replied. “Waste not your breath on these innocent ones, my friend. We shall be within reaching distance of these criminals when that car has been apprehended. In truth, they did fit the description to a perfection.”
“Description?” echoed the sergeant. “What description? Has someone been spillin’ th’ beans to you, sor?”
“Ha, yes, someone has talked to me, in silence,” de Grandin replied. “There were at least two people in the library with Professor Butterbaugh when he was killed, and one of them, at least, had straight hair, smoothed down with some sort of unguent—hair, moreover, which had been cut about two weeks ago. This person must have been somewhat shorter than the professor, and must have stood immediately before him when he was struck down from behind—”
Sergeant Costello looked at him a moment in speechless wonder, then an ingratiating grin spread over his face. He rose, facing de Grandin with upraised forefinger, like an adult telling a fable to a dubious youngster. “An’ th’ wolf said to Little Red Riding Hood, ‘Where are ye goin’, me prett-ty child,’” he interrupted. “I’ve seen ye do a lot o’ things which I’d a’ thought wuz magic if I hadn’t seen ’em with me own two eyes, Dr. de Grandin,” he confessed, “but when ye go into a trance like that an’ begin fortune-tellin’ about how many people wuz present when th’ professor was kilt, an’ how long it had been since one of ’em had his hair cut, I’m havin’ to remind ye that it’s been many a year since I believed in fairy-tales, sor.”
“Fairy-tales, do you say?” de Grandin returned good-naturedly. “Parbleu, my friend, do not you know that the most improbable of the tales of the fairies is sober logic itself beside the seemingly impossible miracles which science performs each day? Nom d’un porc, a hundred years ago men were hanged as wizards for knowing not one-tenth as much as Jules de Grandin has forgotten these twenty years!
“Amuse yourself, cher Sergent. Question the servants to your heart’s content; but be ready to accompany me the minute that missing car is reported caught, I do entreat you.”
“IT’S TH’ TEMPLETON POLICE department speakin’, Dr. de Grandin,” Costello announced some three-quarters of an hour later as he looked up from the telephone. “Will ye be talkin’ to ’em, sor? Sure, I haven’t th’ ghost of an idea what it is you’re wantin’ with th’ young lad and lady that wuz ridin’ in th’ car ye wanted held up.”
“Allo, allo!” de Grandin barked into the telephone as he snatched the receiver from the sergeant’s hand. “This is Jules de Grandin speaking, Monsieur le Chef. You have the occupants of that car in custody? Bien, you do delight me! Charge? Parbleu, I had forgotten that you require a specific charge on which to hold persons in custody in this country. Tell me, Monsieur, you have searched that car, no?” A pause, during which he drummed nervously, on the telephone table with the tips of his slender white fingers, then:
“Ah, so? Très bien, I and Sergeant Costello, of the Harrisonville police, come on the wings of the wind to relieve you of your prisoners. Responsibility? But of course. Hold them, my friend. Place them under the double lock, with gendarmes at door and window, and I shall indubitably indemnify you against all responsibility. Only, I beseech you, hold them in safety until we arrive.”
He turned to us, his small blue eyes sparkling with excitement. “Come, my friends, come away; let us make haste to that commandant of police at Templeton. He has there the birds for our cage!”
We jumped into my waiting car and turned toward Templeton, Costello sitting in the tonneau, a black cigar at a rakish angle in his mouth, an expression of doubt on his face; de Grandin beside me, drumming on the leather upholstery of the seat and humming excitedly to himself.
“What’s it all about, de Grandin?” I asked as, responding to his urging, I pressed my foot on the accelerator and drove the machine several miles beyond the legal speed.
“Mean? Mean?” he answered, turning a twitching face and dancing eyes on me. “Possess yourself in patience, my friend. Restrain your curiosity for only a few little minutes. Curb your inquisitiveness only so long as it takes this abominably slow moteur to convey us to that police chief at Templeton. Then—parbleu!—you shall know. Yes, par la barbe du prophète, you and the good Costello, too, shall know all—all!” He threw back his head and burst into a snatch of marching song:
Elle rit, C’est tout l’ mal qu’elle sait faire,
Madelon, Madelon, Madelon!
“We’ve got ’em locked in there,” the Templeton police chief told us when I brought my panting motor to a halt before the little town’s near graystone municipal building. “Far’s I can see, there’s no charge you can hold ’em on, legally, and there’s apt to be some trouble over this business.
“Sure, we found a
mummy in the car”—in response to de Grandin’s eager question—“but I don’t know any law against transporting a mummy through the streets. Go in and talk to ’em, if you want to, but make it snappy, and remember; if there’s any comeback about a false arrest or anything like that, it’s strictly your funeral.”
“Parbleu, Monsieur le Chef,” de Grandin replied with a smile, “it is like to be a double funeral, with the State of New Jersey officiating, unless Jules de Grandin is more mistaken than he thinks he is!”
TWO PEOPLE, A YOUNG man of twenty-five or twenty-six and a young woman of about the same age, sat on the polished oak benches of the municipal council room which the Templeton police chief had turned into an improvised dungeon for their detention. The man was dressed with that precise attention to detail which characterizes the better-class foreigner, while the woman’s modish traveling costume was more reminiscent of the Rue de la Paix than of the dressmakers of America. Both were dark-skinned with the clear olive complexion of the South, black-eyed, and patrician of feature. And despite their air of hauteur, they were plainly ill at ease.
“This is an outrage!” the man burst forth in a perfectly accentless voice which proclaimed more plainly than faulty speech that the words he used were not of his mother tongue. “This is an outrage, sir. What right have you to hold us here against our will?”
De Grandin fixed him with a level stare, rigid and uncompromising as a pointed bayonet. “And the murder of a respected citizen of this country, Monsieur,” he asked, “is that, perhaps, not also an outrage?”
“What do you mean—?” the man began, but the Frenchman cut him off curtly.
“You and your companion did enter the house of Professor Francis Butterbaugh last night, or more definitely, early this morning,” he replied, “and one of you did engage him in conversation while the other took the scepter of Isis from the wrappings of the mummy and struck him with it—from behind. Do not lie to me, my Egyptian friend; your tongue may be false—cordieu, are you not a nation of liars?—but the hairs of your head tell the truth. Parbleu, you did not think that your victim would throw out his arm at the moment you murdered him and seize evidence which would put the rope of justice about your necks. You did not apprehend that I, Jules de Grandin, would be at hand to deliver you to the public executioner, hein?”
The prisoners stared at him in astonished silence. Then: “You have no proof that we were near Butterbaugh’s house last night,” the man answered, moving a step toward a sheeted object which lay on one of the council benches.
De Grandin smiled unpleasantly. “No proof, do you say?” he returned. “Pardieu, I have all the proof needed to put you both to a shameful death. I have—Trowbridge, Costello, stop him!”
He flung himself at the prisoner, who had rounded the end of the bench and reached suddenly toward the thing under the sheet, drawn forth a tiny, wriggling object, and pressed it quickly to his wrist.
“Too late,” the man observed, holding out his hand to the woman beside him and sinking to the bench beside the sheeted object. “Dr. Jules de Grandin is too late!”
The young woman hesitated the fraction of a second as her fingers met those of her companion, then, with widening eyes, thrust her hand into the low-cut bosom of her dress, drew herself up very straight, and, as a slight shiver ran through her frame, dropped to the bench beside the man.
“Dieu et le diable!” de Grandin swore furiously. “You have cheated me! I—back, Friend Trowbridge, back, Sergent; there is death on the floor!”
He cannoned into me, sending me stumbling toward the row of council seats, poised himself on tiptoe, and leaped lithely into the air, coming down with both feet close together, grinding his heels savagely on the floor. Beneath the edge of his boot sole I made out the sharp-pointed, thrashing end of some small, cylindrical object.
“Five thousand years of life, in death, and now eternal death beneath the feet of Jules de Grandin.” he announced, stepping back and revealing a short, black thing, scarcely thicker through its crushed body than an angle worm, and no longer than a man’s hand.
“What is it, sor?” Costello queried, looking at the still-writhing thing disclosed by the Frenchman’s lifted foot.
“I blame you not for failing to recognize him, cher Sergent,” the other replied; “the good St. Patrick did drive him and all his family from your native land some fifteen hundred years ago.”
To me he said: “Friend Trowbridge, before you lies what remains of such a snake as did kill Cleopatra, no less. To discourage robbers from the graves of their great ones, I have heard, the Egyptians did sometimes secrete the comatose bodies of serpents among the wrappings of their mummies. I have often heard such tales, but never before have I seen evidence of their truth. Like the toad, and the frog, who are found within fossil rocks, the snake has the ability to live indefinitely in suspended animation. When these miscreants did expose this viper to the air he was revived, and I make no doubt they allowed him to live against just such a contingency as this.
“Do you desire more proof? Is not their double suicide a confession sufficient of guilt?” He turned questioning eyes from Costello to me, then glared at the prisoners shivering on the bench beside the sheeted object.
“What’s this?” Costello demanded, striding to the seat where the man and woman sat and snatching the sheet from the form beside them.
“Howly St. Judas, ’tis th’ grinnin’ mummy itself!” he exclaimed as he bared the sardonically smiling features of the thing we had seen in Professor Butterbaugh’s relic room the night of his murder.
“But of course,” de Grandin replied, “what else! Did I not surmise an much when that young grocery man told us of the fleeing couple in the motor car? And did I not have you send out the alarm for the detention of that same car? And did I not particularly question the police chief of this city concerning the presence of a mummy in the motor when he did inform me that he had apprehended our fugitives? Most assuredly. Me, I am Jules de Grandin. I do not make mistakes.”
He directed a quizzical gaze at the prisoners. “Your time grows short,” he stated. “Will you confess now, or must I assure you that I shall cut your hearts from out your dead bodies and feed them to carrion crows? Remember, I am a medical man, and my request that I be allowed to perform an autopsy on you will unquestionably be honored. You will confess; or—” he waved an eloquent hand, the gesture expressing unpleasant possibilities,
The man twisted his thin lips in a mirthless grin. “You may as well know,” he replied, “but we must be assured our ashes will be taken to Egypt for burial before I tell you anything.”
The Frenchman raised his hand. “You have my assurance of that if you tell all, and my equal assurance that you shall be dissected as subjects of anatomical study if you do not,” he promised. “Come, begin. Time presses and there is much to tell. Make haste.”
“IT DOES NOT MATTER who we are, you can find our names and residences from our papers,” the prisoner began. “As to what we are, you have perhaps heard of the movement to revive the secret worship of the old gods of Egypt among those who trace their ancestry to the ancient rulers of the earth?”
De Grandin nodded shortly.
“We are members of that movement,” the man continued, “We Copts possess the blood of Ramses, mighty ruler of the world of Tut-ankh-amen and Ra-nefer; our race was old and glorious when Babylon was a swamp and you Franks were only naked savages. Pagan Greek and pagan Roman, Christian Frank and Moslem Arab—all have swarmed in upon us, forcing their religions down our throats at the sword’s point, but our hearts have remained constant to the gods we worshiped in the days of our greatness. For centuries a faithful few have done honor to Osiris and Isis, to Horus and Nut and Anubis and mighty, ram-headed Ra, father of gods and fashioner of men; but only in recent years, with the weakening of the Moslems’ hated power, have we dared extend our organization. Today we have a complete hierarchy. I am a vowed servant of Osiris, my sister here is a dedicated priestess o
f Isis.
“That the barbarians of Europe and America should delve among the tombs of our illustrious dead and drag their sacred relics forth for fools to gape at has long been intolerable to us—as the violation of the tombs of Napoleon or Washington would be to French or Americans—but for years we have been forced to suffer these insults in silence. Before this robber, Butterbaugh, desecrated the tomb of Ankh-ma-amen”—he motioned toward the uncovered, grinning mummy on the bench beside him—“our priesthood had passed sentence of death on all who despoiled our burying places in future. The Englishman, Carnarvon, died by our orders; other tomb-robbers met their just deserts at our hands. Now you know why Butterbaugh was executed.
“We gave the thieving savage fair warning of our intent before he took the stolen body out of Egypt, but the English police—may Set burn them!—prevented our carrying out our sentence there, so we followed him to America. We had obtained a specimen of his signature in Cairo; it was easy to forge his name to the order for his tombstone.
“Last night my sister and I waited outside his house until his servants had gone to bed. We watched the thief gloating over the body of our sacred dead, saw him unwind the sacerdotal wrappings from it, and while he was still at his ghoulish work we entered an open window and read him the death sentence pronounced on him by the council of our priests. The grave-robber ordered us from his house—threatened us with arrest and would have assaulted me, but my sister, who stood behind him, struck him dead with a single blow of the holy scepter of Isis which he had taken from the cerements of the body outraged by his profane hands.
“We restored the body of Ankh-ma-amen to its case and were about to take it to our car, that we might carry it back to its tomb in Egypt, when we heard someone moving about upstairs and had to make our escape. We put the scepter of Isis in the hand of our ancestor, for it was to avenge his desecrated tomb that we put Butterbaugh to death. A smear of the robber’s blood was on my sister’s hand, and she wiped it off on Ankh-ma-amen’s lips. It was poetic justice; our outraged countryman drank the blood of his ravisher!
The Horror on the Links Page 25
