The Horror on the Links

by Seabury Quinn

  He looked expectantly at the little Frenchman as he finished speaking, his lips parted to launch open a detailed description of the case.

  “Parbleu,” de Grandin laughed, “it is fortunate for me that I have completed my breakfast, cher Sergent, for a riddle of crime detection is to me like a red rag to a bullfrog—I must needs snap at it, whether I have been fed or no. Speak on, my friend, I beseech you; I am like Balaam’s ass, all ears.”

  The big Irishman seated himself on the extreme edge of one of my Heppelwhite chairs and gazed deprecatingly at the derby he held firmly between his knees. “It’s like this,” he began. “’Tis one o’ them mysterious disappearance cases, gentlemen, an’ whilst I’m thinkin’ th’ young lady knows exactly where she’s at an’ why she’s there, I hate to tell her folks about it.

  “All th’ high-hat folks ain’t like you two gentlemen, askin’ your pardon, sors—they mostly seems to think that a harness bull’s unyform is sumpin’ like a livery—like a shofur’s or a footman’s or sumpin’, an’ that a plainclothes man is just a sort o’ inferior servant. They don’t give th’ police credit for no brains, y’see, an’ when one o’ their darters gits giddy an’ runs off th’ reservation, if we tells ’em th’ gurrl’s run away of her own free will an’ accord they say we’re a lot o’ lazy, good-fer-nothin’ bums who are tryin’ to dodge our laygitimate jooties by castin’ mud on th’ young ladies’ char-ac-ters, d’ye see? So, when this Miss Esther Norman disappears in broad daylight leastwise, in th’ twilight—o’ th’ day before her dance, we suspects right away that th’ gurrl’s gone her own ways into th’ best o’ intentions, y’see; but we dasn’t tell her folks as much, or they’ll be hollerin’ to th’ commissioner fer to git a bran’ new set o’ detectives down to headquarters, so they will.

  “Now, mind ye, I’m not sayin’ th’ young lady mightn’t o’ been kidnaped, y’understand, gentlemen, but I do be sayin’ ’tis most unlikely. I’ve been on th’ force, man an’ boy, in unyform and in plain clothes fer th’ last twenty-five years, an’ th’ number of laygitimate kidnapin’s o’ young women over ten years of age I’ve seen can be counted on th’ little finger o’ me left hand, an’ I ain’t got none there at all, at all.”

  He held the member up for our inspection, revealing the fact that the little finger had been amputated close to the knuckle.

  DE GRANDIN, ELBOWS ON the table, pointed chin cupped in his hands, was puffing furiously at a vile-smelling French cigarette, alternately sucking down great drafts of its acrid smoke and expelling clouds of fumes in double jets from his narrow, aristocratic nostrils.

  “What is it you say?” he demanded, removing the cigarette from his lips. “Is it the so lovely Mademoiselle Esther, daughter of that kind Madame Tuscarora Avenue Norman, who is missing?”

  “Yes, sor,” Costello answered, “’tis th’ same young lady’s flew the coop, accordin’ to my way o’ thinkin’.”

  “Mordieu!” The Frenchman gave the ends of his blond mustache a savage twist. “You intrigue me, my friend. Say on, how did it happen, and when?”

  “’Twas about midnight last night th’ alarm came into headquarters,” the detective replied. “Accordin’ to th’ facts as we have ’em, th’ young lady went downtown in th’ Norman car to do some errands. We’ve checked her movements up, an’ here they are.”

  He drew a black-leather memorandum book from his pocket and consulted it.

  “At 2:45 or thereabouts, she left th’ house, arrivin’ at th’ Ocean Trust Company at 2:55, five minutes before th’ instytootion closed for th’ day. She drew out three hundred an’ thirty dollars an’ sixty-five cents, an’ left th’ bank, goin’ to Madame Gerard’s, where she tried on a party dress for th’ dance which was bein’ given at her house that night.

  “She left Madame Gerard’s at 4:02, leavin’ orders for th’ dress to be delivered to her house immeejately, an’ dismissed her sho-fur at th’ corner o’ Dean an’ Tunlaw Streets, sayin’ she was goin’ to deliver some vegytables an’ what-not to a pore family she an’ some o’ her friends was keepin’ till their oldman gits let out o’ jail—’twas meself an’ Clancey, me buddy, that put him there when we caught him red-handed in a job o’ housebreakin’, too.

  “Well, to return to th’ young lady, she stopped at Pete Bacigalupo’s store in Tunlaw Street an’ bought a basket o’ fruit an’ canned things, at 4:30, an’—” He clamped his long-suffering derby between his knees and spread his hands emptily before us.

  “Yes, ‘and’—?” de Grandin prompted, dropping the glowing end of his cigarette into his coffee cup.

  “An’ that’s all,” responded the Irishman. “She just walked off, an’ no one ain’t seen her since, sor.”

  “But—cordieu!—such things do not occur, my friend,” de Grandin protested. “Somewhere you have overlooked a factor in this puzzle. You say no one saw her later? Have you nothing whatever to add to the tale?”

  “Well”—the detective grinned at him—“there are one or two little incidents, but they ain’t of any importance in th’ case, as far as I can see. Just as she left Pete’s store an old gink tried to ‘make’ her, but she give him th’ air, an’ he went off an’ didn’t bother her no more.

  “I’d a’ liked to seen th’ old boy, at that. Day before yesterday there was an old felly hangin’ ’round by the silk mills, annoyin’ th’ gurrls as they come off from work. Clancey, me mate, saw ’im an’ started to take ’im up, an’ darned if th’ old rummy wasn’t strong as a bull. D’ye know, he broke clean away from Clancey an’ darn near broke his arm, in th’ bargain? Belike ’twas th’ same man accosted Miss Norman outside Pete’s store.”

  “Ah?” de Grandin’s slender, white fingers began beating a devil’s tattoo on the tablecloth. “And who was it saw this old man annoy the lady, hein?”

  Costello grinned widely, “’Twas Pete Bacigalupo himself, sor,” be answered. “Pete swore be recognized th’ old geezer as havin’ come to his store a month or so ago in an autymobile an bought up all his entire stock o’ garlic. Huh! Th’ fool said he wouldn’t a gone after th’ felly’ for a hundred dollars—said he had th’ pink-eye, or th’ evil eye, or some such thing. That sure do burn me up!”

  “Dieu et le diable!” de Grandin leaped up, oversetting his chair in his mad haste. “And we sit here like three poissons d’avril—like poor fish—while he works his devilish will on her! Quick, Sergeant! Quick, Friend Trowbridge! Your hats, your coats; the motor! Oh, make haste, my friends, fly, fly, I implore you; even now it may be too late!”

  As though all the fiends of pandemonium were at his heels he raced from the breakfast room, up the stairs, three steps at a stride, and down the upper hall toward his bedroom. Nor did he cease his shouted demands for haste throughout his wild flight.

  “Cuckoo?” The sergeant tapped his forehead significantly.

  I shook my head as I hastened to the hall for my driving clothes. “No,” I answered, shrugging into my topcoat, “he’s got a reason for everything he does; but you and I can’t always see it, Sergeant.”

  “You said a mouthful that time, doc,” he agreed, pulling his hat down over his ears. “He’s the darndest, craziest Frog I ever seen, but, at that, he’s got more sense than nine men out o’ ten.”

  “To Rupleysville, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin shouted as he leaped into the seat beside me. “Make haste, I do implore you. Oh, Jules de Grandin, your grandfather was an imbecile and all your ancestors were idiots, but you are the greatest zany in the family. Why, oh, why, do you require a sunstroke before you can see the light, foolish one?”

  I swung the machine down the pike at highest legal speed, but the little Frenchman kept urging greater haste. “Sang de Dieu, sang de Saint Denis, sang du diable!” he wailed despairingly. “Can you not make this abominable car go faster, Friend Trowbridge? Oh, ah, hélas, if we are too late! I shall hate myself, I shall loathe myself—pardieu, I shall become a Carmelite friar and eat fish and abstain from swearing!”
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br />   WE TOOK SCARCELY TWENTY minutes to cover the ten-mile stretch to the aggregation of tumbledown houses which was Rupleysville, but my companion was almost frothing at the mouth when I drew up before the local apology for a hotel.

  “Tell me, Monsieur,” de Grandin cried as he thrust the hostelry’s door open with his foot and brandished his slender ebony cane before the astonished proprietor’s eyes, “tell me of un vieillard—an old, old man with snow-white hair and an evil face, who has lately come to this so detestable place. I would know where to find him, right away, immediately, at once!”

  “Say,” the boniface demanded truculently, “where d’ye git that stuff? Who are you to be askin’—”

  “That’ll do”—Costello shouldered his way past de Grandin and displayed his badge—“you answer this gentleman’s questions, an’ answer ’em quick an’ accurate, or I’ll run you in, see?”

  The innkeeper’s defiant attitude melted before the detective’s show of authority like frost before the sunrise. “Guess you must mean Mr. Zerny,” he replied sullenly. “He come here about a month ago an’ rented the Hazeltown house, down the road about a mile. Comes up to town for provisions every day or two, and stops in here sometimes for a—” He halted abruptly, his face suffused with a dull flush.

  “Yeah?” Costello replied. “Go on an’ say it; we all know what he stops here for. Now listen, buddy”—he stabbed the air two inches before the man’s face with a blunt forefinger—“I don’t know whether this here Zerny felly’s got a tellyphone or not, but if he has, you just lay off tellin’ ’im we’re comin’; git me? If anyone’s tipped him off when we git to his place I’m comin’ back here and plaster more padlocks on this place o’ yours than Sousa’s got medals on his blouse. Savvy?”

  “Come away, Sergent; come away, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin besought almost tearfully. “Bandy not words with the cancre; we have work to do!”

  Down the road we raced in the direction indicated by the hotelkeeper, till the picket fence and broken shutters of the Hazelton house showed among a rank copse of second-growth pines at the bend of the highway.

  The shrewd wind of early spring was moaning and soughing among the black boughs of the pine trees as we ran toward the house, and though it was bright with sunshine on the road, there was chill and shadow about us as we climbed the sagging steps of the old building’s ruined piazza and paused breathlessly before the paintless front door.

  “Shall I knock?” Costello asked dubiously, involuntarily sinking his voice to a whisper.

  “But no,” de Grandin answered in a low voice, “what we have to do here must be done quietly, my friends.”

  He leaned forward and tried the doorknob with a light, tentative touch. The door gave under his hand, swinging inward on protesting hinges, and we tiptoed into a dark, dust-carpeted hall. A shaft of sunlight, slanting downward from a chink in one of the window shutters, showed innumerable dust-motes flying lazily in the air, and laid a bright oval of light against the warped floor-boards.

  “Huh, empty as a pork-butcher’s in Jerusalem,” Costello commented disgustedly, looking about the unfurnished rooms, but de Grandin seized him by the elbow with one hand while he pointed toward the floor with the ferrule of his slender ebony walking stick.

  “Empty, perhaps,” he conceded in a low, vibrant whisper, “but not recently, mon ami.” Where the sunbeam splashed on the uneven floor there showed distinctly the mark of a booted foot, two marks—a trail of them leading toward the rear of the house.

  “Right y’are,” the detective agreed. “Someone’s left his track here, an’ no mistake.”

  “Ha!” de Grandin bent forward till it seemed the tip of his high-bridged nose would impinge on the tracks. “Gentlemen,” he rose and pointed forward into the gloom with a dramatic flourish of his cane, “they are here! Let us go!”

  Through the gloomy hall we followed the trail by the aid of Costello’s flashlight, stepping carefully to avoid creaking boards as much as possible. At length the marks stopped abruptly in the center of what had formerly been the kitchen. A disturbance in the dust told where the walker had doubled on his tracks in a short circle, and a ringbolt in the floor gave notice that we stood above a trap-door of some sort.

  “Careful, Friend Costello,” de Grandin warned, “have ready your flashlight when I fling back the trap. Ready? Un—deux—trois!”

  He bent, seized the rusty ringbolt and heaved the trap-door back so violently that it flew back with a thundering crash on the floor beyond.

  The cavern had originally been a cellar for the storage of food, it seemed, and was brick-walled and earth-floored, without window or ventilation opening of any sort. A dank, musty odor assaulted our nostrils as we leaned forward, but further impressions were blotted out by the sight directly beneath us.

  White as a figurine of carven alabaster, the slender, bare body of a girl lay in sharp reverse silhouette against the darkness of the cavern floor, her ankles crossed and firmly lashed to a stake in the earth, one hand doubled behind her back in the position of a wrestler’s hammerlock grip, and made firm to a peg in the floor, while the left arm was extended straight outward, its wrist pinioned to another stake. Her luxuriant fair hair had been knotted together at the ends, then staked to the ground, so that her head was drawn far back, exposing her rounded throat to its fullest extent, and on the earth beneath her left breast and beside her throat stood two porcelain bowls.

  Crouched over her was the relic of a man, an old, old, hideously wrinkled witch-husband, with matted white hair and beard. In one hand he held a long, gleaming, double-edged dirk while with the other he caressed the girl’s smooth throat with gloating strokes of his skeleton fingers.

  “Howly Mither!” Costello’s County Galway brogue broke through his American accent at the horrid sight below us.

  “My God!” I exclaimed, all the breath in my lungs suddenly seeming to freeze in my throat.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur le Vampire!” Jules de Grandin greeted nonchalantly, leaping to the earth beside the pinioned girl and waving his walking stick airily. “By the horns of the devil, but you have led us a merry chase, Baron Lajos Czuczron of Transylvania!”

  The crouching creature emitted a bellow of fury and leaped toward de Grandin, brandishing his knife.

  The Frenchman gave ground with a quick, catlike leap and grasped his slender cane in both hands near the top. Next instant he had ripped the lower part of the stick away, displaying a fine, three-edged blade set in the cane’s handle, and swung his point toward the frothing-mouthed thing which mouthed and gibbered like a beast at bay. “A-ah?” he cried with a mocking, upward-lilting accent. “You did not expect this, eh, Friend Blood-drinker? I give you the party-of-surprise, n’est-ce-pas? The centuries have been long, mon vieux; but the reckoning has come at last. Say, now will you die by the steel, or by starvation?”

  The aged monster fairly champed his gleaming teeth in fury. His eyes seemed larger, rounder, to gleam like the eyes of a dog in the firelight, as he launched himself toward the little Frenchman.

  “Sa-ha!” the Frenchman sank backward on one foot then straightened suddenly forward, stiffening his sword-arm and plunging his point directly into the charging beastman’s distended, red mouth. A scream of mingled rage and pain filled the cavern with deafening shrillness and the monster half turned, as though on an invisible pivot, clawed with horrid impotence at the wire-fine blade of de Grandin’s rapier, then sank slowly to the earth, his death cry stilled to a sickening gurgle as his throat filled with blood.

  “Fini!” de Grandin commented laconically, drawing on his handkerchief and wiping his blade with meticulou care, then cutting the unconscious girl’s bonds with hi pocket-knife. “Drop down your overcoat, Friend Trowbridge,” he added, “that we may cover the poor child’s nudity until we can piece out a wardrobe for her.

  “Now, then”—as he raised her to meet the hands Costello and I extended into the pit—“if we clothe her in the motor rug, your jacket, S
ergent, Friend Trowbridge’s topcoat and my shoes, she will be safe from the chill. Parbleu, I have seen women refugees from the Boche who could not boast so complete a toilette!”

  With Esther Norman, hastily clothed in her patchwork assortment of garments, wedged in the front seat between de Grandin and me, we began our triumphant journey home.

  “An’ would ye mind tellin’ me how ye knew where to look for th’ young lady, Dr. de Grandin, sor?” Detective Sergeant Costello asked respectfully, leaning forward from the rear seat of the car.

  “Wait, wait, my friend,” de Grandin replied with a smile. “When our duties are all performed I shall tell you such a tale as shall make your two eyes to pop outward like a snail’s. First, however, you must go with us to restore this pauvre enfant to her mother’s arms; then to the headquarters to report the death of that sale bête. Friend Trowbridge will stay with the young lady for so long as he deems necessary, and I shall remain with him to help. Then, this evening—with your consent, Friend Trowbridge—you will dine with us, Sergent, and I shall tell you all, everything, in total. Death of my life, what a tale it is! Parbleu, but you shall call me a liar many times before it is finished!”

  JULES DE GRANDIN PLACED his demitasse on the tabouret and refilled his liqueur glass. “My friends,” he began, turning his quick, elfish smile first on Costello, then on me, “I have promised you a remarkable tale. Very well, then, to begin.”

  He flicked a wholly imaginary fleck of dust from his dinner jacket sleeve and crossed his slender, womanishly small feet on the hearth rug.

  “Do you recall, Friend Trowbridge, how we went, you and I, to the tea given by the good Madame Norman? Yes? Perhaps, then, you will recall how at the entrance of the ballroom I stopped with a look of astonishment on my face. Very good. At that moment I saw that which made me disbelieve the evidence of my own two eyes. As the gentleman we later met as Count Czerny danced past a mirror on the wall I beheld—parbleu! what do you suppose?—the reflection only of his dancing partner! It was as if the man had been non-existent, and the young lady had danced past the mirror by herself.