“NOW, MONSIEUR,” DE GRANDIN faced Evander across the living room table, “your statement that the gentleman at whose happy dispatch I so fortunately officiated was your wife’s uncle, and that he disappeared before your southern trip, does interest me. Say on, tell me all concerning this Uncle Friedrich of your wife’s. When did he disappear, and what led up to his disappearance? Omit nothing, I pray you, for trifles which you may consider of no account may be of the greatest importance. Proceed Monsieur. I listen.”
Evander squirmed uncomfortably in his chair like a small boy undergoing catechism. “He wasn’t really her uncle,” he responded. “Her father and he were schoolmates in Germany—Heidelberg—years ago. Mr. Hoffmeister—Uncle Friedrich—immigrated to this country shortly after my father-in-law came back, and they were in business together for years. Mr. Hoffmeister lived with my wife’s people—all the children called him Uncle Friedrich—and was just like one of the family.
“My mother-in-law died a few years ago, and her husband died shortly after, and Mr. Hoffmeister disposed of his share of the business and went to Germany on a long visit. He was caught there in the war and didn’t return to America until ’21. Since that time he lived with us.”
Evander paused a moment, as though debating mentally whether he should proceed, then smiled in a half shamefaced manner. “To tell you the truth,” he continued, “I wasn’t very keen on having him here. There were times when I didn’t like the way he looked at my wife a dam’ bit.”
“Eh,” de Grandin asked, “how was that, Monsieur?”
“Well, I can’t quite put a handle to it in words, but more than once I’d glance up and see him with his eyes fastened on Edith in a most peculiar way. It would have angered me in a young man, but in an old man, it both angered and disgusted me. I was on the point of asking him to leave when he disappeared and saved me the trouble.”
“Yes?” de Grandin encouraged. “And his disappearance, what of that?”
“The old fellow was always an enthusiastic amateur botanist,” Evander replied, “and he brought a great many specimens for his herbarium back from Europe with him. Off and on he’s been messing around with plants since his return, and about a month ago he received a tin of dried flowers from Kerovitch, Rumania, and they seemed to set him almost wild.”
“Kerovitch? Mordieu!” de Grandin exclaimed. “Say on, Monsieur; I burn with curiosity. Describe these flowers in detail, if you please.”
“H’m,” Evander took his chin in his hand and studied in silence a moment. “There wasn’t anything especially remarkable about them that I could see. There were a dozen of them, all told, perhaps, and they resembled our ox-eyed daisies a good deal, except that their petals were red instead of yellow. Had a queer sort of odor, too. Even though they were dried, they exuded a sort of sickly-sweet smell, yet not quite sweet either. It was a sort of mixture of perfume and stench, if that means anything to you.
“Pardieu, it means much!” de Grandin assured him. “And their sap, where it had dried, did it not resemble that of the milkweed plant?”
“Yes! How did you know?”
“No matter. Proceed, if you please. Your Uncle Friedrich did take these so accursed flowers out and …”
“And tried an experiment with them,” Evander supplied. “He put them in a bowl of water, and they freshened up as though they had not been plucked an hour.”
“Yes—and his disappearance—name of a little green man!—his disappearance?”
“That happened just before I went south. All three of us went to the theater one evening, and Uncle Friedrich wore one of the red flowers in his buttonhole. My wife wore a spray of them in her corsage. He tried to get me to put one of the things in my coat, too, but I hated their smell so much I wouldn’t do it.”
“Lucky you!” de Grandin murmured so low the narrator failed to hear him.
Uncle Friedrich was very restless and queer all evening,” Evander proceeded, “but the old fellow had been getting rather childish lately, so we didn’t pay any particular attention to his actions. Next morning he was gone.”
“And did you make inquiry?”
“No, he often went away on little trips without warning us beforehand, and, besides, I was glad enough to see him get out. I didn’t try to find him. It was just after this that my wife’s health became bad, but I had to make this trip for our firm, so I called in Dr. Trowbridge, and there you are.”
“Yes, parbleu, here we are, indeed!” de Grandin nodded emphatically. “Listen carefully, my friends; what I am about to say is the truth:
“When first I came to visit Madame Evander with Friend Trowbridge, and heard the strange story Mademoiselle Ostrander told, I was amazed. ‘Why,’ I ask me, ‘does this lady answer the howling of a dog beneath her window?’ Parbleu, it was most curious!
“Then while we three—Friend Trowbridge, Mademoiselle Ostrander and I—did talk of Madame’s so strange malady, I did hear the call of that dog beneath the window with my own two ears, and did observe Madame Evander’s reaction to it.
“Out the window I did put my head, and in the storm I saw no dog at all, but what I thought might be a human man—a tall, thin man. Yet a dog had howled beneath that window and had been answered by Madame but a moment before. Me, I do not like that.
“I call upon that man, if such he be, to be gone. Also I do request Mademoiselle Ostrander to place her patient under an opiate each night, that the howls beneath her window may not awaken Madame Evander.
“Eh bien, thus far, thus good. But you do come along, Monsieur, and countermand my order. While Madame is not under the drug that unholy thing beneath her window does howl once more, and Madame disappears. Yes.
“Now, there was no ordinary medical diagnosis for such a case as this, so I search my memory and my knowledge for an extraordinary one. What do I find in that storehouse of my mind?
“In parts of Europe, my friends—believe me, I know whereof I speak!—there are known such things as werewolves, or wolf-men. In France we know them as les loups-garoux; in Wales they call them the bug-wolves, or bogie-wolves; in the days of old the Greeks did know them under the style of lukanthropos. Yes.
“What he is no one knows well. Sometimes he is said to be a wolf—a magical wolf—who can become a man. Sometimes, more often, he is said to be a man who can, or must, become a wolf. No one knows accurately. But this we know: The man who is also a wolf is ten times more terrible than the wolf who is only a wolf. At night he quests and kills his prey, which is most often his fellow man, but sometimes his ancient enemy, the dog. By day he hides his villainy under the guise of a man’s form. Sometimes he changes entirely to a wolf’s shape, sometimes he becomes a fearful mixture of man and beast, but always he is a devil incarnate. If he be killed while in the wolf shape, he at once reverts to human form, so by that sign we know we have slain a werewolf and not a true wolf. Certainly.
“Now, some werewolves become such by the aid of Satan; some become so as the result of a curse; a few are so through accident. In Transylvania, that devil-ridden land, the very soil does seem to favor the transformation of man into beast. There are springs from which the water, once drunk, will make its drinker into a savage beast, and there are flowers—cordieu, have I not seen them?—which, if worn by a man at night during the full of the moon, will do the same. Among the most potent of these blooms of hell is la fleur de sang, or blood-flower, which is exactly the accursed weed you have described to us, Monsieur Evander—the flower your Uncle Friedrich and your lady did wear to the theater that night of the full moon. When you mentioned the village of Kerovitch, I did see it all at once, immediately, for that place is on the Rumanian side of the Transylvanian Alps, and there the blood-flowers are found in greater numbers than anywhere else in the world. The very mountain soil does seem cursed with lycanthropy.
“Very well. I did not know of the flower when first I came into this case, but I did suspect something evil had cast a spell on Madame. She did exhibit all the symp
toms of a lycanthrope about to be transformed, and beneath her window there did howl what was undoubtedly a wolf-thing.
“‘He has put his cursed sign upon her and does even now seek her for his mate,’ I tell me after I order him away in the name of the good God.
“When Madame disappeared I was not surprised. When she returned after a night in the snow, I was less surprised. But the blood on her hands did perturb me. Was it human? Was she an all-unconscious murderess, or was it, happily, the blood of animals? I did not know. I analyzed it and discovered it were dog’s blood. ‘Very well,’ I tell me. ‘Let us see where a dog has been mauled in that vicinity.’
“This afternoon I made guarded inquiries. I find many dogs have been strangely killed in this neighborhood of late. No dog, no matter how big, was safe out of doors after nightfall.
“Also I meet a man, an ivrogne—what you call a drunkard—one who patronizes the leggers-of-the-boot not with wisdom, but with too great frequency. He is no more so. He have made the oath to remain sober. Pourquoi? Because three nights ago, as he passed through the park he were set upon by a horror so terrible that he thought he was in alcoholic delirium. It were like a man, yet not like a man. It had a long nose, and terrible eyes, and great, flashing teeth, and it did seek to kill and devour him. My friends, in his way, that former drunkard did describe the thing which tried to enter this house tonight. It were the same.
“Fortunately for the poor drunken man, he were carrying a walking cane of ash wood, and when he raised it to defend himself, the terror did shrink from him. ‘Ah ha,’ I tell me when I hear that, ‘now we know it were truly le loup-garou,’ for it is notorious that the wood of the ash tree is as intolerable to the werewolf as the bloom of the garlic is unpleasant to the vampire.
“What do I do? I go to the woods and cut a bundle of ash switches. Then I come here. Tonight the wolf-thing come crying for the mate who ranged the snows with him last night. He is lonely, he is mad for another of his kind. Tonight, perhaps, they will attack nobler game than dogs. Very well, I am ready.
“When Madame Evander, being drugged, did not answer his call, he was emboldened to enter the house. Pardieu, he did not know Jules de Grandin awaited him! Had I not been here it might well have gone hard with Mademoiselle Ostrander. As it was”—he spread his slender hands—“there is one less man-monster in the world this night.”
Evander stared at him in round-eyed wonder. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered, “but you’ve proved your case. Poor Uncle Friedrich! The curse of the blood-flower.” He broke off, an expression of mingled horror and despair on his face. “My wife!” he gasped. “Will she become a thing like that? Will … ?”
“Monsieur,” de Grandin interrupted gently, “she has become one. Only the drug holds her bound in human form at this minute.”
“Oh,” Evander cried, tears of grief streaming down his face, “save her! For the love of heaven, save her! Can’t you do anything to bring her back to me?”
“You do not approve my methods,” de Grandin reminded him.
Evander was like a pleading child. “I apologize,” he whimpered. “I’ll give you anything you ask if you’ll only save her. I’m not rich, but I think I can raise fifty thousand dollars. I’ll give it to you if you’ll cure her!”
The Frenchman twisted his little blond mustache furiously. “The fee you name is attractive, Monsieur,” he remarked.
“I’ll pay it; I’ll pay it!” Evander burst out hysterically. Then, unable to control himself, he put his folded arms on the table, sank his head upon them, and shook with sobs.
“Very well,” de Grandin agreed, casting me the flicker of a wink. “Tomorrow night I shall undertake your lady’s case. Tomorrow night we attempt the cure. Au revoir, Monsieur. Come away, Friend Trowbridge, we must rest well before tomorrow night.”
DE GRANDIN WAS SILENT to the point of moodiness all next morning. Toward noon he put on his outdoor clothing and left without luncheon, saying he would meet me at Evander’s that night.
He was there when I arrived and greeted me, saying that the main business would start soon.
“Meantime, Trowbridge, mon vieux, I beg you will assist me in the kitchen. There is much to do and little time in which to do it.”
Opening a large valise he produced a bundle of slender sticks which he began splitting into strips like basket-withes, explaining that they were from a mountain ash tree. When some twenty-five of these had been prepared, he selected a number of bottles from the bottom of the satchel, and, taking a large aluminum kettle, began scouring it with a clean cloth.
“Attend me carefully, Friend Trowbridge,” he commanded; “do you keep close tally as I compound the draft, for much depends on the formula being correct. To begin.”
Arranging a pair of apothecary’s scales and a graduate glass before him on the table, he handed me this memorandum:
3 pints pure spring water
2 drachms sulfur
½ oz. castorium
6 drachms opium
3 drachms asafoetida
½ oz. hypericum
¾ oz. aromatic ammonia
½ oz. gum camphor
As he busied himself with scales and graduate I checked the amounts he poured into the kettle. “Voilà,” he announced, “we are prepared!”
Quickly he thrust the ash withes into a pailful of boiling water and proceeded to bind together a three-stranded hyssop of ash, poplar and birch twigs.
“And now, my friend, if you will assist me, we shall proceed,” he asserted, thrusting a large wash pan into my hands and preparing to follow me into the dining room with the kettle of liquor he had prepared, his little brush-broom thrust under his arm.
We moved the dining room furniture against the walls, and de Grandin put the kettle of liquid in the dishpan I had brought in, piling a number of light wood chips about it, and starting a small fire. As the liquid in the kettle began bubbling and seething over the flame, he knelt and began tracing a circle about seven feet in diameter with a bit of white chalk. Inside the first circle he drew a second ring some three feet in diameter, and within this traced a star composed of two interlaced triangles. At the very center he marked down an odd-looking figure composed of a circle surmounted by a crescent and supported by a cross. “This is the Druid’s foot, or pentagram,” he explained, indicating the star. “The powers of evil are powerless to pass it, either from without or within. This,” he pointed to the central figure, “is the sign of Mercury. It is also the sign of the Holy Angels, my friend, and the bon Dieu knows we shall need their kind offices this night. Compare, Friend Trowbridge, if you please, the chart I have drawn with the exemplar which I did most carefully prepare from the occult books today. I would have the testimony of both of us that I have left nothing undone.”
Into my hand he thrust the following chart:
Quickly, working like one possessed, he arranged seven small silver lamps about the outer circle where the seven little rings on the chart indicated, ignited their wicks, snapped off the electric light and, rushing into the kitchen, returned with the boiled ash withes dangling from his hand.
Fast as he had worked, there was not a moment to spare, for Miss Ostrander’s hysterical call, “Dr. de Grandin, oh, Dr. de Grandin!” came down the stairs as he returned from the kitchen.
ON THE BED MRS. Evander lay writhing like a person in convulsions. As we approached, she turned her face toward us, and I stopped in my tracks, speechless with the spectacle before me.
It was as if the young woman’s pretty face were twisted into a grimace, only the muscles, instead of resuming their wonted positions again, seemed to stretch steadily out of place. Her mouth widened gradually till it was nearly twice its normal size, her nose seemed lengthening, becoming more pointed, and crooking sharply at the end. Her eyes, of sweet cornflower blue, were widening, becoming at once round and prominent, and changing to a wicked, phosphorescent green. I stared and stared, unable to believe the evidence of my eyes, and as I looked sh
e raised her hands from beneath the covers, and I went sick with the horror of it. The dainty, flower-like pink-and-white hands with their well-manicured nails were transformed into a pair of withered, corded talons armed with long, hornlike, curved claws, saber-sharp and hooked like the nails of some predatory bird. Before my eyes a sweet, gently bred woman was being transfigured into a foul hell-hag, a loathsome, hideous parody of herself.
“Quickly, Friend Trowbridge, seize her, bind her!” de Grandin called, thrusting a handful of the limber withes into my grasp and hurling himself upon the monstrous thing which lay in Edith Evander’s place.
The hag fought like a true member of the wolf pack. Howling, clawing, growling and snarling, she opposed tooth and nail to our efforts, but at last we lashed her wrists and ankles firmly with the wooden cords and bore her struggling frantically, down the stairs and placed her within the mystic circle de Grandin had drawn on the dining room floor.
“Inside, Friend Trowbridge, quickly!” the Frenchman ordered as he dipped the hyssop into the boiling liquid in the kettle and leaped over the chalk marks. “Mademoiselle Ostrander, Monsieur Evander, for your lives, leave the house!”
Reluctantly the husband and nurse left us and de Grandin began showering the contorting, howling thing on the floor with liquid from the boiling kettle.
Swinging his hyssop in the form of a cross above the hideous changeling’s head, he uttered some invocation so rapidly that I failed to catch the words, then, striking the wolf-woman’s feet, hands, heart and head in turn with his bundle of twigs, he drew forth a small black book and began reading in a firm, clear voice: “Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord; Lord hear my voice….”
And at the end he finished with a great shout: “I know that my redeemer liveth … I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live!”
The Horror on the Links Page 31
