“Oh, all right,” I agreed grudgingly. “I’ll go along, but I want you to know I don’t countenance any of this foolishness. What Mrs. Penneman needs is a nerve specialist, not this clowning we’re going through.”
Madame Naîra’s atelier in East Eighty-second Street spoke volumes for the public’s credulity. It was one of the old-fashioned brownstone front residences of two generations ago, located within a pebble’s toss of Central Park, and worth its square footage in gold coin. Outside it was as like its neighbors in the block as one pea is like its fellows in the pod. Within it was a perfect example of good taste and expensive furnishings. A butler bearing all the hall-marks of having served in at least a duke’s household, staidly resplendent in correct cutaway coat and striped trousers, admitted us and took the cards de Grandin handed him, inspecting them with minute care, accepted the Prophetess’ fee (payable strictly in advance) and ushered us into a large and luxuriously furnished parlor.
“See here,” I began as we seated ourselves in a pair of richly upholstered chairs, “if you expect to—”
A violent grimace on the Frenchman’s face warned me to silence. Next moment he rose, remarking, “What a beautiful room we have here, my friend,” and sauntered about, admiring the handsome pictures on the walls. Passing my chair he seated himself on its arm and slapped me jovially on the back, then bent close and whispered fiercely in my ear: “No talk, Friend Trowbridge; already I have discovered dictographs concealed behind nearly every picture, and I know not if they have periscope peepholes, to enable them to watch us as well. Caution! I had a friend at the French consulate make the appointment for us in his name, and I am Alphonse Charres, while you have assumed the role of William Tindell, an attorney. Remember.”
Humming a snatch of tune he began a second circuit of the room.
Before he had completed his trip a slender, dark-skinned young man in flowing blue linen robes and a huge turban of red and yellow silk appeared almost as if by magic in the drawing room doorway, beckoning us with a thin bamboo cane which he bore like a badge of office.
Casting me the flicker of a wink de Grandin fell in step behind him and followed up the stairs.
The ground floor drawing room where we had first cooled our heels was a perfect example of Occidental elegance in furniture and appointments. The room into which we were now shown was a riot of Oriental extravagance. Rugs of hues and patterns as gorgeous as the plumage of paradise birds were strewn over the floor, in some cases three deep, the plaster walls were painted in glaring reproductions of Egyptian temple scenes, and fitted here and there with niches in which stood statues of plaster, stone or metal, many of them enameled in brilliant colors.
The only article of furniture in the apartment was a long crescent-shaped bench or settee of some dark wood thickly encrusted with mother-of-pearl inlays, which stood almost in the center of the room and faced what appeared to be the entrance to another chamber.
This entrance was constructed in the form of a temple gateway, or, it seemed to me, the door to a mausoleum. Plaster blocks, made to imitate stone, had been laid like a wall about it, and on each side of the opening there rose straight, thick columns topped with lotus capitals, while a slab of flat stone reached between them, forming the pediment of the doorway. On this was engraved the Egyptian symbol of the solar disk, vulture wings spreading from right and left of it. To the left of the door crouched a terra cotta androsphinx, while on the right stood a queer-looking statue representing a woman swathed in mummy bands about her lower body, naked from the waist upward, and having the head of a lioness set upon her shoulders. One hand she held against her rather prominent bosom, grasping an instrument something like an undersized tennis racket, only, instead of strings, the open oval of the racket was fitted with transverse horizontal bars on which rows of little bells hung. The other hand was extended as though bestowing a blessing, the long, tapering fingers widely separated.
I did not like the thing’s looks. Involuntarily, even though I knew it to be only a lifeless piece of plaster and papier-mâché, I shuddered as I looked at it, and felt easier when my gaze rested elsewhere.
Straight before us the entrance to the next room opened between the pillars of the temple door. The doorway was fitted with two gates of iron grillwork, heavily gilded; behind the arabesqued iron hung curtains of royal purple silk.
At a sign from the usher we seated ourselves on the inlaid bench and faced the closed iron lattice.
“Assez!” de Grandin exclaimed in an irritable voice, “When you have done inspecting us, Madame, kindly have the goodness to admit us. We have urgent business elsewhere.” To me he whispered: “They do peer at us through the meshes of the curtain! Mordieu, are we beasts at the menagerie to be stared at thus?”
As though in answer to his protest the lights in the room began to grow dimmer, a deep-toned gong sounded somewhere beyond the iron gates, and the grilled doors swung back, disclosing a darkened room beyond.
“Enter!” a deep, sepulchral voice bade us, and we stepped across the threshold of Madame Naîra’s consultation room.
THE PLACE WAS PITCH-DARK, for the purple curtain fell behind us, shutting out all light from the room we had left. I stood stock-still, attempting vainly to pierce the enveloping darkness with my gaze, and it seemed as though an icy wind were blowing on my face, a chilling wind, like the draft from a long-disused tunnel. Subtly, too, the odor of sandalwood and acrid tang of frankincense was wafted to my nostrils, and in the darkness before me the faint, phosphorescent glow of a cold green-blue light became visible.
Slowly the luminosity spread, gradually taking form. Through the dark it shone, cold and hard as a far-distant star viewed on a frosty night, assuming the shape of an ancient coffin. Now the effulgence gained in strength till we could make out an upright figure in the mummy case; the figure of a woman, garbed in a straight-hanging robe of silk tissue thickly sewn with silver sequins. Her hands were crossed above her breast and her face was bowed upon them so that all we could observe at first was the whiteness of her arms and shoulders and the blackness of her hair, piled coil on coil in a high coronal. As the light increased we saw her bare feet rested on the center of a horizontal crescent moon, the horns of which extended upward on each side of her.
The breeze which blew through the dark increased its force. We could hear the flutter of the silken curtain behind us as the Prophetess raised her head and stepped majestically from her coffin, advancing toward us with a lithe, silent movement which somehow reminded me of the tread of a great, graceful leopardess.
By now the increasing light enabled us to see the woman’s face was hidden in a sequin-spangled veil of the same material as her robe, and that her brows were bound with a diadem of blue-green enamel fashioned in the form of a pair of backward-bent hawk wings and bearing the circular symbol of the sun at its center.
“Morbleu,” I heard de Grandin murmur, “are we at the circus, perhaps?”
Seemingly unaware of our presence, the veiled woman glided noiselessly across the room till she stood a scant two yards from us, extended one of her white, jewel-decked arms and motioned us to be seated. Simultaneously a crystal sphere suddenly appeared in the dark before her, glowing with cold inward fire like a monster opal, and she sank to rest in a carved chair, her long, sinuous hands hovering and darting in fantastic gestures about and above the crystal. On each fore- and little finger there gleamed a green-jeweled ring, so that her writhing hands looked for all the world like a pair of green-eyed serpents weaving a saraband in the purple dark.
“I see,” she intoned in a rich contralto voice, “I see a man who vaunts his learning; a man who dares pit his puny strength against the powers which were old when Kronos himself was young. I warn that man to meddle not with what does not concern him. I warn him not to interfere in behalf of the wife who has been put away, or cross the path of one who draws her strength from the ancient goddess of Bubastis.
“Away with you, rash upstart”—one of her long
, jeweled hands suddenly rose and pointed through the shadows at de Grandin—“back to your test-tubes and your retorts, your puny science and punier learning. Go give your aid to the sick and the ailing, but espouse not the cause of the woman who has been cursed by Bast, or your life shall pay the forfeit!”
Like the closing of an eyelid the light in the crystal and the paler light about the mummy case went out, leaving the room in total blackness. There came a greater gust of air than any we had yet felt, and with it an overpowering, cloying sweetness which stifled our breath and made our eyes smart like fumes from burning pepper.
“Seize her, Friend Trowbridge!” I heard de Grandin cry, then fall to coughing and gasping as the sharp, penetrating fumes attacked his mucous membranes. Something more potent than the darkness blotted out my sight, bringing hot tears to my eyes and smothering the answering hail I would have given. About me the gloom seemed filled with tiny shimmering star-points of wicked, dancing light. I reached blindly for the spot where the veiled woman had sat, encountered only empty space, and fell forward on my face, wrenched and racked with a fit of uncontrollable coughing.
Somewhere, far, far away, a light was shining, and in the greater distance a voice was calling my name, thinly, ineffectually, like a voice heard dimly in a dream. I sat up, rubbing my stinging eyes, and stared about me. The light which danced and flickered overhead was a city street lamp, and the voice ringing faintly in my ears was the voice of Jules de Grandin. We were sitting, the pair of us, on the curb of East Eighty-second Street, the arc-light laughing down at us through the cold, frosty air of the winter evening. Neither of us had hat or overcoat, and de Grandin’s thin, white face was already pinched with cold.
“Nom d’un colimaçon; nom d’un coq; nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!” he chattered through rattling teeth. “They have made of us one pair of fools, Friend Trowbridge. They have taken us as the fisherman takes the fish of April. Jules de Grandin, you are no more worthy to regard yourself in the mirror!”
“Whew!” I breathed, clearing my lungs of the fumes which still hung in them. “That was as sharp a trick as I ever saw, de Grandin. There must have been enough chloroform mixed with that incense to have put a dozen men away!” I got unsteadily to my feet and looked about me. We were a good two blocks from the house where Madame Naîra had hoodwinked us so neatly, though how we came there was more than I knew.
“Parbleu, yes,” he agreed, rising and buttoning his jacket over his breast. “We were unconscious before we could so much as call the name of that Monsieur Jacques Robinson! Meantime, I famish with the cold. Can we not obtain suitable clothing?”
“H’m,” I answered, “it is too late for any of the regular shops to be open, but we might get something to tide us over at one of the secondhand places in Third Avenue.”
“Ha, is it so?” he replied. “By all means, then, let us do so at once, right away, immediately. Mordieu, me, I am likely to become a snow man at any minute. Allons!”
A Hebrew gentleman who dealt in cast-off garments eyed us suspiciously when we entered his musty emporium of relics, but the sight of our money quickly quieted any misgivings he might have entertained, and within half an hour, togged out in garments which almost sent their vendor into fits at their beauty and general excellence, we were seated in a taxicab proceeding toward the railway station.
“WELL,” I TEASED AS we concluded our dinner that night, “you saw your Veiled Prophetess. Are you satisfied?”
“Satisfied!” He gave me a glare beside which the fabled basilisk’s worst would have been a melting love-glance. “Pardieu, we shall see who shall make un sacré singe out of whom before we are through! That woman—that adventuress! She did warn me not to meddle in what was not my affair. Nom d’un veau noir, and is not a five-hundred-franc overcoat, to say nothing whatever of a hundred-franc hat, which she stole from me—are they, perhaps, not my affair? Morbleu, I shall say they are, my friend! Mais oui, I shall make that fortune-teller of the veil eat her words. Cordieu, but she shall eat them to the last crumb, nor will they prove a palatable meal for her, either!”
“You’ve got to admit she drew first blood, anyhow,” I replied with a laugh.
“That is true,” he agreed, nodding gravely, “but attend me, my friend, he bleeds best who bleeds last, I do assure you.”
He was moody as a bear with a sore head all evening, and morose to the point of surliness the next day. Toward noon he took his hat and coat and left the house abruptly. “I shall return when I come back,” he told me as he hastened down the steps.
It was long after dinner time when he put in an appearance, but his face wore its usual complacent expression, and, though his eyes twinkled now and again with elfish laughter, I could not get him to tell me of his adventures during the day.
EARLY NEXT MORNING HE left the house on another mysterious errand, and the same thing occurred each day during the week. The following Monday he suddenly insisted on my accompanying him to New York, and, at his direction, we took a taxicab from the Hudson Terminal and drove northward to Columbus Circle, turning in at the entrance of Central Park.
“Ah ha, my friend,” he replied when I urged him to explain our errand, “you shall see what you shall see, and it shall be worth seeing.”
Presently, as we proceeded toward Cleopatra’s Needle, he gave me a sharp nudge in the ribs. “Observe that moteur yonder, my friend,” he commanded, “that one of the color of pea soup. Regard the driver and his companion, if you please.”
Our taxi leaped ahead at his sudden command to the driver, and we passed a long, low sport-model roadster driven by a young man in a heavy raccoon ulster. There was nothing remarkable about the fellow, except that he seemed more than commonly pleased with himself, but I was forced to admit that it was worth our trip to the city to view his companion. She was dark, dark with that mysterious, compelling beauty not possessed by one woman in a thousand. Despite the chill of the winter wind her cheeks showed not a touch of color, but were pale with the rich, creamy tint of old parchment, which made her vivid red lips seem all the more brilliant. Her head was small and finely poised, and fitted with a cap of some tawny-hued fur which nestled snugly to her blue black hair with the tightness of a turban. Her eyes were long and narrow and of that peculiar shade of hazel which defies exact classification, being sometimes topaz-brown, sometimes sea-green. Her lips were full, passionate and brightly rouged, and her long, oval face and prominent cheekbones gave her a decidedly Oriental appearance. Patrician she looked, even royal, and mysterious as night-veiled Isis herself. A collar of tawny fur frothed about her slender bare throat, and her shoulders were covered by a coat of some smooth, mustard-colored pelage which glistened in the morning sunlight like the back of a seal just emerged from the water.
“By George, she’s a beauty,” I admitted, “but—”
“Yes?” de Grandin elevated his brows interrogatively. “You did say ‘but,’ my friend?”
“I was thinking I wouldn’t care to have her enmity,” I replied. “Her claws seem a bit too near the surface, and I’ll warrant they’re sharp, too.”
“Eh bien, you should know, mon vieux,” he replied with a chuckle. “You have felt them.”
“What—you mean—?”
“Nothing less. The lady is none other than our friend, Madame Naîra, the Veiled Prophetess.”
“And the man—?”
“Is Benjamin Penneman, the husband of our client, Madame Penneman.”
“Oh, so he is running about with Madame Naîra?” I replied. “His poor little wife.”
“We’ll have him back, and on his knees, to boot, or Jules de Grandin is a greater fool than Madame Naîra made of him the other night,” he cut in. “Attend me, Friend Trowbridge. After our so humiliating fiasco at the house of the Prophetess that night, I was like a caged beast who sees her young slain before her eyes. Only desire for revenge actuated me, and I could not think clearly for my madness. Then I calmed myself. ‘Jules de Grandin, you great zany,’ I s
aid to me, ‘if you are to overcome the enemy, you must think, and to think you must have the clear brain. Control yourself.’
“And so I did. I went to New York and proceeded to play detective on the trail of this unfaithful husband. Where he went I went. When he stopped I stopped. Parbleu, but he led me a merry chase! He is active, that one.
“At last, however, my patience reaped its deserved reward. I did see him go to that accursed house in Eighty-second Street and come out with that woman. Again and again I did follow him, and always my trail led to the same burrow. ‘Triomphe!’ I told me. ‘We have at last established this lady’s identity.’ Today I did but bring you to see her that you might recognize her face without its veil. Tonight we begin our work of turning her temporary victory into crushing defeat.”
“How are you going to pay her off?” I asked. “Name her as corespondent in a divorce suit?”
“Non, non, non!” he grinned at me. “All in good time, my friend. I have first planned my work; you shall now observe me as I work my plan. This very night I do begin.” Nor could I get any further information from him.
FOR THREE CONSECUTIVE NIGHTS de Grandin watched our telephone as a cat mounts vigil over a rat-hole. On the fourth night, as we were preparing to go upstairs to bed, the bell rang, and he snatched the receiver from the hook before the little clapper had ceased to vibrate against the gongs.
“Allo, allo!” he called excitedly through the mouthpiece. “But yes; most certainly. Immediately, at once, right away!
“Trowbridge, my friend, come with me. Come and see the game we have caught in our trap. Death of my life, but that Madame Penneman is one clever woman!”
Waving away my questions, he hustled me into hat and coat and fairly dragged me to the automobile, urging more and more speed as we bowled along the road to the Penneman house.
Disdaining to knock, he burst the front door open and hurried up the stairs, turning unerringly down the upper hall and pushing open the first door to the right.
The Horror on the Links Page 33
