Costello and I picked our fallen comrade up and bore him into the empty house of death, and while I struck a match and applied it to a gas jet, de Grandin opened the dead policeman’s blouse and made a closer examination.
“Look here, Dr. de Grandin,” the sergeant announced, looking up from the dead man’s face with the dry-eyed sorrow of a man whose daily duty it is to take desperate risks, “there’s something devilish about this business. Look at his face! He’s turnin’ spotty, a’ ready! Why, you’d think he was dead a couple o’ days, an’ we only just carried him in here a minute ago.”
De Grandin bent closer, examining the dead man’s face, chest and arms attentively. “Pardieu, it may easily be so!” he murmured to himself, then aloud to Costello: “You are right, my friend. Do you and the good Callaghan go to the police bureau for an ambulance. Dr. Trowbridge and I will wait until they come for the—for your comrade. Meantime—” He broke off, gazing, abstractedly about the combination living-dining room in which we stood, noting the odd ornaments on the mantel-shelf, the neatly arranged blue plates in the china closet, the general air of stiff, masculine house-keeping which permeated the apartment.
“Parbleu, Trowbridge, my friend,” he commented as the policemen tiptoed out, “I think this matter will require much thinking over. Me, I do not like the way this poor one died, and I have less liking for the intelligence that Monsieur Craven’s head was missing.”
“But Craven must have been cut down by some fiend.” I interposed, “while poor Schippert—well, how did he die, de Grandin?”
“Who can say?” he queried in his turn, tapping his teeth thoughtfully with the polished nail of his forefinger.
“Now, Jules de Grandin, great tête de chou that you are, what have you to say to this?” he apostrophized himself as he inspected the splinter of wood which had scratched the dead policeman’s hand. “That is what it is, undoubtlessly,” he continued his monologue, “yes, pardieu, we do all know that, but why? Such things do not happen without reason, foolish one.” He turned to the chest of drawers beneath the kitchen dresser and began ransacking it as methodically as though he were a burglar intent on looting the place.
“Ah? What have we here?” he demanded as a heavy package, securely wrapped in muslin, came to light. “Perhaps it is a plate—” He bore the parcel to the unpainted kitchen table and began undoing the nautical knots with which its wrappings were fastened. “Morbleu,” he laid back the last layer of cloth, “it is a plate, Friend Trowbridge. And such a plate! Men have died for less—cordieu, I think men have died for this, unless I am more mistaken than I think.”
Under the flickering gaslight there lay a disk of yellow metal some thirteen or fourteen inches in diameter, its outer edge decorated with a row of small, oblong ornaments, like a border of dominoes, an inner circle, three inches or so smaller than the plate’s perimeter, serving as a frame for the bas-relief figure of a dancing man crowned with a feather headdress and brandishing a two-headed spear in one hand and a hook-ended war-club in the other.
“It is gold, my friend,” he breathed almost reverently. “Solid, virgin gold, hammered by hand a thousand years ago, if a day. Pure Mayan it is, from Chichen-Itzá or Uxmal, and worth its weight in diamonds.”
“Um’m, perhaps,” I agreed doubtfully, “but nothing you’ve said means anything to me.”
“No matter,” he retorted shortly. “Let us see—ah, what have we here?” In a corner of the small open fireplace, innocent of any trace of ash or cinder, lay a tiny wisp of charred paper. Darting forward he retrieved the bit of refuse and spread it before him on the table.
“Um’m?” he muttered non-committally, staring at the relic as though he expected it to speak.
The paper had been burned to a crisp and had curled up on itself with the action of the flame, but the metallic content of the ink in which its message had been scribbled had bleached to a dark, leaden gray, several shades lighter than the carbonized surface of the note itself.
“Regardez vous, my friend,” he commanded, taking a pair of laboratory tweezers from his dinner-coat pocket and straightening the paper slightly with a careful pressure. “Can not you descry words on this so black background?”
“No—yes!” I replied, looking over his shoulder and straining my eyes to the utmost.
“Bien, we shall read it together,” he responded. “Now to begin:”
“ar al,” we spelled out laboriously, as he turned the charred note gingerly to and fro beneath the lambent light. “red ils av ot Murphy. Lay low an …” the rest of the message was lost in the multitude of heat-wrinkles on the paper’s blackened surface.
“Mordieu, but this is too bad!” he exclaimed when our united efforts to decipher further words proved fruitless. “There is no date, no signature, no anything. Hélas, we stand no nearer an answer to our puzzle than at first!”
He lighted one of his evil-smelling French cigarettes and took several lung-filling, thoughtful puffs, then threw the half-smoked tube into the fireplace and began re-wrapping the golden plate. “My friend,” he informed me, his little blue eyes twinkling with sardonic laughter, “I lie. A moment since I did declare we were still at sea, but now I think we are, like Columbus, in sight of land. Moreover, again like Columbus, I think it is the coast of Central America which we do sight. Behold, we have established the motive for Monsieur Craven’s murder, and we know how it was accomplished. There now remains only to ascertain who this Monsieur Murphy was and who inscribed this note of warning to the late Monsieur Craven.”
“Well,” I exclaimed impatiently, “I’m glad you’ve found out why and how Craven was killed. All I’ve seen here tonight is a policeman’s tragic death and a silly-looking plate from Uxbridge, or some other absurd place.”
He produced another cigarette and felt thoughtfully through his pockets for a match. “Those who know not what they see oft times see nothing, my friend,” he returned with a sarcastic smile. “Come, let us go out into the air. This place—pah!—it has the reek of death on it.”
We waited at the front gate until Costello and Callaghan arrived with the police ambulance. As the litter-bearers passed us on their grisly errand, de Grandin leaned from my car and whispered to Costello. “Tomorrow night, cher sergent. Perhaps we shall come to the end of the riddle then, and apprehend those who slew your friend, as well.”
“Can ye, now, doctor?” the Irishman returned eagerly. “By gorry, I’ll be present with bells—an’ a couple o’ guns—on if ye can trace th’ murderin’ devil for me.”
“Très bien,” de Grandin assented. “Meet us at Dr. Trowbridge’s house about eight o’clock; if you please.”
“Now, what’s it all mean?” I demanded as I turned the car toward home. “You’re as mysterious as a magician at the county fair. Come, out with it!”
“Listen, my friend,” he bade. “The wise man who thinks he knows whereof he speaks retains silence until his thought becomes a certainty. Me, I have wisdom. Much experience has given it to me. Let us say no more of this matter until we have ascertained light on certain things which are yet most dark. Yes.”
“But—”
“Je suis le roi de ces montagnes …”
He sang in high good humor, nor could all my threats or entreaties make him say one word more concerning the mystery of Craven’s death, or Schippert’s, or the queer, golden plate we found in the deserted house.
“BON SOIR, SERGENT,” DE Grandin greeted as Costello entered the study shortly after nine o’clock the following evening. “We have awaited you with impatience.”
“Have ye, now?” the Irishman replied. “Sure, it’s too bad entirely that I’ve delayed th’ party, but I’ve had th’ devil’s own time gettin’ here this night. All sorts o’ things have been poppin’ up, sor.”
“Eh bien, perhaps we shall pop up something more before the night is ended,” the Frenchman returned. “Come, let us hasten; we have much to do before we seek our beds.”
“All right,” Cos
tello, agreed as he prepared to follow, “where are we goin’, if I may ask?”
“Ah, too many questions spoil the party of surprise, my friend,” de Grandin answered with a laugh as he led the way to the car.
“Do you know the Rugby Road, Friend Trowbridge?” he asked as he climbed into the front seat beside me.
“Uh, yes,” I replied without enthusiasm. The neighborhood he mentioned was in a suburb at the extreme east end of town, not at all noted for its odor of sanctity. Frankly, I had not much stomach for driving out there after dark, even with Sergeant Costello for company, but de Grandin gave me no time for temporizing.
“Bien,” he replied enthusiastically. “You will drive us with all celerity, if you please, and pause when I give the signal. Come, my friend; haste, I pray you. Not only may we save another life—we may apprehend those assassins who did Craven and the poor Schippert to death.”
“All right,” I agreed grudgingly, “but I’m not very keen on it.”
Half an hour’s run brought us to the winding, tree-shaded trail known as Rugby Road, a thoroughfare of broken pavements, tumbledown houses and wide spaces of open, uncultivated fields. At a signal from my companion I brought up before the straggling picket fence of a deserted-looking cottage, and the three of us swarmed out and advanced along the grass-choked path leading to the ruinous front stoop.
“I’m thinkin’ we’ve had our ride for our pains, sor,” Costello asserted as de Grandin’s third imperative knock brought no response from beyond the weather-scarred door.
“Not we,” the Frenchman denied, increasing both tempo and volume of his raps. “There is someone here, of a certainty, and here we shall stand until we receive an answer.”
His persistence was rewarded, for a shuffling step finally sounded beyond the panels, and a cautious voice demanded haltingly, “Who’s there?”
“Parbleu, friend, you are over long in honoring the presence of those who come to aid you!” de Grandin complained with testy irrelevancy. “Have the kindness to open the door.”
“Who’s there?” the voice repeated, this time with something like a tremor in it.
“Nom d’un homard!” the Frenchman ejaculated. “What does it matter what names we bear? We are come to help you escape ‘the red devils’—those same demons who did away with Murphy and Craven. Quick, open, for the time is short!”
The man inside appeared to be considering de Grandin’s statement, for there was a brief period of silence, then the sound of bolts withdrawing and a chain-lock being undone. “Quick—step fast!” the voice admonished as the door swung inward a scant ten inches without disclosing the person behind it. Next moment we stood in a dimly lighted hallway, surveying a perspiring little man in tattered pajamas and badly worn carpet slippers. He was an odd-looking bit of humanity, undersized, thin almost to the point of emaciation, with small, deep-sunken eyes set close together, a head almost denuded of hair and a mouth at once weak and vicious. I conceived an instant dislike for him, nor was my regard heightened by his greeting.
“What do you know about ‘the red devils’?” he demanded truculently, regarding us with something more than suspicion. “If you’re in cahoots with ’em—” he placed his hand against the soiled front of his jacket, displaying the outline of a revolver strapped to his waist.
“Ah bah, Deacons,” de Grandin advised, “be not an utter fool. Were we part of their company, you know how much safety the possession of that toy would afford. Murphy was an excellent shot, so was Craven, but”—he waved an expressive hand—“what good were all their weapons?”
“None, by God!” the other answered with a shudder. “But what’s a little pip squeak like you goin’ to be able to do to help me?”
“Morbleu—a pip squeak—I?” The diminutive Frenchman bristled like a bantam game-cock, then interrupted himself to ask, “Why do you barricade yourself like this? Think you to escape in that way?”
“What d’ye want me to do?” the other replied sullenly. “Go out an’ let ’em fill me full o’—”
“Tiens, the chances are nine to one that they will get you in any case,” de Grandin cut in cheerfully. “We have come to offer you the tenth chance; my friend. Now attend me carefully: Have you a cellar beneath this detestable ruin of a house, and has it a floor of earth?”
“Huh? Yes,” the other replied, looking at the Frenchman as though he expected him to proclaim himself Emperor of China with his next breath. “What of it?”
“Parbleu, much of it, stupid one! Quick, make haste, repair instantly to the cellar and bring me a panful of earth. Be swift, the night is too hot for us to remain long baking in this hell-hole of yours.”
“Lookee here—” the other began, but de Grandin shut him off.
“Do as I bid!” he thundered, his little eyes blazing fiercely. “At once, right away, immediately, or we leave you to your fate. Cordieu, am I not Jules de Grandin? I will be obeyed!”
With surprising meekness our host descended to the cellar and struggled up the rickety stairs in a few minutes, a dishpan full of clayey soil from the unpaved floor in his hands.
“Bien!” De Grandin carried the earth to the kitchen sink and proceeded to moisten it with water from the tap, then began kneading it gently with his long, tapering fingers.
“Do you seat yourself between me and the light, my friend,” he commanded, looking up from his work to address Deacons. “I would have a clear-cut view of your profile.”
“Sa-a-ay—” the other began protestingly.
“Here, now, you, do what Dr. de Grandin tells ye, or I’ll mash ye to a pulp,” Costello cut in, evidently feeling he had already taken too little part in the proceedings. “Turn your ugly mug, now, like he tells ye, or I’ll be turnin’ it for ye, an’ turnin’ it so far ye’ll have to walk backwards to see where ye’re goin’, too.”
Under Costello’s chaperonage Deacons sat sullenly while de Grandin deftly punched and pounded the mass of soggy clay into a rough simulacrum of his nondescript profile. “Parbleu, Trowbridge, my friend,” he remarked with a grin, “when I was a lad studying at the Beaux Arts and learning I should never make an artist, little did I think I should one day apply such little skill as I absorbed in modeling such a cochon as that”—he indicated Deacons with a disdainful nod—“in earth scooped from his own cellar floor! Eh bien, he who tracks a mystery does many strange things before he reaches his trail’s end, n’est-ce-pas?
“Now, then,” he gave the clay a final scrape with his thumb, “let us consider the two of you. Be so good as to stand beside my masterpiece, Monsieur,” he waved an inviting hand to his model and strode across the room to get a longer perspective on his work.
Deacons complied, still muttering complainingly about “fellers that comes to a man’s house an’ orders ’im about like he was a bloomin’ servant.”
The Frenchman regarded his handiwork through narrowed eyelids, turning his head first one side, then the other. Finally he gave a short grunt of satisfaction. “Ma foi,” he looked from Costello to me, then back to Deacons and the bust. “I think I have bettered the work of le bon Dieu. Surely my creation from earth does flatter His. Is it not so, my friends?”
“Sure, it is,” Costello commended, “but if it ain’t askin’ too much, I’d like to know what’s th’ idea o’ all th’ monkey business?”
De Grandin wiped the clay from his hands on the none-too-clean towel which hung from a nail in the kitchen door. “We are about to demonstrate the superiority of Aryan culture to the heathen in his blindness,” he replied.
“Are we, now?” Costello answered. “Sure, that’s fine. When do we start?”
“Now, immediately, right away. Deacons”—he turned curtly to our host—“Do you smoke a pipe? Habitually? Bien. You will put your pipe in that image’s mouth, if you please. Careful, I do not wish my work spoiled by your clumsiness. Good.” He regarded the image a thoughtful moment, then drawled to himself. “And—now—ah, pardieu, the very thing!” Seizing a roll of
clothesline from the corner of the room he made it fast to a leg of the table on which the statuette rested, then began dragging it slowly toward him.
“Once more I would have your so generous criticism, Sergent,” he requested of Costello. “Will you stand in the doorway, there, and observe the statue as it passes the light? Does its outline resemble the profile of our handsome friend yonder?”
“It does,” the Policeman asserted after a careful inspection through half-closed eyes. “If I seen it at fifty foot or so in a bad light I’d think it were th’ man himself, mebbe.”
“Good, fine, excellent,” de Grandin replied. “Those are the precise conditions under which I propose exhibiting my work to the audience I doubt not waits to examine it. Parbleu, we must hope their sense of artistic appreciation is not too highly developed. Trowbridge, mon vieux, will you assist me with the table? I would have it in the next room, please.”
When we had placed the table some five feet from the living room window which overlooked the cottage’s shabby side yard, de Grandin turned to Costello and me, his face tense with excitement. “Let us steal to the back door, my friends,” he directed, “and you, Sergent, do you have your pistol ready, for it may be that we shall have quick and straight shooting to do before we age many minutes.
“Deacons,” he turned at the doorway, speaking with a sharp, rasping note of command in his voice, “do you seat yourself on the floor, out of sight from the window, and draw the table toward you slowly with that rope when you hear my command. Slowly, my friend, mind you; about the pace a man might walk if he were in no hurry. Much depends upon your exact compliance with my orders. Now—”
Tiptoeing to the window, he seized the sliding blind, ran it up to its full height, then unbarred the shutters, flinging them wide, and dodged nimbly back from the window’s opening.
“Sergent—Trowbridge!” he whispered tensely. “Attention; let us go, allons! Be ready,” he flung the command to Deacons over his shoulder as he slipped from the room, “begin drawing in the rope when you hear the back door open!”
The Horror on the Links Page 39
