The Horror on the Links

by Seabury Quinn

  For an instant she stood swaying there, the cruel points embedded in her flesh, yet seemingly causing no pain, then a wild, heart-rending shriek broke from her lips, and her eyes opened wide in sudden terror and consternation. Instantly it was apparent she had regained consciousness, realized her position, her almost complete nudity and the biting, stinging points of the countless needles all at once.

  “Quick, Trowbridge, my friend!” de Grandin urged, leaping forward. “Take her, my old one. Do not permit her to fall—those pins, they will surely impale her if she drops.”

  Even as I seized the fainting girl in my arms, the Frenchman was furiously garnering the pins from her flesh, cursing volubly in mingled French and English as he worked.

  “Parbleu,” he swore, “it is the devil’s work, of a surety. By damn, I shall have words to say to this accursed dracu who sticks pins in young ladies and throws knives at Jules de Grandin!”

  Following him, I bore the swooning girl up the stairs, placed her on her bed and turned furiously in search of the nurse. What could the woman have been thinking of to let her patient leave her room in such a costume? “Miss Stanton,” I called angrily. “Where are you?”

  A muffled sound, half-way between a scream and an articulate cry, and a faint, ineffectual tap-tap on the door of the closet answered me. Snatching the door of the clothes-press open, I found her lying on the floor, half smothered by fallen dresses, her mouth gagged by a Turkish towel, wrists tied behind her and ankles lashed together with knotted silk stockings.

  “A-a-ah, oh!” she gasped as I relieved her of her fetters and helped her, half fainting, to her feet. “It took me, Dr. Trowbridge. I was helpless as a baby in its hands.”

  De Grandin looked up from his ministrations to Julia Loudon. “What was the ‘It’ which took you, Mademoiselle?” he inquired, folding back the shawl from the girl’s injured limbs and deftly shoving her beneath the bedclothes. “Was it Mademoiselle Loudon?”

  “No!” the nurse gasped, her hands still trembling with fright and nervousness. “Oh, no, not Miss Loudon, sir. It was—I don’t know what. Miss Loudon came upstairs a few moments ago and said you and Dr. Trowbridge were taking her motoring, and she must change her clothes. She began removing her house dress, but kept taking off her garments until she was—she was—” she hesitated a moment, catching her breath in long, laboring gasps.

  “Mordieu, yes!” de Grandin cut in testily. “We do waste time, Mademoiselle. She did remove her clothing until she was what? Completely nude?”

  “Yes,” the nurse replied with a shudder. “I was about to ask her if she needed to change all her clothes, when she turned and looked at me, and her face was like the face of a devil, sir. Then something seemed to come down on me like a wet blanket. No, not like a blanket, either. It clung to me and bore me down, and smothered me all at once, but it was transparent, sir. I could feel it, but I couldn’t see it. It was like a—like a terrible, big jelly-fish, sir. It was cold and slimy and strong, strong as a hundred giants. I tried to call out, and it oozed into my mouth—choked me; ugh!” She shuddered at the recollection. “Then I must have fainted, for the next thing I knew everything was dark, and I heard Dr. Trowbridge calling me, so I tried to call out and kicked as hard as I could, and—”

  “And voilà—here you are!” de Grandin interrupted. “I marvel not you are nerveuse, Mademoiselle. Cordieu, are we not all so!

  “Attend me, Trowbridge, my friend,” he commanded, “do you remain with Mademoiselle Stanton and the patient. Me, I shall go below and procure three drinks of brandy for us—yes, morbleu, four I shall obtain, for one I shall drink myself immediately, right away, at once, before I return. Meantime, watch well Mademoiselle Julie, for I think she will require much watching before all is done.”

  A moment later the clatter of his heels sounded on the polished boards of the hall floor as he hastened below stairs in search of stimulant.

  “IT IS DAMNABLE, DAMNABLE, my friends!” the little Frenchman cried a few moments later as he, Captain Loudon and I conferred in the lower hall. “This poltergeist, it has complete possession of the poor Mademoiselle Julie, and it has manifested itself to Mademoiselle Stanton as well. Pardieu, if we but knew whence it comes, and why, we might better be able to combat it; but all, all is mystery. It comes, it wreaks havoc, and it remains. Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu!” He strode fiercely back and forth across the rug, twisting first one, then the other end of his diminutive moustache until I thought he would surely drag the hairs from his lip.

  “If only we could—” he began again, striding across the hall and bringing up before a buhl cabinet which stood between two low windows. “If only we could—ah! What—who is this, Monsieur le Capitaine, if you please?”

  His slender, carefully manicured forefinger pointed to an exquisite little miniature which stood in a gold easel-frame on the cabinet’s top.

  Looking over his shoulder, I saw the picture of a young girl, black-haired, oval-faced, purple-eyed, her red lips showing against the pallor of her face almost like a wound in healthy flesh. There was a subtle something of difference—more in expression than in feature—from the original, nevertheless I recognized the likeness as a well-executed portrait of Julia Loudon, though it had been made, I imagined, several years earlier. “Why,” I exclaimed in astonishment at his question, “why, it is Miss Loudon, de Grandin!”

  Ignoring my remark, he kept his fixed, unwinking stare upon the captain, repeating, “This lady, Monsieur, she is who?”

  “It’s a picture of my niece, Julia’s cousin,” Captain Loudon returned shortly; then: “Don’t you think we could occupy our time better than with trifles like that? My daughter—”

  “Trifles, Monsieur!” de Grandin cut in. “There are no trifles in a case such as this. All, all is of the importance. Tell me of this young lady, if you please. There is a so remarkable resemblance, yet a look in the eyes which is not the look of your daughter. I would know much of her, if you please.”

  “She was my niece, Anna Wassilko,” the captain replied. “That picture was made in St. Petersburg—Petrograd—or Leningrad, as it is called now—before the World War.”

  “Ah?” de Grandin stroked his moustache gently, as though making amends for the furious pulling to which he had subjected it a moment before. “You did say ‘was,’ Monsieur. May I take it, then, that she ‘is’ no more?” He cast a speculative glance at the portrait again, then continued: “And her name, so different from yours, yet her appearance so like your daughter’s. Will you not explain?”

  Captain Loudon looked as though he would like to wring the inquisitive little Frenchman’s neck, but complied with his request instead. “My wife was a Rumanian lady,” he began, speaking with evident annoyance. “I was stationed for duty at our legation at Bukharest in 1895, and there I met my wife, who was a Mademoiselle Seracki. I was married before returning to floating service, and my wife’s twin sister, Zoë, married Leonidas Wassilko, a young officer attached to the Russian embassy, about the same time.

  “Things were beginning to move a little, even in those days. One or two near-quarrels with European nations over the Monroe Doctrine had warned even the lunkheads at Washington that we’d best be getting some sort of navy in the water, and there was no time for a protracted honeymoon after our marriage. I had to leave my bride of two months and report for duty to the flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron. Anna, my wife, stayed on at Bukharest for a time, then moved from one port to another along the European coast so as to be fairly near me when I could get infrequent furloughs. Finally I was moved to the China station, and she went to live with her sister and brother-in-law at St. Petersburg. Our baby Julia and their little girl, Anna, were born on the same day and resembled each other even more than their mothers did.

  “Following the Spanish War and my transfer to home service, my wife divided her time between America and Europe, spending almost as much time in Russia as she did in Washington. Julia and Anna were educated together in a Fren
ch convent and later went to the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg.

  “Anna joined up as a nurse in the Russian Red Cross at the outbreak of the World War, and was in France when the Revolution broke. That probably saved her life. Both her parents were shot by the Bolshevists as reactionaries, and she came to live with us after the Armistice.

  “Somehow, she didn’t take very well to American ways, and when Robert—Lieutenant Proudfit—came along and began paying court to Julia, Anna seemed to take it as a sort of personal affront. Seems she had some sort of fool idea she and Julia were more than cousins, and ought to remain celibate to devote their lives to each other. To tell the truth, though, I rather fancy she was more than a little taken by Proudfit herself, and when he preferred Julia to her—well, it didn’t please her any too much.”

  “Ah?” de Grandin breathed, a trace of the heat-lightning flash which betokened excitement showing in his cool eyes. “And Mademoiselle Anna, she is—”

  “She—died, poor child,” Loudon responded.

  “She did commit suicide?” the Frenchman’s words were so low we could scarcely hear them.

  “I didn’t say that,” the captain returned coldly.

  “Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur le Capitaine,” the other shot back, “but you did not say otherwise, and, the pause before you mentioned her death—surely that was something more than a tribute of momentary regret?”

  “Humph! Yes, you’re right. The poor youngster committed suicide by drowning herself about six months ago.”

  “Six months, did you say?” the little Frenchman’s face was so near his host’s that I feared the spike of his waxed mustache would scratch the captain’s cheek. “Six months ago she did drown herself. In the ocean? And Mademoiselle Julie’s engagement to Lieutenant Proudfit, it was announced—when?”

  “It had just been announced—but look here, I say, see here—” Captain Loudon began violent protest, but de Grandin was grinning mirthlessly at him.

  “I look there, Monsieur,” he replied, “and I see there. Parbleu, I see far past! Six months, six months, everything, it dates from six months of yore! The death of Mademoiselle Anna, the engagement of Mademoiselle Julie, the tapping at her window, the beginning of these so strange signs and wonders—all are six months old. Grâce à Dieu, my friend, I begin to see the light at last. Come, Trowbridge, my friend, first for the information, then the action!”

  Turning on his heel, he mounted the stairs, three at a time, beckoning me violently as he did so.

  “MADEMOISELLE—MADEMOISELLE JULIE!” HE CRIED, bursting into the patient’s room with hardly a perceptible pause between his knock and the nurse’s summons to enter. “You have not told me all, Mademoiselle, no, nor near all! This Mademoiselle Anna, who was she; and what relation was there between you and her? Of haste, speak quickly, it is important that I should know all!”

  “Why,” Miss Loudon looked at him with startled eyes, “she was my cousin.”

  “But yes, that much I know. What I desire to learn is if there was some close bond, some secret understanding between you.”

  The girl regarded him fixedly a moment, then: “Yes, there was. Both of us were in love with Lieutenant Proudfit; but he seemed to prefer me, for some reason. When Anna saw he was proof against all her wiles—and she was an accomplished coquette—she became very morose, and talked constantly of suicide. I tried to laugh her out of the idea, but she persisted. Finally, I began to believe she was serious, and I told her, ‘If you kill yourself, so will I, then there’ll be two of us dead and nobody any the happier.’”

  “Ah?” de Grandin regarded her intently. “And then?”

  “She gave me one of those queer, long looks of hers, and said, ‘Maybe I hold you to that promise, cousin. Jizn kopyeka—life is but a kopeck—maybe we spend him, you and I.’ And that was all she said at the time. But two months later, just before Lieutenant Proudfit and I announced our engagement, she left me a note:

  Have gone to spend my kopeck. Remember your promise and do likewise.

  “Next morning—”

  “Yes?” de Grandin prompted.

  “Next morning they took her from the bay—drowned.”

  “A-a-h!” he let the single syllable out slowly through his teeth with a sort of hissing finality. “A-a-ah, at last, Mademoiselle, I do understand.”

  “You mean—”

  “Parbleu, I mean nothing less. Tonight, she did say? Morbleu, tonight we shall see what we shall see!”

  “Stay you here, Friend Trowbridge,” he ordered. “Me, I go to procure that which is necessary for our work this night!”

  He was through the door like a shot, rushing down the stairs three steps at a stride, banging the front door behind him without a word of farewell or explanation to his astounded host.

  DARKNESS HAD FALLEN WHEN he returned, a small black bag in his hand and an expression of unbridled excitement on his face. “Any change in our patient?” he demanded as he entered the house. “Any further manifestations of that accursed poltergeist?”

  “No,” I reported, “everything has been singularly calm this afternoon.”

  “Ah, so? Then we shall have the harder fight tonight. The enemy, he does marshal his forces!”

  He tiptoed to the sickroom, entered quietly, and took a seat beside the bed, detailing his experiences in the city with lively interest. Once or twice it seemed to me the patient’s attention wandered as he continued his recital, but his conversation never faltered. He had seen the beautiful flowers in Fifth Avenue! The furs in the shops were of the exquisiteness! Never was there such a parade of beauty, culture and refinement as could be found in that so wonderful street!

  I listened open-mouthed with wonder. Time given to extraneous matters when he was engaged in a case was time wasted according to his ideas, I knew, yet here he sat and chattered like a gossiping magpie to a girl who plainly took small interest in his talk.

  Eight o’clock struck on the tall clock in the hall below, still he related humorous incidents in his life, and described the chestnut trees and the whistling blackbirds at St. Cloud or the students’ masked balls in the Latin Quarter. “What ails the man?” I muttered to myself. “He rambles on like a wound-up phonograph!”

  It must have been about a quarter of nine when the change began to show itself in our patient. From polite inattention her attitude toward the Frenchman became something like open hostility. In another five minutes she seemed to have lost all remembrance of his presence, and lay with her eyes turned toward the ceiling. Then, gradually but surely, there came into her already too thin face a pinched, drawn look, the sure sign of physical and nervous exhaustion.

  “Ah-ha, we do begin to commence!” de Grandin exclaimed exultantly, reaching beneath his chair and opening the little black bag he had deposited there.

  From the satchel he produced an odd-looking contrivance, something like the toy rotary fans to be bought at novelty shops—the sort of fan which consists of three twisted blades, like reversed propeller wings, and which is made to whirl by the pressure of the thumb against a trigger fitted in the handle. But this fan, instead of having blades of colored metal, was supplied with brightly nickeled arms which shone in the lamplight like a trio of new mirrors.

  “Observe, Mademoiselle; behold!” de Grandin cried sharply, signing to me to turn the electric bulbs on full strength at the same time.

  The girl’s languid gaze lowered from the ceiling a moment and rested on the little Frenchman. Instantly he advanced the mirror-fan to within six inches of her face and began spinning it violently with quick, sharp jerks at the rotating loop. “Regardez, si’l vous plaît,” he ordered, spinning the whirling mirrors faster and faster.

  The three bright pieces of metal seemed to merge into a single disk, but from their flying it seemed that countless tiny rays of light fell away, like water scattered from a swiftly turning paddle-wheel. For an instant the girl regarded the bright, whirling mirrors without interest, then her eyes seemed gradually to conv
erge toward the bridge of her nose as they sought to follow the fan’s rotations, and a fixed, rapt expression began to steal over her features.

  “Sleep, sleep and rest. Sleep and hear no orders from those who wish you ill. Sleep, sleep—sleep!” de Grandin. commanded in low, earnest tones.

  Slowly, peacefully, her lids lowered over her fascinated eyes, her breast rose and fell convulsively once or twice, then her gentle breathing told us she had obeyed his command and lay fast in quiet sleep.

  “What—” I began, but he waved me back impatiently.

  “Another time, my friend,” he promised with a quick gesture of warning. “At present we must not talk; there is too much at stake.”

  All through the night he sat beside the bed, raising his whirling mirrors and commanding sleep in tones of suppressed fury each time the girl stirred on her pillow. And each time his order was implicitly obeyed. The patient slept continuously till the first faint streaks of dawn began to show against the eastern sky.

  “Now, then,” he cried, springing from his chair, reopening his black bag and bringing forth—of all things!—a hyssop of mistletoe bough. Around and around the room he dashed with a sort of skipping step, for all the world like a country woman fanning flies from the house in summertime.

  “Anna Wassilko, Anna Wassilko, who has wandered beyond the bounds of the tomb,” he ordered as he waved his little brush-broom, “I command that you return whence you came. To Death you have said, ‘Thou art my lord and my master,’ and to the Grave, ‘Thou art my lover and my betrothed.’ Your business in this world is done, Anna Wassilko; get you to the world you chose for your dwelling place when you cast your body into the sea!”

  Near the window, where the dimming electric bulbs’ light mingled with the beams of the waning moon and the flushing rays of the coming morning, he repeated his command three times, waving his brush forward and outward toward the ocean which surged and boomed on the beach a quarter-mile away.