Too late he discovered his error. A crash of tinkling, shivering glass sounded, and the vision of the man in red dissolved before our eyes like a scene on a motion-picture screen when the film is melted in an overheated projector. A full-length mirror had been moved into the hall since we came through, and the man we had supposed before us was really at our back. De Grandin had been parleying with the fellow’s reflection and—irony of ironies!—fired point blank into the mirror, smashing it into a hundred fragments, but injuring his opponent not at all.
Like the echo of de Grandin’s shot sounded the spiteful, whiplike report of the other’s weapon. Jules de Grandin clapped his left hand to his right shoulder and dropped like an overturned sack of meal to the polished floor.
Two more figures joined the red-robed man. One of them burst into a roar of laughter. “Ach, dot vas a goot vun!” he chuckled. “He vas daking der lady from der house oudt vas he? Now, perhabs, ve dake her back und giff her some more dime to dink ofer vedder she vill der baber sign or not. No?”
“No!—Nom d’un porc—NO!” de Grandin echoed, rolling over and rising on his elbow. The chuckling German swayed drunkenly in his tracks a moment, then crashed face downward to the floor, and his red-robed companion fell across him in a heap of crumpled crimson draperies a split-second later as de Grandin’s revolver bellowed a second time. The third man turned with a squeal of dismay and leaped half-way through the open door, then stumbled over nothing and slid forward on his face as a soft-nosed bullet cut his spinal cord in two six inches below his collar.
“See to Mademoiselle Mytinger, Friend Trowbridge!” de Grandin flung over his shoulder as, pistol in hand, he charged toward the doorway where his late antagonists lay. “Take her outside, I will join you anon!”
“Where are you going!” I objected. The thought of being separated in this uncanny house terrified me.
“Outside—cornes et peau du diable!—outside with you!” he shouted in answer. “Me, I go to find Mademoiselle Mueller and a certain souvenir.”
7
THE BIG FRONT DOOR was barred and double-locked. I swung to the right, traversed the room through which we had entered and hoisted the unlatched window a few inches higher. “This way, please,” I told Miss Mytinger, pointing to the opening, “it’s only a few feet to the ground.”
She clambered over the sill and dropped to the soft turf below, and, after a futile look around for my friend, I lowered myself beside her.
“Quick, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin’s sharp whisper commanded even as my feet touched the grass. “This way—they come!”
His warning was none too early. Even as he grasped my arm and swung me into the shadow of a towering cedar, six men charged around the corner of the house, weapons in their hands and looks of fierce malignancy on their faces.
“Sa-ha!” de Grandin raised his revolver and fired, and the foremost of our assailants clapped his hand to his side, whirled half-way round, like a pirouetting ballet-dancer, reeled suddenly to the left and slumped to the ground in an awkward heap. The man immediately behind stumbled over the fallen one’s legs and fell forward with a guttural curse. De Grandin pressed the trigger again, but only a harmless click responded. The cylinder was empty, and five armed men faced us across a stretch of turf less than twenty feet wide.
Half turning, the Frenchman hurled his empty weapon with terrific force into the face of the nearest ruffian, who dropped with a scream, blood spurting from his nose and mouth, and grasped my elbow again. “This way, my friend!” he cried, seizing the Mytinger woman’s arm with his free hand and rushing across the shaded lawn toward the narrow beach where the waters of Barnegat Bay lapped softly against the sand.
“Where’s Fräulein Mueller?” I panted, striving to keep pace with him.
“Yonder!” he answered, and as he spoke a dark form detached itself from the shadow of a towering tree and joined us in flight.
Shouts and shots echoed among the evergreens behind us, but the short start we secured when the second man fell under the impact of de Grandin’s hurled weapon enabled us to keep our lead, and, dodging among the shadows, we made steadily and swiftly toward the water.
“It’s no use,” Miss Mytinger informed us as the cool edges of the little wavelets moistened our feet and we swung toward the south, intent on rounding the edge of the walls surrounding the grounds on the landward side and doubling back to my car. “It’s no use. The beach is full of quicksand. I heard them talking about it the night I came here. One of their cows wandered down to eat the sea-grass and was sucked under before they could save her.”
“On, my friend!” de Grandin answered through clenched teeth, for the strain was beginning to tell on him. “Better to perish in the quicksands than fall prey to those assassins.”
We dashed along the waterline, heading for the beach beyond the wall, and a chorus of triumphant shouts followed us. Our pursuers had noted our course and made certain we rushed to our doom.
“Parbleu, what a chase!” de Grandin laughed pantingly, suddenly dropping to the sands and unfastening the lacings of his shoes.
“Yes, and it’s not over yet,” I reminded him. “They’ll be on us in a moment. What’s the idea—going paddling?”
“Observe me, my friend,” he replied as he drew off his pale mauve socks and took shoes and stockings in hand, running barefoot ahead of us across the sands. “Follow where I lead.” He advanced along the beach with long, swinging strides like those of a Canadian voyageur sweeping over a winter drift on his snow-shoes. “Jules de Grandin has been in many places,” he flung back over his shoulder, “and one of them was the coast of Japan, where quicksands are thick as pickpockets at a fair. There it was I learned the ways of quicksand from the peasant fishermen. Like all other sand it looks, nor does it quake or tremble until it has its victim fast in its hold, but always it is colder than the sands about it, and the knowing one walking barefoot on the beach can feel its death-chilled borders before it is too late to draw back.
“Careful—to the right, my friends!” Gracefully, sliding one foot behind the other, like a dancer crossing a stage, he swerved inward from the water’s edge, finally pausing a moment to feel the ground before him with a tentative toe. “Très bon—proceed. The quicksands reach no farther here,” he announced, stepping forward with a confident stride.
Following his careful lead we proceeded the better part of a hundred yards when a sudden outcry behind us made me look round apprehensively. Infuriated by the sight of our escape, and assuming that because we had not perished the beach was safe for them, four of our enemies were rushing pell-mell after us, the starlight glinting evilly on the weapons brandished over their heads.
“Hurry, de Grandin!” I urged. “They’ll be up with us in a moment!”
“Will they, indeed?” he replied with cool indifference, seating himself on the soft sand and beginning to don his socks and shoes in a leisurely manner. “When they reach us, my friend, I shall be ready for them, I assure you.”
“But,” I remonstrated, “but—good Lord, man!—here they come!”
“Yes!” he answered, lighting a cigarette. “If you will trouble to look round, I think you will say ‘there they go’.”
Looking down the beach I saw the four pursuers hurrying forward, running four abreast, like a squad of soldiers going into action.
Suddenly the man to the left stumbled awkwardly, like a person descending a flight of stairs and coming to the end before he was aware of it. He faltered, raised his forward foot, as though feeling for support where there was none, and grasped the man next him.
The second man staggered drunkenly in the frenzied hold of his companion, floundered bewilderedly a moment—all four of them were doing a clumsy, grotesque dance, reeling from side to side, swaying back and forth, raising their arms spasmodically as though grasping at non-existent ropes dangling before them. But oddly, they seemed shrinking in stature, growing shorter and shorter, like inflated manikins from which the air is
slowly escaping. They were melting, melting like bits of grease thrown into a heated frying-pan.
I shuddered in spite of myself. Even though they were conscienceless minions of a conscienceless master, stealers and torturers of defenseless women, I could not repress a feeling of nausea as the last of the four heads sank like a corkless bottle flung into a stream. A jet of sandy spray shot up from the level beach, a hand, opening and closing in a paroxysm of terror and despair, rose above the rippling sands, then all was still. The pale stars blinked unconcernedly down upon the bare stretch of smooth, unruffled beach and lapping, whispering water.
“Tiens, my friends,” de Grandin flung away his cigarette and rose; “that appears to be that. Come, let us go.”
I CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR WANTING to rescue Fräulein Mueller, de Grandin,” I remarked as we started on our homeward journey with the two women snugly stowed in the rear seat of my car, “but what was that remark you made about getting a souvenir when you left me in the hall?”
The little Frenchman’s small white teeth gleamed under the line of his sharply waxed mustache as an elfish smile spread across his face. “Friend Trowbridge,” he confided, “I have visited many interesting places in your so interesting country, but never yet have I lodged in a jail, nor am I wishful to do so. Think you I risked good money when I entrusted Mademoiselle Mueller to those villains’ care? Not I. I did procure two thousand dollars in counterfeit bills with which she was to pay the wretches, and faithfully did I promise to return those notes to the police museum when I should have finished with them. It was to make good that promise that I left you in the hall.”
“And Fräulein Mueller—had they released her when you found her?” I asked.
He suppressed a yawn. “Not quite,” he returned. “They had her bound in a chair, and the lady called Laïla was standing guard over her with a wicked-looking knife when I entered. My friend, I greatly dislike manhandling a woman, but ladies who wish not to be mauled should not attempt to stick knives in Jules de Grandin. I fear I was forced to be less than entirely gentlemanly before I succeeded in releasing Mademoiselle Mueller and binding Laïla in the chair in her place. Eh bien, I tied her no tighter than was necessary to keep her in place until the police call for her.”
“And—?”
“More speed and less conversation, if you please, my friend,” he interrupted. “Your house is yet a long distance away, and there is nothing to drink this side of your so adorable cellar. Come, as you Americans say, stand hard upon the gas.”
The Jewel of Seven Stones
1. The Coffins from Alexandria
“HELLO, DR. TROWBRIDGE,” A cheerful hail accosted me as I turned the corner, hastening on my round of afternoon calls, “I’ve been meaning to look you up for the last two months, but never got ’round to it. Good thing I met you now; I’m figuring on pulling off a show this evening, and maybe you’d like a ringside seat.”
“Oh? How do you do?” I responded somewhat doubtfully, for the grinning young man in the shabby little red roadster at the curb was unknown to me. “I’m afraid you’ve the advantage of me; I—”
“Oh, yes, you do,” he replied with an infectious smile. “I’m Ellsworth Bennett you know. You used to come out to our house a lot when Father was living, and—”
“Why,” I broke in, “Ellsworth, boy, I never would have known you. You’ve grown so—”
“Quite right,” he agreed. “It’s a habit we all have during early life. Now, what do you say to coming out to my little diggings tonight? I’m parked in the old Van Drub cottage for the season, and I’ve really got something worth looking at.”
“Well,” I temporized, “I’d be delighted to have you in to my place to dinner, but I’m so tied up with night calls these times that I fear I’ll not be able to accept your invitation.”
“Oh rats!” he returned. “Try to come, won’t you? You know, I’ve been connected with the Museum of Ethnology ever since I got my degree, and this spring I ran across the trail of something really big while traveling in Egypt. I think I can show you something brand-new if you’ll drop out my way tonight or tomorrow. I seem to recall that you and Father used to spend no end of time talking about Rameses and Ptolemy and the rest of those antique gentlemen when I was too small to know what it was all about.”
I regarded the lad speculatively. He was his father’s own son, no mistake about it. Those honest, humorous blue eyes beneath the sandy brows, that wide, mobile mouth and square chin cleft with the slightest suggestion of a dimple, even the flecks of russet freckles across the bridge of his aquiline nose reminded me of my dear old classmate whose house had been a second home to me in the days before the influenza pandemic took him off. “I’ll come,” I decided, clasping the youngster’s hand in mine. “You may expect me sometime after eight this evening—office hours have to be observed, you know—and, if you don’t mind, I’ll bring a friend with me, a Dr. de Grandin, from Paris, who’s stopping with me.”
“Not Jules do Grandin?” he demanded incredulously.
“Yes; do you know him?”
“No, but I’d like to. Jules de Grandin! Why, Dr. Trowbridge, I’d no idea you traveled in such highbrow company.”
“I’d hardly call him highbrow,” I replied, smiling at his enthusiasm.
“Oh, Lord!” he threw up his hands in mock despair. “You fellows who have all the luck never do appreciate it. Why, man, de Grandin’s one of the foremost ethnologists of the age; his studies in evolution and anthropometry are classics. I’ll say you can bring him. I’ll be hanging out the window waiting for you tonight. G’bye.” With a warning double toot of his horn he set his decrepit motor going and dashed down the street at a speed bound to bring him afoul of the first crossing policeman who spied him.
THE VAN DRUB COTTAGE where young Bennett had his “diggings” was a relic of the days when Swede and Dutchman contended for mastery of the country between the Delaware and the Hudson. Like all houses of its day, it was of the story-and-a-half type, built of stone to the edge of the overhanging roof and of hand-split chestnut shingles above. The ground floor was entirely occupied by a single large combination living-room and kitchen paved with brick and walled with roughly split planks, and small cubby-holes of storerooms flanked it at each end. Bennett’s living arrangements were as typical of himself as a photograph. Bookshelves lined the walls and displayed a most improbable array of volumes—de Morgan’s Les Premières Civilisations and Munzinger’s Ostafrikanische Studien huddled cheek by jowl with a much-worn copy of Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ. A once fine but now badly worn Sarouk rug covered the major portion of the brick floor, and the furniture was a hodgepodge of second-hand mahogany and new, cheap pine. In the middle of the room, as though on exhibition, were two long covered objects, roughly resembling a pair of mummy-cases, raised some three feet above the floor on rough saw-horses. Two kerosene-burning student lamps of the sort used in the late nineties, their green shades removed for greater radiation of light, illuminated the room’s center with an almost theatric glare, leaving the corners in shadow all the deeper from the contrast.
“Welcome to the humble student’s cave, gentlemen,” Bennett greeted as we stepped through the wide, low doorway. “Tonight’s the fateful hour; I either uncover something to set ’em all talking for the next ten years, or get myself a free ticket to the booby-hatch.”
With sudden soberness he turned directly to de Grandin and added: “I’m on special leave from the Museum to work out a theory that’s been haunting me for the last year or so. It’ll be an important contribution to science, if I’m right. Here”—he waved his hand toward the sheeted objects on the trestles—“is the evidence. Shall we begin?”
“U’m.” Jules de Grandin gave his little blond mustache a vicious tweak as he regarded our host with his direct, challenging stare. “What is it that you wish to prove by the evidence, mon brave?”
“Just this”—Bennett’s frank, boyish eyes lost something of their humorous gle
am and took on the earnest enthusiastic expression of the fanatic’s—“that not all the traces of the Greek civilization were obliterated when the Moslems sacked and burned Alexandria.”
“Ah? And you will prove it by—?” De Grandin’s delicately arched brows lifted slightly as he glanced significantly at the sheeted things.
“By these,” Bennett returned. “This spring, while I was over in Africa, I got in with a scoundrelly old Arab who rejoiced in the name of Abd-el-Berkr, and, in return for several liberal applications of bakshish, he agreed to turn over two ancient Greek coffins he had found in an old native cemetery in the desert. The old villain knew enough to distinguish between Christian coffins and Egyptian mummy-cases—there aren’t any of the latter left in the neighborhood of Alexandria, anyhow—and he was too good a Moslem to disturb the tombs of his co-religionists, even if they had used substantial coffins for burial, which they hadn’t.
“I took the old beggar on, for if he were telling the truth his find was worth a lot more than it cost me, and if he were lying—which he probably was—I’d not be so very much out of pocket. As you know, the Mohammedans took about everything that wasn’t nailed down when they captured the city, and their descendants have been keeping the good work up. The few Christian cemeteries which survived the first onslaught of Islam were gradually uprooted and their inmates, ruthlessly ripped from their tombs and despoiled of such trifling ornaments as happened to be buried with them. So, even if we don’t find anything of great importance in these two cases, the chances are we may recover a few old coins or some antique jewelry—enough to take back to the Museum and prove my time hasn’t been entirely wasted.”
He paused, eyes shining, lips parted as he surveyed us each in turn, almost pathetically anxious for a word of encouragement.
“I fear we have come on a chase of the wild goose, my friend,” de Grandin replied a trifle wearily. “Me, I have unearthed coffins of the olden days from the vicinity of Alexandria, of Tunis and of Sidon, but nothing save the most abominable evidence that all flesh is subject to decay have I ever found. For your sake I hope your hopes are justified. Speaking from experience, I should say the Arab gentleman has driven a most advantageous bargain, for himself. Undoubtlessly he first despoiled the tombs of such trifles as they contained, then sold you the empty boxes for as much as he could. I fear you are—how do you say it?—holding the sack, mon enfant.”
The Horror on the Links Page 53
