“Indeed?” he raised narrow, black eyebrows. “Do you say so? Nevertheless, my friend, I shall interview the so excellent Monsieur Johannes. It is probable that the journalist is a facile liar, but we did not beat back the boche by leaving anything to chance. Me, I shall prove each step of this business.”
“What business?” I asked as he pushed back his chair and sought his hat and walking-stick.
“Ah bah, my friend,” he replied, “you do ask too many questions for the sake of listening to your own voice. Expect me when I return.”
“TROWBRIDGE, MON VIEUX, BEHOLD what it is I have discovered,” he ordered, bursting into my study some four hours later. “Parbleu, but the young man of the press did us an inestimable favor, though he knows it not, when he wrote his tale of the Devil of New Jersey. Observe, if you please!” With a hand that trembled with excitement he extended a bit of folded paper to me.
Opening the slip I beheld what might have been the paring from a horse’s hoof made by a blacksmith when preparing to fit a new shoe to the beast.
“Well?” I asked, turning the thing over curiously. “What is it, and what of it?”
“As to what it is, I did not expect recognition from you,” he admitted with one of his quick, elfin smiles. “As to its significance—who shall say? That, my friend, is a chip from the belly-armor of a great snake. I did find it after two hours’ search upon my hands and knees beside the tracks left by the serpent which raided the sty of Monsieur Johannes’ pigs last night. At present I am not prepared to say definitely what sort of reptile shed it, but my guess is in favor of a Burmese python or an African boa. Also, from this scale’s size, I should say that terror and astonishment lent magnifying lenses to Monsieur Johannes’ eyes when he beheld the snake, for the thing is more likely twenty than forty feet in length, but the good God knows he would be sufficiently formidable to meet, even so.”
“Well?” I queried again.
“Well?” he mocked. “Well, what? What does it mean?”
“As far as I can see, it doesn’t mean anything, except—”
“Dieu de Dieu,” he interrupted impatiently “except that Madame Candace was stating only the literal truth when she said she recognized snake tracks in her garden, and that there is actually such a monster abroad in the countryside.”
“Why,” I stammered as the enormity of his statement struck me, “why, you mean the little Candace boy might have been devoured by this monster? That would account for his disappearance without clues; but what about the ransom letter we saw last night? A snake might eat a child, though I’ve always understood the process of ingestion is rather slow, and I can’t quite see how he could have swallowed the little boy before Mrs. Candace reached the nursery; but even you will admit a snake would hardly have been likely to prepare and send that letter demanding two thousand dollars for the child’s return.”
“Sometimes, Friend Trowbridge,” he assured me, solemnly, “I think you a fool. At others I believe you only dull-witted. Can you not reconcile the possibility of a great serpent’s having made off with the little one and a ransom letter being sent?”
“No, I’m hanged if I can,” I admitted.
“Morbleu—” he began furiously, then paused, one of his quick smiles driving the annoyed frown from his face. “Forgive me, good, kind friend,” he implored. “I do forget you have not had the benefit of my experience at the Sûreté. Attend me: Ten days ago the little lad did vanish. The police have been notified, the news of his disappearance has become public. There is no clue to the manner of his going; as yet the pig-ignorant police have no theory worthy of the name. The snake might well be responsible for all this, n’est-ce-pas?”
“I suppose so,” I admitted.
“Très bien. Now suppose some miscreant desired to trade upon the misery of those bereaved parents; what then? Granting that he knew their circumstances, which I strongly suspect he does, what would be easier than for him to concoct such a letter as the dastardly thing we read last night and transmit it stealthily to Monsieur and Madame Candace, knowing full well they would jump at any chance, and pay any sum within their means, to see their baby boy once more?”
“You mean some fiend would trade on their heartbreak to swindle them out of two thousand dollars—knowing all the time he was unable to keep his wretched bargain and return their child?” I asked, horrified.
His small, sensitive mouth set in a grim, straight line beneath the trimly waxed ends of his little blond mustache. “Précisément,” he nodded. “Such things have been done many times. We of the Paris Sûreté are familiar with many such cases.”
“But, for the Lord’s sake—” I began.
“Exactly,” he responded. “For the Lord’s sake, and for the sake or those two poor ones whose little man has been stolen away, and for the sake of all other parents who may suffer a similar fate, I shall make it my sworn duty to apprehend this villain, and, by the horns of the Devil, if it turns out he knows not the whereabouts of the little boy, he will pray lustily for death before I have done with him.”
“But—”
“Ah bah, let us bother with no buts at this time, my friend. Tomorrow night is the appointed time. Me, I hasten, I rush, I fly to New York, where I would consult with certain expert artificers. By the belly of Jonah’s whale, but I shall give this kidnaper such a surprise as he does not suspect! Adieu, Friend Trowbridge. I return when my business in New York is completed.”
“HAVE A CARE, MY friend,” de Grandin ordered the following night as I relieved him of a small black satchel while he climbed into the tonneau of the Candace motor car. “Treat the bag with respect; coddle it like an infant, and, whatever you do, touch not its handles, but hold it by the sides.”
Consulting the diminutive watch strapped to the under side of his wrist, he nodded shortly to Candace, who sat at the wheel in a perfect fever of excitement and impatience. “Let us go, Monsieur,” he ordered, and the powerful motor-car turned southward toward the little Italian settlement of Rupleyville, its engine gaining speed with each revolution of the wheels.
“Do you keep sharp watch on your side of the road, Friend Trowbridge,” he directed, driving a sharp elbow into my ribs. “Me, I shall glue my eyes to mine.
“More speed, Monsieur Candace,” he urged as the car entered a long, narrow stretch of roadway between two segments of dense pine woods. “Never will our fish rise to the bait if we loiter along the highway. Tread on the gas, I beseech you!”
His face set in grim lines, eyes narrowed as he peered intently before him, Iring Candace advanced his spark and pressed his foot on the accelerator. The car shot ahead like a projectile and darted down the tunnel between the ranks of black-boughed pines with a roar like that of an infuriated beast.
“Good, most excellently good,” the Frenchman commended. “At this rate we should—grand Dieu, there is the light!”
As the car roared round the bend of the road the sudden yellow gleam of a stable lantern suspended from a tree-bough shone out against the black background of the woods. “Continue—carry on—keep going, pour l’amour de Dieu!” de Grandin gritted in the driver’s ear as Candace involuntarily slackened speed. Next instant he leaned far out of the rushing car, seized the small black satchel from my lap and hurled it toward the flickering lantern like a football player making a lateral pass.
“Gently—gently, my friend,” he counseled, nudging Candace between the shoulder blades as the car rounded the bend, “do but slow down sufficiently to permit us to alight, but keep your moteur running and your muffler out. We must persuade the despicable one we are still on our way.” Next instant he flung open the tonneau door, dropped silently to the hard-surfaced roadway, and motioning me to follow, crept toward the underbrush bordering the highway.
“Have you your gun ready?” I whispered as I crouched beside him in the long weeds fringing the road.
“S-s-sh!” he cautioned sibilantly, reaching under his jacket and bringing out a small, cloth-covered pack
age resembling a folded sheet-music stand. Feverishly he tore the flannel wrappings from the slender steel bars and began jointing the rods together. In a moment’s time he held an odd-looking contrivance, something like an eel-spear, except that it possessed only two tines, in his left hand, while from an inside pocket he produced a skein of strong, braided horsehair rope terminating in a slip-noose, and swung it loosely, lasso-wise, from his right fist.
“Allez vous en!” he rasped, crawling farther into the undergrowth.
Cautiously, moving so slowly it seemed to us we scarcely moved at all, we approached the swinging lantern. Nothing indicative of human presence showed in the tiny circle of light cast by the swinging lamp; neither form nor shadow stirred among the tall black pines.
“The Devil!” I exclaimed in furious disappointment. “He’s got away.”
“Quiet!” warned the Frenchman angrily. “Be still; he does but wait to make sure we were not followed by the police. Lie low, my friend, and be ready—nom d’un bête, behold him!”
Like the shadow of a shadow, moving furtively as a weasel between the tree trunks, a man, slender as a youth, stoop-shouldered and narrow-chested, but incredibly quick-footed, had slipped forward, seized the black bag de Grandin flung from the car, and darted back among the sheltering pines, even as the Frenchman gave his warning cry.
Next moment the midnight quiet of the woods was broken by a sudden retching sneeze, another and yet another, and a rushing, stumbling figure emerged from the darkness, blundering blindly into bush and shrub and heavy tree bole, clawing frantically at his face and stopping every now and again in his crazy course to emit a tortured, hacking cough or sternutative sneeze.
“Ha, Monsieur Child-stealer, you expected coin of another sort, n’est-ce-pas?” de Grandin fairly shrieked leaping forward to trip the blinded, sneezing fellow with a deft movement of his foot. “On him, Friend Trowbridge!” he shouted. “Sit upon him, grind his face into the earth, seize him, bind him—off to the bastille!”
I rushed forward to comply, then started back, cold horror grasping at my throat. “Look out, de Grandin!” I screamed. “Look out, for God’s sake—”
“Ha?” The Frenchman’s sharp interrogative exclamation was more an expression of satisfied expectancy than of surprise. Almost, it seemed, the monstrous snake which had risen up from the pine needles at our feet was something he had awaited.
“Is it indeed thou, Monsieur le Serpent?” he demanded, skipping backward between the trees, advancing his two-pronged fork before him as a practiced swordsman might swing his foil. “It would seem we are met, after all,” he added, dancing back another step, then, with the speed of forked lightning, stabbing downward with his prong.
“Sa-ha, Monsieur, how do you care for that?” he demanded, his voice high and thin with hysterical triumph as the sharp steel tines sank into the soft earth each side of the great snake’s neck, pinning his wicked, wedge-shaped head fast to the ground.
“Eh bien, it seems I am one too many for you, mon ami,” de Grandin remarked calmly as he slipped the noose of his hair rope beneath the squirming head, drew it taut and nonchalantly flung the rope’s free end over a low-hanging tree bough. “Up we go,” he announced cheerfully, drawing sharply on the rope and hoisting the monster reptile from the earth until it hung suspended from the branch, the tip of its pointed tail and some four feet of brown-mottled body lashing furiously at the scrub pines which grew rank underfoot.
The noisome thing beat the earth futilely with its tail a moment, then drew its glistening body, thick as a man’s thigh, upward, wrapping it about the bough to which its neck was pinioned, knotted there a moment in agony, then slid in long, horrifying waves again toward the earth.
“Squirm, my friend,” de Grandin ordered, surveying the struggling serpent with a smile of grim amusement. “Parbleu, wriggle, writhe and twist, it will do you small good. ’Twas Jules de Grandin tied those knots, and he knows how to deal with your sort, whether they travel on their bellies or their feet. Which reminds me”—he turned toward the struggling man on the ground—“it seems we have you, also, Monsieur. Will you be pleased to rise when I can induce my good Friend Trowbridge to cease kneeling on your biceps?”
“Did you get him?” Candace crashed through the undergrowth, brushed me aside and seized the prisoner’s shoulder in an iron grip. “Where’s my son, you devil? Tell me, or, by God, I’ll—”
“Meestair, let me go!” the captive screamed, writhing in Candace’s clutch. “I ver’ good man, me. I was passing through the woods, and saw where someone had left a lantern—a good, new lantern—out here, and come over to get him. As I try and take him from the tree, somebody come by and throw a satchel at me, and I think maybe it have money in him, so I pick him up, and then my eyes go all—”
“You lie!” Candace was almost frothing at the mouth as he shook the fellow again. But de Grandin drew him away with a word of caution.
“Softly, my friend,” he whispered. “Remember, it is your son we wish to recover. Perhaps we may succeed only in frightening him into silence if we attempt intimidating here. At Harrisonville is a barracks of the state gendarmerie. Let us take him there. Undoubtlessly the officers will force a confession from him, and Madame Candace will be cleared before all the world thereby. Let us go.”
“All right,” Candace agreed grudgingly. “Let’s get going. We can get there in half an hour, if we hurry.”
THE LIGHTS OF THE troopers’ barracks streamed out into the moonless summer night as Candace brought his car to a halt before the building and fairly dragged the prisoner from the vehicle.
“Bon soir, Messieurs les Gendarmes,” de Grandin greeted, removing his soft felt hat with a ceremonious flourish as he led the way into the guard-room. “We are this minute arrived from Rupleyville and”—he paused a moment, then motioned toward the undersized prisoner writhing in Candace’s grip—“we have brought with us the kidnaper of the little Candace boy. No less.”
“Oh, have you?” the duty sergeant responded unenthusiastically. “Another one? We’ve been getting all sorts of tips on that case—got a stack o’ letters a foot high—and we have about a dozen ’phone calls a day, offering us the lowdown on the—”
“Monsieur le Sergent”—de Grandin’s amiability vanished like the night’s frost before the morning sun—“if you are of opinion that we rush about the countryside at midnight for our own amusement, you are greatly mistaken. Look upon this!” He thrust the ransom letter under the astonished policeman’s nose, and as the other concluded his perusal of the missive, launched on a succinct account of the evening’s adventures.
“Huh, looks as if you’ve got something we can sink our teeth in, for a fact,” the sergeant complimented.
“Where’s the kid?” he turned bruskly to the prisoner. “Speak up, you; it’ll be worse for you if you don’t.”
“Meestair,” the captive returned with an expressive elevation of his narrow shoulders, “I not know what you talk of. Me, I am hones’ man; ver’ poor, but hones’. I not know nothing about this keed you ask for. Tonight I walk through the woods on my way home, and I see where someone have left a good, new lantern hanging up. I go to get him, for I need him at my house, and these gentlemens you see here come by in a fast automobile, and—whizz!—they throw something into the woods. I think maybe they are bootleggers running from police, so I go to see what’s in the bag, and right away something go off right in my face—pouf!—like that. It make me all blind, and while I run around like a fish out of water, these gentlemens here, they come up and say, ‘You—you steala da keed; we kill you pretty dam’ quick if you no tell us where he is!’ I not know why they say so, Meestair. Me poor, hones’ man. Not steal no keed, not steal nothing. No, not me!”
“Humph!” the sergeant turned to de Grandin with a shrug. “He’s probably a damn liar, most of ’em are; but his story’s straight enough. We’ll just lock him up for a couple of days and give him time to think the matter over. He’ll be ready t
o admit something by the time we have him arraigned, I hope.”
“But, Monsieur?” de Grandin protested, “can not you see how absurd that is? While you have this so villainous miscreant in a cell, the little boy whom we seek may starve to death. Your delay may mean his death!”
“Can’t help it,” the young officer replied resignedly. “I’ve had more experience with these fellows than you have, and if we try mauling him he’ll call on all the saints in the calendar to witness his innocence and yell bloody murder, but we’ll never get an admission from him. Give him time to think it over in a nice, solitary cell—that’s the way to crack these wops’ shells.”
“Morbleu”—I thought the little Frenchman would explode with amazed anger—“you have more experience than I—I, Jules de Grandin of le Sûreté? Blood of the Devil; blood of a most ignoble cat! We shall see what we shall see. You admit your inability to force a confession from this one. May I try? Parbleu, if I fail to make him talk within ten little minutes I shall turn monk and live upon prayers and detestable turnips for the rest of my life!”
“U’m?” the sergeant regarded the angry little Frenchman speculatively. “Promise not to hurt him?”
De Grandin tiptoed across the room and whispered something in the policeman’s ear, waving his slender hands like a windmill in a hurricane the while.
“Okeh,” the officer agreed, a broad grin spreading over his features. “I’ve heard a lot about the way you fellows work. Let’s see you strut your stuff.”
“Merci,” de Grandin acknowledged, crossing the guard-room and pausing before the tall cast-iron stove which heated the place in winter.
Accumulated paper and a few sticks of light wood lay in the heater’s cylinder, and de Grandin set them alight with a match, thrusting the long, steel poker into the midst of the leaping flames. “Will you help, Friend Trowbridge?” he asked as he took a skein of stout cord from his pocket and began making the captive fast to his chair with skillful knots.
The Horror on the Links Page 59
