“What do you want me to do?” I asked wonderingly.
“Stand ready to hand me a bit of ice from the cooler,” he whispered softly in my ear; then, as the poker slowly glowed from gray to red, and from red to pale orange in the fire, he seized its handle and advanced with a slow, menacing stride toward the bound and helpless prisoner, his little, round blue eyes hardening to a merciless glare as the eyes of a kindly house-cat flash with fury at sight of a mongrel street dog.
“Kidnaper of little children,” he announced in a voice so low as to he hardly audible, but hard and merciless as a scalpel’s edge, “I am about to give you one last chance to speak the truth. Say, where is the little one you stole away?”
“Signor,” replied the prisoner, twisting and straining at the cords, “me, I have told you only the truth. Per l’amore della Madonna—”
“Ah bah!” the Frenchman advanced the glowing steel to within an inch of the fellow’s face. “You have told only the truth! What does a child-stealer know of true words? Nom d’un chat, what does a duck know of the taste of cognac?”
Advancing another step, he suddenly snatched a towel from above the washstand, looped it into a loose knot and flung it over the prisoner’s face, drawing it tightly about his eyes. “Observe him well, my friends,” he commanded, reaching out to snatch the bit of ice I had abstracted from the water-cooler at his nod of silent command, then ripping the bound man’s collar open.
Fascinated, we watched the tableau before us. De Grandin seemed as savage and implacable as the allegorical figure of Nemesis in a classic Greek play. Facing him, trembling and shaking as though with a chill, despite the warmth of the night, his swarthy visage gone corpse-pale, sat the fettered prisoner. He was an undersized man, scarcely more than a boy, apparently, and his small, regular features and finely modeled, tiny hands and feet gave him an almost feminine appearance. His terror was so obvious that I was almost moved to protest, but the Frenchman waited no further word.
“Speak, child-stealer, or take the consequences!” he exclaimed sharply, bringing the scorching poker to within a half-inch of the prisoner’s quivering throat, then snatching it back and thrusting the bit of ice against the shrinking white skin.
A shriek of hopeless anguish and pain burst from the captive’s lips. He writhed and twisted against his bonds like a scotched snake in the flame, biting his lips till bloody froth circled his mouth, digging his long, pointed nails into the palms of his hands. “Santissima Madonna—caro Dio!” he screamed as the ice met his flesh.
“Make answer, villain!” de Grandin commanded, boring the ice farther into the prisoner’s neck. “Answer me, or, pardieu, I shall burn your lying tongue from your throat!”
The bound man twisted again, but only hoarse, inarticulate sounds of fright and pain escaped his bloody lips.
“Nom d’un sacré singe—but he is stubborn, this one,” de Grandin muttered. “It seems I must yet burn his heart from his breast.”
Dropping the poker into the fire again, he snatched at the prisoner’s soiled white shirt with his free hand, ripping the fabric apart and exposing the bosom.
“Mon dieu!” he ejaculated as the garment parted in his grasp.
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed in amazement.
“For Gawd’s sake—a woman!” the constabulary sergeant gasped.
“Santa Madonna, Santissima Madre!” the prisoner gave a choking, gurgling cry and slumped against her restraining cords, head hanging, bleeding lips parted, her bared white bosom heaving convulsively.
“Quick, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin commanded sharply. “Some water, if you please. She is unconscious.”
THE WOMAN’S EYELIDS FLUTTERED upward, even as I hastened to obey de Grandin’s command. “Si, si, signori,” she answered. “I am a woman, and—I took the little one from the Candace house.”
For a moment she paused, swallowing convulsively, raising one of her slender hands, from which de Grandin had cut the bonds, to her throat, feeling tentatively at the spot where the Frenchman had pressed the ice, then shuddering with mystified relief as she discovered no brand from what she had thought the red-hot poker.
“I”—she gulped back a sob—“I am Gioconda Vitale. I live in Rupleyville, down by the railroad tracks. The people of College Grove know me as one who works by the day, who scrubs, who tends fires, washes. You, Signor Candace, have seen me in your house more than once, but never have you noticed me more than if I had been a chair or table.
“Last year my man, my Antonio, he die. It was the influenza, the doctor say, and he went ver’ quick, like falling asleep after a hard day’s work. In life he had been—how you call it? snake-charmer?—with circuses in Italy, then at Coney Island. We make plenty money while he was living, for he ver’ good man with the snakes—they call him ‘King of the Serpents’ on the billboards. But I not like them. All but Beppo, he was ver’ good, kind snake. Him I like. That Beppo, the python, my man like best of all, and I like him, too. He has a good, kind heart, like a dog. I not have the heart to sell him like I sell all the others when my ’Tonio die. I keep him, but he ver’ hard for to feed, for he eat much every month—chicken, rabbit, anything he can get his hand on. When I not have money for get him what he want, he go out and get it himself.
“‘Beppo,’ I tell him, ‘you get us in plenty trouble if you keep on,’ but he not pay me no ’tention. No.
“Signori”—she swept us with her large, dark eyes—“when my man die I was left all alone, yet not alone, for there was another with me, the answer to my man’s love and my prayers to la Madonna. Yes.
“Without my man, all heavy as I was, I go out and work, work, work till I think the bone come through my finger-ends, and at night I sit up and sew, that the bambino who is to come should have everything all nice. Yes.
“Presently he come, that beautiful little boy. His eyes are blue like my man’s who are in heaven with the blessed saints, for Antonio was of Florence, and not dark like us Sicilians. Santo Dio, how I love him, how I worship him, for he was not only the child of my body; he was my man come back to me again! I christen him Antonio, for his father who is gone to God, and every night when I come home from work he smile on me and seem to say, ‘Madre mia, my father up in heaven with the blessed ones, he see all you do, and love you still as when he held you in his arms on earth. Yes, signori, it is so.
“The good God knows His ways, but they are ver’ hard for women to understand. My little one, my token of love, he were taken from me. The doctor say it is something he have eat, but me, I know it were because he were too beautiful to stay on earth away from the holy angels and the blessed innocents who died that our Lord might live in the days of King Herod.
“Then I have only Beppo. He were a good snake; but no snake, not even the favorite of my dear man, can take the place of the little one who has gone to God. Beppo, he follow me out the door sometimes when I go out to walk at night—mostly when he are hungry, for it cost so much to feed him—but I say, ‘Beppo, go back. What the people say if they see me walking with a snake? They tell me I have the Evil Eye!’
“Signor”—she turned directly to Candace—“you know what it mean to have empty arms. Me, I was that way. I was one crazed woman. Each time I see a happy mother with her child something inside me seem to say, ‘Gioconda, but for the curse of God, there goes you!’
“Pretty soon I can not stand it no more. In Signor Candace’s house is a little boy about the size of my lost one if he had lived till now. I watch him all day when I go there to work. All the time my empty heart cry out for the feel of a baby’s head against it. Finally, a week—maybe two—ago, I go clear mad. All night I stand outside the window where the little one sleeps and watch the light. Late, ver’ late, his mother come in and lean over and kiss him good-night. My heart burst with the nothing which is inside. I can not stand it. Santa Madre, I can not stand it! When she put out the light and raise the window, I take a stepladder from the kitchen porch and climb up the house, take t
he little one from his bed all quiet, replace the ladder, and run to my house.
“Ah, how sweet it are to have a child once more in my arm, to feel the little head against my breast, to kiss back the cries he makes when he wakes up at night! I am wild for joy.
“But how am I, a poor woman, whose husband is with the blessed saints, to bring up this child? I can sell Beppo, but how much money will they give me for him? Not much. A hundred dollar, perhaps. That will not do. No, I can not get enough that way. Then I remember Signor Candace is rich. His wife not have to scrub floors or wash clothes. She is young, too; more children will come to gladden their home, but for me there is only the little bambino which I have stole. I shall make the rich father support his child, though he knows it not.
“So I make the letter which ask for money, and threaten to kill the little one if he does not pay. I kill him? Dio mio, sooner would I starve myself than have him go without the good red wine, the goat’s milk and the fine white bread every day!”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed the horrified father. “Is she feeding my child that?”
The woman paid no heed, but hurried on: “Signori, I am a wicked woman. I see it now. If I suffer because the good God, who own him, take my little boy to heaven, how much more shall this other poor mother suffer because a mortal, sinful woman, who have no right, steal away her little son from her? Yes.
“You come with me”—she cast big, tear-dimmed eyes pleadingly on each of us in turn—“I take you to my house and show you how nice I keep the little man and how he hold out his baby hands and smile when he see me come in.”
Jules de Grandin twisted his mustache furiously and strove manfully to look fierce, but the voice which he tried to make stern had a surprisingly tender tone as he replied: “Take us to your house; we shall get the little one, and if all is as you say, it may be you shall not suffer too greatly for your crime.”
“AND NOW, MY FRIENDS,” de Grandin began when the little boy had been restored to his hysterically happy mother’s arms, “you are due an explanation of my cleverness.
“When first I heard of the marks Madame Candace saw in the earth of her garden I knew not what to think. Snakes of the size the marks seemed to indicate are not native to this soil; I thought perchance she might be mistaken, even”—he made a quick, apologetic bow to Mrs. Candace—“that she might be stating something with no greater foundation than her imagination.
“When I did behold the letter asking for ransom I thought, ‘Surely, this is the explanation of it all. We shall take this miscreant red-handed, perhaps recover the stolen child, as well; but at any rate, we shall take the kidnaper.
“Next morning I read where the excellent Monsieur Johannes lost a pig to a great snake. ‘Parbleu,’ I say to me, ‘this must be investigated. It may be the snake whose track Madame Candace saw did thrust his so hideous head into the room where her little one slept as lesser snakes thrust their heads into birds’ nests, and made off with the baby.’ It was not a pleasant thought, my friends; but we must see what we should see.
“So I interviewed Monsieur Johannes, and sure enough, I found the evidence of a real snake, a large one. ‘Now, what to do?’ I ask me.
“It may easily be someone who knows nothing of the little man’s whereabouts was trying to cheat Monsieur and Madame Candace of two thousand dollars, I know. I have seen such cases. He has asked in his letter that we throw the money from an automobile. ‘Ah-ha, Monsieur the kidnaper,’ I say, ‘Jules de Grandin shall throw you something you do not expect.’
I go to New York and have an artizan make me a satchel which is only one great tear-gas bomb disguised. In its top are many tiny holes, and inside its metal interior is much tear-gas, pumped in at great pressure. The handle is like a trigger, and the minute anyone grasps it the holes in the bag’s top are opened and the gas rushes out, blinding the person who holds the handles. Remember, Friend Trowbridge, how I warned you not to touch those handles?
“Very good. ‘But what connection have the snake with the stealing of the child?’ I want to know. Not much, I believe, yet one thing make me stop and think. Was it only coincidence that those tracks appear in Madame Candace’s garden the night her little boy was stolen? Perhaps so; perhaps not. At any rate, Jules de Grandin does not sleep when wakefulness is necessary. I have made also a fork something like the notched sticks the Burmese use to catch the great snakes of their country—the snakes which later make shoes for the pretty ladies. Now, I am ready for human kidnapers or reptile devourers of children.
“We go to the woods as the note directs, we fling out the bag, and the little woman who stole to refill her aching, empty heart, is caught by the success of my so clever bomb-satchel.
“So far all is well, but it was as well I had my snake-stick with me, for the excellent Beppo, who doubtless was a most affectionate snake, was also there, and I, not being aware of his good qualities, was obliged to exterminate him in self-defense. Eh bien, Beppo is not the first to die because of evil appearances.
“Friend Trowbridge, I think our work is done. We have restored the little boy to his parents; we have made one great fool of that so odious Perkinson person who suspected Madame Candace of killing her son; we have apprehended the kidnapper. Let us go.”
He bowed to the company, strode to the door, then paused abruptly, a half-diffident, ingratiating smile on his face. “Monsieur Candace,” he asked, “as a favor to me, if you feel at all obligated for the little I have done, I would ask that you be merciful to the poor, bereaved mother when her trial comes up. Remember, though she sinned against you greatly by stealing your child, her temptation was also great.”
“Trial, hell!” Candace retorted. “There isn’t going to be any trial. D’ye think I’d have the heart to prosecute her after what she told us at the barracks? Not much! As far as I’m concerned, she can go free now.”
“Eh bien, Trowbridge, my friend,” de Grandin confided as we walked down the garden path, “I do admire that Monsieur Candace immensely. Truly, the great heart of America is reflected in the great hearts of her citizens.”
As we reached the waiting car he paused with a chuckle. “And the great thirst of the great desert is reflected in Jules de Grandin,” he confided. “Come, make haste, my friend, I pray. I would imbibe one of your so glorious gin rickies before I bid myself good night.”
Body and Soul
I HAD HAD A STRENUOUS day, for the mild epidemic of summer grippe had lasted over into September, and my round of calls had been double the usual number. “Thank heaven, I can relax for seven or eight hours,” I murmured piously as I pulled the single blanket up around my chin and settled myself for the night. The hall clock had just struck twelve, and I had no appointments earlier than nine the following morning. “If only nobody is so inconsiderate as to break a leg or get the bellyache,” I mumbled drowsily, “I’ll not stir from this bed until—”
As if to demonstrate the futility of self-congratulation, there came a sudden thunderous clamor at the front door. Someone was beating the panels with both his fists, raining frenzied blows on the wood with his feet and shrieking at the top of his voice, “Let me in! Doctor—Dr. Trowbridge, let me in! For God’s sake, let me in!”
“The devil!” I ejaculated, rising resentfully and feeling for my slippers and dressing-gown. “Couldn’t he have had the decency to ring the bell?”
“Let me in, let me in, Dr. Trowbridge!” the frantic hail came again as I rounded the bend of the stairs. “Let me in—quick!”
“All right, all right!” I counseled testily, undoing the lock and chain-fastener. “Just a min—”
The caller ceased his battering-ram assault on the door as I swung it back and catapulted past me into the hall, almost carrying me off my feet as he did so. “Quick, shut it—shut the door!” he gasped, wheeling in his tracks to snatch the knob from my hand and force the door to. “It’s out there—it’s outside there, I tell you!”
“What the mischief—” I began, half puzzled,
half angry, as I took quick stock of the intruder.
He was a young man, twenty-five or -six, I judged, dressed somewhat foppishly in a suit of mohair dinner clothes, his jacket and waistcoat badly rumpled, his once stiff evening shirt and collar reduced to a pulpy mass of sweat-soaked linen, and the foamy froth of drool disfiguring the corners of his flaccid mouth. As he turned on me to repeat his hysterical warning, I noticed that he caught his breath with considerable difficulty and that there was a strong hint of liquor in his speech.
“See here, young man, what do you mean?” I demanded sternly. “Haven’t you any better sense than to knock a man out of bed at this ungodly hour to tell him that—”
“Ssssh!” he interrupted with the exaggerated caution of the half-tipsy. “Ssssh, Dr. Trowbridge, I think I hear it coming up the steps. Is the door locked? Quick, in here!” Snatching me by the arm he dragged me unceremoniously into the surgery.
“Now see here, confound you!” I remonstrated. “This is going a bit too far. If you expect to get away with this sort of thing, I’ll mighty soon show you—”
“Trowbridge, mon vieux, what is it? What does the alarm portend?” Jules de Grandin, a delicate mauve-silk dressing-gown drawn over his lilac pajamas, slippers of violet snake-skin on his womanishly small feet, tiptoed into the room, his little blue eyes round with wonder and curiosity. “I thought I heard someone in extremity calling,” he continued, looking from the visitor to me, then back again with his quick, stock-taking glance. “Is it that someone dies and requires our assistance through the door to the better world, or—”
“It looks as if some drunken young fool is trying to play a practical joke on us,” I returned grimly, bending a stern look on the boy who cowered in the chair beside my desk. “I’ve half a mind to prescribe four ounces of castor oil and stand by while he takes it!”
De Grandin regarded the young man with his steady, unwinking stare a moment, then: “What frightens you, mon brave?” he demanded, far too gently, I thought. “Parbleu, but, you look as though you had been playing tag with Satan himself!”
The Horror on the Links Page 60
