“I have—I have!” the youth replied quaveringly. “I tell you, it jumped at me just as I came past the park entrance, and I wasn’t a hundred yards ahead when Dr. Trowbridge let me in!”
“U’m?” the Frenchman twisted the ends of his little blond mustache meditatively. “And this ‘It’ which pursued you, it is what?”
“I don’t know,” the other responded. “I was walking home from a dance at the Sigma Delta Tau house—been stagging it, you know—and stopped by the Victory Monument to light a cigarette when something—dam’ if I know what—jumped out o’ the bushes at me and made a grab at my throat. It missed my neck by a couple o’ inches, but snatched my hat, and I didn’t take any time to see what it would do next. I’d ’a’ been going yet if my wind hadn’t given out, and I happened to think that Dr. Trowbridge lives in this block and that he’d most likely be up, or within call, anyhow, so I rushed up the steps and hammered on the door till he let me in.
“Will you let me stay here overnight?” he concluded, turning to me appealingly. “I’m Dick Ratliff—Henry Ratliff’s nephew, you know—and honest, Doctor, I’m scared stiff to go out in that street again till daylight.”
“H’m,” I murmured judicially, surveying the young fool reflectively. He was not a bad-looking boy—quite otherwise—and I could well imagine he presented a personable enough appearance when his clothing was in better array and his head less fuddled with bad liquor. “How much have you had to drink tonight, young man?”
“Two drinks, sir,” he returned promptly, looking me squarely in the eye, and, though my better judgment told me he was lying like a witness at a Senate investigation, I believed him.
“I think you’re a damn fool,” I told him with more candor than courtesy. “You were probably so full of rotgut that your own shadow gave you a start back there by the park gate, and you’ve been trying to outrace it for the last four blocks. You’ll be heartily ashamed of yourself in the morning, but I’ve a spare bed, and you may as well sleep off your debauch here as in some police station, I suppose.”
“Thank you, sir,” he answered humbly. “I don’t blame you for thinking I’ve got the jim-jams—I know my story sounds crazy—but I’m telling you the truth. Something did jump out at me, and almost succeeded in grabbing me by the throat. It wasn’t just imagination, and it wasn’t booze, either, but—my God, look!”
THE EXCLAMATION ENDED IN a shrill crescendo, and the lad half leaped from his chair, pointing with a shaking forefinger at the little window over the examination table, then slumped back as though black-jacked, his hands falling limply to the floor, his head lolling drunkenly forward on his breast.
Both de Grandin and I wheeled about, facing the window. “Good lord!” I exclaimed as my gaze penetrated the shining, night-backed panes.
“Grand Dieu—ç’est le diable en personne!” the little Frenchman cried.
Staring into the dimly lighted room was such a visage as might bring shudders of horripilation to a bronze statue. It was a long, cadaverous face, black with the dusky hue of old and poorly cured rawhide, bony as a death’s-head, yet covered with a multitude of tiny horizontal wrinkles. The fleshless, leathery lips were drawn back from a set of broken and discolored teeth which reminded me somehow of the cruel dentition of a shark, and the corded, rugous neck supporting the withered face was scarcely thicker than a man’s wrist. From the bare, black scalp there hung a single lock of coarse, straggling hair. But terrible as the features were, terrifying as were the unfleshed lips and cheeks and brow, the tiny, deep-set eyes almost fallen backward from their sockets were even more horrible. Small as the eyes of a rodent, set, unwavering in their stare, they reminded me, as they gleamed with hellish malevolence in their settings of shrunken, wrinkled skin, of twin poisonous spiders awaiting the chance to pounce upon their prey. It might have been a trick of the lamplight, but to me it seemed that the organs shone with a diabolical luminance of their own as they regarded us with a sort of mirthless smile.
“Good heavens, what is it?” I choked, half turning to my companion, yet keeping most of my glance fixed on the baneful, hypnotic orbs glaring at me through the windowpane.
“God knows,” returned de Grandin, “but by the belly of Jonah’s whale, we shall see if he be proof against shot and powder!” Whipping a tiny Ortgies automatic from his dressing-gown pocket he brought its blunt muzzle in line with the window and pressed the trigger. Seven, eight shots rang out so quickly that the last seemed no more than the echo of the first; the plate glass pane was perforated like a sieve within an area of three square inches; and the sharp, acrid smell of smokeless powder bit the mucous membrane of my nostrils.
“After him, Friend Trowbridge!” de Grandin cried, flinging aside the empty pistol and bolting through the door, down the hallway and across the porch. “Barbe d’une oie, but we shall see how he liked the pills I dealt him!”
The September moon rode serenely in the dark-blue sky; a little vagrant breeze, coming from the bay, rustled the boughs of the curbside maple trees; and from the downtown section there came to us, faintly, the muted clangor of the all-night trolley cars and the occasional hoot of a cruising taxicab’s horn. After the bedlam of the Frenchman’s shots the early autumn night seemed possessed of a stillness which bore in on our eardrums like a tangible sound, and, like visitors in an empty church, we pursued our quest in silence, communicating only in low, breathless whispers. From house to hedge, over lawn and rosebed and tennis court we pushed our search, scanning every square inch of land, peering under rosebushes and rhododendron plants, even turning over the galvanized iron trash-can which stood by my kitchen stoop. No covert large enough to have shielded a rat did we leave unexplored, yet of the awful thing which had gazed through the surgery window we found no sign or trace, though we hunted till the eastern sky began to pale with streaks of rose and pearl and amethyst and the rattling milk carts broke the nighttime quiet with their early-morning clatter.
“GOOD MORNIN’, DR. DE Grandin.” Detective Sergeant Costello rose from his seat in the consulting-room as de Grandin and I entered. “’Tis sorry I am to be disturbin’ ye so early in th’ mornin’, more especially as I know what store ye set by yer breakfast”—he grinned broadly at his sally—“but th’ fact is, sor, there’s been a tidy little murder committed up th’ street, an’ I’m wondering if ye’d be discommodin’ yerself to th’ extent o’ comin’ up to Professor Kolisko’s house and takin’ a look around before th’ coroner’s physician messes everything up an’ carts th’ remains off to the morgue for an autopsy.”
“A murder?” de Grandin’s little eyes snapped with sudden excitement. “Do you say a murder? My friend, you delight me!”
“Yes, sor, I knew y’d be pleased to hear about it,” the Irishman answered soberly. “Will we be goin’ up to th’ house at once, sor?”
“But of course, by all means,” de Grandin assented. “Trowbridge, my friend, you will have the charity to convey us thither, will you not? Come, let us hasten to this Monsieur Kolisko’s house and observe what we can see. And”—his little eyes twinkled as he spoke—“I beseech you, implore the so excellent Nora to reserve sufficient breakfast against the time of our return. Mordieu, already I feel my appetite assuming giant proportions!”
Two minutes later the detective, de Grandin and I were speeding uptown toward the isolated cottage where Urban Kolisko, one-time professor of psychology at the University at Warsaw, had passed the declining years of his life as a political refugee.
“Tell me, Friend Costello,” the Frenchman demanded; “this Monsieur Kolisko, how did he die?”
“H’m, that’s just what’s puzzlin’ all of us,” the detective admitted. “All we know about th’ case is that Murphy, who has th’ beat where th’ old felly lived wuz passin’ by there a little after midnight an’ heard th’ devil’s own row goin’ on inside. The lights, wuz all goin’ in th’ lower part o’ th’ house, which warn’t natural, an’ when Murphy stopped to hear what it wuz all about
, he thought he heard someone shoutin’ an’ swearin’, an’ once or twice th’ crack o’ a whip, then nothin’ at all.
“Murphy’s a good lad, sor; I’ve knowed him, man an’ boy, these last eighteen years, an’ he did just what I’d expected o’ him. Went up an’ knocked on th’ door, an’ when he couldn’t get no response, broke it in. There was hell broke loose for certain, sor.”
“Ah?” returned de Grandin. “What did the excellent Murphy observe?”
“Plenty,” Costello replied laconically. “Ye’ll be seein’ it for yerself in a minute.”
Inside the Kolisko house was that peculiar hush which does reverence to the Grim Reaper’s visits. Acting on telephoned instructions, Officer Murphy mounted guard before the door, permitting no one to enter the place, and the scene in the small, poorly lighted living-room was exactly as he had come upon it several hours earlier. Like most dyed-in-the-wool students, Kolisko had regarded his home merely as a place to sleep, eat and store books. The room was lined from floor to ceiling on all sides with rough deal shelving which groaned and sagged under the weight of ponderous volumes in every language known to print. Piles of other books, unable to find accommodation on the shelves, were littered about the floor. The rough, bench-like table and the littered, untidy desk which stood between the two small windows were also piled high with books.
Between the desk and table, flat on its back, staring endlessly at the rough whitewashed ceiling with bulging, sightless eyes, lay the relic of Professor Kolisko. Clothed in a tattered bathrobe and soiled pajamas the body lay, and it was not a pretty sight even to a medical man to whom death in its unloveliest phases is no stranger. Kolisko had been thin to the point of emaciation, and his scrawniness was accentuated in death. His white-thatched head was thrown back and bent grotesquely to one side, his straggling white beard thrust upward truculently, and his lower jaw had fallen downward with the flaccidity of death, half an inch or so of tongue protruding beyond the line of his lower teeth. Any doctor, soldier or undertaker—any man whose business has to do habitually with death—could not fail to recognize the signs. The man was dead, and had been so for upward of seven hours.
“Howly Mither!” Costello’s brogue came strongly to the surface as he blessed himself involuntarily. “Will ye be lookin’ at th’ awfulness o’ him, sors?”
“U’m,” murmured Jules de Grandin, sinking to one knee beside the corpse, raising the lolling head and fingering the back of the neck with quick, practiced hands, then brushing back the bristling beard to examine the scrawny throat attentively, “he had cause to be dead, this one. See, Friend Trowbridge”—taking my hand he guided my fingers slowly down the dead man’s neck, then pointed to the throat—“there is a clean fracture of the spine between the third and fourth dorsal vertebræ, probably involving a rupture of the cord, as well. The autopsy will disclose that. And here”—he tapped the throat with a well-manicured forefinger—“are the marks of strangulation. Mordieu, whatever gripped this poor one’s neck possessed a hold like Death himself, for he not only choked him, but broke his spine as well! If it were not for one thing, I should say such strength—such ferocity of grip—could only have been exerted by one of the great apes, but—”
He broke off, staring with preoccupied, unseeing eyes at the farther wall.
“But what, sor?” Costello prompted as the little man’s silence continued.
“Parbleu, it could not be an ape and leave such a thumb-mark, my friends,” de Grandin returned. “The gorilla, the orangutan, the chimpanzee, all have such strength of hand as to accomplish what we see here, but they are not human, no matter how much they parody mankind. Their thumbs are undeveloped; the thumb which closed on this one’s neck was long and thin, more like a finger than a thumb. See for yourselves, it closed about the throat, meeting the fingers which clasped it on the other side. Mordieu, if we are to find this murderer we must look for one with twice the length and five times the strength of hand of the average man. Bethink you—this one’s grip was great enough to snap Kolisko’s spine like a clay-pipe stem by merely squeezing his neck! Dieu de Dieu, but he will be an uncomfortable one to meet in the dark!”
“Sergeant Costello,” Murphy’s hail came sharply from the cottage door, “they’re comin’; Coroner Martin an’ Dr. Schuester just drove up!”
“All right, Murphy, good lad!” Costello returned, then glanced sharply at de Grandin. “Leave him be, Doc,” he ordered. “If the coroner an’ Dr. Schuester catch us monkeyin’ with their property there’ll be hell poppin’ at headquarters.”
“Very good, my friend,” de Grandin rejoined, rising and brushing the dust from his trousers knees, “we have seen as much of the body as we desire. Let them have it and perform their gruesome rites; we shall look elsewhere for what we seek.”
Coroner Martin and his physician came bustling in almost as the little Frenchman ceased speaking, glanced casually at Costello and suspiciously at de Grandin and me, then went at their official duties with only a mumbled word of greeting.
“What do you make of it?” I inquired as we drove toward my house.
“Eh bien, as yet I make nothing,” de Grandin returned. “The man was killed by paralysis resulting from a broken neck, although the pressure on his windpipe would have been sufficient to have slain him, had it but continued long enough. We know his murderer possessed hands of extraordinary strength and size, and is, therefore, in all probability, a man of more than usual height. Thus far we step with assurance. When the coroner has finished with the deceased gentleman’s premises, we shall afford ourselves the pleasure of a protracted search; before that we shall request our good friend Costello to inquire into Monsieur Kolisko’s antecedents and discover if he possessed any enemies, especially any enemies capable of doing him to death in this manner. Meantime I famish for my breakfast. I am hungry as a cormorant.”
The boasted appetite was no mere figure of speech. Three bowls of steaming cereal, two generous helpings of bacon and eggs, half a dozen cups of well-creamed coffee disappeared into his interior before he pushed back his chair and lighted a rank-smelling French cigarette with a sigh of utter content. “Eh bien, but it is difficult to think on an empty stomach,” he assured me as he blew a column of smoke toward the ceiling. “Me, I am far from my best when there is nothing but flatulence beneath my belt. I require stimu—Mon Dieu, what a fool I am!”
Striking his forehead with the heel of his hand, he rose so abruptly that his chair almost capsized behind him. “What’s the matter?” I asked, but he waved my question and me aside with an impatient hand.
“Non, non, do not stop me, do not hinder me, my friend!” he ordered. “Me, I have important duties to perform, if it be not too late to do them. Go upon your errands of mercy, Friend Trowbridge, and should you chance to return before I quit the surgery, I pray you leave me undisturbed. I have to do that which is needful, and I must do it uninterrupted, if you please.”
Having thus served notice on me that I would be unwelcome in my own workshop, he turned and fled toward the front door like a luckless debtor pursued by collectors.
It was nearly four o’clock that afternoon when I returned from my round of calls and tiptoed past the surgery door, only to find my caution unnecessary, for de Grandin sat in the cool, darkened library, smoking a cigar and chuckling over some inane story in L’Illustration.
“Finish the important duties?” I asked, regarding him ironically.
“But certainly,” he returned. “First, dear friend, I must apologize most humbly for my so abominable rudeness of this morning. It is ever my misfortune, I fear, to show only incivility to those who most deserve my courtesy, but I was all afire with the necessity of haste when I spoke. Great empty-head that I was, I had completely forgotten for the moment that one of the best places to seek clues of a murder is the person of the victim himself, and when I did remember I was almost beside myself until I ascertained to which entrepreneur des pompes funèbres—How do you say it? Undertaker?—my God,
what a language!—Monsieur Kolisko’s body had been entrusted by the coroner. Friend Costello informed me that Monsieur Mitchell was in charge, and to the excellent Mitchell I hurried post-haste, begging that he would permit me one little minute alone with the deceased before he commenced his ministrations.”
“H’m, and did you find anything?” I asked.
“Parbleu, yes; I found almost too much. From the nails of Monsieur Kolisko’s hands I rescued some fragments, and in your surgery I subjected them to microscopic examination. They proved to be—what do you say?”
“Tobacco?” I hazarded.
“Tobacco!” he scoffed. “Friend Trowbridge, sometimes I think you foolish; at others I fear you are merely stupid. Beneath the dead man’s finger-nails I found some bits of human skin—and a fragment of human hair.”
“Well,” I returned unenthusiastically, “what of it? Kolisko was an exceedingly untidy sort of person—the kind who cared so little for social amenities that he was apt to scratch himself vigorously when he chose, and probably he was also addicted to the habit of scrabbling through his beard with his fingers. Most of those European scientists with birds’ nests sprouting from their chins are that sort, you know. He was shockingly uncouth, and—”
“And you annoy me most thoroughly, Friend Trowbridge,” the little Frenchman broke in. “Listen, attend me, regard that which I am about to tell you: The skin and hair which I did find were black, my friend, black as bitumen, and subjected to chemical reagents, showed themselves to be strongly impregnated with natron, oil of cedar and myrrh. What have you to say now?”
“Why—”
“And if these things suggest an Egyptian mummy to you, as they may if you think steadily for the next ten or more years, I make so bold as to ask what would a professor of psychology be doing in contact with a mummy. Hein? Answer me that, if you please. Had he been an Egyptologist, or even a student of comparative anatomy, there would be reason for it, but a psychologist—it does not make sense!”
The Horror on the Links Page 61
