“And she—”
“Gentlemen, I’m not sure whether I ought to have delirium or not with this disease, but I’m pretty sure I’ve had a touch of something. Now, I want you to know I’m not crazy before I tell you the rest; but I might have had a heart attack or something, then fallen asleep and dreamed it.”
“Say on, Monsieur,” de Grandin ordered rather grimly. “We listen.”
“Very well. When I said I loved her that girl just put her hands up to her eyes—like this—as if to wipe away some unshed tears. I half expected she’d be angry, or maybe giggle, but she didn’t. All she said was, ‘Too late—oh, too late!’
“‘I know it is,’ I answered. ‘I’ve already told you I’m as good as dead, but I can’t go west without telling you how I feel.’
“Then she said, ‘Oh, no, it’s not that, my dear. That’s not at all what I meant. For I love you, too, though I’ve no right to say so—I’ve no right to love anyone—it’s too late for me, too.’
“After that I just took her in my arms and held her tight, and she sobbed as if her heart would break. Finally I asked her to make me a promise. ‘I’ll rest better in my grave if I know you’ll never go out with that ugly brute I saw you with tonight,’ I told her, and she let out a little scream and cried harder than ever.
“Then I had the awful thought that maybe she was married to him, and that was what she meant when she said it was too late. So I asked her point blank.
“She said something devilish queer then. She told me, ‘I must go to him whenever he wants me. Though I hate him as you can never understand; when he calls I have to go. This is the first time I’ve ever gone with him, but I must go again, and again, and again! She kept screaming the word till I stopped her mouth with kisses.
“Presently the car stopped and we got out. We were at some sort of park, I think, but I was so engrossed in helping her compose herself I didn’t notice much of anything.
“She led me through a big gate and down a winding road. At last we stopped before some sort of lodge-house, and I took her in my arms for one last kiss.
“I don’t know whether the rest of it really happened or whether I passed out and dreamed it. What I thought happened was this: Instead of putting her lips against mine, she put them around them and seemed to draw the very breath out of my lungs. I could feel myself go faint, like a swimmer caught in the surf and mauled and pounded till the breath’s knocked out of him, and my eyes seemed blinded with a sort of mist; then everything went sort o’ dark green round me, and I began sagging at the knees. I could still feel her arms round me, and remember being surprised at her strength, but it seemed as if she’d transferred her lips to my throat. I kept getting weaker and weaker with a sort of languorous ecstasy, if that means anything to you. Rather like sinking to sleep in a soft dry bed with a big drink of brandy tucked under your belt after you’re dog-tired with cold and exposure. Next thing I knew I’d toppled over and fallen down the steps with no more strength in my knees than a rag doll has. I must have got an awful crack on the head when I went down, for I passed out completely, and the next thing I remember was waking to find you gentlemen working over me. Tell me, did I dream it all? I’m—just—about—played—out.”
The sentence trailed off slowly, as if he were falling to sleep, and his head dropped forward while his hands slipped nervelessly from his lap, trailing flaccidly to the floor.
“Has he gone?” I whispered as de Grandin sprang across the room and ripped his collar open.
“Not quite,” he answered. “More amyl nitrite, if you please; he will revive in a moment, but go home he shall not unless he promises not to destroy himself. Mon Dieu, destroyed he would be, body and soul, were he to put a bullet through his brain before—ah-ha? Behold, Friend Trowbridge, it is even as I feared!”
Against the young man’s throat there showed two tiny perforated wounds, as though a fine needle had been thrust through a fold of skin.
“H’m,” I commented. “If there were four of them I’d say a snake had bitten him.”
“She has! Name of a little blue man, she has!” he retorted. “A serpent more virulent and subtle than any which goes on its belly has sunk her fangs in him; he is envenomed surely as if he had been a victim of a cobra’s bite; but by the wings of Jacob’s Angel we shall thwart her, my friend. We shall show her Jules de Grandin must be reckoned with—her, and that fish-eyed paramour of hers as well, or may I eat stewed turnips for my Christmas dinner and wash them down with ditch-water!”
IT WAS A SERIOUS face he showed at breakfast the next day. “You have perhaps a half hour’s liberty this morning?” he asked as he drained his fourth cup of coffee.
“H’m, I suppose so. Anything special you’d like to do?”
“There is, indeed. I should like to go again to Shadow Lawn Cemetery. I would examine it by daylight, if you please.”
“Shadow Lawn?” I echoed in amazement. “What in this world—”
“Only partially,” he interrupted. “Unless I am much more mistaken than I think our business has as much to do with the next world as this. Come; you have your patients to attend, I have my duties to perform. Let us go.”
The rain had vanished with the night and a bright November sun was shining when we reached the graveyard. Making straight for the tomb where we had found young Rochester the night before, de Grandin halted and inspected it carefully. On the lintel of the massive doorway he invited my attention to the single incised word:
HEATHERTON
“U’m?” he nursed his narrow pointed chin between a thoughtful thumb and forefinger. “That name I must remember, Friend Trowbridge.”
Inside the tomb, arranged in two superimposed rows, were the crypts containing the remains of deceased Heathertons, each sealed by a white marble slab set with cement in a bronze frame, a two-lined legend telling the name and vital data of the occupant. The withering remains of a wreath clung by a knot of ribbon to the bronze ring-bolt ornamenting the marble panel of the farthest crypt, and behind the desiccating circle of roses and ruscus leaves I made out:
ALICE HEATHERTON
Sept. 28, 1926—Oct. 2, 1948
“You see?” he asked.
“I see a girl named Alice Heatherton died a month ago at the age of twenty-two,” I admitted, “but what that has to do with last night is more than I can—”
“Of course,” he broke in with a chuckle somehow lacking merriment. “But certainly. There are many things you do not see, my old one, and there are many more at which you blink your eyes, like a child passing over the unpleasant pages of a picture book. Now, if you will be so kind as to leave me, I shall interview Monsieur l’Intendant of this so lovely park, and several other people as well. If possible I shall return in time for dinner, but”—he raised his shoulders in a fatalistic shrug—“at times we must forego a meal in deference to duty. Yes, it is unfortunately so.”
THE CONSOMMÉ HAD GROWN cold and the roast lamb kiln-dried in the oven when the stutter of my study telephone called me. “Trowbridge, my friend,” de Grandin’s voice, shrill with excitement, came across the wire, “meet me at Adelphi Mansions quickly as you can. I would have you for witness!”
“Witness?” I echoed. “What—” A sharp click notified me he had hung up and I was left bewildered at the unresponsive instrument.
He was waiting for me at the entrance of the fashionable apartment house when I arrived, and refused to answer my impatient questions as he dragged me through the ornate entrance and down the rug-strewn foyer to the elevators. As the car shot upward he reached in his pocket and produced a shiny thumb-smudged photograph. “This I begged from Le Journal,” he explained. “They had no further use for it.”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed as I looked at the picture. “Wh—why, it’s—”
“Assuredly it is,” he answered in a level tone. “It is the girl we saw last night beyond a doubt; the girl whose tomb we visited this morning; the girl who gave the kiss of death to the young Roches
ter.”
“But that’s impossible! She—”
His short laugh interrupted. “I was convinced you would say just that, Friend Trowbridge. Come, let us hear what Madame Heatherton can tell us.”
A trim Negro maid in black-and-white uniform answered our summons and took our cards to her mistress. As she left the rather sumptuous reception room I glanced covertly about, noting rugs from China and the Near East, early American mahogany and an elaborately wrought medieval tapestry depicting a scene from the Nibelungenlied with its legend in formal Gothic text: “Hic Siegfriedum Aureum Occidunt—Here They Slay Siegfried the Golden.”
“Dr. Trowbridge? Dr. de Grandin?” the soft, cultured voice recalled me from my study of the fabric as an imposing white-haired lady entered.
“Madame, a thousand pardons for this intrusion!” de Grandin clicked his heels together and bowed stiffly from the hips. “Believe me, we have no desire to trespass on your privacy, but a matter of the utmost importance brings us. You will forgive me if I inquire of the circumstances of your daughter’s death, for I am of the Sûreté of Paris, and make investigation as a scientific research.”
Mrs. Heatherton was, to use an overworked expression, a “perfect lady.” Nine women out of ten would have frozen at de Grandin’s announcement, but she was the tenth. The direct glance the little Frenchman gave her and his evident sincerity, combined with perfect manners and immaculate dress, carried conviction. “Please be seated, gentlemen,” she invited. “I cannot see where my poor child’s tragedy can interest an officer of the Paris secret police, but I’ve no objection to telling all I can; you could get a garbled version from the newspapers anyway.
“Alice was my youngest child. She and my son Ralph were two years apart, almost to the day. Ralph graduated from Cornell year before last, majoring in civil engineering, and went to Florida to take charge of some construction work. Alice died while visiting him.”
“But—forgive my seeming rudeness, Madame—your son, is not he also deceased?”
“Yes,” our hostess assented. “He is dead, also. They died almost together. There was a man down there, a fellow townsman of ours, Joachim Palenzeke—not the sort of person one knows, but Ralph’s superior in the work. He had something to do with promoting the land development, I believe. When Alice went to visit Ralph this person presumed on his position and the fact that we were all from Harrisonville, and attempted to force his attentions on her.”
“One sees. And then?” de Grandin prompted softly.
“Ralph resented his overtures. Palenzeke made some insulting remarks—some scurrilous allusions to Alice and me, I’ve been told, and they fought. Ralph was a small man, but a thoroughbred. Palenzeke was almost a giant, but a thoroughgoing coward. When Ralph began to get the better of him he drew a pistol and fired five shots into my poor son’s body. Ralph died the next day after hours of terrible suffering.
“His murderer fled to the swamps where it would be difficult to track him with hounds, and according to some Negro squatters he committed suicide, but there must have been some mistake, for—” she broke off, pressing her crumpled handkerchief to her mouth, as if to force back the sobs.
De Grandin reached from his chair and patted her hand gently, as if consoling a child. “Dear lady,” he murmured, “I am distressed, believe me, but also please believe me when I say I do not ask these so heart-breaking questions idly. Tell me, if you will, why you believe the story of this vile miscreant’s suicide an error.”
“Because—because he was seen again! He killed Alice!”
“Nom d’un nom! Do you say so?” His comment was a suppressed shout. “Tell me, tell me, Madame, how came this vileness about? This is of the great importance; this explains much which was inexplicable. Say on, chère Madame, I implore you!”
“Alice was prostrated at the tragedy of Ralph’s murder—somehow, she seemed to think she was responsible for it—but in a few days she recovered enough to make preparations to return home with his body.
“There was no railway nearer than fifteen miles, and she wanted to catch an early train, so she set out by motor the night before her train was due. As she drove through a length of lonely, unlighted road between two stretches of undrained swampland someone emerged from the tall reeds—we have the chauffeur’s statement for this—and leaped upon the running-board. He struck the driver senseless with a single blow, but not before he had been recognized. It was Joachim Palenzeke. The car ran into the swamp when the driver lost consciousness, but fortunately for him the mud was deep enough to stall the machine, though not deep enough to engulf it. He recovered in a short time and raised the alarm.
“A sheriff’s posse found them both next morning. Palenzeke had apparently slipped in the bog while trying to escape and been drowned. Alice was dead—from shock, the doctors said. Her lips were terribly bruised, and there was a wound on her throat, though not serious enough to have caused death; and she had been—”
“Enough! No more, Madame, I entreat you! Sang de Saint Denis, is Jules de Grandin a monster that he should roll a stone upon a mother’s breaking heart? Dieu de Dieu, non! But tell me, if you can, and then I shall ask you no more—what became of this ten-thousand-times-damned—your pardon, Madame!—this so execrable cochon of a Palenzeke?”
“They brought him home for burial,” Mrs. Heatherton replied softly. “His family is very wealthy. Some of them were bootleggers during prohibition, some are real estate speculators, some are politicians. He had the most elaborate funeral ever seen in the local Greek Orthodox Church—they say the flowers alone cost more than five thousand dollars—but Father Apostolakos refused to say Mass over him, merely recited a short prayer, and denied him burial in the consecrated part of the church cemetery.”
“Ah!” de Grandin looked meaningfully at me, as if to say, “I told you as much!”
“This may interest you, too, though I don’t know,” Mrs. Heatherton added: “A friend of mine who knows a reporter on the Journal—newspapermen know everything,” she added with simple naïveté, “told me that the coward really must have tried suicide and failed, for there was a bullet-mark on his temple, though of course it couldn’t have been fatal, since they found him drowned in the swamp. Do you suppose he could have wounded himself purposely where those Negro swamp-dwellers could see, so that the story of his suicide would get about and the officers stop looking for him?”
“Quite possibly,” de Grandin agreed as he rose. “Madame, we are your debtors more than you suspect, and though you cannot know it, we have saved you at least one pang this night. Adieu, chère Madame, and may the good God watch over you—and yours.” He laid his lips to her fingers and bowed himself from the room.
As we passed through the outer door we caught the echo of a sob and Mrs. Heatherton’s despairing cry: “Me and mine—there are no ‘mine.’ All, all are gone!”
“La Pauvre!” de Grandin murmured as he closed the door softly. “All the more reason for le bon Dieu’s watchfulness, though she knows it not!”
“Now what?” I demanded, dabbing furtively at my eyes with my handkerchief.
The Frenchman made no effort to conceal his tears. They trickled down his face as if he had been a half-grown schoolboy. “Go home, my friend,” he ordered. “Me, I shall consult the priest of that Greek Church. From what I hear of him he must be a capital fellow. I think he will give credence to my story. If not, parbleu, we must take matters into our own hands. Meantime, crave humble pardon from the excellent Nora for having neglected her dinner and ask that she prepare some slight refreshment, then be ready to accompany me again when we shall have regaled ourselves. Nom d’un canard vert, we have a busy night before us, my old and rare!”
IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when he returned, but from the sparkle in his eyes I knew he had successfully attended to some of his “offices.”
“Barbe d’une chèvre,” he exclaimed as he disposed of his sixth cold lamb sandwich and emptied his eighth glass of Ponte Canet, “that Father Apo
stolakos is no man’s fool, my friend. He is no empty-headed modern who knows so much that he knows nothing; a man versed in the occult may talk freely with him and be understood. Yes. He will help us.”
“U’m?” I commented noncommittally, my mouth half-filled with lamb sandwich.
“Precisely,” he agreed, refilling his glass and lifting another sandwich from the tray. “Exactly, my friend. The good papa is supreme in matters ecclesiastical, and tomorrow he will give the necessary orders without so much as ‘by your leave’ from the estimable ex-bootleggers, real estate dealers and politicians who compose the illustrious Palenzeke clan. The sandwiches are all gone, and the bottle empty? Good, then let us be upon our way.”
“Where?” I demanded.
“To the young Monsieur Rochester’s. Me, I would have further talk with that one.”
As we left the house I saw him transfer a small oblong packet from his jacket to his overcoat. “What’s that?” I asked.
“A thing the good father lent me. I hope we shall have no occasion to use it, but it will prove convenient if we do.”
A LIGHT MIST, DAPPLED HERE and there with chilling rain, was settling in the streets as we set off for Rochester’s. Half an hour’s cautious driving brought us to the place, and as we drew up at the curb the Frenchman pointed to a lighted window on the seventh floor. “That burns in his suite,” he informed me. “Can it be he entertains at this hour?”
The night elevator operator snored in a chair in the lobby, and, guided by de Grandin’s cautious gesture, I followed his lead up the stairs. “We need not announce our coming,” he whispered as we rounded the landing of the sixth floor. “It is better that we come as a surprise, I think.”
Another flight we climbed silently, and paused before the door of Rochester’s apartment. De Grandin rapped once softly, repeated the summons more authoritatively, and was about to try the knob when we heard footsteps beyond the panels.
Young Rochester wore a silk robe over his pyjamas, his hair was somewhat disarranged, but he looked neither sleepy nor particularly pleased to see us.
The Horror on the Links Page 65
