“Ma pauvre!” de Grandin laid his hand upon the girl’s bowed, shining head. “My innocent, poor lamb who met the butcher ere you had the lambkin’s right to play! I know all there is to know of you. Your sainted mother told me far more than she dreamed this evening. I am not cruel, my little lovely one; I am all sympathy and sorrow, but life is cruel and death is even crueller. Also, you know what the inevitable end must be if I forebear to do my duty. If I could work a miracle I would roll back the gates of dead, and bid you live and love until your natural time had come to die, but—”
“I don’t care what the end must be!” the girl blazed, sinking back until she sat upon the upturned soles of her bare feet. “I only know that I’ve been cheated out of every woman’s birthright. I’ve found love now, and I want it; I want it! He’s mine, I tell you, mine—” She cowered, groveling before him—“Think what a little thing I’m asking!” Inching forward on her knees she took his hand in both of hers and fondled it against her cheek. “I’m asking just a little drop of blood now and then; just a little, tiny drop to keep my body whole and beautiful. If I were like other women and Donald were my lover he’d be glad to give me a transfusion—to give me a whole pint or quart of his blood any time I needed it. Is it so much, then, when I ask only an occasional drop? Just a drop now and then, and once in a while a draft of living breath from his lungs to—”
“To slay his poor sick body, then destroy his young, clean soul!” the Frenchman interrupted softly. “It is not of the living that I think so much, but of the dead. Would you deny him quiet rest in his grave when he shall have lost his life because of you? Would you refuse him peaceful sleep until the dawn of God’s Great Tomorrow?”
“O-o-oh!” the cry wrung from her writhing lips was like the wail of a lost spirit. “You’re right—it is his soul we must protect. I’d kill that, too, as mine was killed that night in the swamps. Oh, pity, pity me, dear Lord! Thou who didst heal the lepers and despised not the Magdalen, have pity on me, the soiled, the unclean!”
Scalding tears of agony fell between the fingers of her long, almost transparent hands as she held them before her eyes. Then: “I am ready,” she announced, seeming to find courage for complete renunciation. “Do what you must to me. If it must be the knife and stake, strike quickly. I shall not scream or cry, if I can help it.”
For a long moment he looked in her face as he might have looked in the casket of a dear friend. “Ma pauvre,” he murmured compassionately. “My poor, brave, lovely one!”
Abruptly he turned to Rochester. “Monsieur,” he announced sharply, “I would examine you. I would determine the state of your health.”
We stared at him astounded as he proceeded to strip back the—young man’s pyjamas jacket and listen carefully at his chest, testing by percussion, counting the pulse action, then feeling slowly up and down the arm. “U’m” he remarked judicially at the end of the examination, “you are in bad condition, my friend. With medicines, careful nursing, and more luck than the physician generally has, we might keep you alive another month. Again, you might drop over any moment. But in all my life I have never given a patient his death warrant with more happiness.”
Two of us looked at him in mute wonder; it was the girl who understood. “You mean,” she trilled, laughter and a light the like of which there never was on land or sea breaking in her eyes, “you mean that I can have him till—”
He grinned at her delightedly. There was a positively gleeful chuckle in his voice as he replied: “Precisely, exactly, quite so, Mademoiselle.” Turning from her he addressed Rochester.
“You and Mademoiselle Alice are to love each other as much as you please while life holds out. And afterwards”—he stretched his hand out to grasp the girl’s fingers—“afterwards I shall do the needful for you both. Ha, Monsieur Diable, I have tricked you nicely; Jules de Grandin had made one great fool of hell!” He threw his head back and assumed an attitude of defiance, eyes flashing, lips twitching with excitement and elation.
The girl bent forward, took his hand and covered it with kisses. “Oh, you’re kind—kind!” she sobbed brokenly. “No other man in all the world, knowing what you know, would have done what you have done!”
“Mais non, mais certainement non, Mademoiselle,” he agreed imperturbably. “You do forget that I am Jules de Grandin.
“Come, Trowbridge, my friend,” he admonished, “we obtrude here most unwarrantably. What have we, who drained the purple wine of youth long years ago, to do with those who laugh and love the night away? Let us go.”
Hand in hand, the lovers followed us to the hall, but as we paused upon the threshold—
Rat-tat-tat! something struck the fog-glazed window, and as I wheeled in my tracks I felt the breath go hot in my throat. Beyond the window, seemingly adrift in the fog, there was a human form. A second glance told me it was the brutal-faced man we had seen at the café the previous night. But now his ugly, evil face was like the devil’s, not merely a wicked man’s.
“Eh bien, Monsieur, is it you, indeed?” de Grandin asked nonchalantly. “I thought you might appear, so I am ready for you.
“Do not invite him in,” he called the sharp command to Rochester. “He cannot come in unbidden. Hold your beloved, place your hand or lips against her mouth, lest she who is his thing and chattel, however unwillingly, give him permission to enter. Remember, he cannot cross the sill without the invitation of someone in this room!”
Flinging up the sash he regarded the apparition sardonically. “What have you to say, Monsieur le Vampire, before I send you hence?” he asked.
The thing outside mouthed at us, very fury robbing it of words. At last: “She’s mine!” it shrieked. “I made her what she is, and she belongs to me. I’ll have her, and that dough-faced, dying thing she holds in her arms, too. All, all of you are mine! I shall be king, I shall be emperor of the dead! Not you nor any mortal can stop me. I am all-powerful, supreme, I am—”
“You are the greatest liar outside burning hell,” de Grandin cut in icily. “As for your power and your claims, Monsieur Monkey-Face, tomorrow you shall have nothing, not even so much as a little plot of earth to call a grave. Meanwhile, behold this, devil’s spawn; behold and be afraid!”
Whipping his hand from his topcoat pocket he produced a small flat case like the leather containers sometimes used for holding photographs, pressed a concealed spring and snapped back its top. For a moment the thing in the night gazed at the object with stupefied, unbelieving horror; then with a wild cry fell backward, its uncouth motion somehow reminding me of a hooked bass.
“You do not like it, I see,” the Frenchman mocked. “Parbleu, you stinking truant from the charnel-house, let us see what nearer contact will effect!” He stretched his hand out till the leather-cased object almost touched the phantom face outside the window.
A wild, inhuman screech echoed, and as the demon face retreated we saw a weal of red across its forehead, as if the Frenchman had scored it with a hot iron.
“Close the windows, mes amis,” he ordered casually as though nothing hideous hovered outside. “Shut them tight and hold each other close until the morning comes and shadows flee away. Bonne nuit!”
“For heaven’s sake,” I besought as we began our homeward drive, “what’s it all mean? You and Rochester called that girl Alice, and she’s the speaking image of the girl we saw in the café last night. But Alice Heatherton is dead. Her mother told us how she died this evening; we saw her tomb this morning. Are there two Alice Heathertons, or is this girl her double—”
“In a way,” he answered. “It was Alice Heatherton we saw back there, my friend, yet not the Alice Heatherton of whom her mother spoke this evening, nor yet the one whose tomb we saw this morning—”
“For God’s sake,” I burst out, “stop this damned double-talk! Was or was it not Alice Heatherton—”
“Be patient, my old one,” he counseled. “At present I can not tell you, but later I will have a complete explanation—I hope
.”
DAYLIGHT WAS JUST BREAKING when his pounding on my bedroom door roused me from coma-like sleep. “Up, Friend Trowbridge!” he shouted, punctuating his summons with another knock. “Up and dress as quickly as may be. We must be off at once. Tragedy has overtaken them!”
Scarcely knowing what I did I stumbled from the bed, felt my way into my clothes and, sleep still filming my eyes, descended to the lower hall where he waited in a perfect frenzy of excitement.
“What’s happened?” I asked as we started for Rochester’s.
“The worst,” he answered. “Ten minutes ago I was awakened by the telephone. ‘It is for Friend Trowbridge,’ I told me. ‘Some patient with the mal de l’estamac desires a little paregoric and much sympathy. I shall not waken him, for he is all tired with the night’s exertions.’ But still the bell kept ringing, and so I answered it. My friend, it was Alice. Hélas, as strong as her love was, her bondage was still stronger. But when the harm was done she had the courage to call us. Remember that when you come to judge her.”
I would have paused for explanation, but he waved me on impatiently. “Make haste; oh, hurry, hurry!” he urged. “We must go to him at once. Perhaps it is even now too late.”
There was no traffic in the streets, and we made the run to Rochester’s apartment in record time. Almost before we realized it we were at his door once more, and this time de Grandin stood upon no ceremony. Flinging the door open he raced down the hall and into the living room, pausing at the threshold with a sharp indrawn breath. “So!” he breathed. “He was most thorough, that one.”
The place was a shambles. Chairs were overturned, pictures hung awry, bits of broken bric-à-brac were strewn about, the long throw-cover of the center table had been jerked off, overturning the lamp and scattering ashtrays and cigarette boxes indiscriminately.
Donald Rochester lay on the rug before the dead fire, one leg bent queerly under him, his right arm stretched out flaccidly along the floor and bent at a sharp right angle at the wrist.
The Frenchman crossed the room at a run, unclasping the lock of his kit as he leaped. Dropping to his knees he listened intently at the young man’s chest a moment, then stripped back his sleeve, swabbed his arm with alcohol and thrust the needle of his hypodermic through a fold of skin. “It is a desperate chance I take,” he muttered as he drove the plunger home, “but the case is urgent; le bon Dieu knows how urgent.”
Rochester’s eyelids fluttered as the powerful stimulant took effect. He moaned and turned his head with great effort, but made no move to rise. As I knelt beside de Grandin and helped him raise the injured man I understood the cause of his lethargy. His spine had been fractured at the fourth dorsal veterbra, paralysis resulting.
“Monsieur,” the little Frenchman whispered softly, “you are going fast. Your minutes are now more than numbered on the circle of the watch-face. Tell us, tell us quickly, what occurred.” Once more he injected stimulant into Rochester’s arm.
The young man wet his blued lips with the tip of his tongue, attempted a deep breath, but found the effort too great. “It was he—the fellow you scared off last night,” he whispered hoarsely.
“After you’d gone Alice and I lay on the hearth rug, counting our minutes together as a miser counts his gold. I heaped coals on the fire, for she was chilled, but it didn’t seem to do any good. Finally she began to pant and choke, and I let her draw breath from me. That revived her a little, and when she’d sucked some blood from my throat she seemed almost herself again, though I could feel no movement of her heart as she lay against me.
“It must have been just before daybreak—I don’t know just when, for I’d fallen asleep in her arms—when I heard a clattering at the window, and someone calling to be let in. I remembered your warning, and tried to hold Alice, but she fought me off. She ran to the window and flung it up as she called, ‘Enter, master; there is none to stop you now.’
“He made straight for me, and when she realized what he was about she tried to stop him, but he flung her aside as if she were a rag doll—took her by the hair and dashed her against the wall. I heard her bones crack as she struck it.
“I grappled with him, but I was no more his match than a three-year-old child was mine. He threw me down and broke my arms and legs with his feet. The pain was terrible. Then he grabbed me up and hurled me to the floor again, and after that I felt no pain, except this dreadful headache. I couldn’t move, but I was conscious, and the last thing I remember was seeing Alice stepping out the window with him, hand in hand. She didn’t even look back.”
He paused a moment, fighting desperately for breath, then, still lower, “Oh, Alice—how could you? And I loved you so!”
“Peace, my poor one,” bade de Grandin. “She did not do it of her own accord. That fiend holds her in bondage she cannot resist. She is his thing and chattel more completely than ever black slave belonged to his master. Hear me; go with this thought uppermost in your mind: She loved you, she loves you. It is because she called us we are here now, and her last word was one of love for you. Do you hear me? Do you understand? ’Tis sad to die, mon pauvre, but surely it is something to die loving and beloved. Many a man lives out his whole life without as much, and many there are who would trade a whole span of four score gladly for five little minutes of the ecstasy that was yours last night.
“Monsieur Rochester—do you hear me?” he spoke sharply, for the young man’s face was taking on the greyness of impending death.
“Ye-es. She loves me—she loves me. Alice!” With the name sighing on his lips his facial muscles loosened and his eyes took on the glazed, unwinking stare of eyes that see no more.
De Grandin gently drew the lids across the sightless eyes and raised the fallen jaw, then set about straightening the room with methodical haste. “As a licensed practitioner you will sign the death certificate,” he announced matter-of-factly. “Our young friend suffered from angina pectoris. This morning he had an attack, and after calling us fell from the chair on which he stood to reach his medicine, thereby fracturing several bones. He told us this when we arrived to find him dying. You understand?”
“I’m hanged if I do,” I denied. “You know as well as I—”
“That the police would have awkward questions to address to us,” he reminded me. “We were the last ones to see him alive. Do you conceive that they would credit what we said if we told them the truth?”
Much as I disliked it, I followed his orders to the letter and the poor boy’s body was turned over to the ministrations of Mortician Martin within an hour.
As Rochester had been an orphan without known family de Grandin assumed the role of next friend, made all arrangements for the funeral, and gave orders that the remains be cremated without delay, the ashes to be turned over to him for final disposition.
Most of the day was taken up in making these arrangements and in my round of professional calls. I was thoroughly exhausted by four o’clock in the afternoon, but de Grandin, hustling, indefatigable, seemed fresh as he had been at daybreak.
“Not yet, my friend,” he denied as I would have sunk into the embrace of an easy chair, “there is yet something to be done. Did not you hear my promise to the never-quite-to-be-sufficiently-anathematized Palenzeke last night?”
“Eh, your promise?”
“Précisément. We have one great surprise in store for that one.”
Grumbling, but with curiosity that overrode my fatigue, I drove him to the little Greek Orthodox parsonage. Parked at the door was the severely plain black service wagon of a funeral director, its chauffeur yawning audibly at the delay in getting through his errand.
De Grandin ran lightly up the steps, gained admission and returned in a few minutes with the venerable priest arrayed in full canonicals. “Allons mon enfant,” he told the chauffeur, “be on your way; we follow.”
Even when the imposing granite walls of the North Hudson Crematory loomed before us I failed to understand his hardly suppressed glee.
All arrangements had apparently been made. In the little chapel over the retort Father Apostolakos recited the orthodox burial office, and the casket sank slowly from view on the concealed elevator provided for conveying it to the incineration chamber below.
The aged priest bowed courteously to us and left the building, seating himself in my car, and I was about to follow when de Grandin motioned to me imperatively. “Not yet, Friend Trowbridge,” he told me. “Come below and I will show you something.”
We made our way to the subterranean chamber where incineration took place. The casket rested on a low wheeled track before the yawning cavern of the retort, but de Grandin stopped the attendants as they were about to roll it into place. Tiptoeing across the tiled floor he bent above the casket, motioning me to join him.
As I paused beside him I recognized the heavy, evil features of the man we had first seen with Alice, the same bestial, furious face which had mouthed curses at us from outside Rochester’s window the night before. I would have drawn back, but the Frenchman clutched me firmly by the elbow, drawing me still nearer the body.
“Tiens, Monsieur le Cadavre,” he whispered as he bent above the dead thing, “what think you of this, hein? You who would be king and emperor of the dead, you who boasted that no power on earth could balk you—did not Jules de Grandin promise you that you should have nothing, not even one poor plot of earth to call a grave? Pah, murderer and ravisher of women, man-killer, where is now your power? Go—go through the furnace fire to hell-fire, and take this with you!” He pursed his lips and spat full in the cold upturned visage of the corpse.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 13
