“Find out anything?” I asked as I ladled out a liberal portion of smoking chicken broth.
“Cordieu, I shall say so, and he who denies it is a most foul liar!” he returned with a grin. “Observe this, if you please.”
From his pocket he produced an odd-looking object, something like a fork of dried weed or a root of desiccated ginger, handing it first to me, then to Eric Balderson for inspection.
“All right, I’ll bite—what is it?” Eric admitted as the little Frenchman eyed us in turn expectantly.
“Mandragora officinalis—mandrake,” he replied with another of his quick smiles. “Have you not seen it before?—”
“U’m”—I searched the pockets of my memory a moment—“isn’t this the thing we found on the old pirate’s coffin last night?”
“Exactly, precisely, quite so!” he replied delightedly, patting his hands together softly as though applauding at a play. “You have it right, good friend; but last night we were too much concerned with saving our silly heads from the swinging ax, with finding gold and gems, and similar useless things to give attention to matters of real importance. Behold, my friends, with this bit of weed-root and these, I shall make one sacré singe—a monkey, no less—of that so vile murderer who terrorizes the city and slays inoffensive young women in the right. Certainly.” As he finished speaking, he thrust his hand into another pocket and brought forth a dozen small conical objects which he pitched onto the table-cloth with a dramatic gesture.
“Bullets!” Balderson remarked wonderingly. “What—”
“Bullets, no less,” de Grandin agreed, taking a pair of the little missiles into his hand and joggling them up and down playfully. “But not such bullets as you or Friend Trowbridge have seen before, I bet me your life. Attend me: These are silver, solid silver, without a trace of alloy. Eh bien, but I did have the fiend’s own time finding a jeweler who would undertake to duplicate the bullets of my pistol in solid silver on such short notice. But at last, grâce à Dieu, I found him, and he fashioned these so pretty things to my order and fitted them into the shells in place of the nickel-plated projectiles. For good measure I ordered him to engrave each one with a cross at its tip, and then, on my way home, I did stop at the church of Saint Bernard and dip them each and every one into the font of eau bénite. Now, I damn think, we shall see what we shall see this night.”
“What in the world—” I began, but he shut me off with upraised hand.
“The roast, Friend Trowbridge,” he implored, “for dear friendship’s sake, carve me a liberal portion of the roast and garnish it well with potatoes. Do but permit that I eat my fill, and, when the time arrives, I shall show you such things as to make you call yourself one colossal liar when you recall them to memory!”
SERGEANT COSTELLO, THOROUGHLY DISGRUNTLED at hours of vigil in the snowy night and completely mystified, was waiting for us beside the entrance to Saint David’s churchyard. “Sure, Dr. de Grandin, sor,” he announced as he stepped from the shelter of the pentice, blowing on his numbed fingers, “’tis th’ divil’s own job ye gave me tonight. Me eyes have been skinned like a pair o’ onions all th’ night long, but niver a bit o’ annyone comin’ in or out o’ th’ graveyard have I seen.”
“Very good, my friend,” de Grandin commented. “You have done most well, but I fear me one will attempt to pass you, and by the inward route, before many minutes have gone. You will kindly await our outcoming, if you please, and we shall be no longer than necessary, I assure you.”
Forcing the sliding door of the tombstone, we hastened down the stairway to the burial chamber in de Grandin’s wake, sprung the guarding ax at the entrance of the first room and crept into the inner cavern. One glance was sufficient to confirm our suspicions. The stone coffin was empty.
“Was—was it like this when you were here today?” I faltered.
“No,” de Grandin answered, “he lay in his bed as calmly as a babe in its cradle, my friend, but he lay on his side.”
“On his side? Why, that is impossible! The skeleton was on its back when we came here last night and we didn’t move it. How came the change of posture?”
“Tiens, who can say?” he replied. “Perhaps he rests better that way. Of a certainty, he had lain long enough on his posterior to have become tired of it. It may be—sssh! Lights out. To your quarters!”
Balderson and I rushed to opposite corners of the room, as de Grandin had previously directed, our powerful electric bull’s-eye lanterns shut off, but ready to flood the place with light at a second’s notice. De Grandin stationed himself squarely in line with the door, his head thrust forward, his knees slightly bent, his entire attitude one of pleased anticipation.
What sixth sense had warned him of approaching danger I know not, for in the absolute quiet of the pitch dark chamber I could hear no sound save the low, short breaths of my two companions and the faint trickle-trickle of water into the tank of the beheading machine which guarded the entrance of the farther room. I was about to speak, when:
Bang! The muffled detonation of a shot fired somewhere above ground sounded startlingly, followed by another and still another; then the rasping, high-pitched cackle of a maniacal laugh, a scraping, shuffling step on the narrow stone stairs, and:
“Lights, pour l’amour de Dieu, lights!” de Grandin shrieked as something—some malign, invisible, unutterably wicked presence seemed suddenly to fill the chamber, staining the inky darkness still more black with its foul effluvium.
As one man Balderson and I snapped up the shutters of our lanterns, and the converging beams displayed a frightful tableau.
Crouched at the low entrance of the cavern, like a predatory beast with its prey, was a fantastic figure, a broad, squat—almost humpbacked—man arrayed in leathern jerkin, Turkish fez and loose, baggy pantaloons tucked into hip-boots of soft Spanish leather. About his face, mask-like, was bound a black-silk kerchief with two slits for eyes, and through the openings there glowed and glittered a pair of baleful orbs, green-glossed and vitreous, like those of a cat, but fiercer and more implacable than the eyes of any feline.
Over one malformed shoulder, as a miller might carry a sack of meal, the creature bore the body of a girl, a slight, frail slip of femininity with ivory face and curling hair of deepest black, her thin, frilly party dress ripped to tatters, one silver slipper fallen from her silk-sheathed foot, the silver-tissue bandeau which bound her hair dislodged so that it lay half across her face like the bandage over the eyes of a condemned felon.
“Monsieur le Pirate,” de Grandin greeted in a low, even voice, “you do roam afield late, it seems. We have waited overlong for you.”
The mask above the visitant’s face fluttered outward with the pressure of breath behind it, and we could trace the movement of jaws beneath the silk, but no word of answer came to the Frenchman’s challenge.
“Ah—so? You choose not to talk?” de Grandin queried sarcastically. “Is it perhaps that you prefer deeds to words? C’est bien!” With a quick, skipping step he advanced several paces toward the creature, raising his pistol as he moved.
A peal of sardonic, tittering laughter issued from beneath the mask. Callous as a devil, the masked thing dropped the girl’s lovely body to the stone floor, snatched at the heavy hanger in his belt and leaped straight for de Grandin’s throat.
The Frenchman fired even as his antagonist charged, and the effect of his shot was instantaneous. As though he had run against a barrier of iron, the masked pirate stopped in mid-stride and staggered back an uncertain step, but de Grandin pressed his advantage. “Ha, you did not expect this, hein?” he demanded with a smile which was more like a snarl. “You who defy the bullets of policemen and make mock of all human resistance thought you would add one more victim to your list, n’est-ce-pas, Monsieur? Perhaps, Monsieur, le Mort-félon, you had not thought of Jules de Grandin?”
As he spoke he fired another shot into the cowering wretch, another, and still another until eight silver balls had pierced t
he cringing thing’s breast.
As the final shot went home the fantastical, terrible shape began to change before our eyes. Like the cover of a punctured football the gaudy, archaic costume began to wrinkle and wilt, the golden-tasseled fez toppled forward above the masked face and the black-silk handkerchief itself dropped downward, revealing the unfleshed countenance of a grinning skull.
“Up with him, my friends,” de Grandin shouted. “Pitch him into his coffin, clamp down the lid—here, lay the root of mandrake upon it! So! He is in again, and for all time.
“Now, one of you, take up poor Mademoiselle and pass her through the door to me.
“Very well, Sergent, we come and bring the young lady with us!” he cried as Costello’s heavy boots sounded raspingly on the stone steps outside. “Do not attempt to enter—it is death to put your head through the opening!”
A moment later, with the girl’s body wrapped in the laprobe, we were driving toward my house, ignoring every speed regulation in the city ordinances.
5
SERGEANT COSTELLO LOOKED ASKANCE at the rug-wrapped form occupying the rear seat of my car. “Say, Dr. de Grandin, sor,” he ventured with another sidewise glance at the lovely body, “hadn’t we best be notifyin’ th’ coroner, an’”—he gulped over the word—“an’ gittin’ a undertaker fer this here pore young lady?”
“Coroner—undertaker? À bas les croque-morts! Your wits are entirely absent harvesting the wool of sheep, cher sergent. The only undertaker of which she stands in need is the excellent Nora McGinnis, who shall give her a warm bath to overcome her chill after Friend Trowbridge and I have administered stimulants. Then, unless I mistake much, we shall listen to a most remarkable tale of adventure before we restore her to the arms of her family.”
HALF AN HOUR LATER our fair prize, revived by liberal doses of aromatic ammonia and brandy, thoroughly warmed by a hot sponge and alcohol rub administered by the competent Nora, and with one of de Grandin’s vivid flowered-silk dressing-gowns slipped over the sorry remnants of her tattered party costume, sat demurely before our library fire. As she entered the room, Eric Balderson, who had not seen her face before, because of the bandeau which obscured it in the cave, gave a noticeable start, then seemed to shrink back in his corner of the ingle-nook.
Not so Jules de Grandin. Swinging one well-tailored leg across the corner of the library table, he regarded the young lady with a level, unwinking stare till the sustained scrutiny became embarrassing. Finally:
“Mademoiselle, you will have the kindness to tell us exactly what has happened to you this night, so far as you can remember,” he ordered.
The girl eyed him with a tremulous smile a moment; then, taking a deep breath, launched on her recital like a child speaking a piece in school.
“I’m Marian Warner,” she told us. “We live in Tunlaw Street—I think Dr. Trowbridge knows my father, Fabian Warner.”
I nodded agreement, and she continued.
“Tonight I went to a Christmas Eve party at Mr. and Mrs. Partridge’s. It was a masquerade affair, but I just wore a domino over my evening dress, since we were to unmask at midnight, anyway, and I thought I’d feel more comfortable in ‘citizen’s clothes’ than I would dancing in some sort of elaborate costume.
“There wasn’t anything unusual about the party, or about the first part of the evening, that I remember, except, of course, everyone was talking about the mysterious murder of those two poor women.
“They danced a German just before midnight, and I was pretty hot from the running around, so I stepped into the conservatory to slip out of my domino a moment and cool off.
“I’d just taken the gown off when I felt a touch on my arm, and turning round found a man staring into my face. I thought he must be one of the guests, of course, though I couldn’t remember having seen him. He wore a jerkin of bright red leather with a wide black belt about his waist, a red fez with gold-and-black tassel, and loose trousers tucked into tall boots. His face was concealed with a black-silk handkerchief instead of a regular mask, and, somehow, there was something menacing and terrifying about him. I think it must have been his eyes, which glittered in the light like those of an animal at night.
“I started back from him, but he edged after me, extending his hand to stroke my arm, and almost fawning on me. He made queer, inarticulate sounds in his throat, too.
“‘Go away,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know you and I don’t want to. Please leave me alone.’ By that time he’d managed to crowd me into a corner, so that my retreat into the house was cut off, and I was getting really frightened.
“‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll scream,’ I threatened, and then, before I had a chance to say another word, out shot one of his hands—ugh, they were big and thin and long, like a gorilla’s!—and grasped me by the throat.
“I tried to fight him off, and even as I did so there flashed through my mind the description Miss Müller gave of her murderer. Then I knew. I was helpless in the grasp of the killer! That’s all I remember till I regained consciousness with Dr. Trowbridge’s housekeeper drying me after my bath and you gentlemen standing outside the door, ready to help me downstairs.
“Did they catch him—the murderer?” she added with true feminine curiosity.
“But of course, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin assured her gravely. “I was on his trail. It was impossible he should escape.
“Attend me, my friends,” he ordered, slipping from his seat on the table and striding to the center of the room like a lecturer about to begin his discourse. “Last night, when we entered that accursed tomb, I had too many thoughts within my so small brain to give full attention to any one of them. In my hurry I did overlook many important matters. That root of mandrake, by example, I should have suspected its significance, but I did not. Instead, I tossed it away as an unconsidered trifle.
“Mandrake, or mandragora, my friends, was one of the most potent charm-drugs in the ancient pharmacopoeia. With it the barren might be rendered fecund; love forgotten might be reawakened; deep and lasting coma might be induced by it. Does not that Monsieur Shakespeare make Cleopatra say:
‘Give me to drink of mandragora,
That I might sleep out this great gap of time
My Antony is away’?
“Most certainly. Moreover, it had another, and less frequent use. Placed upon the grave of one guilty of manifold sins, it would serve to keep his earthbound spirit from walking. You perceive the connection.
“When we cast aside that root of mandragora, we did unseal a tomb which was much better left unopened, and did release upon the world a spirit capable of working monstrous evil. Yes. This ‘Black Master,’ I do know him, Friend Trowbridge.
“When we looked upon the poor relics of those slain women, I noticed at once the peculiarity of the bruises on their throats. ‘Parbleu,’ I say to me, ‘the skeleton which we saw last night, he had a hand so maimed as to leave a mark like this. Jules de Grandin, we must investigate.’
“‘Make it so,’ I reply to me in that mental conversation, and so, Friend Trowbridge, when I left you I did repair instantly to that cursed tomb and look about. There, in his coffin of stone, lay the skeleton of the ‘Black Master,’ but, as I have already been at pains to tell you, on his side, not as we left him lying the night before. ‘Mordieu, this are not good, this are most badly strange,’ I inform me. Then I look about and discover the bit of mandrake root, all shriveled and dried, and carelessly tossed to one side where we left it when Friend Trowbridge let fall his light. I—”
“By the way, de Grandin,” I put in. “Something hit me a paralyzing blow on the knuckles before I let my flashlight fall; have you any idea what it was?”
He favored me with a momentary frown, then: “But certainly,” he responded. “It were a bit of stone from the ceiling. I saw it detach itself and cried a warning to you, even as it fell, but the loss of our light was of such importance that I talked no more about your injury. Now to resume:
“‘
Can we not now seal him in the tomb with the mandrake once more?’ I ask me as I stand beside that coffin today, but better judgment tells me not to attempt it. This old-time sea-devil, he have been able to clothe his bony frame with seeming habiliments of the flesh. He are, to all intents and purposes, once more alive, and twice as wicked as before on account of his long sleep. I shall kill his fantasmal body for good and all before I lock him once and forever in the tomb again.
“‘But how shall we slay him so that he be really-truly dead?’ I ask me.
“Then, standing beside the coffin of that old, wicked pirate, I think and think deeply. ‘How were the were-wolves and witches, the wizards and the warlocks, the bugbears and goblins of ancient times slain in the olden days?’ I ask, and the answer comes back, ‘With bullets of silver.’ Attend me, my friends.”
Snatching a red leather volume from the near-by shelf he thumbed quickly through its pages. “Hear what your Monsieur Whittier say in one of his so lovely poems. In the olden times, the garrison of a New England fort was beset by
… a spectral host, defying stroke of
steel and aim of gun;
Never yet was ball to slay them in the
mold of mortals run!
Midnight came; from out the forest moved
a dusky mass that soon
Grew to warriors, plumed and painted,
grimly marching in the moon.
“Ghosts or witches,” said the captain, “thus
I foil the Evil One!”
And he rammed a silver button from his
doublet down his gun.
“Very good. I, too, will thus foil the Evil One and his servant who once more walks the earth. I have told you how I had the bullets made to my order this day. I have recounted how I baptized them for the work they were to do this night. Yourselves saw how the counter-charm worked against that servitor of Satan, how it surprised him when it pierced his phantom breast, how it made of him a true corpse, and how the seeming-flesh he had assumed to clothe his bare bones while he worked his evil was made to melt away before the bullets of Jules de Grandin. Now, doubly dead, he lies sealed by the mandrake root within his tomb for evermore.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 17
