Heedless of the drenching rain, we raced across the lawn and halted by the prostrate postilion. Miraculously, the man was not only living, but regaining consciousness as we reached him. “Glory be to God!” he exclaimed piously as we helped him to his feet. “’Tis only by th’ mercy o’ heaven I’m still a livin’ man!”
“Eh bien, my friend”—de Grandin gave his little blond mustache a sharp twist as he surveyed the ruined carriage—“perhaps the stupidity of hell may have something to do with it. Look to your horses; they seem scarcely worse off than yourself, but they may be up to mischief if they remain unchaperoned.”
Once more beneath the shelter of the porte-cochère, as calmly as though discussing the probability of the storm’s abatement, he proposed: “Let us go in, my friends. The horses and coachman will soon be all right. As for the carriage”—he raised his narrow shoulders in a fatalistic shrug—“Mademoiselle, I hope Monsieur your father carried adequate insurance on it.”
2
THE LITTLE FRENCHMAN LAID his hand on the polished brass handle of the big oak door, but the portal held its place unyieldingly, and it was not till the girl had pressed the bell button several times that a butler who looked as if his early training had been acquired while serving as guard in a penitentiary appeared and paid us the compliment of a searching inspection before standing aside to admit us.
“Your father’s in the living-room, Miss Haroldine,” he answered the girl’s quick question, then followed us half-way down the hall, as though reluctant to let us out of sight.
Heavy draperies of mulberry and gold brocade were drawn across the living-room windows, shutting out the lightning flashes and muffling the rumble of the thunder. A fire of resined logs burned cheerfully in the marble-arched fireplace, taking the edge from the early-spring chill; electric lamps under painted shades spilled pools of light on Turkey carpets, mahogany shelves loaded with ranks of morocco-bound volumes and the blurred blues, reds and purples of Oriental porcelains. On the walls the dwarfed perfection of several beautifully executed miniatures showed, and in the far corner of the apartment loomed the magnificence of a massive grand piano.
James Arkright leaped from the overstuffed armchair in which he had been lounging before the fire and whirled to face us as we entered the room, almost, it seemed to me, as though he were expecting an attack. He was a middle-aged man, slender almost to the point of emaciation, with an oddly parchmentlike skin and a long, gaunt face rendered longer by the iron-gray imperial pendant from his chin. His nose was thin and high-bridged, like the beak of a predatory bird, and his ears queer, Panesque appendages, giving his face an odd, impish look. But it was his eyes which riveted our attention most of all. They were of an indeterminate color, neither gray nor hazel, but somewhere between, and darted continually here and there, keeping us constantly in view, yet seeming to watch every corner of the room at the same time. For a moment, as we trooped into the room, he surveyed us in turn with that strange, roving glance, a light of inquiring uncertainty in his eyes fading to a temporary relief as his daughter presented us.
As he resumed his seat before the fire the skirt of his jacket flicked back and I caught a fleeting glimpse of the corrugated stock of a heavy revolver holstered to his belt.
The customary courtesies having been exchanged we lapsed into a silence which stretched and lengthened until I began to feel like a bashful lad seeking an excuse for bidding his sweetheart adieu. I cleared my throat, preparatory to making some inane remark concerning the sudden storm, but de Grandin forestalled me.
“Monsieur,” he asked as his direct, unwinking stare bored straight into Arkright’s oddly watchful eyes, “when was it you were in Tibet, if you please?”
The effect was electric. Our host bounded from his chair as though propelled by an uncoiled spring, and for once his eyes ceased to rove as he regarded the little Frenchman with a gaze of mixed incredulity and horror. His hand slipped beneath his jacket to the butt of the concealed weapon, but:
“Violence is unnecessary, my friend,” de Grandin assured him coolly. “We are come to help you, if possible, and besides, I have you covered”—he glanced momentarily at the bulge in his jacket pocket where the muzzle of his tiny Ortgies automatic pressed against the cloth—“and it would be but an instant’s work to kill you several times before you could reach your pistol. Very good”—he gave one of his quick, elfish smiles as the other subsided into his chair—“we do make progress.
“You wonder, perhapsly, how comes it I ask that question? Very well. A half-hour or so ago, when Mademoiselle your lovely daughter was recovered from her fainting-spell in Dr. Trowbridge’s office, she tells us of the sinister red bead she has found in her purse, and of the evil fortune such little balls have been connected with in the past.
“I, Monsieur, have traveled a very great much. In darkest Africa, in innermost Asia, where few white men have gone and lived to boast of it, I have been there. Among the head-hunters of Papua, beside the upper, banks of the Amazon, Jules de Grandin has been. Alors, is it so strange that I recognize this so mysterious ball for what it is? Parbleu, in disguise I have fingered many such in the lamaseries of Tibet!
“Mademoiselle’s story, it tells me much; but there is much more I would learn from you if I am to be of service. You were once poor. That is no disgrace. You suddenly became rich; that also is no disgrace, nor is the fact that you traveled up and down the world almost constantly after the acquisition of your fortune necessarily confession of wrongdoing. But”—he fixed his eyes challengingly on our host—“but what of the other occurrences? How comes it that Madame your wife (God rest her spirit!) was found floating in the Seine with such a red ball clutched in her poor, dead hand?
“Me, I have recognized this ball. It is a bead from the rosary of a Buddhist lama of that devil-ridden gable of the world we call Tibet. How came Madame to be grasping it? Who knows?
“When next we see one of these red beads, it is on the occasion of the sudden sad death of the young Monsieur, your son.
“Later, when you have fled like one pursued to America and settled in this small city which nestles in the shadow of the great New York, comes the death of your daughter, Mademoiselle Charlotte—and once more the red ball appears.
“This afternoon Mademoiselle Haroldine finds the talisman of impending doom in her purse and forthwith swoons in terror. Dr. Trowbridge and I succor her and are conveying her to you when a storm arises out of a clear sky. We change vehicles and I leave the red bead behind. All goes well until—pouf!—a bolt of lightning strikes the carriage in which the holder of this devil’s rosary seems to ride, and demolishes it. But horses and coachman are spared. Cordieu, it is more than merely strange; it is surprising, it is amazing, it is astonishing! One who does not know what Jules de Grandin knows would think it incomprehensible.
“It is not so. I know what I have seen. In Tibet I have seen those masked devil-dancers cause the rain to fall and the winds to blow and the lightning bolts to strike where they willed. They are worshipers of the demons of the air, my friends, and it was not for nothing the wise old Hebrews named Satan, the rejected of God, the Prince of the Powers of the Air. No.
“Very well. We have here so many elements that we need scarcely guess to know what the answer is. Monsieur Arkright, as the roast follows the fish and coffee and cognac follow both, it follows that you once wrested from the lamas of Tibet some secret they wished kept; that by that secret you did obtain much wealth; and that in revenge those old heathen monks of the mountains follow you and yours with implacable hatred. Each time they strike, it would appear, they leave one of these beads from the red rosary of vengeance as sign and seal of their accomplished purpose. Am I not right?” He looked expectantly at our host a moment; then, with a gestured application for permission from Haroldine, produced a French cigarette, set it alight and inhaled its acrid, ill-flavored smoke with gusto.
JAMES ARKRIGHT REGARDED THE little Frenchman as a respectable matron might look at th
e blackmailer threatening to disclose an indiscretion of her youth. With a deep, shuddering sigh he slumped forward in his chair like a man from whom all the resistance has been squeezed with a single titanic pressure. “You’re right, Dr. de Grandin,” he admitted in a toneless voice, and his eyes no longer seemed to take inventory of everything about him. “I was in Tibet; it was there I stole the Pi Yü Stone—would God I’d never seen the damned thing!”
“Ah?” murmured de Grandin, emitting a twin column of mordant smoke from his narrow nostrils. “We make progress. Say on, Monsieur; I listen with ears like the rabbit’s. This Pi Yü Stone, it is what?”
Something like diffidence showed in Arkright’s face as he replied, “You won’t believe me, when I’ve told you.”
De Grandin emitted a final puff of smoke and ground the fire from his cigarette against the bottom of a cloisonné bowl. “Eh bien, Monsieur,” he answered with an impatient shrug, “it is not the wondrous things men refuse to credit. Tell the ordinary citizen that Mars is sixty million miles from the earth, and he believes you without question. Hang up a sign informing him that a fence is newly painted, and he must needs smear his finger to prove your veracity. Proceed, if you please.”
“I was born in Waterbury,” Arkright began in a sort of half-fearful, half-stubborn monotone, “and educated as an engineer. My father was a Congregational clergyman, and money was none too plentiful with us; so, when I completed my course at Sheff, I took the first job that offered. They don’t pay any too princely salaries to cubs just out of school, you know, and the very necessity of my finding employment right away kept me from making a decent bargain for myself.
“For ten years I sweated for the N.Y., N.H.&H., watching most of my classmates pass me by as though I stood stone-still. Finally I was fed up. I had a wife and three children, and hardly enough money to feed them, let alone give them the things my classmates’ families had. So, when I got an offer from a British house to do some work in the Himalayas it looked about as gorgeous to me as the fairy godmother’s gifts did to Cinderella. It would get me away from America and the constant reminders of my failure, at any rate.
“The job took me into upper Nepal and I worked at it for close to three years, earning the customary vacation at last. Instead of going down into India, as most of the men did, I pushed up into Tibet with another chap who was keen on research, and a party of six Bhotia bearers. We had no particular goal in mind, but we’d been so fed up on stories of the weird happenings in those mountain lamaseries, we thought we’d go up and have a look—see on our own.
“There was some good shooting on the way, and what few natives we ran into were harmless enough if you kept ’em far enough away to prevent their cooties from climbing aboard you; so we really didn’t get much excitement out of the trip, and had about decided it was a bust when we came on a little lamasery perched like an eagle’s nest on the edge of an enormous cliff.
“We managed to scramble up the zigzag path to the place, and had some difficulty getting in, but at last the ta-lama agreed we might spend the night there.
“They didn’t seem to take any particular notice of us after we’d unslung our packs in the courtyard, and we had the run of the place pretty much to ourselves. Clendenning, my English companion, had knocked about Central Asia for upward of twenty years, and spoke several Chinese dialects as well as Tibetan, but for some reason he’d played dumb when we knocked at the gates and let our head man interpret for us.
“About four o’clock in the afternoon he came to me in a perfect fever of excitement. ‘Arkright, old boy,’ he whispered, ‘this blighted place is simply filthy with gold—raw, virgin gold!’
“‘You’re spoofing,’ I told him; ‘these poor old duffers are so God-awful poor they’d crawl a mile on their bare knees and elbows for a handful of copper cash.’
“‘Cash my hat!’ he returned. ‘I tell you, they’ve got great heaps and stacks of gold here; gold enough to make our perishing fortunes ten times over if we could shift to get the blighted stuff away. Come along, I’ll show you.’
“He fairly dragged me across the courtyard where our duffle was stored, through a low doorway, and down a passage cut in the solid rock. There wasn’t a lama or servant in sight as we made our way through one tunnel after another; I suppose they were so sure we couldn’t understand their lingo that they thought it a waste of time to watch us. At any rate, no one offered us any interruption while we clambered down three or four flights of stairs to a sort of cavern which had been artificially enlarged to make a big, vaulted cellar.
“Gentlemen”—Arkright looked from de Grandin to me and back again—“I don’t know what it is, but something seems to get into a white man’s blood when he goes to the far corners of the world. Men who wouldn’t think of stealing a canceled postage stamp at home will loot a Chinese or Indian treasure house clean and never stop to give the moral aspects of their actions a second thought. That’s the way it was with Clendenning and me. When we saw those stacks of golden ingots piled up in that cave like firewood around the sides of a New England woodshed, we just went off our heads. Nothing but the fact that the two of us couldn’t so much as lift, much less carry, a single one of the bars kept us from making off with the treasure that minute.
“When we saw we couldn’t carry any of it off we were almost wild. Scheme after scheme for getting away with the stuff was broached, only to be discarded. Stealth was no go, for we’d be sure to be seen if we tried to lead our bearers down the tunnels; force was out of the question, for the lamas outnumbered us ten to one, and the ugly-looking knives they wore were sufficient warning to us not to get them roused.
“Finally, when we were almost insane with futile planning, Clendenning suggested, ‘Come on, let’s get out of this cursed place. If we look around a little we may find a cache of jewels—we wouldn’t need a derrick to carry off a couple of Imperial quarts of them, at any rate.’
“The underground passages were like a Cretan labyrinth, and we lost our way more than once while we stumbled around with no light but the flicker of Clendenning’s electric torch, but after an hour or more of floundering over the damp, slippery stones of the tunnels, we came to a door stopped with a curtain of yak’s hide. A fat, shaven-headed lama was sitting beside it, but he was sound asleep and we didn’t trouble to waken him.
“Inside was a fair-sized room, partly hollowed out of the living rock, partly natural grotto. Multicolored flags draped from the low ceiling, each emblazoned with prayers or mottoes in Chinese ideographs or painted with effigies of holy saints or gods and goddesses. Big bands of silk cloth festooned down the walls. On each side of the doorway were prayer wheels ready to be spun, and a plate of beaten gold with the signs of the Chinese zodiac was above the lintel. On both sides of the approach to the altar were low, red-lacquered benches for the lamas and the choir. Small lamps with tiny, flickering flames threw their rays on the gold and silver vessels and candlesticks. At the extreme end of the room, veiling the sanctuary, hung a heavy curtain of yellow silk painted with Tibetan inscriptions.
“While we were standing there, wondering what our next move would be, the shuffle of feet and the faint tinkle of bells came to us. ‘Quick,’ Clendenning ordered, ‘we mustn’t be caught here!’ He ran to the door, but it was too late, for the monk on guard was already awake, and we could see the faint gleam of light from candles borne in procession at the farther end of the corridor.
“What happened next was the turning-point in our lives, gentlemen. Without stopping to think, apparently, Clendenning acted. Snatching the heavy Browning from his belt he hit the guardian monk a terrific blow over the head, dragged him through the doorway and ripped off his robe. ‘Here, Arkright, put this on!’ he commanded as he lugged the unconscious man’s body into a dark corner of the room and concealed himself behind one of the wall draperies.
“I slipped the yellow gown over my clothes and squatted in front of the nearest prayer wheel, spinning the thing like mad.
&nb
sp; “I suppose you’ve already noticed I’ve a rather Mongolian cast of features?” he asked with a bleak smile.
“Nom d’un fusil, Monsieur, let us not discuss personal pulchritude or its lack, if you please!” de Grandin exclaimed testily. “Be so good as to advance with your narrative!”
“It wasn’t vanity which prompted the question,” Arkright replied. “Even with my beard, I’m sometimes taken for a Chinaman or a half-caste. In those days I was clean-shaven, and both Clendenning and I had had our heads shaved for sanitary reasons before setting out on our trip; so, with the lama’s robe pulled up about my neck, in the dim light of the sanctuary I passed very well for one of the brotherhood, and not one of the monks in the procession gave me so much as a second glance.
“The ta-lama—I suppose you’d call him the abbot of the community—led the procession into the temple and halted before the sanctuary curtain. Two subordinate lamas pulled the veil aside, and out of the dim light from the flickering lamps there gradually appeared the great golden statue of Buddha seated in the Golden Lotus. The face of the image was indifferent and calm with only the softest gleam of light animating it, yet despite the repose of the bloated features it seemed to me there was something malignant about the countenance.
“Glancing up under my brows as I turned the prayer wheel, I could see the main idol was flanked on each side by dozens of smaller statues, each, apparently, of solid gold.
The ta-lama struck a great bronze gong with a padded drumstick to attract the Buddha’s attention to his prayer; then closed his eyes, placed his hands together before his face and prayed. As his sleeve fell away, I noticed a rosary of red beads, like those I was later to know with such horror, looped about his left wrist.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 19
