The Best of Jules de Grandin

by Seabury Quinn

De Grandin took it from his hand and presented it to the Tibetan with a ceremonious bow.

  “Ki lao yeh hsieh ti to lo,” the yellow man pressed his clasped hands to his breast and bowed nearly double to the Frenchman.

  “Parbleu, yes, and Dr. Trowbridge, too,” my little friend returned, indicating me with a wave of his hand.

  The Tibetan bent ceremoniously toward me as de Grandin added, “Ch’i kan.”

  “What did he say?” I demanded, returning the Asiatic’s salute.

  “He says, ‘The honorable, illustrious sir has my heartfelt thanks,’ or words to that effect, and I insist that he say the same of you, my friend,” de Grandin returned. “Name of a small green pig, I do desire that he understand there are two honorable men in the room besides himself.

  “En avant, mon brave,” he motioned the Tibetan toward the door with his sword, then lowered his point with a flourish, saluting the Arkrights with military punctilio.

  “Mademoiselle Haroldine,” he said, “it is a great pleasure to have served you. May your approaching marriage be a most happy one.

  “Monsieur Arkright, I have saved your life, and, though against your will, restored your honor. It is true you have lost your gold, but self-respect is a more precious thing. Next time you desire to steal, permit that I suggest you select a less vengeful victim than a Tibetan brotherhood. Parbleu, those savages they have no sense of humor at all! When a man robs them, they take it with the worst possible grace.”

  “Pipe d’un chameau”—JULES DE Grandin brushed an imaginary fleck of dust from the sleeve of his dinner jacket and refilled his liqueur glass—“it has been a most satisfactory day, Friend Trowbridge. Our experiment was one grand, unqualified success; we have restored stolen property to its rightful owners, and I have told that Monsieur Arkright what I think of him.”

  “U’m,” I murmured. “I suppose it’s all perfectly clear to you, but I’m still in the dark about it all.”

  “Perfectly,” he agreed with one of his quick, elfin smiles. “Howeverly, that can be remedied. Attend me, if you please:

  “When first we interviewed Mademoiselle Haroldine and her father, I smelt the odor of Tibet in this so strange business. Those red beads, they could have come from but one bit of jewelry, and that was the rosary of a Buddhist monk of Tibet. Yes. Now, in the course of my travels in that devil-infested land, I had seen those old lamas do their devil-dances and command the elements to obey their summons and wreak vengeance on their enemies. ‘Very well,’ I tell me, ‘if this be a case of lamas’ magic, we must devise magic which will counteract it.’

  “‘Of course,’ I agree with me. ‘For every ill there is a remedy. Men living in the lowlands know cures for malaria; those who inhabit the peaks know the cure for mountain fever. They must do so, or they die. Very well, is it not highly probable that the Mongolian people have their own safeguards against these mountain devils? If it were not so, would not Tibet completely dominate all China?’

  “‘You have right,’ I compliment me, ‘but whom shall we call on for aid?’

  “Thereupon I remember that my old friend, Dr. Feng Yuin-han, whom I have known at the Sorbonne, is at present residing in New York, and it is to him I send my message for assistance. Parbleu, when he comes he is as full of wisdom as a college professor attempts to appear! He tells me much in our nighttime interview before you arrive from your work of increasing the population. I learn from him, for instance, that when these old magicians of the mountains practise their devil’s art, they automatically limit their powers. Invisible they may become, yes; but while invisible, they may not overstep a pool, puddle or drop of chicken blood. For some strange reason, such blood makes a barrier which they can not pass and across which they can not hurl a missile nor send their destroying winds or devastating lightning-flashes. Further, if chicken blood be cast upon them their invisibility at once melts away, and while they are in the process of becoming visible in such circumstances their physical strength is greatly reduced. One man of normal lustiness would be a match for fifty of them half visible, half unseen because of fresh fowl’s blood splashed on them.

  “Voilà I have my grand strategy of defense already mapped out for me. From the excellent Pierre Grasso I buy much fresh chicken blood, and from Dr. Feng I obtain the ashes of the mystic camphor tree. The blood I spread around in an almost-circle, that our enemy may attack us from one side only, and inside the outer stockade of gore I scatter camphor wood ashes that his footprints may become visible and betray his position to us. Then, inside our outer ramparts, I draw a second complete circle of blood which the enemy can not penetrate at all, so that Monsieur Arkright, but most of all his so charming daughter, may be safe. Then I wait.

  “Presently comes the foe. He circles our first line of defense, finds the break I have purposely left, and walks into our trap. In the camphor wood ashes his all-invisible feet leave visible footprints to warn of his approach.

  “With your aid, then, I do spray him with the blood as soon as his footprints betray him, and make him visible so that I may slay him at my good convenience. But he are no match for me. Non, Jules de Grandin would not call it the sport to kill such as he; it would not be fair. Besides, is there not much to be said on his side? I think so.

  “It was the cupidity of Monsieur Arkright and no other thing which brought death upon his wife and children. We have no way of telling that the identical man whom I have overthrown murdered those unfortunate ones, and it is not just to take his life for his fellows’ crimes. As for legal justice, what court would listen believingly to our story? Cordieu, to relate what we have seen these last few days to the ordinary lawyer would be little better than confessing ourselves mad or infatuated with too much of the so execrable liquor which your prosperous bootleggers supply. Me, I have no wish to be thought a fool.

  “Therefore, I say to me, ‘It is best that we call this battle a draw. Let us give back to the men of the mountains that which is theirs and take their promise that they will no longer pursue Monsieur Arkright and Mademoiselle Haroldine. Let there be no more beads from the Devil’s rosary scattered across their path.’

  “Very good. I make the equal bargain with the Tibetan; his property is returned to him and—

  “My friend, I suffer!”

  “Eh?” I exclaimed, shocked at the tragic face he turned to me.

  “Nom d’un canon, yes; my glass is empty again!”

  The House without a Mirror

  MY FRIEND JULES DE Grandin was in one of his gayest moods. Reclining against the plank seat of the john-boat he gazed with twinkling, bright blue eyes at the cloudless Carolina sky, tweaked the tips of his diminutive blond mustache till the waxed hairs thrust out to right and left of his small, thin-lipped mouth as sharply as a pair of twin fish-hooks, and gave vent to his own private translation of a currently popular song:

  “Oui, nous n’avons plus de bananes;

  Nous n’avons plus de bananes aujourd’hui!”

  he caroled merrily.

  “Say, looka yere, boss,” protested our colored factotum from the boat’s stern, “does yo’ all want ter shoot enny o’ dem birds, youh’s best be cuttin’ out dat music. Dese yere reed-birds is pow’ful skittish, wid so many no’then gemmen comin’ dhown yere an’ bangin’ away all ober de place wid deir pump-guns, an—”

  “Là, là, mon brave,” the little Frenchman interrupted, “of what importance is it whether we kill ten dozen or none at all of the small ones? Me, I had as soon return to Monsieur Gregory’s lodge with empty bag as stagger homeward with a load of little feathered corpses. Have not these, God’s little ones, a good right to live? Why should we slay them when our bellies are well filled with other things?”

  The Negro boy regarded him in hang-jawed amazement. That anyone, especially a “gemman” from the fabulous “no’th,” should feel compunction at slaughtering the reed-birds swarming among the wild rice was something beyond his comprehension. With an inarticulate grunt he thrust his ten-foot pole into
the black mud bottom of the swamp canal and drove the punt toward a low-lying island at the farther end of the lagoon-like opening in the waterway. “Does yo’ all crave ter eat now?” he asked. “Ef yuh does, dis yere lan’ is as dry as enny ’round yere, an—”

  “But of course,” de Grandin assented, reaching for the well-filled luncheon hamper our host had provided. “I am well-nigh perished with hunger, and if Monsieur Gregory has furnished brandy as well as food—Mordieu, may the hairs of his head each become a waxen taper to light his way to glory when he dies!”

  The hamper was quickly unpacked and we sat cross-legged on a slight eminence to discuss assorted sandwiches, steaming coffee from vacuum bottles and some fine old cognac from a generously proportioned flask.

  A faint rustling in the short grass at de Grandin’s elbow drew my attention momentarily from my half-eaten sandwich. “Look out!” I cried sharply.

  “Lawd Gawd, boss, don’ move!” the colored boy added in a horrified tone.

  Creeping unnoticed through the short, sun-dried vegetation with which the island was covered, a huge brown moccasin had approached within a foot of the little Frenchman and paused, head uplifted, yellow, forked tongue flickering lambently from venom-filled mouth.

  We sat in frozen stillness. A move from the Negro or me might easily have irritated the reptile into striking blindly; the slightest stirring by de Grandin would certainly have invited immediate disaster. I could hear the colored guide’s breath rasping fearfully through his flaring nostrils; the pounding of my own heart sounded in my ears. I ran my tongue lightly over suddenly parched lips, noting, with that strange ability for minute inventory we develop at such times, that the membrane seemed rough as sandpaper.

  Actually, I suppose, we held our statue-still pose less than a minute. To me it seemed a century. I felt the pupils of my eyes narrowing and ceasing to function as if I had just emerged from a darkened room into brilliant sunlight, and the hand which half raised the sandwich to my lips was growing heavy as a leaden fist when sudden diversion came.

  Like a beam of light shot through a moonless night something whizzed through the still afternoon air from a thicket of scrub trees some thirty feet behind us; there was a sharp, clipping sound, almost like a pair of scissors snipping shut, and the deadly reptile’s head struck the ground with a smacking impact. Next instant the foul creature’s blotched body writhed upward, coiling and wriggling about a three-foot shaft of slender, flexible wood like the serpent round Mercury’s caduceus. A feather-tipped arrow had cleft the snake through the neck an inch or less behind its ugly, wedged-shaped head, and pinned it to the earth.

  “Thank you, friend,” de Grandin cried, turning toward the direction from which the rescuing shaft had sped. “I know not who you are, but I am most greatly in your debt, for—”

  He broke off, his lips refusing to frame another word, his small, round eyes staring unbelievingly at the visage which peered at us between the leaves.

  The Negro boy followed the Frenchman’s glance, emitted a single shrill, terrified yell, turned a half somersault backward, regaining his feet with the agility of a cat and scurrying down the mud-flat where our boat lay beached. “Lawdy Gawdy,” he moaned, “hit’s de ha’nt; hit’s de swamp ha’nt, sho’s yuh bo’n! Lawd Gawd, lemme git erway fr’m heah! Please, suh, Gawd, sabe me, sabe dis pore nigger fr’m de ha’nt!”

  He reached our punt, clambered aboard and shoved off, thrusting his pole against the lagoon bottom and driving the light craft across the water with a speed like that of a racing motorboat. Ere de Grandin or I could more than frame a furious shout he rounded the curve of a dense growth of wild rice and disappeared as completely as though dissolved into the atmosphere.

  The Frenchman turned to me with a grimace. “Cordieu,” he remarked, “we would seem to be between the devil and the sea, Friend Trowbridge. Did you, by any chance, see what I saw a moment hence?”

  “Ye-es; I think so,” I assented. “If you saw something so dreadful no nightmare ever equaled it—”

  “Zut!” he laughed. “Let us not be ungrateful. Ugly the face is, I concede; but its owner did us at least one good turn.” He pointed to the still-writhing snake, pinned fast to the earth by the sharp-tipped arrow. “Come, let us seek the ugly one. Though he be the devil’s own twin for ugliness, he is no less deserving of our thanks. Perhaps he will show further amiability and point out an exit from this doubly damned morass of mud and serpents.”

  Treading cautiously, lest we step upon another snake, we advanced to the clump of scrub trees whence the repulsive face had peered. Several times de Grandin hailed the unseen monster whose arrow had saved his life, but no answer came from the softly rustling bushes. At length we pushed our way among the shrubs, and reached the covert where our unknown friend had been concealed. Nothing rewarded our search, though we passed entirely through the coppice several times.

  I was about ready to drop upon the nearest rotting log for a moment’s rest when de Grandin’s shrill cry hailed me. “Regardez-vous,” he commanded, pointing to the black, greasy mud which sloped into the stagnant water.

  Clearly outlined in the mire as though engraved with a sculptor’s tool was the imprint of a tiny, mocassined foot, so small it could have been made only by a child or a daintily formed woman.

  “Well—” I began, then paused for lack of further comment.

  “Well, indeed, good friend,” de Grandin assented with a vigorous nod. “Do not you understand its significance?”

  “U’m—can’t say I do,” I confessed.

  “Ah bah, you are stupid!” he shot back. “Consider: There is no sign of a boat having been beached here; there is nothing to which a boat could have been tied within ten feet of the water’s edge. We have searched the island, we know we are alone here. What then? How came the possessor of this so lovely foot here, and how did she leave?”

  “Hanged if I know,” I returned.

  “Agreed,” he acquiesced, “but is it not fair to assume that she waded through yonder water to that strip of land? I think so. Let us test it.”

  We stepped into the foul marsh-water, felt the mud sucking at our boots, then realized that the bottom was firm enough to hold us. Tentatively, step by cautious step, we forded the forty-foot channel, finding it nowhere more than waist-deep, and, bedraggled, mud-caked and thoroughly uncomfortable, finally clambered up the loamy bank of the low peninsula which jutted into the marsh-lake opposite the island of our adventure.

  “Tiens, it seems I was right, as usual, Friend Trowbridge,” the Frenchman announced as we floundered up the bank to solid ground. Again, limned in the soft, moist earth, was a tiny, slender footprint, followed by others leading toward the rank-growing woods.

  “I may be wrong,” he admitted, surveying the trail, “but unless I am more mistaken than I think, we have but to follow our noses and these shapely tracks to extricate ourselves. Come; allez vous en!”

  Simple as the program sounded, it was difficult of accomplishment. The guiding footprints trailed off and lost themselves among the dead, crackling leaves with which the wood was paved, and the thick-set trees and thicker undergrowth disclosed nothing like a path. Beating the hampering bushes aside with our guns, staggering and crashing through thorny thickets by main strength and direct assault, we forced our way, turning aside from time to time as the land became spongy with seeping bogwater or an arm of the green, stagnant swamp barred our advance. We progressed slowly, striving to attain open country before darkness overtook us, but before we realized it twilight fell and we were obliged to admit ourselves hopelessly lost.

  “No use, old chap,” I advised. “The more we struggle, the deeper in we get; with night coming on our chances of being mired in the swamp are a hundred to one. Best make camp and wait for daylight. We can build a fire and—”

  “May Satan bake me in his oven if we do!” de Grandin interrupted. “Are we the Babes in the Woods that we should lie down here and wait for death and the kindly ministrations of t
he robin-redbreasts! Come away, my friend; we shall assuredly win through!”

  He returned to the assault with redoubled vigor, beat his way some twenty yards farther through the underbrush, then gave a loud, joyous hail.

  “See what is arrived, Friend Trowbridge!” he called. “Cordieu, did I not promise we should find it?”

  Heavy-footed, staggering with fatigue, I dragged myself to where he stood, and stared in amazement at the barrier barring our path.

  Ten feet away stood an ancient wall, gray with weather and lichen-spotted with age. Here and there patches of the stucco with which it had originally been dressed had peeled away, exposing the core of antique firebrick.

  “Right or left?” de Grandin asked, drawing a coin from his pocket. “Heads we proceed right; tails, left.” He spun the silver disk in the air and caught it between his palms. “Bon, we go right,” he announced, shouldering his gun and turning on his heel to follow the wall.

  A few minutes’ walk brought us to a break in the barrier where four massive posts of roughly dressed stone stood sentry. There should have been gates between them, but only ancient hand-wrought hinges, almost eaten away with rust, remained. Graven in the nearest pillar was an escutcheon on which had been carved some sort of armorial device, but the moss of many decades had smothered the crest so that its form was indistinguishable.

  Beyond the yawning gateway stood a tiny, box-like gatekeeper’s lodge, like the wall, constructed of brick faced with stucco. Tiles had scuffed from its antiquated roof, the panes of old, green bottle-glass were smashed from its leaded casements; the massive door of age-discolored oak leaned outward drunkenly, its sole support, a single lower hinge with joints long since solidified with rust.

  Before us stretched the avenue, a mere unkept, overgrown trail straggling between two rows of honey locusts. Alternating shafts of moonlight and shadow barred its course like stripes upon a convict’s clothes. Nothing moved among the trees, not even a moth or a bird belated in its homeward flight. Despite myself, I shivered as I gazed on the desolation of this place of bygone splendor. It was as if the ghosts of ten generations of long-dead gentlefolk rose up and bade us stay our trespassing steps.