“Now, my friends—to business,” the Frenchman cried as he closed the surgery door on the policemen and turned to eye our prisoner.
I held a bottle of sal volatile under the man’s nose, and in a moment a twitching of the nostrils and fluttering of lids told us he was coming round. He clutched both chair-arms and half heaved himself upright, but:
“Slowly my friend; when your time comes to depart, you will not go alone,” de Grandin ordered, digging the muzzle of his pistol into the captive’s ribs. “Be seated, rest yourself, and give us information which we much desire, if you please.”
“Yes, an’ remember annything ye say may be used agin ye at yer trial,” Costello added officially.
“Pains of a dyspeptic Billy-goat! Must you always spoil things?” de Grandin snapped, but:
“It’s quite all right sir, the game seems played, and I appear to have lost,” the prisoner interrupted. “What is it you would like to know?”
He was a queer figure, one of the queerest I had ever seen. A greatcoat of plum-colored cloth, collared and cuffed with kolinsky, covered him from throat to knees, and beneath the garment his massive legs, arrayed in light gray trousers, stuck forward woodenly, as though his joints were stiff. He was big, huge; wide of shoulder, deep of chest and almost obscenely gross of abdomen. His head was oversized, even for his great body, and nearly round, with out-jutting, sail-like ears. Somehow, his face reminded me of one of those old Japanese terror-masks, mahogany-colored, mustached with badger hair, and snarling malignantly. A stubble of short, gray hair covered his scalp, the fierce gray mustache above his month was stiff as bristles from a scrubbing-brush, and the smile he turned on Jules de Grandin was frozen cruelty warmed by no slightest touch of human pity, while terrible, malignant keenness lurked in his narrow, onyx-black eyes. A single glance at him convinced me that the ruthless murderer of four innocent people was before us, and that his trail of murder would be ended only with his further inability to kill. He waved a hand, loosely, wagging it from the wrist as though it were attached to his forearm by a well-oiled hinge, and I caught the gleam of a magnificent octagonal emerald—a gem worth an emperor’s ransom—on his right forefinger. “What was it you wished to know?” he repeated. Then: “May I smoke?”
The Frenchman nodded assent, but kept the prisoner covered with his weapon until sure he meant to draw nothing more deadly than a silver cigarette case from his pocket.
“Begin at the beginning, if you please, Monsieur,” he bade. “We know how you did slay Monsieur Pancoast and his poor son, and how you murdered his defenseless widow, also the poor Monsieur Dalky, but why, we ask to know. For why should four people you had never seen be victims of your lust for killing? Speak quickly; we have not long to wait.”
The prisoner smiled, and once again I felt the chills run down my back at sight of the grimace.
“East is East and West is West,
And never the twain shall meet.”
he quoted ironically. “I suppose it’s no use attempting to make you share my point of view?”
“That depends on what your viewpoint is,” de Grandin answered. “You killed them—why?”
“Because they deserved it richly,” the other returned calmly. “Listen to this charming little story, if you can spare the time:
“I was born in Mangadone. My father was a chetty—they call them bania in India. A money-lender—usurer—in fine. You know the breed; unsavory lot they are, extracting thirty and forty per cent on loans and keeping whole generations in their debt. Yes, my father was one of them.
“He was Indian by birth, but took up trade in Burma, and flourished at it like the proverbial green bay tree. His ideas for me, though, were different from the usual Indian’s. He wanted me to be a burra sahib—a ‘somebody,’ as you say. So when the time came he packed me off to England and college to study Shakespeare and the musical classes, but particularly law and finance. I came back a licensed barrister and with a master’s degree in economics.
“But”—again his evil smile moved across his features—“I came back to a desolated home, as well. My father had a daughter by a second wife, a lovely little thing called Mumtaj, meaning moonflower. He cherished her, was rather more fond of her than the average benighted Indian is of his girl-children; and because of the wealth he had amassed, looked forward to a brilliant match for her.
“‘Man proposes but God disposes,’ it has been said, you know. In this case it was the White Man’s God, through one of his accredited ministers, who disposed. In the local American mission was an earnest young sahib known as the Reverend Carlin Pancoast, a personable young man who wrestled mightily with Satan, and made astonishing progress at it. My father was liberal-minded; he saw much good in the ways of the sahiblog, believing that our ancient customs were outmoded; so it was not difficult to induce him to send my little sister Moonflower to the mission school.
“But though he was progressive, my father still adhered to some of the old ways. For instance, he kept the bulk of his wealth in precious metals and jewels, and much of it in gold and silver currency—this last was necessary in order to have ready cash for borrowers, you see. So it was not very difficult for Pancoast Thakin and my sister to lay hands on gold and jewels amounting to three lakhs of rupees—about a hundred thousand dollars—quite a respectable little sum, and virtually every farthing my father had.
“They fled to China, ‘cross the bay,’ where no one was too inquisitive and British extradition would not reach, except in the larger cities. Then they went inland and to the sea by boat. At Shanghai they parted. It was impossible for a sahib, especially an American preacher-sahib, to take a black girl home with him as wife. But it was not at all embarrassing for him to take home her father’s money, which she had stolen for him, plus my sister’s purchase price.
“What? Oh, dear me, yes. He sold her. She was ‘damaged goods,’ of course, but proprietors of the floating brothels that ply the China coasts and rivers aren’t over-particular concerning the kind of woman-flesh they buy, provided the price is low enough. So the Reverend Pancoast Sahib was rid of an embarrassing incumbrance, and in a little cash to boot by the deal. Shrewd businessmen, these Yankees.
“My father was all for prosecuting in the sahibs’ way, but I had other plans. A few odd bits of precious metals were dug up here and there—literally dug up, gentlemen, for Mother Earth is Mother India’s most common safe deposit vault—and with these we began our business life all over again. I profited by what I’d learned in England, and we prospered from the start. In fifteen years we were far wealthier than when the Reverend Carlin Pancoast eloped with my father’s daughter and fortune.
“But as the Chinese say, ‘we had lost face’—the memory of the insult put on us by the missionary still rankled, and I began to train myself to wipe it out. From fakirs I learned the arts of hypnotism and jugglery, and from Dakaits whom I hired at fabulous prices I acquired perfect skill at handling the throwing-knife. Indeed, there was hardly a budmash in all lower Burma more expert in the murderer’s trade than I when I had completed my training.
“Then I came here. Before the bloody altar of Durga—you know her as Kali, goddess of the thags—I took an oath that Pancoast and all his tribe should perish at my hands, and that everyone who had profited by what he stole from my father should also die.
“And—I can’t expect you to appreciate this subtlety—I brought along a very useful tool in addition to my knives. I called her Allura. Not bad, eh? She certainly possesses allure, if nothing else.
“I found her in a London slum, a miserable, undernourished brat without known father and with a gin-soaked female swine for mother. I bought her for thirty shillings, and could have had her for half that, except it pleased me to make sure her dam would drink herself to death, and so I gave her more cash than she had ever seen at one time for the child.
“I almost repented of my bargain at first, for the child, though beautiful according to Western standards, was very meagerly
endowed with brains, almost a half-wit, in fact. But afterward I thanked whatever gods may be that it was so.
“Her simplicity adapted her ideally to my plan, and I began to practise systematically to kill what little mind she had, substituting my own will for it. The scheme worked perfectly. Before she had reached her twelfth year she was nothing but a living robot—a mechanism with no mind at all, but perfectly responsive to my lightest wish. With only animal instinct to guide her to the simplest vital acts, she would perform any task I set her to, provided I explained in detail just what she was to do. I’ve sent her on a five-hundred-mile journey, had her buy a particular article in a particular shop, and return with it, as if she were an intelligent being; then, when the task was done, she lapsed once more into idiocy, for she has become a mere idiot whenever the support of my will is withdrawn.
“It was rare sport to send her to be made love to by Pancoast’s cub. The silly moon-calf fell heels over head in love with her at sight, and every day I made her rehearse everything he said—she did it with the fidelity of a gramophone—and told her what to say and do at their next meeting. When I had disposed of his father I had Allura bring the son to a secluded part of the campus and—how is it you say in French, Doctor de Grandin? Ah, yes, there I administered the coup de grâce. It was really droll. She didn’t even notice when I cut him down, just stood there, looking at the spot where he had stood, and saying, ‘Poor Harold; dear Harold; I’m so sorry, dear!’
“She was useful in getting Pancoast’s widow out of the house and into my reach, too.
“Dalky I handled on my own, using the telephone in approved American fashion to ‘put him on the spot,’ as your gangsters so quaintly phrase it.
“Your activities were becoming annoying, though, Doctor de Grandin, so I reluctantly decided to eliminate you. Tell me, how did you suspect my trap? Did Allura fail? She never did before.”
“I fear you underestimated my ability to grasp the Oriental viewpoint, my friend.” de Grandin answered dryly. “Besides, although it had been burned, I rescued Mademoiselle Allura’s card from Madame Pancoast’s fire, and read the message on it. That, and the warning we found in Monsieur Dalky’s waistcoat pocket—I saw it thrown through the window to him at the Pancoast funeral—these gave me the necessary clues. Now, if you have no more to say, let us be going. The Harrisonville gendamerie will be delighted to provide you entertainment, I assure you.”
“A final cigarette?” the prisoner asked, selecting one of the long, ivory-tipped paper tubes from his case with nice precision.
“Mais oui, of course,” de Grandin agreed, and held his flaming lighter forward.
“I fear you do underestimate the Oriental mind, after all, de Grandin,” the prisoner laughed, and thrust half the cigarette into his mouth, then bit it viciously.
“Mille diables, he has tricked us!” the Frenchman cried as a strong odor of peach kernels flooded the atmosphere and the captive lurched forward spasmodically, then fell back in his chair with gaping month and staring, death-glazed eyes. “He was clever, that one. All camouflaged within his cigarette he had a sac of hydrocyanic acid. Less than one grain produces almost instant death; he had a least ten times that amount ready for emergency.
“Eh bien, my friend,” he turned to Costello with a philosophical shrug, “it will save the state the expense of a trial and of electric current to put him to death. Perhaps it is better so. Who knows?”
“What about the girl, Allura?” I asked.
He pondered a moment, then: “I hope he was mistaken,” he returned. “If she could be made intelligent by hypnotism, as he said, there is a chance her seeming idiocy may be entirely cured by psychotherapy. It is worth the trial, at all events. Tomorrow we shall begin experiments.
“Meantime, I go.”
“Where?” Costello and I asked together.
“Where?” he echoed, as though surprised at our stupidity. “Where but to see if those so thirsty gentlemen of the police have left one drink of brandy in the bottle for Jules de Grandin, pardieu!”
Satan’s Stepson
1. The Living Dead
“Horns of a little blue devil!” Jules de Grandin bent his head against the sleet-laden February wind and clutched madly at my elbow as his feet all but slipped from under him. “‘We are three fools, my friends. We should be home beside our cheerful fire instead of risking our necks going to this sacré dinner on such a night.”
“Comment ça va, mon Jules,” demanded Inspector Renouard, “where is your patriotism? Tonight’s dinner is in honor of the great General Washington, whose birthday it is. Did not our own so illustrious Marquis de Lafayette—”
“Monsieur le Marquis is dead, and we are like to be the same before we find our way home again,” de Grandin cut in irritably. “As for the great Washington, I think no more of him for choosing this so villainous month in which to be born. Now me, I selected May for my début; had he but used a like discretion—”
“Misère de Dieu, see him come! He is a crazy fool, that one!” Renouard broke in, pointing to a motor car racing toward us down the avenue.
We watched the vehicle in open-mouthed astonishment. To drive at all on such a night was risking life and limb, yet this man drove as though contending for a record on the racing track. Almost abreast of us, he applied his brakes and swerved sharply to the left, seeking to enter the cross street. The inevitable happened. With a rending of wood and metal the car skidded end for end and brought up against the curb, its right rear wheel completely dished, its motor racing wildly as the rimless spokes spun round and round.
“Mordieu, you are suicidal, my friend!” de Grandin cried, making his way toward the disabled vehicle with difficulty. “Can I assist you? I am a physician, and—”
A woman’s hysterical scream cut through his offer. “Help—save me—they’re—” Her cry died suddenly as a hand was clapped over her mouth, and a hulking brute of a man in chauffeur’s leather coat and vizored cap scrambled from the driver’s cab and faced the Frenchman truculently. “Yékhat! Be off!” he ordered shortly. “We need no help, and—”
“Don’t parley with him, Dimitri!” a heavy voice inside the tonneau commanded. “Break his damned neck and—”
“’Cré nom! With whose assistance will you break my neck, cochon?” de Grandin asked sharply. “Name of a gun, make but one step toward me, and—”
The giant chauffeur needed no further invitation. As de Grandin spoke he hurled himself forward, his big hands outstretched to grasp the little Frenchman’s throat. Like a bouncing ball de Grandin rose from the ground, intent on meeting the bully’s rush with a kick to the pit of the stomach, for he was an expert at the French art of foot-boxing, but the slippery pavement betrayed him. Both feet flew upward and he sprawled upon his back, helpless before the larger man’s attack.
“À moi, mon Georges!” he called Renouard. “Je suis perdu!”
Practical policeman that he was, Renouard lost no time in answering de Grandin’s cry. Reversing the heavy walking-stick which swung from his arm he brought its lead-loaded crook down upon the chauffeur’s head with sickening force, then bent to extricate his friend from the other’s crushing bulk.
“The car, into the moteur, my friend!” de Grandin cried. “A woman is in there; injured, perhaps; perhaps—”
Together they dived through the open door of the limousine’s tonneau, and a moment later there came the sound of scuffling and mingled grunts and curses as they fought desperately with some invisible antagonist.
I rushed to help them, slipped upon the sleet-glazed sidewalk, and sprawled full length as a dark body hurtled from the car, cannoned into me and paused a moment to hurl a missile, then sped away into the shadows with a mocking laugh.
“Quick, Friend Trowbridge, assist me; Renouard is hit!” de Grandin emerged from the wrecked car supporting the Inspector on his arm.
“Zut! It is nothing—a scratch!” Renouard returned. “Do you attend to her, my friend. Me, I can walk wi
th ease. Observe—” he took a step and collapsed limply in my arms, blood streaming from a deeply incised wound in his left shoulder.
Together de Grandin and I staunched the hemorrhage as best we could, then rummaged in the ruined car for the woman whose screams we had heard when the accident occurred.
“She is unconscious but otherwise unhurt, I think,” de Grandin told me. “Do you see to Georges; I will carry her—prie-Dieu I do not slip and kill us both!”
“But what about this fellow?” I asked, motioning toward the unconscious chauffeur. “We oughtn’t leave him here. He may freeze or contract pneumonia—”
“Eh bien, one can but hope,” de Grandin interrupted. “Let him lie, my friend. The sleet may cool his ardor—he who was so intent on breaking Jules de Grandin’s neck. Come, it is but a short distance to the house. Let us be upon our way; allez-vous-en!”
A RUGGED CONSTITUTION AND THE almost infinite capacity for bearing injury which he had developed during years of service with the gendarmerie stood Inspector Renouard in good stead. Before we had reached the house he was able to walk with my assistance; by the time he had had a proper pack and bandage applied to his wound and absorbed the better part of a pint of brandy he was almost his usual debonair self.
Not so our other patient. Despite our treatment with cold compresses, sal volatilis and aromatic ammonia it was nearly half an hour before we could break the profound swoon in which she lay, and even then she was so weak and shaken we forbore to question her.
At length, when a slight tinge of color began to show in her pale cheeks de Grandin took his station before her and bowed as formally as though upon a ballroom floor. “Mademoiselle,” he began, “some half an hour since we had the happy privilege of assisting you from a motor wreck. This is Doctor Samuel Trowbridge, in whose office you are; I am Doctor Jules de Grandin, and this is our very good friend, Inspector Georges Jean Jacques Joseph-Marie Renouard, of the Sûreté Générale, all of us entirely at your service. If Mademoiselle will be so kind as to tell us how we may communicate with her friends or family we shall esteem it an honor—”
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 30
