“The years went on, and to Cambodia came a young countryman of yours, a citizen of Harrisonville, who met and loved this nameless mystery of a temple coryphée, known only as Thi-bah, the dancing-woman of the temple, and she returned his passion, for in Cambodia as elsewhere, like cries aloud to like, and this milk-skinned, violet-eyed inmate of a heathen shrine knew herself not akin to her brown-faced fellow members of the temple’s corps du ballet.
“Enfin, they did elope and hasten to the young man’s home in this city, and on their trail, blood-lustful as a tiger in the hunt, there followed Sun Ah Poy, determined to retake the girl whom he had purchased from the priests; if possible to slay the man on whom her favor rested, also. Parbleu, and as the shadow follows the body when the sun is low, Renouard did dog the footsteps of this Sun Ah Poy. Yes.
“Tiens, almost the wicked one succeeded in his plans for vengeance, but with the aid of Jules de Grandin, who is a clever fellow, for all his stupid looks and silly ways, I captured him and saved the little lady, now a happy wife and an American citizeness by marriage and adoption.
“How I then fared, how this miscreant of a Sun Ah Poy made apes and monkeys of the law and lodged himself all safely in a madhouse, I have already related. How he escaped and all but gave me my quietus you know from personal, first-hand experience. Certainly.
“Now, consider: Somewhere in the vicinage there lurk these two near-mad men with twin maggots of jealousy and vengeance gnawing at their brains. Your so unfortunate lady is already in their power—Konstantin has scored a point in his game of passion and revenge. But I know Sun Ah Poy. A merchant prince he was in former days, the son of generations of merchant princes, and Chinese merchant princes in the bargain.
“Such being so, I know all well that Sun Ah Poy has not united forces with this Konstantin unless he is assured of compensation. My death? Pouf, a bagatelle! Me he can kill—at least, he can attempt my life—whenever he desires, and do it all unaided. Last night we saw how great his resource is and how casually he tossed a stink-bomb through the window by way of telling me he was at liberty once more. No, no, my friend; he has not joined with Konstantin merely to he assured that Renouard goes home in one of those elaborate containers for the dead your undertakers sell. On the contrary. He seeks to regain the custody of her who flouted his advances and ran off with another man. Thus far his purpose coincides with Konstantin’s. They both desire women whom other men have won. One has succeeded in his quest, at least for the time being; the other still must make his purpose good. Already they have run down a gendarme who stood in their way—thus far they work in concert. Beyond a doubt they will continue to be allies till their plans are consummated. Yes.”
The clatter of the front-door knocker silenced him, and I rose to answer the alarm, knowing Nora McGinnis had long since gone to bed.
“Is there a feller named Renyard here?” demanded a hoarse voice as I swung back the door and beheld a most untidy taximan in the act of assaulting the knocker again.
“There’s a gentleman named Renouard stopping here,” I answered coldly. “What—”
“A’right, tell ’im to come out an’ git his friend, then. He’s out in me cab, drunk as a hard-boiled owl, an’ won’t stir a foot till this here Renyard feller comes fer ’im. Tell ’im to make it snappy, will yuh, buddy. This here Chinaman’s so potted I’m scared he’s goin’ to—”
“A Chinaman?” I cut in sharply. “What sort of Chinaman?”
“A dam’ skinny one, an’ a mean one, too. Orderin’ me about like I wuz a servant or sumpin’, an’—”
“Renouard—de Grandin!” I called over my shoulder. “Come here, quickly, please! There’s a Chinaman out there in that cab—‘a skinny Chinaman,’ the driver calls him—and he wants Renouard to come out to him. D’ye suppose—”
“Sacré nom d’un porc, I damn do!” de Grandin answered. To the taximan he ordered:
“Bring in your passenger at once, my friend. We can not come out to him; but—”
“Say, feller, I ain’t takin’ no more orders from a Frog than I am from a Chink, git me?” the cabman interposed truculently. “You’ll come out an’ git this here drunk, an’ like it, or else—”
“Précisément; or else?” de Grandin shot back sharply, and the porchlight’s rays gleamed on the wicked-looking barrel of his small but deadly automatic pistol. “Will you obey me, or must I shoot?”
The taximan obeyed, though slowly, with many a backward, fearful glance, as though he did not know what instant the Frenchman’s pistol might spit death. From the cab he helped a delicate, bent form muffled to the ears in a dark overcoat, and assisted it slowly up the steps. “Here he is,” he muttered angrily, as he transferred his tottering charge to Renouard’s waiting hands.
The shrouded form reeled weakly at each step as de Grandin and Renouard assisted it down the hall and guided it to an armchair by the fire. For a moment silence reigned within the study, the visitant crouching motionless in his seat and wheezing asthmatically at intervals. At length de Grandin crossed the room, took the wide brim of the black-felt hat which obscured the man’s face in both his hands and wrenched the headgear off.
“Ah?” he ejaculated as the light struck upon the caller’s face. “A-a-ah? I thought as much!”
Renouard breathed quickly, almost with a snort, as he beheld the livid countenance turned toward him. “Sun Ah Poy, thou species of a stinking camel, what filthy joke is this you play?” he asked suspiciously.
The Chinaman smiled with a sort of ghastly parody of mirth. His face seemed composed entirely of parchment-like skin stretched drum-tight above the bony processes; his little, deep-set eyes were terrible to look at as empty sockets in a skull; his lips, paper-thin and bloodless, were retracted from a set of broken and discolored teeth. The countenance was as lifeless and revolting as the mummy of Rameses in the British Museum, and differed from the dead man’s principally in that it was instinct with conscious evil and lacked the majesty and repose of death.
“Does this look like a jest?” he asked in a low, faltering voice, and with a twisted, claw-like hand laid back a fold of his fur overcoat. The silken Chinese blouse within was stained with fresh, warm blood, and the gory spot grew larger with each pulsation of his heart.
“Morbleu, it seems you have collided with just retribution!” de Grandin commented dryly. “Is it that you are come to us for treatment, by any happy chance?”
“Partly,” the other answered as another horrifying counterfeit of mirth writhed across his livid mouth. “Doctor Jules de Grandin is a surgeon and a man of honor; the oath of Aesculapius and the obligation of his craft will not allow him to refuse aid to a wounded man who comes to him for succor, whoever that man may be.”
“Eh bien, you have me there,” de Grandin countered, “but I am under no compulsion to keep your presence here a secret. While I am working on your wound the police will be coming with all haste to take you back in custody. You realize that, of course?”
We cut away his shirt and singlet, for undressing him would have been too hazardous. To the left, between the fifth and sixth ribs, a little in front of the mid-axillary line, there gaped a long incised wound, obviously the result of a knife-thrust. Extensive hemorrhage had already taken place, and the patient was weakening quickly from loss of blood. “A gauze pack and styptic collodion,” de Grandin whispered softly, “and then perhaps ten minims of adrenalin; it’s all that we can do I fear. The state will save electric current by this evening’s work, my friend; he’ll never live to occupy the chair of execution.”
The treatment finished, we propped the patient up with pillows. “Doctor Sun,” de Grandin announced professionally, “it is my duty to inform you that death is very near. I greatly doubt that you will live till morning.”
“I realize that,” the other answered weakly, “nor am I sorry it is so. This wound has brought me back my sanity, and I am once again the man I was before I suffered madness. All I have done while I was mentally deranged
comes back to me like memories of a disagreeable dream, and when I think of what I was, and what I have become, I am content that Sun Ah Poy should die.
“But before I go I must discharge my debt—pay you my fee,” he added with another smile, and this time, I thought, there was more of gentleness than irony in the grimace. “My time is short and I must leave some details out, but such facts as you desire shall be yours,” he added.
“This morning I met Konstantin the Russian as I fled the police, and we agreed to join forces to combat you. He seemed to be a man beset, like me, by the police, and gladly did I welcome him as ally.” He paused a moment, and a quick spasm of pain flickered in his face, but he fought it down. “In the East we learn early of some things the Western world will never learn,” he gasped. “The lore of China is filled with stories of some beings whose existence you deride. Yet they are real, though happily they become more rare each day. Konstantin is one of them; not wholly man, nor yet entirely demon, but a dreadful hybrid of the two. Not till he’d taken me to his lair did I discover this—he is a servant of the Evil One.
“It cost my life to come and tell you, but he must be exterminated. My life for his; the bargain is a trade by which the world will profit. What matters Sun Ah Poy beside the safety of humanity? Konstantin is virtually immortal, but he can be killed. Unless you hunt him out and slay him—”
“We know all this,” de Grandin interrupted; “at least, I have suspected it. Tell us while you have time where we may find him, and I assure you we shall do to him according to his sins—”
“Old Shepherd’s Inn, near Chestertown—the old, deserted place padlocked three years ago for violation of the Prohibition law,” the Chinaman broke in. “You’ll find him there at night, and with him—go there before the moon has set; by day he is abroad, and with him goes his captive, held fast in bonds of fear, but when the moon has climbed the heavens—” He broke off with a sigh of pain, and little beads of perspiration shone upon his brow. The man was going fast; the pauses between his words were longer, and his voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.
“Renouard”—he rolled his head toward the Inspector—“in the old days you called me friend. Can you forget the things I did in madness and say good-bye to the man you used to know—will you take my hand, Renouard? I can not hold it out to you—I am too weak, but—”
“Assuredly, I shall do more, mon vieux,” Renouard broke in. “Je vous salue!” He drew himself erect and raised his right hand in stiff and formal military greeting. Jules de Grandin followed suit.
Then, in turn, they took the dying man’s hand in theirs and shook it solemnly.
“Shades—of—honorable—ancestors, comes—now—Sun—Ah—Poy to be among—you!” the Oriental gasped, and as he finished speaking a rattle sounded in his throat and from the corners of his mouth there trickled thin twin streams of blood. His jaw relaxed, his eyes were set and glazed, his breast fluttered once or twice, then all was done.
“Quicker than I thought,” de Grandin commented as he lifted the spare, twisted body from the chair and laid it on the couch, then draped a rug over it. “The moment I perceived his wound I knew the pleural wall was punctured, and it was but a matter of moments before internal hemorrhage set in and killed him, but my calculations erred. I would have said half an hour; he has taken only eighteen minutes to die. We must notify the coroner,” he added practically. “This news will bring great happiness to the police, and rejoice the newspapers most exceedingly, as well.”
“I wonder how he got that wound?” I asked.
“You wonder?” he gave me an astonished glance. “Last night we saw how Konstantin can throw a knife—Renouard’s shoulder is still sore in testimony of his skill. The wonder is he got away at all. I wish he had not died so soon; I should have liked to ask him how he did it.”
7. Though This Be Damnation
Shepherd’s Inn was limned against the back-drop of wind-driven snow like the gigantic carcass of a stranded leviathan. Remote from human habitation or activity, it stood in the midst of its overgrown grounds, skeletal remains of small summer-houses where in other days Bacchus had dallied drunkenly with Aphrodite stood starkly here and there among the rank-grown evergreens and frost-blasted weeds; flanking the building on the left was a row of frontless wooden sheds where young bloods of the nineties had stabled horse and buggy while reveling in the bar or numerous private dining-rooms upstairs; a row of hitching-posts for tethering the teams of more transient guests stood ranked before the porch. The lower windows were heavily barred by rusted iron rods without and stopped by stout wooden shutters within. Even creepers seemed to have felt the blight which rested on the place, for there was no patch of ivy green upon the brickwork which extended upward to the limit of the lower story.
Beneath a wide-boughed pine we paused for council. “Sergeant,” de Grandin ordered, “you and Friend Trowbridge will enter at the rear—I have here the key which fits the door. Keep watchful eyes as you advance, and have your guns held ready, for you may meet with desperate resistance. I would advise that one of you precede the other, and that the first man hold the flashlight, and hold it well out from his body. Thus, if you’re seen by Konstantin and he fires or flings a knife at the light, you will suffer injury only to your hand or arm. Meanwhile, the one behind will keep sharp watch and fire at any sound or movement in the dark—a shotgun is most pleasantly effective at any range which can be had within a house.
“Should you come on him unawares, shoot first and parley afterward. This is a foul thing we face tonight, my friends—one does not parley with a rattlesnake, neither does one waste time with a viper such as this. Non, by no means. And as you hope for pardon of your sins, shoot him but once; no matter what transpires, you are not to fire a second shot. Remember.
“Renouard and I shall enter from the front and work our way toward you. You shall know when we are come by the fact that our flashlight will be blue—the light in that I give you will be red, so you may shoot at any but a blue light, and we shall blaze away whenever anything but red is shown. You understand?”
“Perfectly, sor,” the Irishman returned.
We stumbled through the snow until we reached the rear door and Costello knelt to fit the key into the lock while I stood guard above him with my gun.
“You or me, sor?” he inquired as the lock unlatched, and even in the excitement of the moment I noted that its mechanism worked without a squeak.
“Eh?” I answered.
“Which of us carries th’ light?”
“Oh. Perhaps I’d better. You’re probably a better shot than I.”
“O.K. Lead th’ way, sor, an’ watch your shtep. I’ll be right behint ye.”
Cautiously we crept through the service hall, darting the red rays of our flash to left and right, through the long-vacant dining-room, finally into the lobby at the front. As yet we saw no sign of Konstantin nor did we hear a sound betokening the presence of de Grandin or Renouard.
The foyer was paved with flagstones set in cement sills, and every now and then these turned beneath our feet, all but precipitating us upon our faces. The air was heavy and dank with that queer, unwholesome smell of earth one associates with graves and tombs; the painted woodwork was dust-grimed and dirty and here and there wallpaper had peeled off in leprous strips, exposing patches of the corpse-gray plaster underneath. From the center of the hall, slightly to the rear, there rose a wide grand staircase of wood. A sweep of my flashlight toward this brought an exclamation of surprise from both of us.
The central flight of stairs which led to the landing whence the side-flights branched to left and right, was composed of three steps and terminated in a platform some six feet wide by four feet deep. On this had been placed some sort of packing-case or table—it was impossible to determine which at the quick glance we gave it, and over this was draped a cover of some dark material which hung down nearly to the floor. Upon this darker covering there lay a strip of linen cloth and upright at the center
of the case was fixed some sort of picture or framed object, while at either end there stood what I first took to be candelabra, each with three tall black candles set into its sockets. “Why,” I began in a whisper, it looks like an—”
“Whist, Doctor Trowbridge, sor, there’s some one comin’!” Costello breathed in my ear. “Shall I let ’em have it?” I heard the sharp click of his gunlock in the dark.
“There’s a door behind us,” I whispered back. “Suppose we take cover behind it and watch to see what happens? If it’s our man and he comes in here, he’ll have to pass us, and we can jump out and nab him; if it’s de Grandin and Renouard, we’ll hail them and let them know there’s no one in the rear of the house. What d’ye say?”
“A’right,” he acquiesced. “Let’s go.”
We stepped back carefully, and I heard Costello fumbling with the door. “O.K., sor, it’s open,” he whispered. “Watch your shtep goin’ over th’ sill; it’s a bit high.”
I followed him slowly, feeling my way with cautious feet, felt his big bulk brush past me as he moved to close the door; then:
“Howly Moses!” he muttered. “It’s a trap we’re in, sor! It were a snap-lock on th’ door. Who th’ devil’d ’a’ thought o’ that?”
He was right. As the door swung to there came a faint, sharp click of a spring lock, and though we strained and wrenched at the handle, the strong oak panels refused to budge.
The room in which we were imprisoned was little larger than a closet, windowless and walled with tongue-and-groove planks in which a line of coat hooks had been screwed. Obviously at one time it had functioned as a sort of cloak room. For some reason the management had fancied decorations in the door, and some five feet from the floor twin designs of interlacing hearts had been bored through the panels with an auger. I blessed the unknown artist who had made the perforations, for they not only supplied our dungeon generously with air but made it possible for us to see all quarters of the lobby without betraying our proximity.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 36
