The Best of Jules de Grandin

by Seabury Quinn

  “However, he has this weakness: Strong and ferocious, cunning and malicious as he is, he can be killed as easily as any natural wolf. A sharp sword will slay him, a well-aimed bullet puts an end to his career; the wood of the thorn-bush and the mountain ash are so repugnant to him that he will slink away if beaten or merely threatened with a switch of either. Weapons efficacious against an ordinary physical foe are potent against him, while charms and exorcisms which would put a true demon to flight are powerless.

  “You saw how he mocked at Monsieur Higginbotham in the sacristy the other night, by example. But he did not stop to bandy words with me. Oh, no. He knows that I shoot straight and quick, and he had already felt my lead on one occasion. If young Friend Jean will always go well-armed, he has no need to fear; but if he be taken off his guard—eh bien, we can not always be on hand to rescue him as we did the night when we first met him. No, certainly.”

  “But why do you fear for Sarah?” I persisted.

  “I hardly know,” he answered. “Perhaps it is that I have what you Americans so drolly call the hunch. Werewolves sometimes become werewolves by the aid of Satan, that they may kill their enemies while in lupine form, or satisfy their natural lust for blood and cruelty while disguised as beasts. Some are transformed as the result of a curse upon themselves or their families, a few are metamorphosed by accident. These are the most unfortunate of all. In certain parts of Europe, notably in Greece, Russia and the Balkan states, the very soil seems cursed with lycanthropic power. There are certain places where, if the unwary traveler lies down to sleep, he is apt to wake up with the curse of werewolfism on him. Certain streams and springs there are which, if drunk from, will render the drinker liable to transformation at the next full moon, and regularly thereafter. You will recall that in the dream, or vision, which Madame Sarah had while in the Smyrna garden so long ago, she beheld herself drinking from a woodland pool? I do not surely know, my friend, I have not even good grounds for suspicion, but something—something which I can not name—tells me that in some way this poor one, who is so wholly innocent, has been branded with the taint of lycanthropy. How it came about I can not say, but—”

  My mind had been busily engaged with other problems, and I had listened to his disquisition on lycanthropy with something less than full attention. Now, suddenly aware of the thing which puzzled me, I interrupted:

  “Can you explain the form that werewolf—if that’s what it was—took on different occasions? The night we met John Maxwell he was fighting for his life with as true a wolf as any there are in the zoological gardens. O’Brien, the policeman, saw it, too, and shot at it, after it had killed Fred Suffrige. It was a sure-enough wolf when it howled under Sarah’s window and you wounded it; yet when it interrupted the wedding it was an awful combination of wolf and man, or man and wolf, and the thing the justice’s son drove off with his shotgun was the same, according to his description.”

  Surprisingly, he did not take offense at my interruption. Instead, he frowned in thoughtful silence at the dashboard lights a moment; then: “Sometimes the werewolf is completely transformed from man to beast,” he answered; “sometimes he is a hideous combination of the two, but always he is a fiend incarnate. My own belief is that this one was only partly transformed when we last saw him because he had not time to wait complete metamorphosis. It is possible he could not change completely, too, because—” he broke off and pointed at the sky significantly.

  “Well?” I demanded as he made no further effort to proceed.

  “Non, it is not well,” he denied, “but it may be important. Do you observe the moon tonight?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “What quarter is it in?”

  “The last; it’s waning fast.”

  “Précisément. As I was saying, it may be that his powers to metamorphose himself were weakened because of the waning of the moon. Remember, if you please, his power for evil is at its height when the moon is at the full, and as it wanes, his powers become less and less. At the darkening of the moon, he is at his weakest, and then is the time for us to strike—if only we could find him. But he will lie well hidden at such times, never fear. He is clever with a devilish cunningness, that one.”

  “Oh, you’re fantastic!” I burst out.

  “You say so, having seen what you have seen?”

  “Well, I’ll admit we’ve seen some things which are mighty hard to explain,” I conceded, “but—”

  “But we are arrived at home; Monsieur and Madame Maxwell are safe upon the ocean, and I am vilely thirsty,” he broke in. “Come, let us take a drink and go to bed, my friend.”

  With midwinter came John and Sarah Maxwell, back from their honeymoon in Paris and on the Riviera. A week before their advent, notices in the society columns told of their homecoming, and a week after their return an engraved invitation apprised de Grandin and me that the honor of our presence was requested at a reception in the Leigh mansion, where they had taken residence.“… and please come early and stay late; there are a million things I want to talk about,” Sarah pencilled at the bottom of our card.

  Jules de Grandin was more than usually ornate on the night of the reception. His London-tailored evening clothes were knife-sharp in their creases; about his neck hung the insignia of the Legion d’Honneur; a row of miniature medals, including the French and Belgian war crosses, the Médaille Militaire and the Italian Medal of Valor, decorated the left breast of his faultless evening coat; his little, wheat-blond mustache was waxed to needle-sharpness and his sleek blond hair was brilliantined and brushed till it fitted flat upon his shapely little head as a skull-cap of beige satin.

  Lights blazed from every window of the house as we drew up beneath the porte-cochère. Inside all was laughter, staccato conversation and the odd, not unpleasant odor rising from the mingling of the hundred or more individual scents affected by the women guests. Summer was still near enough for the men to retain the tan of mountain and seashore on their faces and for a velvet vestige of veneer of painfully acquired sun-tan to show upon the women’s arms and shoulders.

  We tendered our congratulations to the homing newlyweds; then de Grandin plucked me by the sleeve. “Come away, my friend,” he whispered in an almost tragic voice. “Come quickly, or these thirsty ones will have drunk up all the punch containing rum and champagne and left us only lemonade!”

  The evening passed with pleasant swiftness, and guests began to leave. “Where’s Sallie—seen her?” asked John Maxwell, interrupting a rather Rabelaisian story which de Grandin was retailing with gusto to several appreciative young men in the conservatory. “The Carter-Brooks are leaving, and—”

  De Grandin brought his story to a close with the suddenness of a descending theater curtain, and a look of something like consternation shone in his small, round eyes. “She is not here?” he asked sharply. “When did you last see her?”

  “Oh,” John answered vaguely, “just a little while ago; we danced the ‘Blue Danube’ together, then she went upstairs for something, and—”

  “Quick, swiftly!” de Grandin interrupted. “Pardon, Messieurs,” he bowed to his late audience and, beckoning me, strode toward the stairs.

  “I say, what’s the rush—” began John Maxwell, but:

  “Every reason under heaven,” the Frenchman broke in shortly. To me: “Did you observe the night outside, Friend Trowbridge?”

  “Why, yes,” I answered. “Its a beautiful moonlit night, almost bright as day, and—”

  “And there you are, for the love of ten thousand pigs!” he cut in. “Oh, I am the stupid-headed fool, me! Why did I let her from my sight?”

  We followed in wondering silence as he climbed the stairs, hurried down the hall toward Sarah’s room and paused before her door. He raised his hand to rap, but the portal swung away, and a girl stood staring at us from the threshold.

  “Did it pass you?” she asked, regarding us in wide-eyed wonder.

  “Pardon, Mademoiselle?” de Grandin countered. “W
hat is it that you ask?”

  “Why, did you see that lovely collie, it—”

  “Cher Dieu,” the words were like a groan upon the little Frenchman’s lips as he looked at her in horror. Then, recovering himself: “Proceed, Mademoiselle, it was of a dog you spoke?”

  “Yes,” she returned. “I came upstairs to freshen up, and found I’d lost my compact somewhere, so I came to Sallie’s room to get some powder. She’d come up a few moments before, and I was positive I’d find her here, but—” she paused in puzzlement a moment; then: “But when I came in there was no one here. Her dress was lying on the chaiselongue there, as though she’d slipped it off, and by the window, looking out with its paws up on the sill, was the loveliest silver collie.

  “I didn’t know you had a dog, John,” she turned to Maxwell. “When did you get it? It’s the loveliest creature, but it seemed to be afraid of me; for when I went to pat it, it slunk away, and before I realized it had bolted through the door, which I’d left open. It ran down the hall.”

  “A dog?” John Maxwell answered bewilderedly. “We haven’t any dog, Nell; it must have been—”

  “Never mind what it was,” de Grandin interrupted as the girl went down the hall, and as she passed out of hearing he seized us by the elbows and fairly thrust us into Sarah’s room, closing the door quickly behind us.

  “What—” began John Maxwell, but the Frenchman motioned him to silence.

  “Behold, regard each item carefully; stamp them upon your memories,” he ordered, sweeping the charming chamber with his sharp, stock-taking glance.

  A fire burned brightly in the open grate, parchment-shaded lamps diffused soft light. Upon the bed there lay a pair of rose-silk pajamas, with a sheer crêpe negligée beside them. A pair of satin mules were placed toes in upon the bedside rug. Across the chaise-longue was draped, as though discarded in the utmost haste, the white-satin evening gown that Sarah had worn. Upon the floor beside the lounge were crumpled wisps of ivory crêpe de Chine, her bandeau and trunks. Sarah, being wholly modern, had worn no stockings, but her white-and-silver evening sandals lay beside the lingerie, one on its sole, as though she had stepped out of it, the other on its side, gaping emptily, as though kicked from her little pink-and-white foot in panic haste. There was something ominous about that silent room; it was like a body from which the spirit had departed, still beautiful and warm, but lifeless.

  “Humph,” Maxwell muttered, “the Devil knows where she’s gone—”

  “He knows very, exceedingly well, I have no doubt,” de Grandin interrupted. “But we do not. Now—ah? Ah-ah-ah?” his exclamation rose steadily, thinning to a sharpness like a razor’s cutting-edge. “What have we here?”

  Like a hound upon the trail, guided by scent alone, he crossed the room and halted by the dressing-table. Before the mirror stood an uncorked flask of perfume, lovely thing of polished crystal decorated with silver basketwork. From its open neck there rose a thin but penetrating scent, not wholly sweet nor wholly acrid, but a not unpleasant combination of the two, as though musk and flower-scent had each lent it something of their savors.

  The little Frenchman put it to his nose, then set it down with a grimace. “Name of an Indian pig, how comes this devil’s brew here?” he asked.

  “Oh, that?” Maxwell answered. “Hanged if I know. Some unknown admirer of Sallie’s sent it to her. It came today, all wrapped up like something from a jeweler’s. Rather pleasant-smelling, isn’t it?”

  De Grandin looked at him as Torquemada might have looked at one accusing him of loving Martin Luther. “Did you by any chance make use of it, Monsieur?” he asked in an almost soundless whisper.

  “I? Good Lord, do I look like the sort of he-thing who’d use perfume?” the other asked.

  “Bien, I did but ask to know,” de Grandin answered as he jammed the silver-mounted stopper in the bottle and thrust the flask into his trousers pocket.

  “But where the deuce is Sallie?” the young husband persisted. “She’s changed her clothes, that’s certain; but what did she go out for, and if she didn’t go out, where is she?”

  “Ah, it may be that she had a sudden feeling of faintness, and decided to go out into the air,” the Frenchman temporized. “Come, Monsieur, the guests are waiting to depart, and you must say adieu. Tell them that your lady is indisposed, make excuses, tell them anything, but get them out all quickly; we have work to do.”

  John Maxwell lied gallantly, de Grandin and I standing at his side to prevent any officious dowager from mounting the stairs and administering home-made medical assistance. At last, when all were gone, the young man turned to Jules de Grandin, and:

  “Now, out with it,” he ordered gruffly. “I can tell by your manner something serious has happened. What is it, man; what is it?”

  De Grandin patted him upon the shoulder with a mixture of affection and commiseration in the gesture. “Be brave, mon vieux,” he ordered softly. “It is the worst. He has her in his power; she has gone to join him, for—pitié de Dieu!—she has become like him.”

  “Wha—what?” the husband quavered. “You mean she—that Sallie, my Sallie, has become a were—” his voice balked at the final syllable, but de Grandin’s nod confirmed his guess.

  “Hélas, you have said it, my poor friend,” he murmured pitifully.

  “But how?—when?—I thought surely we’d driven him off—” the young man faltered, then stopped, horror choking the words back in his throat.

  “Unfortunately, no,” de Grandin told him. “He was driven off, certainly, but not diverted from his purpose. Attend me.”

  From his trousers pocket he produced the vial of perfume, uncorked it and let its scent escape into the room. “You recognize it, hein?” he asked.

  “No, I can’t say I do,” Maxwell answered.

  “Do you, Friend Trowbridge?”

  I shook my head.

  “Very well. I do, to my sorrow.”

  He turned once more to me. “The night Monsieur and Madame Maxwell sailed upon the Île de France, you may recall I was explaining how the innocent became werewolves at times?” he reminded.

  “Yes, and I interrupted to ask about the different shapes that thing assumed,” I nodded.

  “You interrupted then,” he agreed soberly, “but you will not interrupt now. Oh, no. You will listen while I talk. I had told you of the haunted dells where travelers may unknowingly become werewolves, of the streams from which the drinker may receive contagion, but you did not wait to hear of les fleurs des loups, did you?”

  “Fleurs des loups—wolf-flowers?” I asked.

  “Précisément, wolf-flowers. Upon those cursed mountains grows a kind of flower which, plucked and worn at the full of the moon, transforms the wearer into a loup-garou. Yes. One of these flowers, known popularly as the fleur de sang, or blood-flower, because of its red petals, resembles the marguerite, or daisy, in form; the other is a golden yellow, and is much like the snapdragon. But both have the same fell property, both have the same strong, sweet, fascinating scent.

  “This, my friends,” he passed the opened flagon underneath our noses, “is a perfume made from the sap of those accursed flowers. It is the highly concentrated venom of their devilishness. One applying it to her person, anointing lips, ears, hair and hands with it, as women wont, would as surely be translated into wolfish form as though she wore the cursed flower whence the perfume comes. Yes.

  “That silver collie of which the young girl spoke, Monsieur”—he turned a fixed, but pitying look upon John Maxwell—“she was your wife, transformed into a wolf-thing by the power of this perfume.

  “Consider: Can you not see it all? Balked, but not defeated, the vile vrykolakas is left to perfect his revenge while you are on your honeymoon. He knows that you will come again to Harrisonville; he need not follow you. Accordingly, he sends to Europe for the essence of these flowers, prepares a philtre from it, and sends it to Madame Sarah today. Its scent is novel, rather pleasing; women like strange, exotic s
cents. She uses it. Anon, she feels a queerness. She does not realize that it is the metamorphosis which comes upon her, she only knows that she feels vaguely strange. She goes to her room. Perhaps she puts the perfume on her brow again, as women do when they feel faint; then, pardieu, then there comes the change all quickly, for the moon is full tonight, and the essence of the flowers very potent.

  “She doffed her clothes, you think? Mais non, they fell from her! A woman’s raiment does not fit a wolf; it falls off from her altered form, and we find it on the couch and on the floor.

  “That other girl comes to the room, and finds poor Madame Sarah, transformed to a wolf, gazing sadly from the window—la pauvre, she knew too well who waited outside in the moonlight for her, and she must go to him! Her friend puts out a hand to pet her, but she shrinks away. She feels she is ‘unclean’, a thing apart, one of ‘that multitudinous herd not yet made fast in hell’—les loups-garous! And so she flies through the open door of her room, flies where? Only le bon Dieu—and the Devil, who is master of all werewolves—knows!”

  “But we must find her!” Maxwell wailed. “We’ve got to find her!”

  “Where are we to look?” de Grandin spread his hands and raised his shoulders. “The city is wide, and we have no idea where this wolf-man makes his lair. The werewolf travels fast, my friend; they may be miles away by now.”