The Best of Jules de Grandin

by Seabury Quinn

  Rising, he crossed the cabin on tiptoe, so as not to wake the sleeping girl, and drew the burlap curtain across the window. “Look at that until your ugly eyes are tired, Monsieur le Cadavre,” he bade. “My good Friend Trowbridge does not care to have you watch him while he sleeps.”

  “Sleep!” I echoed. “D’ye think I could sleep knowing that’s outside?”

  “Parbleu, he is much better outside than in, I think,” returned the Frenchman with a grin. “However. if you care to lie awake and think of him, I have no objections. But me, I am tired. I shall sleep; nor shall I sleep the worse for knowing that he is securely barred outside the house. No.”

  REASSURED, I FINALLY FELL asleep, but my rest was broken by unpleasant dreams. Sometime toward morning I awoke, not from any consciousness of impending trouble nor from any outward stimulus; yet, once my eyes were open, I was as fully master of my faculties as though I had not slept at all. The pre-dawn chill was in the air, almost bitter in its penetrating quality; the fire which had blazed merrily when we said good-night now lay a heap of whitened ashes and feebly smoldering embers. Outside the cabin rose a furious chorus of light, swishing, squeaking noises, as though a number of those whistling rubber toys with which small children are amused were being rapidly squeezed together. At first I thought it was the twittering of birds, then realized that the little feathered friends had long since flown to southern quarters; besides, there was an eery unfamiliarity in this sound, totally unlike anything I had ever heard until the previous evening, and it rose and gathered in shrill tone and volume as I listened. Vaguely, for no conscious reason, I likened it to the clamoring of caged brutes when feeding-time approaches in the zoo.

  Then, as I half rose in my bunk, I saw an indistinct form move across the cabin. Slowly, very slowly, and so softly that the rough, uneven floor forbore to creak beneath her lightly pressing feet, Audrey Hawkins tiptoed toward the cabin door, creeping with a kind of feline grace. Half stupefied, I saw her pause before the portal, sink stealthily to one knee, reach out a cautious hand—

  “Non, non; dix mille fois non—you shall not do it!” de Grandin cried, emerging from his bunk and vaulting across the cabin, seemingly with a single movement, then grasping the girl by the shoulders with such force that he hurled her half across the room. “What business of the fool do you make here, Mademoiselle?” he asked her angrily. “Do not you know that once the barriers of steel have been removed we should be—mon Dieu, one understands!”

  Audrey Hawkins’ hands were at her temples as she looked at him with innocent amazement while he raged at her. Clearly, she had wakened from a sound and dreamless sleep when she felt his hands upon her shoulders. Now she gazed at him in wonder mixed with consternation.

  “Wh-what is it? What was I doing?” she asked.

  “Ah, parbleu, you did nothing of your own volition, Mademoiselle,” he answered, “but those other ones, those very evil ones outside the house, in some way they reached you in your sleep and made you pliable to their desires. Ha, but they forgot de Grandin; he sleeps, yes, but he sleeps the sleep of the cat. They do not catch him napping. But no.”

  We piled fresh wood upon the fire and, wrapped in blankets, sat before the blaze, smoking, drinking strong black coffee, talking with forced cheerfulness till the daylight came again, and when de Grandin put the curtain back and looked out in the clearing round the cabin, there was no sign of any visitants, nor were there any squeaking voices in the woods.

  BREAKFAST FINISHED, WE CLIMBED into the ancient Ford and set out for Bartlesville, traveling at a speed I had not thought the ancient vehicle could make.

  Hawkins’ general store was a facsimile of hundreds of like institutions to be found in typical American villages from Vermont to Vancouver. Square as a box, it faced the village main street. Shop windows, displaying a miscellany of tinned groceries, household appliances and light agricultural equipment, occupied its front elevation. Shuttered windows piercing the second-story walls denoted where the family living-quarters occupied the space above the business premises.

  Audrey tried the red-painted door of the shop, found it locked securely, and led the way through a neat yard surrounded by a fence of white pickets, took a key from her trousers pockets and let us through the private family entrance.

  Doctors and undertakers have a specialized sixth sense. No sooner had we crossed the threshold than I smelled death inside that house. De Grandin sensed it, too, and I saw his smooth brow pucker in a warning frown as he glanced at me across the girl’s shoulder.

  “Perhaps it would be better if we went first, Mademoiselle,” he offered. “Monsieur your father may have had an accident, and—”

  “Dad—oh, Dad, are you awake?” the girl’s call interrupted. “It’s I. I was caught in Putnam’s woods last evening and spent the night at Sutter’s camp, but I’m—Dad! Why don’t you answer me?”

  For a moment she stood silent in an attitude of listening; then like a flash she darted down the little hall and up the winding stairs which led to the apartment overhead.

  We followed her as best we could, cannoning into unseen furniture, barking our shins on the narrow stairs, but keeping close behind her as she raced down the upper passageway into the large bedroom which overlooked the village street.

  The room was chaos. Chairs were overturned, the clothing had been wrenched from the big, old-fashioned bed and flung in a heap in the center of the floor, and from underneath the jumbled pile of comforter and sheets and blankets a man’s bare foot protruded.

  I hesitated at the doorway, but the girl rushed forward, dropped to her knees and swept aside the veiling bedclothes. It was a man past early middle life, but looking older, she revealed. Thin, he was, with that starved-turkey kind of leanness characteristic of so many native New Englanders. His gray head was thrown back and his lean, hard-shaven chin thrust upward truculently. In pinched nostril, sunken eye and gaping open mouth his countenance bore the unmistakable seal of death. He lay on his back with arms and legs sprawled out at grotesque angles from the inadequate folds of his old-fashioned Canton flannel nightshirt, and at first glance I recognized the unnaturalness of his posture, for human anatomy does not alter much with death, and this man’s attitude would have been impossible for any but a practised contortionist.

  Even as I bent my brows in wonder, de Grandin knelt beside the body. The cause of death was obvious, for in the throat, extending almost down to the left clavicle, there gaped a jagged wound, not made by any sharp, incising weapon, but rather, apparently, the result of some savage lancination, for the whole integument was ripped away, exposing the trachea to view—yet not a clot of blood lay round the ragged edges of the laceration, nor was there any sign of staining on the nightrobe. Indeed, to the ordinary pallor of the dead there seemed to be a different sort of pallor added, a queer, unnatural pallor which rendered the man’s weather-stained countenance not only absolutely colorless, but curiously transparent, as well.

  “Good heavens—” I began, but:

  “Friend Trowbridge, if you please, observe,” de Grandin ordered, lifting one of the dead man’s hands and rotating it back and forth. I grasped his meaning instantly. Even allowing for the passage of rigor mortis and ensuing post mortem flaccidity, it would have been impossible to move that hand in such a manner if the radius and ulna were intact. The man’s arm-bones had been fractured, probably in several places, and this, I realized, accounted for the posture of his hands and feet.

  “Dad—oh, Daddy, Daddy!” cried the distracted girl as she took the dead man’s head in her arms and nursed it on her shoulder. “Oh, Daddy dear, I knew that something terrible had happened when—”

  Her outburst ended in a storm of weeping as she rocked her body to and fro, moaning with the helpless, inarticulate piteousness of a dumb thing wounded unto death. Then, abruptly:

  “You heard that laugh last night!” she challenged me. “You know you did, Doctor Trowbridge—and there’s where we heard it from,” she pointed with a
shaking finger at the wall-telephone across the room.

  As I followed the line of her gesture I saw that the instrument had been ripped clear from its retaining bolts, its wires, its mouthpiece and receiver broken as though by repeated hammer-blows.

  “They—those dreadful things that tried to get at us last night came over here when they found they couldn’t reach me and murdered my poor father!” she continued in a low, sob-choked voice. “I know! The night Colonel Putnam raised those awful mummies from the dead the she-thing said they wanted our lives, and one of the others chased us through the woods. They’ve been hungering for us ever since, and last night they got Daddy. I—”

  She paused, her slender bosom heaving, and we could see the tear drops dry away as fiery anger flared up in her eyes.

  “Last night I said I wouldn’t go near Putnam’s house again for a million dollars,” she told de Grandin. “Now I say I wouldn’t stay away from there for all the money in the world. I’m going over now—this minute—and pay old Putnam off. I’ll face that villain with his guilt and make him pay for Daddy’s life if it’s the last thing I do!”

  “It probably would be, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin answered dryly. “Consider, if you please: This so odious Monsieur Putnam is undoubtlessly responsible for loosing those evil things upon the countryside, but while his life is forfeit for his crimes of necromancy, merely to kill him would profit us—and the community—not at all. These most unpleasant pets of his have gotten out of hand. I make no doubt that he himself is in constant, deadly fear of them, and that they, who came as servants of his will, are now his undisputed masters. Were we to kill him, we should still have those evil ones to reckon with, and till they have been utterly destroyed the country will be haunted by them; and others—countless others, perhaps—will share the fate of your poor father and that unfortunate young man and woman who perished on their boating-trip, not to mention those misguided workingmen who answered Monsieur Putnam’s advertisements. You comprehend? This is a war of extermination on which we are embarked; we must destroy or be destroyed. Losing our lives in a gallant gesture would be a worthless undertaking. Victory, not speedy vengeance, must be our first and great consideration.”

  “Well, then, what are we to do, sit here idly while they range the woods and kill more people?”

  “By no means, Mademoiselle. First of all, we must see that your father has the proper care; next, we must plan the work which lies before us. That done, it is for us to work the plans which we have made.”

  “All right, then, let’s call the coroner,” she agreed. “Judge Lindsay knows me, and he knew Dad all his life. When I tell him how old Putnam raised those mummies from the dead, and—”

  “Mademoiselle!” the Frenchman expostulated. “You will tell him nothing about anything which Monsieur Putnam has done. It has been two hundred years, unfortunately, since your kin and neighbors ceased paying such creatures as this Putnam for their sins with rope and flame. To tell your truthful story to the coroner would be but signing your commitment to the madhouse. Then, doubly protected by your incarceration and public disbelief in their existence, Monsieur Putnam’s mummy-things could range the countryside at will. Indeed, it is altogether likely that the first place they would visit would be the madhouse where you were confined, and there, defenseless, you would be wholly at their mercy. Your screams for help would be regarded as the ravings of a lunatic, and the work of extirpation of your family which they began last night would be concluded. Your life, which they have sought since first they came, would be snuffed out, and, with none to fight against them, the countryside would fall an easy prey to their vile depredations. Eh bien, who can say how far the slaughter would go before the pig-ignorant authorities, at last convinced that you had told the sober truth when they thought you raving, would finally arouse themselves and take befitting action? You see why we must guard our tongues, Mademoiselle?”

  NEWS OF THE MURDER spread like wildfire through the village. Zebulon Lindsay, justice of the peace, who also acted as coroner, empaneled a jury before noon; by three o’clock the inquisition had been held and a verdict of death by violence at the hands of some person or persons unknown was rendered.

  Among the agricultural implements in Hawkins’ stock de Grandin noted a number of billhooks, pike-like instruments with long, curved blades resembling those of scythes fixed on the ends of their strong helves.

  “These we can use tonight, my friends,” he told us as he laid three carefully aside.

  “What for?” demanded Audrey.

  “For those long, cadaverous things which run through Monsieur Putnam’s woods, by blue!” he answered with a rather sour smile. “You will recall that on the first occasion when you saw them you shot one of their number several times?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that notwithstanding you scored several hits, it continued its pursuit?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. You know the reason? Your bullets tore clear through its desiccated flesh, but had not force to stop it. Tiens, could you have knocked its legs off at the knees, however, do you think that it could still have run?”

  “Oh, you mean—”

  “Precisely, exactly; quite so, ma chère, I purpose dividing them, anatomizing them, striking them limb from limb. What lead and powder would be powerless to do, these instruments of iron will accomplish very nicely. We shall go to their domain at nightfall; that way we shall be sure of meeting them. Were we to go by daylight, it is possible they would be hidden in some secret place, for like all their kind they wait the coming of darkness because their doings are evil.

  “Should you see one of them, remember what he did to your poor father, Mademoiselle, and strike out with your iron. Strike and do not spare your blows. It is not as foeman unto foe we go tonight, but as executioners to criminals. You understand?”

  WE SET OUT JUST at sundown, Audrey Hawkins driving, de Grandin and I, each armed with a stout billhook, in the rear seat.

  “It were better that you stopped here, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin whispered as the big white pillars of the mansion’s antique portico came in view between the trees. “There is no need to advertise our advent; surprise is worth a thousand men in battle.”

  We dismounted from the creaking vehicle and, our weapons on our shoulders, began a stealthy advance.

  “S-s-st!” Audrey warned as we paused a moment by a little opening in the trees, our eyes intent upon the house. “Hear it?”

  Very softly, like the murmur of a sleepy little bird, there came a subdued squeaking noise from a hemlock thicket twenty feet or so away. I felt the short hair on my neck begin to rise against my collar and a little chill of mingled hate and apprehension run rippling through my scalp and cheeks. It was like the sensation felt when one comes unexpectedly upon a serpent in the path.

  “Softly, friends,” Jules de Grandin ordered, grasping the handle of his billhook like a quarterstaff and leaning toward the sound; “do you stand by me, good Friend Trowbridge, and have your flashlight ready. Play its beam on him the minute he emerges, and keep him visible for me to work on.”

  Cautiously, quietly as a cat stalking a mouse, he stepped across the clearing, neared the clump of bushes whence the squeaking came, then leant forward, eyes narrowed, weapon ready.

  It burst upon us like a charging beast, one moment hidden from our view by the screening boughs of evergreen, next instant leaping through the air, long arms flailing, skeleton-hands grasping for de Grandin’s throat, its withered, leather-like face a mask of hatred and ferocity.

  I shot the flashlight’s beam full on it, but its terrifying aspect caused my hand to tremble so that I could scarcely hold the shaft of light in line with the leaping horror’s movements.

  “Ça-ha, Monsieur le Cadavre, we meet again, it seems!” de Grandin greeted in a whisper, dodging nimbly to the left as the mummy-monster reached out scrawny hands to grapple with him. He held the billhook handle in the center, left hand upward, right hand
down, and as the withered leather talons missed their grasp he whirled the iron-headed instrument overhand from left to right, turning it as he did so, so that the carefully whetted edge of the heavy blade crashed with devastating force upon the mummy’s withered biceps. The limb dropped helpless from the desiccated trunk, but, insensible to pain, the creature whirled and grasped out with its right hand.

  Once more the billhook circled whistling through the air, this time reversed, striking downward from right to left. The keen-edged blade sheared through the lich’s other arm, cleaving it from the body at the shoulder.

  And now the withered horror showed a trace of fear. Sustained by supernatural strength and swiftness, apparently devoid of any sense of pain, it had not entered what intelligence the thing possessed that a man could stand against it. Now it paused, irresolutely a moment, teetering on its spindle legs and broad, splay feet, and while it hesitated thus the little Frenchman swung his implement again, this time like an ax, striking through dry, brown flesh and aged, brittle bone, lopping off the mummy’s legs an inch or so above the knees.

  Had it not been so horrible I could have laughed aloud to see the withered torso hurtle to the ground and lie there, flopping grotesquely on stumps of arms and legs, seeking to regain the shelter of the hemlock copse as it turned its fleshless head and gazed across its bony shoulder at de Grandin.