The Best of Jules de Grandin

by Seabury Quinn

  “Very well, Monsieur Szekler; as I say, I am not a practitioner of medicine, and—”

  “But no, it is not a medical practitioner whom I seek,” the other interrupted eagerly. “My daughter, her illness is more of the spirit than the body, and I have heard of your abilities to fight back those who dwell upon the threshold of the door between our world and theirs, to conquer such ills as now afflict my child. Say that you will take the case, I beg, Monsieur.”

  “Eh bien, you put a different aspect upon things,” de Grandin answered. “What are the symptoms of Mademoiselle your daughter, it you please?”

  Our visitor sucked the breath between his large and firm white teeth with a sort of hissing sigh, and a look of relief, something almost like a gleam of secret triumph, flashed in his narrow eyes. He was a man in late middle life, not fat, but heavily built, blond, regular of features save that his cheek-bones were set so high that they seemed to crowd his light, indefinitely colored eyes, making them seem narrow, and pushing them into a slight slant. Dry-skinned, clean-shaven save for a heavy cavalry mustache waxed into twin uprearing horns, he had that peculiarly well-groomed aspect that denotes the professional soldier, even out of uniform, and though his forehead was broad and benevolent, his queerly narrowed slanting eyes modified its kindliness, and the large, firm mouth, with its almost wolfishly white teeth, lent his face a slightly sinister expression. Now, however, it was the father, not the soldier trained in Old World traditions of blood and iron, who spoke.

  “We are Hungarian,” he began, then paused a moment, as though at a loss how to proceed.

  “One surmised as much,” de Grandin murmured politely. “One also assumed you are a soldier, Monsieur. Now, as to Mademoiselle your daughter, you were about to say—?” He raised his brows and bent a questioning look upon the visitor.

  “You are correct, Monsieur,” responded Szekler. “I am—I was—a soldier; a colonel of hussars in the army of the old monarchy. You know what happened when the war was done, how Margyarország and Austria separated when the poltroon Charles gave up his birthright, and how our poor land, bereft of Transylvania, Croatia and Slavonia was racked by civil war and revolution. Things went badly for our caste. Reduced to virtual beggary, we were harried through the streets like beasts, for to have worn the Emperor’s uniform was sufficient cause to send a man before the execution squad. With what little of our fortune that remained I took my wife and little daughter and fled for sanctuary to America.

  “The new land has been good to us; in the years which I have spent here I have recouped the fortune which I lost, and added to it. We were very happy here until—”

  He paused and once more drew in his breath with that peculiar, eager sound, then passed his tongue-tip across his lower lip. The sight affected me unpleasantly. His tongue was red and pointed like an animal’s, and in his oddly oblique eyes there shone a look of scarcely veiled desire.

  De Grandin watched him narrowly, his little, round blue eyes intent upon the stranger’s face, recording every movement, every feature with photographic fidelity. His air of unsuspecting innocence, it seemed to me, was a piece of superb acting as he prompted gently: “Yes, Monsieur, and what occurred to spoil the happiness you found here?”

  “Zita, my daughter, was always delicate,” Colonel Szekler answered. “For a long time we feared she might be marked by that disease the Turks call gusel vereni, which is akin to the consumption of the Western world, except that the patient loses nothing of her looks and often seems to grow more beautiful as the end approaches. It is painless, progressive and incurable, so—”

  “One understands, Monsieur,” de Grandin nodded; “I have seen it in the Turkish hospitals. Et puis?”

  “Our Magyar girls attain the bloom of womanhood early,” answered Colonel Szekler. “When Zita was fourteen she was mature as any American girl four years her senior, and for a time her delicacy seemed to pass away. We sent her off to school, and each season she came home more strengthened, more robust, more like the Zita we would have her be. A month ago, however, her old malady returned. She shows profound lassitude, often complaining of being too tired to rise. Doctors we have had, five, eight of them; all said there is no trace of physical illness, yet there she is, growing weaker day by day. Two days ago I think I found the cause!”

  Again that whistling, eager sigh as he drew in his breath before proceeding: “Zita was lying on the chaise-longue in her room, and I went upstairs to ask if she felt well enough to come to luncheon. She was asleep. She was wearing purple-silk pajamas, and a shawl of purple silk was draped across her knees, which enabled me to see it more distinctly.

  “As I opened the door to her chamber I saw a patch of white, cloud-like substance, becoming denser and bigger as I watched, issuing from her left side just below the breast. I say it was like cloud, but that is not quite accurate; it had more substance than a cloud, it was more like some ponderable gas, or a great bubble of some gelatinous substance being gradually inflated, and as it grew, it seemed to thicken and become more opaque, or opalescent. Then, taking form as though modeled out of wax by the clever hands of an unseen sculptor, a face took shape and looked at me out of the bubble. It was a living face, Monsieur de Grandin, normal in size, with skin as white as the scraped bone of a fleshless skull, and thick, red lips and rolling, glaring eyes that made my blood run cold.

  “I stood there horror-frozen for a moment, repeating to myself: ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph have pity on us!’ and then, just as it had come, that cursed, milky cloud began to disappear. Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing speed, as though it were being sucked back into Zita’s body, the great, cloudy bubble shrank, the dreadful, leering face flattened out and elongated, melting imperceptibly into its frame of hazy, gleaming cloudiness; finally the whole mass vanished through the fabric of the purple garment which my daughter wore.

  “She still continued sleeping peacefully, apparently, and I shook her gently by the shoulder. She wakened and smiled at me and told me she had had a lovely dream. She—”

  “Tell me, Monsieur,” de Grandin interrupted, “you say you saw a face inside this so strange bubble emanating from Mademoiselle Zita’s side. Did you by any chance recognize it? Was it just a face, or was it, possibly, the countenance of someone whom you know?”

  Colonel Szekler started violently, and a look of frightened surprise swept across his face. “Why should I have recognized it?” he demanded in a dry, harsh voice.

  “Tiens, why should crockery show cracks, or knives dismember chickens, or table legs be built without knees?” de Grandin countered irritably. “I asked you if you recognized the face, not why.”

  Szekler seemed to age visibly, to put on ten more years, as he bent his head as though in tortured thought. “Yes, I recognized him,” he answered slowly. “It was the face of Red-gauntlet Czerni.”

  “Ah, and one infers that your relations with this Monsieur Czerni were not always of the pleasantest?”

  “I killed him.”

  De Grandin pursed his lips and raised inquiring brows. “Doubtless he was immeasurably improved by killing,” he returned, “but why, specifically, did you bestow the happy dispatch on him, Monsieur?”

  Colonel Szekler flicked his tongue across his nether lip again, and again I caught myself comparing him to something lupine.

  “The vermin!” he gritted. “While I and my son—eternal rest grant him, O Lord!—were fighting at the front for Emperor and country, that toad-creature was skulking in the backwaters of Pest, evading military service. At last they caught him; shipped him off with other conscripts to the Eastern front. Two days later he deserted and went over to the Russians. An avowed Communist, he and Bela Kun and other traitors were hired by the Russians to foment Bolshevist cells among Hungarian prisoners of war.

  The colonel’s breath was coming fast, and his odd, light eyes were glazed as though a film had dropped over them, as he fairly hurled a question at us:

  “Do you know—have you heard how t
wo hundred loyal Hungarian officer-prisoners—prisoners of war, mind you, entitled to protection and respect by the law of nations—were butchered by the Russians and their traitorous Hungarian accomplices, because they could not be corrupted?”

  De Grandin nodded shortly. “I was with the French Intelligence, Monsieur,” he answered.

  “My son Stephan was one of those whom Tibor Czerni helped to massacre—the swine boasted of it later!

  “Back he came when war was done, led home to Hungary by the instinct that leads the vulture to the helpless, dying beast; and when the puppet-republic fell and bolshevism rose up in its place this vermin, this slacker and deserter, this traitor and murderer, was given the post of Commissar of the Tribunal of Summary Jurisdiction in Buda-Pest. You know what that meant, hein? That anyone whom he accused was doomed, that he was lord of life and death, a court from whose decisions there was no appeal throughout the city.

  “You heard me call him ‘Red-gauntlet’. You know why? Because, when it did not suit his whim to order unfortunate members of the bourgeoisie or gentry to be shot or hanged, he ‘put the red gauntlets on them’—had his company of butchers take them out and beat their hands to bloody pulp with mauls upon a chopping-block. Then, crippled hopelessly, suffering torment almost unendurable, they were given liberty to serve as warning to others of their kind whose only crime was that they loved their country and were loyal to their king.

  “One day the wretch conceived another scheme. He had been pampered, fawned upon and flattered since his rise to power till he thought himself omnipotent. Even women of our class—more shame to them!—had not withheld their favors to purchase safety for their men or the right to retain what little property they had. My wife—the Countess Szekler she was then—was noted for her beauty, and this slug, this toad, this monstrous parody of humankind determined to have her. This Galician cur presumed to raise his eyes to Irina Szekler—kreuzsakrament, he who was not fit to lap the water which had laved her feet!

  “Out to our villa in the hills beyond Buda he went, forced himself into our house and made his vile proposals, telling my wife that he had captured me and only her complaisance could buy me immunity from the Red Gauntlets. But Szeklers do not buy immunity at such a price, and well she knew it. She ordered the vile creature from her presence as though she still were Countess Szekler and he but Tibor Czerni, son of a Galician money-lender and police court journalist of Pest.

  “He left her, vowing dreadful vengeance. Only the fact that he had not brought his bullies with him saved her from immediate arrest, for an hour later a squadron of ‘Lenin Boys’ drove up to the house, looted it of everything which they could carry, then burned it to the ground.

  “But we escaped. I came home almost as the scoundrel left, and we fled to friends in Buda who concealed us till I had time to grow a beard and so alter my appearance that I dared to venture on the street without certainty of summary arrest.

  “Then I began my hunt. Systematically, day by day, I dogged the villain’s steps, seeking for the chance to wash away the insult he had offered in his blood. Finally we met face to face in a side street just off Franz Joseph Square. He was armed, as always, but without his bodyguard of cutthroats. Despite my beard and shabby clothes he recognized me instantly and bawled out frantically for help, dragging at his pistol as he did so.

  “But to draw the rapier from my sword-stick and run him through the throat was but an instant’s work. He strangled in his blood before he could repeat his hail for help; so I dispatched the monster and escaped, for no one witnessed our encounter. Next day I fled with my wife and little daughter, and through a miracle we were able to cross the border to freedom.”

  “And had you ever seen this revenant—this materialization—before the painful incident in Mademoiselle’s boudoir?” de Grandin asked.

  Colonel Szekler flushed. “Yes,” he answered. “Once. Though Stephan died a hero, and our loss was years ago, the wound has never healed in his mother’s heart. Indeed, her sorrow seems increasing as the years go by. She has been leaning more and more toward spiritism of late years, and though we knew the Church forbids such things, my daughter and I could not bring ourselves to dissuade her, since she seemed to get some solace from the mediums’ mummery. A month ago, when the first symptoms of Zita’s returning illness were beginning to make their appearance, she prevailed on us to attend a séance with her.

  “The sitting was held at the house of a medium who calls herself Madame Claire. The psychic sat at the end of a long table on which a gramophone’s tin trumpet had been placed, and her wrists were fastened to the back of her chair with tape which was sewed, not tied. Her ankles were similarly secured to the front legs of the chair, and a blindfold was tied about her eyes. Then the lights were turned off and we sat with our hands upon the table, staring out into the darkness.

  “We had waited some time without any manifestation, and I felt myself growing sleepy with the monotony of it, when a sharp rap sounded suddenly from the tin cone lying on the table. Rat-tat-tat, it came with a quick, clicking beat, then ended with a heavier blow, which caused a distinct metallic clang. No sooner had this ceased than the table began to move, as though pushed by the medium’s feet; yet we had seen her ankles lashed securely to her chair and the knots sewed with thick linen thread.

  “Next instant we heard the tin horn scraping slowly across the table-top, as though being lifted with an effort, only to fall back again. This kept up several minutes; then a voice came to us, rather weakly, but still strong enough to be understood:

  A, B, C, D, E, F, G,

  All good people hark to me,

  Where you sit there, one two, three—

  “The senseless doggerel was spouted at us through the trumpet which had risen and floated through the air to the far corner of the room. I was about to rise in anger at the childishness of it all when something happened which arrested my attention. The room in which we sat was closed up tightly. We had seen the medium shut and lock the door, and all the windows were latched and heavy curtains hung before them. The place was intolerably hot, and the air had begun to grow stale and flat; but as I made a move to rise, there was a sudden chilling of the atmosphere, as though a draft of winter wind had blown into the room. No, that is not quite accurate. There was no wind nor any stirring of the air; rather, it was as though we had all been put into some vast refrigerator where the temperature was absolute zero. What gave me the impression of an air-current was an odd, whistling sound which accompanied the sudden change of temperature—something like the whirring which one hears when wind blows through telegraph wires in wintertime.

  “And as the chilling cold replaced the sultry heat, the piping, mincing voice reciting its inane drivel through the trumpet was replaced by another, a stronger voice, which laughed a cackling, spiteful laugh, then choked and retched and strangled, as though the throat from which it came were suddenly filled up with blood. The words it spoke were almost unintelligible, but not quite. I’d heard them fifteen years before, but they came back to me clearly, as though it had been yesterday:

  “‘Pig-dog, I’ll have her yet. Next time, I’ll come in such a way that you can not prevail against me!’

  “They broke off with in awful, gurgling rattle, and I recognized them. It was the threat that Tibor Czerni spewed at me that day in Buda-Pest when I ran my rapier through his throat and he lay choking in his blood upon the sidewalk of Maria Valeria Street!

  “Just then the trumpet fell crashing to the floor, and where it had been floating in the air there showed a spot of something luminous, like a monster bubble rising from some foul, miasmic swamp, and inside it, outlined by a sort of phosphorescence, showed the grinning, malignant face of Tibor Czerni.

  “The medium woke up shrieking from her trance. ‘Lights! For God’s sake, turn on the lights!’ she screamed. Then, as the lamps were lighted: ‘I’m a trumpet psychic; my controls never materialize, yet—’ she struggled with the bonds that held her to the chair in a p
erfect ecstasy of terror, crying, groaning, begging to be released, and it was not till we had cut the tapes that she could talk coherently. Then she ordered: ‘Get out; get out, all of you—someone here is followed by an evil spirit; one of you must have done it a great wrong when it was in the flesh—one of you is a murderer! Out of my house, the lot of you, and take your Nemesis with you!’”

  De Grandin tweaked the needle-points of his tightly waxed, diminutive mustache. “And the luminous globe, the one with Monsieur the Dead Man’s face in it, did it disappear when the lights went up?” he asked.

  “Yes,” responded Colonel Szekler, “but—”

  “But what, if you please, Monsieur?”

  “There was a distinct odor in the room, an odor which had not been present before Czerni’s cursed face appeared—it was the faint but unmistakable odor of decomposing flesh. Trust a soldier who has seen a hundred battlefield cemeteries plowed up by shell-fire weeks after the dead have been buried to recognize that smell!”

  For a long moment there was silence. Colonel Szekler looked at Jules de Grandin expectantly. Jules de Grandin turned a speculative eye on Colonel Szekler. At length: “Very well, Monsieur,” he agreed with a nod. “The case intrigues me. Let us go and see Mademoiselle your daughter.”

  2. Zita

  COLONEL SZEKLER’S HOUSE FACED the Albemarle Road, a mile or so outside of town. It was a big house, bowered in Norway spruce and English holly and flowering rhododendron, well back from the highway, with a stretch of smoothly mown lawn before and a well-tended rose garden on each side. There was no hallway, and we stepped directly into a big room which seemed to combine the functions of library, music room and living-room. And as a mirror gives back the image of the face which looks in it, so this single room reflected the character of the family we had come to serve. Books, piano, easy-chairs and sofas loomed in the dim light filtering through the close-drawn silken curtains. An easel with a partly finished water color on it stood by a north window; beside it was a table of age-mellowed cherry laden with porcelain dishes, tubes of color and scattered badger-hair brushes.