Beside the concert-grand piano was a music-stand on which a violin rested, and the polished barrel of a cello showed beyond the music-bench. A bunch of snowballs nodded from a crystal vase upon a table, a spray of mimosa let its saffron grains fall in a graceful shower across a violet lampshade. Satsuma ash-trays stood on little tables beside long cigarette boxes of cedar cased in silver. Everywhere were books; books in French, German, Italian and English, some few in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.
De Grandin took the room in with a quick, appraising glance. “Pardieu, they live with happy richness, these ones,” he advised me in a whisper. “If Mademoiselle makes good one-tenth the promise of this room, cordieu, it will have been a privilege to have served her!”
“Mademoiselle” did. When she came in answer to her father’s call she proved to be a slender, straight young thing of middle height, blond like her sire, betraying her Tartar ancestry, as he did, in her high cheek-bones and slightly slanting eyes. Her face, despite the hallmark of non-Aryan stock, was sweet and delicate as the blossom of an almond tree—“but a wilting blossom,” I told myself as I noted white, transparent skin through which showed veins in fine blue lines. There was no flush upon her cheek, no light of fever in her eyes, but had she been my patient I should have ordered her to bed at once, and then to Saranac or Colorado.
“Mother’s gone downtown,” she told her father in a soft and gentle voice. “I know that she’ll be sorry when she hears these gentlemen have called while she was out.”
“Perhaps it’s just as well she’s out,” the colonel answered. “Doctor de Grandin is a very famous occultist, as well as a physician, and I’ve called him into consultation because I am convinced that something more than bodily fatigue is responsible for your condition, dear. Will you be kind enough to tell him everything he wants to know?”
“Of course,” she answered with a faint and rather wistful smile. “What is it that you’d like to hear about, Doctor? My illness? I’m not really ill, you know, just terribly, terribly tired. Rest and sleep don’t seem to do me any good, for I rise as exhausted as when I go to bed, and the tonics they have given me”—she pulled a little face, half comic, half pathetic—“all they do is make my stomach ache.”
“Ah bah, those tonics, those noisome medicines!” the little Frenchman nodded in agreement. “I know them. They pucker up the mouth, they make the tongue feel rough and sore—mon Dieu, what must they do to the poor stomach!”
Abruptly he sobered, and: “Let us have the physical examination first,” he ordered.
At the end of half an hour I was more than puzzled, I was utterly bewildered. Her temperature and pulse were normal, her skin was neither dry nor moist, but exactly as a healthy person’s skin should be; fremitus was in nowise more than usual; upon percussion there was no indication of impaired resonance, and the stethoscope could find no trace of mucous rales. Whatever else the young girl suffered from, I was prepared to stake my reputation it was not tuberculosis.
“Now, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin asked as he completed jotting down our findings in his notebook, “do you recall the night that you and your parents attended Madame Claire’s séance?”
“Of course; perfectly.”
“Tell us, if you please, when first you saw the face within the globe of light. How did it look to you? Describe it, if you will.”
“I didn’t see it, sir.”
“Morbleu, you did not see it? How was that?”
A faint flush crept across the girl’s pale cheeks, then she laughed a soft, low, gurgling laugh, half embarrassment, half amusement. “I was asleep,” she confessed. “Somehow, I’d been very tired that day—not as tired as I am now, but far more tired than my usual wont, and the air in Madame Claire’s drawing-room seemed close and stuffy. Almost as soon as the lights were shut off I began to feel drowsy, and I closed my eyes—just for a minute, as I thought. The next thing I knew the lights were up and Madame Claire was trying to shriek and talk and cry, all at the same time. I couldn’t make out what it was about, and it was several days before I heard about the face; the only way I know about it now is from piecing scraps of conversation together, for I didn’t like to ask. It would have hurt poor Mother dreadfully if she knew I’d gone to sleep at one of her precious sittings with the spirits.”
“Ah? So she has attended these séances often?”
“Gracious, yes! She pretended to Father that the one we went to was her first, but she’d been going to Madame Claire for over a year before she plucked up courage to ask Dad to go with her.”
“And had you ever gone with her before?”
“No, sir.”
“U’m. Now tell me: have you been subject to unusual dreams since that night at Madame Claire’s?”
The blush which mantled her pale face and throat and mounted to her brow was startling in its vividness. Her long, pansy-blue eyes were suddenly suffused with tears, and she cast her glance demurely down until it rested on the silver cross-straps of her boudoir sandals. “Y-yes,” she answered hesitantly. “I—I’ve had dreams.”
“And they are—?” he paused with lifted brows, and I could see the sudden flicker in his little, round blue eyes which presaged keen excitement or sudden, murderous rage.
“I’d rather not describe them, sir,” her answer was a muted whisper, but the deep flush stained her face and throat and brow again.
“No matter, Mademoiselle, you need not do so,” he told her with a quick and reassuring smile. “Some things are better left unsaid, even in the medical consulting-room or the confessional.”
“INVITE US OUT TO dinner, if you please,” he told the colonel as we parted on the porch. “Already I have formed a theory of the case, and if I am not right, parbleu, I am much more mistaken than I think.”
“DON’T YOU THINK YOU should have pushed the examination further?” I demanded as we drove back to town. “If Zita Szekler’s trouble is psychic, or spiritual, if you prefer, an analysis of her dreams should prove helpful. You know Freud says—”
“Ah bah,” he interrupted with a laugh, “who in Satan’s naughty name cares what that old one says? Was it necessary that she should tell her secret dreams to me? Cordieu, I should say otherwise! That melting eye, that lowered glance, that quick, face-burning blush, do they mean nothing in your life, my friend, or is it that you grow so old and chilly-blooded that the sweet and subtle memories—”
“Confound you, be quiet!” I cut in. “If externals are any indication, I’d say the girl’s in love; madly, infatuatedly in love, and—by George”—I broke off with a sudden inspiration—“that may be it! ‘Love sickness’ isn’t just a jesting term; I’ve seen adolescents actually made ill by the thwarting of suppressed desire, and Zita Szekler’s an Hungarian. They’re different from the colder-blooded Nordics; like the Turks and Greeks and even the Italians and Spaniards, they actually suffer from an excess of pent-up emotion and—”
“Oh là, là—hear him spout!” the little Frenchman cut in with a chuckle. “You are positively droll, my olden one. And yet,” he sobered suddenly, “you have arrived at half—no, a quarter—of the truth in your so awkward, blundering fashion. She is in love; sick—drunk—exhausted with it, mon ami; but not the kind of love you think of.
“Consider all the facts, if you will be so kind: What do we discover? This very devil of a fellow, Tibor Czerni, has made overtures to Madame Szekler while her husband is away. For that the colonel kills him, very properly. But what does Czerni say while he is dying on the sidewalk? He promises to come back, to have the object of his black and evil heart’s desire, and to come in such a way that all resistance to his coming shall be unavailing. N’est-ce-pas?
“Very well, then. What next? The years have come and gone. Madame Szekler has grown older. Doubtless she is charming still, but Time has little pity on a woman. She has grown older. Ah, but her little, infant daughter, she has ripened with the passing of the seasons. She has grown to sweet and blooming womanhood. Have we not seen her?
But certainly. And”—he put his gathered fingers to his lips and wafted an ecstatic kiss up toward the evening sky—“she is the very blossom of the peach, the flower of the jasmine; she is the morning dew upon the rose—mordieu, she is not trying on the eyes!
“Now, what turned Madame Szekler’s thoughts to spiritism? One does not surely know, but one may guess. Was it only the preying thought of her loneliness at the loss of her first child, or was it not, perhaps, the evil influence of that wicked one who was constantly hovering over the house of Szekler like the shadow of a pestilence; ever dwelling on the threshold of their lives with intent to do them evil?”
“You mean to intimate—” I started, but:
“Be quiet,” he commanded sharply. “I am thinking.
“At any rate his opportunity arrived at last. Poor Madame Szekler sought out the medium and let her guard be lowered. There was the opening through which this evil, discarnate entity could inject himself, the doorway, all unguarded, through which he might proceed to spoil the very treasure-house of Szekler. Yes.
“You realize, my friend, that a spiritualistic séance is as unsafe to the spirit as a smallpox case is to the body?”
“How’s that?”
“Because there are low-grade discarnate entities, just as there are low-grade mortals, spirits which have never inhabited human form—but which would like to—and the lowest and most vicious spirits whose human lives have been but cycles of wickedness and debauchery. These invariably infest the sittings of the spiritists, ever seeking for an opening through which they may once more regain the world and work their wicked wills. You know the mediums work through ‘controls’? Ha, I tell you the line of demarcation between innocent ‘control’ by some benevolently-minded spirit and possession by an evil entity is a very, very narrow one. Sometimes there is no line at all.
“Now, how can an evil spirit enter in a human body—gain possession of it? Chiefly by dominating that body’s human will. It is this will-dominance, which is akin to hypnotism, that is the starting, the danger-point from which all evil things work forward. You have been to séances; you know their technique. The dual state of mental concentration and muscular relaxation which is necessary on the part of everyone for the evocation of the medium’s control is closely analogous to that state of passive consent which the hypnotist demands of his subject. If a person attending a séance chances to be in delicate health, so much the worse for him—or her. The evil spirit, striving for control of mortal flesh, can force his way into that body more easily than if it were a vigorous one, precisely as the germ of a physical disease can find a favorable place to incubate where the phagocytic army of defense is weak.
“Now, consider Mademoiselle Zita’s condition on the evening of that so abominable séance. She was ‘tired’, she said, so tired that when she ‘closed her eyes just for a moment’ she fell into instant slumber. Was her sleep a natural one, or was it but a state of trance induced by the wicked spirit of the wicked Czerni? Who can say?
“At any rate, we know that Czerni’s spirit materialized, though Madame Claire declared no spirits ever did so in her séances before. Moreover, while the innocuous control of Madame Claire was making a fool of itself by reciting that so silly verse, it was roughly shouldered from the way, and Czerni’s dying threat was bellowed through the trumpet, after which the trumpet tumbled to the floor and Czerni showed his wicked face.
“He has come back, even as he promised, my friend. The materialization which the colonel witnessed in his home the other day establishes the fact. And he has come back to fulfill his threat; only, instead of possessing the mother, as he swore to do when he was dying, he has transferred his vile attentions to the young and lovely daughter. Yes, of course.
“Oh, you’re fantastic!” I derided.
“Possibly,” he nodded gloomily. “But I am also right, my friend. I would that I were not.”
3. The Phantom Lover
MADAME SZEKLER, WHO PRESIDED at dinner, proved as representative of the old, vanished order of Hungarian society as her husband. Well beyond the borderline of middle age, she still retained appealing charm and beauty, with a slender, exquisitely formed figure which lent distinction to her Viennese dinner gown, a face devoid of lines or wrinkles as a girl’s, high-browed but heavy-lidded eyes of pansy blue and a pale but flawless skin. Her hair, close-cropped as a man’s and brushed straight back with a flat marcelle, was gleaming-white as a cloud adrift upon a summer sky, and gave added charm, rather than any impression of age, to her cameo-clear features.
“Zita was too tired to come to dinner; I left her sleeping soundly shortly after you had gone,” Colonel Szekler apologized, and de Grandin bowed assent.
“It is well for her to get as much rest as she can,” he answered; then, in an aside to me:
“It is better so, Friend Trowbridge; I would observe Madame at dinner, and I can do so better in her daughter’s absence. Do you regard her, too, if you will be so kind. Ladies of her age are apt to become neurotic. I should value your opinion.”
Dinner was quite gay, for de Grandin’s spirits rose perceptibly when the main course proved to be boned squab, basted in wine, stuffed with Carolina wild rice and served with orange ice. When the glasses were filled with vintage Tokay he seemed to have forgotten the existence of such a thing as trouble, and his witty sallies brought repeated chuckles from the colonel and even coaxed a smile to Madame Szekler’s sad, aristocratic lips.
The meal concluded, we adjourned to the big living-room, where coffee and liqueurs were served while de Grandin and I smoked cigars and our host and hostess puffed at long, slim cigarettes which were one-third paper mouthpiece.
“But it grows late,” the little Frenchman told us as he concluded one of his inimitable anecdotes; “let us go upstairs and see how Mademoiselle Zita does.”
The girl was sleeping peacefully when we looked into her room, and I was about to go downstairs again when de Grandin plucked me by the sleeve.
“Wait here, my friend,” he bade. “It yet wants a half-hour until midnight, and it is then that he is most likely to appear.”
‘You think she’s apt to have another—visitation?” Madame Szekler asked. “Oh, if I thought that wretched séance were the cause of this, I’d kill myself. I only wanted to be near my boy, but—”
“Do not distress yourself, Madame,” de Grandin interrupted. “He was bound to find a way to enter in, that one. The séance did at most but hasten his advent—and that of Jules de Grandin. Leave us with her, if you please. If nothing happens, all is well; if she is visited, we shall be here to take such steps as may be necessary.”
FOR HOURS OUR VIGIL by the sleeping girl was uneventful. Her breath came soft and regular: she did not even change position as she slept; and I stood by the window, smothering back a yawn and wishing that I had not drunk so much Tokay at dinner. Abruptly:
“Trowbridge, my friend, observe!” de Grandin’s low, sharp whisper summoned my attention.
Turning, I saw that the girl had cast aside the covers and lay upon her bed, her slender, supple body showing pale as carven alabaster through the meshes of her black-lace sleeping-suit. As I looked I saw her head move restlessly from side to side, and heard a little moan escape her. I was reminded of a sleepy, ailing child registering protest at being waked to take unpleasant-tasting medicine.
But not for long was this reluctance shown. Slowly, almost tentatively, like one who feels her cautious way through darkness, she put forth one exquisitely small foot and then the other, hesitated for a breath, then rose up from her couch, a smile of blissful joy upon her face. And though her eyes were closed, she seemed to see her path as she walked half-way across the room, then halted suddenly, stretched out her arms, then clasped them tightly, as though she never would let go of what she held. Head back, lips parted, she raised herself and stood on tiptoe, scarcely seeming to touch the floor. It was as if, by some sort of levitation, she were lifted up and really floated in the air, anchored to earth
only by the pink-tipped toes of her small feet. Or was it not—my heart stood still as the thought crashed through my mind—was it not as though she yielded herself to the embrace of someone taller than herself, someone who clasped her in his arms, all but lifting her from her feet while he rained kisses on her yearning mouth?
A little, moaning gasp escaped her, and she staggered backward dizzily, still hugging something which we could not see against her breast, her every movement more like that of one who leaned upon another for support than one who walked unaided. She fell across the bed. Her eyes were still fast-shut, but she thrust her head a little forward, as though she seemed to see ecstatic visions through the lowered lids. Her pale cheeks flushed, her lips fell back in the sweet curve of an eager, avid smile. She raised her hands, making little downward passes before her face, as though she stroked the cheeks of one who leant above her, and a gentle tremor shook her slender form as her slim bosom seemed to swell and her lips opened and closed slowly, blissfully, in a pantomime of kissing. A deep sigh issued from between her milk-white teeth; then her breath came short and jerkily in quick exhausted gasps.
“Grand Dieu—l’incube!” de Grandin whispered. “See, my friend?”
“L’incube—incubus—nightmare? I should say so!” I exclaimed. “Quick, waken her, de Grandin; this sort of thing may lead to erotomania!”
“Be still!” he whispered sharply. “I did not say an incubus, but the incubus. This is no nightmare, my friend, it is a foul being from the world beyond who woos a mortal woman—observe, behold, regardez-vous!”
From Zita’s side, three inches or so below the gentle prominence of her left breast, there came a tiny puff of smoke, as from a cigarette. But it was renewed, sustained, growing from a puff to a stream, from a stream to a column, finally mushrooming at the top to form a nebulous, white pompon which whirled and gyrated and seemed to spin upon its axis, growing larger and more solid-seeming with each revolution. Then the grayish-whiteness of the vapor faded, took on translucence, gradually became transparent, and like a soap-bubble of gigantic size floated upward till it rested in the air a foot or so above the girl’s ecstatic countenance.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 56
