And from the bubble looked a face—a man’s face, evil as Mefisto’s own, instinct with cruelty and lechery and wild, vindictive triumph. The features were coarse, gross, heavy; bulbous lips, not red, but rather purple as though gorged with blood; a great hooked nose, not aquiline, but rather reminiscent of a vulture; dank, matted hair which clung in greasy strands to a low forehead; deepset, lack-luster eyes which burned like corpse-lights showing through the hollow sockets of a skull.
I started back involuntarily, but de Grandin thrust his hand into the pocket of his dinner coat and advanced upon the vision. “Gutter-spawn of hell,” he warned, “be off. Conjuro te; abire ad locum tuum!” With a wrenching motion he drew forth a flaçon, undid its stopper and hurled its contents straight against the gleaming bubble which encased the leering face.
The pearly drops of water struck the opalescent sphere as though it had been glass, some of them splashing on the sleeping, girl, some adhering to the globe’s smooth sides, but for all the effect they produced they might as well not have been thrown.
“Now, by the horns on Satan’s head—” the Frenchman began furiously, but stopped abruptly as the globe began to whirl again. As though it had derived its roundness from winding up the end of the smoke-column issuing from Zita’s side, so now it seemed that it reversed itself, becoming first oval as it turned, then elliptical, then long and sausage-shaped, finally merging with the trailing wisp of vapor which floated from the girl’s slim trunk, and which, even as we watched, was steadily withdrawn until it lost itself in her white flesh.
Zita was lying on her back, her arms stretched out as though she had been crucified, her breath coming in hot, fevered gasps, tears welling from beneath the lashes of her lowered lids.
“Now, look at this, my friend,” de Grandin ordered. “It was from here the vapor issued, was it not?”
He placed a finger over the girl’s side, and as I nodded he drew a needle from his lapel and thrust it to the eye in her soft flesh. I cried aloud at his barbarity, but he silenced me with a quick gesture, parted the wide meshes of her lace pajamas and held the bedside lamp above the acupuncture. The steel was almost wholly fleshed in her side; yet not only did she not cry out, but there was no sign of blood about the point of incision. It might as well have been dead tissue into which he thrust the needle.
“Whatever are you doing?” I demanded furiously.
“Merely testing,” he replied; then, contritely: “Non, I would not play with you, my friend. I did desire to assure myself of a local anesthesia at the point from which the ectoplasm issued. You know the olden story that witches and all those who sold themselves to Satan bore somewhere on their bodies an area insensible to pain. This was said to be because the Devil had possessed them. I shall not say it was not so; but what if the possession be involuntary, if the evil spirit of possession comes against the will of the possessed? Will there still be such local insensitive areas? I thought there would be. Pardieu, now I know. I have proved it!
“Now the task remains to us to devise some method of attack against this so vile miscreant. He has become as much physical as spiritual; consequently spiritual weapons are of little avail against him. Will the purely physical prevail, one wonders?”
“How d’ye mean?”
“Why, you saw what happened when I dashed the holy water on him—it did not seem to inconvenience him at all.”
“But, good heavens, man,” I argued, “how can that—whatever it was we saw—be both spiritual and physical? Doesn’t it have to be one or the other?”
“Not necessarily,” he answered. “You and I and all the rest of us are dually constructed: part physical body, part animating spirit. This unpleasant Czerni person was once the same, till Colonel Szekler killed him. Then he became wholly spirit, but evil spirit. And because he was a spirit he was powerless to work overt harm. He lacked a body for his evil work. Then finally came opportunity. At that cursed séance of Madame Claire’s, Mademoiselle Zita was an ideal tool to work his wickedness. It is a well-recognized fact among Spiritualists that the adolescent girl is regarded as the ideal medium, where it is desired that the spirits materialize. For why? Because such girls’ nerves are highly strung and their physical resistance weak. It is from such as these that imponderable, but nevertheless physical substance called ectoplasm is most easily ravished by the spirit desiring to materialize, to build himself a semi-solid body. Accordingly, Mademoiselle Zita was ideal for the vile Czerni’s purpose. From her he drew the ectoplasm to materialize at Madame Claire’s. When the ectoplasm flowed back to her, he went with it. This moment, Friend Trowbridge, he dwells within her, dominating her completely while she is asleep and the conscious mind is off its guard, drawing ectoplasm from her when he would make himself apparent. He can not do so often, she is not strong enough to furnish him the power for frequent materializations; but there he is, ever present, always seeking opportunity to injure her. We must cast him out, my friend, before he takes complete possession of her, and she becomes what the ancients called ‘possessed of a devil’; what we call insane.
“Come, let us go. I do not think that he will trouble her again tonight, and I have much studying to do before we come to final grips, I and this so vile revenant of the Red Gauntlets.”
4. Red Gauntlets of Czerni
“TROWBRIDGE, MY FRIEND, AWAKE, arouse yourself; get up!” de Grandin’s hail broke through my early-morning sleep. “Rise, dress, make haste, friend; we are greatly needed!”
“Eh?” I sat up drowsily and shook the sleep from my eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything, by blue!” he answered. “It is Mademoiselle Zita. She is hurt, maimed, injured. They have taken her to Mercy Hospital. We must hurry.
“No, I can not tell you the nature of her injuries,” he answered as we drove through the gray light of early dawn toward the hospital. “I only know that she is badly hurt. Colonel Szekler telephoned a few minutes ago and seemed in great distress. He said it was her hands—”
“Her hands?” I echoed. “How—”
“Cordieu, I said I do not know,” he flashed back. “But I damn suspect, and if my suspicions are well founded we must hasten and arrive before it is too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Oh, pour l’amour des porcs, talk less, drive faster, if you please, great stupid one!” he shouted.
COLONEL SZEKLER, GRAY-FACED AS a corpse, awaited us in the hospital’s reception room. “Himmelkreuzsakrament,” he swore through chattering teeth, “this is dreadful, unthinkable! My girl, my little Zita—” a storm of retching sobs choked further utterance, and he bowed his forehead on his arms and wept as though his heart were bursting.
“Courage, Monsieur,” de Grandin soothed. “All is not lost; tell us how it happened; what is it that befell Mademoiselle—”
“All isn’t lost, you say?” Colonel Szekler raised his tear-scarred face, and the wolfish gleam in his eyes was so dreadful that involuntarily I raised my arm protectively. “All isn’t lost, when my little girl is hopelessly deformed?—when she wears the red gauntlets of Czerni?”
“Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu, do you say it?” the Frenchman cried. “Attention, Monsieur; lay by your grief and tell me all—everything—immediately. There is not a moment to be wasted. I had the presentiment that this might be what happened, and I have made plans, but first I must know all. Speak, Monsieur! There will be time enough to grieve if our efforts prove futile. Now is the time for action.”
Laying small, white hands upon the colonel’s shoulders, he shook him almost as a dog might shake a rat, and the show of unexpected strength in one so small, no less than the physical violence, brought the colonel from his maze of grief.
“It was about three-quarters of an hour ago,” he began. “I’d gone to Zita’s room and found her resting peacefully; so, reassured, I lay down and fell asleep. Immediately, I began to dream. I was back in Buda-Pest again during the terror. Czerni was sitting in judgment on helpless victims of the B
olsheviki’s vengeance. One after another they were brought before him, soldiers of the king, nobles, members of the bourgeoisie—children, old men, women, anyone and everyone who had fallen into the clutches of his rowdies of the Red Guard. Always the judgment was the same—death. As well might a lamb have looked for mercy from the wolf-pack as a member of our class seek clemency from that mockery of a court where Tibor Czerni sat in judgment.
“Then they brought Zita in. She stood before him, proud and silent, as became her ancient blood, not deigning to offer any defense to the accusation of counter-revolutionary activities which they brought against her. I saw Czerni’s eyes light with lust as he looked at her, taking her in from head to foot with a lecherous glance that seemed to strip the garments from her body as he puckered up his gross, thick lips and smiled.
“‘The charges are not proved to my satisfaction,’ he declared when all the accusations had been made. ‘At least they are not sufficiently substantiated to merit the death sentence on this young lady. It would be a pity, too, to mar that pretty body with bullets or stretch that lovely throat out of proportion with the hangman’s rope. Besides, I know her parents, her charming mother and her proud, distinguished father. I owe them something, and I must pay my debt. Therefore, for their sakes, if not for her own charming self, I order this young lady to be set at liberty.’
“I saw a look of incredulous relief sweep over Zita’s face as he gave the order, but it was replaced by one of horror as he finished:
“‘Yes, comrades, set her free—but not until you’ve put red gauntlets on her!’
“And as I lay there gasping at the horror of my dream, I heard a laugh, high, cachinnating, triumphant, and awoke with the echo of it in my ears. Then, as I was about to fall asleep again, thanking heaven that I only dreamt, I heard Zita’s scream. Peal after peal of frenzied shrieks came from her room as she cried for mercy, called to me and her mother for help, then, becoming inarticulate, merely wailed in agony. As I ran headlong down the hall her screaming died away, and she was only moaning weakly when I reached her room.
“She lay across her bed, groaning in exhausted agony, like a helpless beast caught in the hunter’s trap, and her hands were stretched straight out before her.
“Her hands—Gott in Himmel, no! Her stumps! Her hands were crushed to bloody pulp and hung upon her wrists like mops of shredded cloth, sopping with red stickiness. Blood was over everything, the bed, the rug, the pillows and her sleeping-suit, and as I looked at her I could see it spurting from the mangled flesh of her poor, battered hands with every palpitation of her pounding heart.
“‘This, too, is a dream,’ I told myself, but when I crossed the room and touched her, I knew it was no dream. How it happened I don’t know, but somehow, through some damned black magic, Tibor Czerni has been able to come back from that hell where his monstrous spirit waits throughout eternity and work this mischief to my child; to disfigure her beyond redemption and make a helpless cripple of her.
“There was little I could do. I got some dressings from the bathroom and bound her hands, trying my best to staunch the flow of blood, ’phoned to Mercy Hospital for an ambulance; finally called you. We are lost. Czerni has triumphed.”
“WILL YOU SIGN THIS, sir?” the young intern, sick with revulsion at the ghastly phases of his trade, stepped almost diffidently into the reception room and presented a filled-in form to Colonel Szekler. “It’s your authority as next of kin for the operation.”
“Is it absolutely necessary—must they operate?” Colonel Szekler asked with a sharp intake of his breath.
“Good Lord, yes!” the young man answered. “It’s dreadful, sir; I never saw anything like it. Doctor Teach will have to take both hands off above the carpus, he says—”
“Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, but who will take what off above the which?” de Grandin interrupted. His voice was soft but there was murderous fury flashing in his small blue eyes.
“Doctor Teach, sir; the chief surgeon. He’s in the operating-room now, and as soon as Colonel Szekler signs this authorization—”
“Par la barbe d’un poisson, your youngest grandchild will have grown a long white beard before that happens!” the Frenchman cried. “Give me that cursed damned, abominable, execrable paper, if you please!” He snatched the form from the young doctor’s hand and tore it into shreds. “Go tell Doctor Teach that I shall do likewise to him if he so much as lays a finger on her,” he added.
“But you don’t understand, this is an emergency case,” the intern swallowed his anger, for Jules de Grandin’s reputation as a surgeon, had become a byword in the city’s clinics, and my thirty years and more of practise had lent respectability, if nothing more, to my professional standing. “Just look at her card!”
From his pocket he produced a duplicate of the reception record, and I read across de Grandin’s shoulder:
Right hand—Multiple fractures of carpus and metacarpus; compound comminutive fractures of first, second and third phalanges; rupture of flexor and reflexor muscles; short abductor muscle severed; multiple contusions of thenar eminence; multiple ecchymoses …
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed as the detailed catalogue of injuries burned itself into my brain; “he’s right, de Grandin: her hands are practically destroyed.”
“Parbleu, so will that sacré Doctor Teach be if he presumes to lay a hand on her!” he shot back fiercely; then, to Colonel Szekler:
“Retract your order of employment, Monsieur, I implore you. Tell them that they may not operate, at least until Doctor Trowbridge and I have had an opportunity to treat her. Do you realize what it means if that sale butcher is allowed to take her hands away?”
Colonel Szekler eyed him coldly. “I came to you in the hope of freeing her from the incubus that rested on her,” he replied. “They told me you were skilled in such things, and had helped others. You failed me. Czerni’s ghost took no more notice of your boasted powers than he did of the efforts of those medical fakers I’d called in. Now she is deformed, crippled past all hope of healing, and you ask another chance. You’d cure her? You haven’t even seen her poor, crushed hands. What assurance have I that—”
“Monsieur,” the little Frenchman broke in challengingly, “you are a soldier, are you not?”
“Eh? Yes, of course, but—”
“And you put the miscreant Czerni to death, n’est-ce-pas?”
“I did, but—”
“And you would not shrink from taking life again?”
“What—”
“Very good. I put my life in pawn for my success, Monsieur!” Reaching underneath his jacket he drew out the vicious little Ortgies automatic pistol cradled in its holster below his armpit and handed it to Colonel Szekler. “There are nine shots in it, Monsieur,” he said. “One will be enough to finish Jules de Grandin if he fails.”
“BUT THERE ISN’T A chance; not a ghost of a chance, Trowbridge!” stormed Doctor Teach when we told him that the colonel had withheld permission for the operation. “I’ve seen de Grandin do some clever tricks in surgery—he’s a good workman, I’ll give him that—but anyone who holds out hope of saving that girl’s hands is a liar or a fool or both. I tell you, it’s hopeless; utterly hopeless.”
“Do you drink, Monsieur?” de Grandin interjected mildly, apropos of nothing.
Doctor Teach favored him with a stare beside which that bestowed by Cotton Mather on a Salem witch would have been a lover’s ardent glance. “I don’t quite see it’s any of your business,” he answered coldly, “but as a matter of fact I do sometimes indulge.”
“Ah, bon, meilleur; mieux. Let us wager. When all is done, let us drink glass for glass till one of us can drink no more, and if I save her hands you pay the score; if not, I shall. You agree?”
“You’ve an odd sense of humor, sir, jesting at a time like this.”
“Ah, mon Dieu, hear him!” de Grandin cried as he rolled his eyes toward heaven. “As if good brandy could ever be a cause for jest!”
&nb
sp; “WELL, YOU’VE GOT YOURSELF into a nice fix, I must say!” I chided as we sat beside the cot where Zita Szekler lay, still drugged with morphine. “You’ve no more chance of saving this poor child’s hands than I have of flying to the moon, and if I know anything of human nature, Colonel Szekler will take you at your word when he finds you can’t make good your promise, and shoot you like a dog. Besides, you’ve made me look ridiculous by seeming to back you in your insane—”
“S-s-st!” his sharp hiss shut me off. “Be quiet, if you please. I would think, and can not do so for your ceaseless jabbering.”
He rose, went to the wall telephone and called the office. “Is all in readiness, exactly as I ordered?” he demanded. A pause; then: “Bon, très bon, Mademoiselle; have them bring the sweeper to this floor immediately, and have the saline solution all in readiness in the operating-room.
“What the deuce—” I began, but he waved me silent.
“I arranged for my matériel de siège while they were transporting her,” he answered with a smile. “Now, if Monsieur le Revenant will only put in his appearance—ah, parbleu, what have we here? By damn, I think he does!”
The drugged girl on the bed began to stir and moan as though she suffered an unpleasant dream, and I became aware of a faint, unpleasant smell which cut through the mingled aroma of disinfectant and anesthetic permeating the hospital atmosphere. For a moment I was at a loss to place it; then, suddenly, I knew. Across the span of years my memory flew to the days of my internship, when I had to make my periodic visits to the city mortuary. That odor of decaying human flesh once smelled can never be forgotten, nor can all the deodorants under heaven quite drive it from the air.
And now the girl’s soft breast was heaving tremulously, and her features were distorted by a faint grimace of suffering. Her brows drew downward, and along her cheeks deep lines were cut, as though she were about to weep.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 57
