“Tonight?”
“Précisément. This is the twenty-third of June, Midsummer’s Eve. Tonight in half the world the bonfires spring in sudden flame on mountain and in valley, by rushing river and by quiet lake. In France and Norway, Hungary and Spain, Rumania and Sweden, you could see the flares stand out against the blackness of the night while people dance about them and chant charms against the powers of Evil. On Midsummer’s Eve the witches and the wizards wake to power; tonight, if ever, that which menaces our little friend will manifest itself. Let us be on hand to thwart it—if we can.”
“GRETA’S DANCING AT THE Country Club,” said Mrs. Friebergh when we called to see our patient late that evening. “I didn’t want her to go, she’s seemed so feverish and nervous all day long, but she insisted she was well enough, so—”
“Precisely, Madame,” Jules de Grandin nodded. “It is entirely probable that she will feel no ill effects, but for precaution’s sake we will look in at the dance and see how she sustains the strain of exercise.”
“But I thought you said that we were going to the club,” I remonstrated as he touched my arm to signal a left turn. “But we are headed toward the cemetery—”
“But naturally, my friend; there is the grave of Madame Kristina; there the small white cat-thing keeps its watch; there we must go to see the final act played to its final curtain.”
He shifted the small bundle on his knees and began unfastening the knots which bound it.
“What’s that?” I asked.
For answer he tore off the paper and displayed a twelve-gage shotgun, its double barrels sawed off short against the wood.
“Good Lord!” I murmured; “whatever have you brought that for?”
He smiled a trifle grimly as he answered, “To test the soundness of the advice which I bestowed upon myself this morning.”
“Advice you gave yourself—good heavens, man, you’re raving!”
“Perhapsly so,” he grinned. “There are those who would assure you that de Grandin’s cleverness is really madness, while others will maintain his madness is but cleverness disguised. We shall know more before we grow much older, I damn think.”
THE AIR SEEMED THICK and heavy with a brooding menace as we made our way across the mounded graves. Silence, choking as the dust of ages in a mummy-tomb, seemed to bear down on us, and the chirping of a cricket in the grass seemed as loud and sharp as the scraping of metal against metal as we picked our path between the tombstones. The stars, caught in a web of overhanging cloud, were paling in the luminance which spread from the late-rising moon, and despite myself I felt the ripple of a chill run up my back and neck. The dead had lain here quietly two hundred years and more, they were harmless, powerless, but—reason plays no part when instinct holds the reins, and my heart beat faster and my breathing quickened as we halted by the tombstone which marked Kristina Friebergh’s grave.
I cannot compute the time we waited. Perhaps it was an hour, perhaps several, but I felt as though we had crouched centuries among the moon-stained shrubbery and the halftones of the purple shadows when de Grandin’s fingers on my elbow brought me from my semi-dream to a sort of terrified alertness. Down by the ancient lich-gate through which ten generations of the village dead had come to their last resting-place, a shadow moved among the shadows. Now it lost itself a moment; now it stood in silhouette against the shifting highlights on the corpse-road where the laurel bushes swayed in the light breeze. Terror touched me like a blast of icy wind. I was like a little, frightened boy who finds himself deserted in the darkness.
Now a tiny spot of lightness showed against the blackened background of the night; a second spot of orange light shone out, and I descried the form of Greta Friebergh coming slowly toward us. She was dressed in red, a bright-red evening dress of pleated net with surplice sleeves and fluted hem, fitted tightly, at the waistline, molding her slender, shapely hips, swirling about her toeless silver sandals. In each hand she bore a candle which licked hungrily against the shadows with its little, flickering tongue of orange flame. Just before her, at the outer fringe of candlelight, walked a little chalk-white kitten, stepping soundlessly on dainty paws, leading her unhurriedly toward the grave where Kristina Friebergh lay as a blind man’s poodle might escort its master.
I would have spoken, but de Grandin’s warning pressure on my arm prevented utterance as he pointed silently across the graveyard to the entrance through which Greta had just come.
Following cautiously, dodging back of tombstones, taking cover behind bushes, but keeping at an even distance from the slowly pacing girl, was another figure. At a second glance I recognized him. It was young Karl Pettersen.
Straight across the churchyard Greta marched behind her strange conductor, halted by the tombstone at the head of Kristina’s grave, and set her feebly flaring candles in the earth as though upon an altar.
For a moment she stood statue-still, profiled against the moon, and I saw her fingers interlace and writhe together as if she prayed for mercy from inexorable fate; then she raised her hands, undid snap-fasteners beneath her arms and shook her body with a sort of lazy undulation, like a figure in a slowed-down motion picture, freeing herself from the scarlet evening gown and letting it fall from her.
Straight, white and slim she posed her ivory nakedness in silhouette against the moon, so still that she seemed the image of a woman rather than a thing of flesh and blood, and we saw her clasp her hands behind her, straining wrists and elbows pressed together as though they had been bound with knotted thongs, and on her features came a look of such excruciating pain that I was forcibly reminded of the pictures of the martyrs which the mediæval artists painted with such dreadful realism.
She turned and writhed as though in deadly torment, her head swayed toward one shoulder, then the other; her eyes were staring, almost starting from their sockets; her lips showed ruddy froth where she gnashed them with her teeth; and on her sides and slim, white flanks, upon her satin-gleaming shoulders, her torture-corded neck and sweetly rounded breasts, there flowered sudden spots of red, cruel, blood-marked wounds which spouted little streams of ruby fluid as though a merciless, sharp skewer probed and stabbed and pierced the tender, wincing flesh.
A wave of movement at the grave’s foot drew our glance away from the tormented girl. Karl Pettersen stood there at the outer zone of candlelight, his face agleam with perspiration, eyes bright and dilated as though they had been filled with belladonna. His mouth began to twist convulsively and his hands shook in a nervous frenzy.
“Look—look,” he slobbered thickly, “she’s turning to the witch! She’s not my Greta, but the wicked witch they killed so long ago. They’re testing her to find the witch-mark; soon they’ll drown her in the bay—I know the story; every fifty years the witch-cat claims another victim to go through the needle-torture, then—”
“You have right, mon vieux, but I damn think it has found its last one,” interrupted Jules de Grandin as he rested his shotgun in the crook of his left elbow and pulled both triggers with a jerk of his right hand.
Through a smoky pompon flashed twin flares of flame, and the shotgun’s bellow was drowned out by a strangling scream of agony. Yet it was not so much a cry of pain as of wild anger, maniacal, frenzied with thwarted rage. It spouted up, a marrow-freezing geyser of terrifying sound, and the kitten which had crouched at Greta’s feet seemed literally to fly to pieces. Though the double charge of shotgun slugs had hit it squarely, it did not seem to me that it was ripped to shreds, but rather as though its tiny body had been filled with some form of high explosive, or a gas held at tremendous pressure, and that the penetrating slugs had liberated this and caused a detonation which annihilated every vestige of the small, white, furry form.
As the kitten vanished, Greta dropped down to the ground unconscious, and, astoundingly, as though they had been wiped away by magic, every sign of pulsing, bleeding wounds was gone, leaving her pale skin unscarred and without blemish in the faintly gleaming candlel
ight.
“And now, Monsieur, s’il vous plait!” With an agile leap de Grandin crossed the grave, drew back his sawed-off shotgun and brought its butt-plate down upon Karl’s head.
“Good heavens, man, have you gone crazy?” I demanded as the youngster slumped down like a pole-axed ox.
“Not at all, by no means; otherwise, entirely, I assure you,” he answered as he gazed down at his victim speculatively. “Look to Mademoiselle, if you will be so kind; then help me carry this one to the motorcar.”
Clumsily, I drew the scarlet ballgown over Greta’s shoulders, then grasped her underneath the arms, stood her on unconscious feet a moment and let the garment fall about her. She was scarcely heavier than a child, and I bore her to the car with little effort, then returned to help de Grandin with Karl Pettersen.
“What ever made you do it?” I demanded as we set out for my office.
Pleased immensely with himself, he hummed a snatch of tune before he answered: “It was expedient that he should be unconscious at this time, my friend. Undoubtlessly he followed Mademoiselle Greta from the dance, saw her light the candles and disrobe herself, then show the bleeding stigma of the witch. You heard what he cried out?”
“Yes.”
“Très bon. They love each other, these two, but the memory of the things which he has seen tonight would come between them and their happiness like a loathsome specter. We must eliminate every vestige of that memory, and of the wound she dealt him, too. But certainly. When they recover consciousness I shall be ready for them. I shall wipe their memories clean of those unpleasant things. Assuredly; of course.”
“How can you do that?”
“By hypnotism. You know I am an adept at it, and these two, exhausted, all weakened with the slowly leaving burden of unconsciousness, will offer little opposition to my will. To implant suggestions which shall ripen and bear fruit within their minds will be but child’s play for me.”
We drove along in silence a few minutes; then, chuckling, he announced: “Tiens, she is the lucky girl that Jules de Grandin is so clever. Those other ones were not so fortunate. There was no Jules de Grandin to rescue Sarah Spotswood from her fate, nor the others, either. No. The same process was beginning in this case. First came a feeling of aversion for her lover, a reluctance to embrace him. That was the will of wickedness displacing her volition. Then, all unconsciously, she struck him with a knife, but the subjugation of her will was not complete. The will of evilness forced her hand to strike the blow, but her love for him withheld it, so that he suffered but a little so small scratch.”
“Do you mean to tell me Kristina Friebergh was responsible for all these goings-on?” I asked.
“No-o, I would not say it,” he responded thoughtfully. “I think she was a most unfortunate young woman, more sinned against than sinning. That sacré petit chat—that wicked little cat-thing—was her evil genius, and that of Sarah Spotswood and the other girls, as well as Mademoiselle Greta. You remember Monsieur Friebergh’s story, how his several times great-uncle found the little Kristina trying to force her way into the flames which burnt her parents, with a little kitten clutched tight in her arms? That is the explanation. Her parents were undoubtlessly convicted justly for the crime of witchcraft, and the little cat-thing was the imp by which they worked their evil spells. When they were burnt, the cat-familiar lingered on and attached itself to their poor daughter. It had no evil work to do, for there is no record that Kristina indulged in witchery. But it was a devil’s imp, instinct with wickedness, and her very piety and goodness angered it; accordingly it brought her to a tragic death. Then it must find fresh source of nourishment, since witches’ imps, like vampires, perpetuate themselves by sucking human blood. Accordingly it seized on Sarah Spotswood as a victim, and took her blood and sanity, finally her life. For half a century it lived on the vitality it took from that unfortunate young woman, then—pouf!—another victim suffers, goes insane and dies. Each fifty years the process is repeated till at last it comes to Mademoiselle Greta—and to me. Now all is finished.”
“But I saw you toss a stone at it last night without effect,” I argued, “yet tonight—”
“Précisément. That gave me to think. ‘It can make a joke of ordinary missiles,’ I inform me when I saw it let the stone I threw pass through its body. ‘This being so, what are we to do with it, Jules de Grandin?’
“‘Phantoms and werewolves which are proof against the ordinary bullet can be killed by shots of silver,’ I reply.
“‘Very well, then, Jules de Grandin,’ I say to me; ‘let us use a silver bullet.’
“‘Ha, but this small cat-thing are an artful dodger, you might miss it,’ I remind me; so I make sure there shall be no missing. From the silversmith I get some silver filings, and with these I stuff some shotgun shells. ‘Now, Monsieur le Chat,’ I say, ‘if you succeed in dodging these, you will astonish me.’
“Eh bien, it was not I who was astonished, I damn think.”
WE TOOK THE CHILDREN to my surgery, and while I went to seek some wine and biscuit at de Grandin’s urgent request, he placed them side by side upon the couch and took his stance before them.
When I tiptoed back some fifteen minutes later, Greta lay sleeping peacefully upon the sofa, while Karl was gazing fascinated into Jules de Grandin’s eyes.
“… and you will remember nothing but that you love her and she loves you, Monsieur,” I heard de Grandin say, and heard the boy sigh sleepily in acquiescence.
“Why, we’re in Doctor Trowbridge’s surgery!” exclaimed Greta as she opened her eyes.
“But yes, of course,” de Grandin answered. “You and Monsieur Karl had a little, trifling accident upon the road, and we brought you here.”
“Karl dear”—for the first time she seemed to notice the scratch upon his neck—“you’ve been hurt!”
“Ah bah, it is of no importance, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin told her with a laugh. “Those injuries are of the past, and tonight the past is dead. See, we are ready to convey you home, but first”—he filled the glasses with champagne and handed them each one—“first we shall drink to your happiness and forgetfulness of all the things which happened in the bad old days.”
Suicide Chapel
ALTHOUGH THE CALENDAR DECLARED it was late May the elements and the thermometer denied it. All day the rain had streamed torrentially and the wind keened like a moaning banshee through the newly budded leaves that furred the maple boughs. Now the raving tempest laid a lacquer-like veneer of driven water on the window-pane and howled a bawdy chanson down the chimney where a four-log fire was blazing on the hearth. Fresh from a steaming shower and smelling most agreeably of Roman Hyacinth, Jules de Grandin sat before the fire and gazed with unconcealed approval at the toe tip of his purple leather slipper. A mauve silk scarf was knotted Ascot fashion round his throat, his hands were drawn up in the sleeves of his deep violet brocade dressing-gown, and on his face was that look of somnolent content which well-fed tomcats wear when they are thoroughly at peace with themselves and the world. “Not for a thousand gold Napoléons would I set foot outside this house again tonight,” he told me as he dipped into the pocket of his robe, fished out a pack of “Marylands” and set one of the evil-smelling things alight. “Three times, three separate, distinct times, have I been soaked to saturation in this sacré rain today. Now, if the Empress Josèphine came to me in the flesh and begged that I should go with her, I would refuse the assignation. Regretfully, mais certainement, but definitely. Me, I would not stir outside the door for—”
“Sergeant Costello, if ye plaze, sor,” came the rich Irish brogue of Nora McGinnis, my household factotum, who appeared outside the study entrance like a figure materialized in a vaudeville illusion. “He says it’s most important, sor.”
“Tiens, bid him enter, ma petite, and bring a bottle of the Irish whisky from the cellar,” de Grandin answered with a smile; then:
“C’est véritablement toi, ami?” he asked as the big Irishman ca
me in and held cold-reddened fingers to the fire. “What evil wind has blown you out on such a fetid night?”
“Evil is th’ word, sor,” Costello answered as he drained the glass de Grandin proffered. “Have ye been radin’ in th’ papers of th’ Cogswell gur-rl’s disappearin’, I dunno?”
“But yes, of course. Was she not the young woman who evaporated from her dormitory at the Shelton School three months ago? You have found her, mon vieux? You are to be congratulated. In my experience—”
“Would yer experience tell ye what to do when a second gur-rl pops outa sight in pracizely th’ same manner, lavin’ nayther hide nor hair o’ clue?”
De Grandin’s small blue eyes closed quickly, then opened wide, for all the world like an astonished cat’s. “But surely, there is some little trace of evidence, some hint of hidden romance, some—”
“Some nothin’ at all, sor. Three months ago today th’ Cogswell gur-rl went to ’er room immejiately afther class. Th’ elevator boy who took her up seen her walk down th’ hall, two classmates said hello to her. Then she shut her door, an’ shut herself outa th’ wor-rld entirely, so it seems. Nobody’s seen or heard o’ her since then. This afthernoon, just afther four o’clock, th’ Lefètre gur-rl comes from th’ lab’ratory, goes straight to ’er room an’”—he paused and raised his massive shoulders in a ponderous shrug—“there’s another missin’-persons case fer me to wrastle wid. I’ve come to ask yer help, sor.”
De Grandin pursed his lips and arched his narrow brows. “I am not interested in criminal investigation, mon sergent.”
“Not even to save an old pal in a hot spot, sor?”
“Hein? How is it you say?”
“’Tis this way, sor. When th’ Cogswell gur-rl evaporated, as ye say, they gave th’ case to me, though be rights it b’longed to th’ Missin’ Persons Bureau. Well, sor, when a gur-rl fades out that way there may be anny number o’ good reasons fer it, but mostly it’s because she wants to. An’ th’ more ye asks th’ family questions th’ less ye learn. ‘Had she anny, love affairs?’ sez you, an’ ‘No!’ sez they, as if ye’d been set on insultin’ her. ‘Wuz she happy in her home?’ ye asks, an’ ‘Certainly, she wuz!’ they tells ye, an’ they imply ye’ve hinted that they bate her up each night at eight o’clock an’ matinees at two-fifteen. So it goes. Each time ye try to git some reason for her disappearin’ act they gits huffier an’ huffier till finally they sez they’re bein’ persecuted, an’ ye git th’ wor-rks, both from th’ chief an’ newspapers.”
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 69
