“You are involved, my friend?” De Grandin’s small eyes widened with concern.
“In a way, yes. I should have knocked the little blighter silly the minute that he volunteered, or at least have told the Chief he wasn’t to be trusted. As it was, I rather urged him to accept the offer.”
“Then what do we wait for? Let us don our outdoor clothes and go to seek this missing young man. You he may elude, but I am Jules de Grandin; though he hide in the lowest workings of a mine, or scale the sky in a balloon—”
“Easy on, son,” Hiji thrust a hand out to the little Frenchman. “There’s nothin’ much that we can do tonight.”
“I’ve already done some gum-shoe wor-rk, sor,” Costello volunteered. “We’ve traced ’im through th’ Holland Tunnels an’ through Newark an’ th’ Amboys and New Brunswick. Th’ trail runs out just th’ other side o’ Cranberry. It wuz four o’clock when he left New York, an’ a storm blew up about five, so he musta slowed down, for it wuz close to eight when he passed Cranberry, headed for Phillydelphia, an’”—he spread his hands—“there th’ trail ends, sor, like as if he’s vanished into thin air, as th’ felly says.”
De Grandin lit a cigarette and leant back in his chair, drumming soundlessly on the table where his glass stood, narrowing his eyes against the smoke as he stared fixedly at the farther wall.
“There was mingled rain and snow—sleet—on all the roads last night,” he murmured. “The traffic is not heavy in the early evening, for pleasure cars have reached their destinations and the nightly motorcade of freight trucks does not start till sometime near eleven. He would have had a lonely, slippery, dangerous road to travel, this one. Has inquiry been made for wrecks?”
“That it has, sor. He couldn’t ’a’ had a blowout widout our knowin’ of it. His car wuz a Renault sports model, about as inconspicuous as a ellyphunt on a Jersey road, an’ that should make it a cinch to locate ’im. That’s what’s drivin’ me nuts, too. If a young felly in a big red car can evaporate—howly Mither, I wonder now, could that have any bearin’—” He broke off suddenly, his blue eyes opened wide, a look almost of shocked amazement on his face.
“A very pleasant pastime that, my friend,” de Grandin put in acidly as the big detective remained silent. “Will you not confide your cause for wonder to us? We might wish to wonder, also.”
“Eh? O’ course, sor.” Costello shook his shoulders with a motion reminiscent of a dog emerging from the water. “I wuz just wonderin’—”
“We gathered as much—”
“If sumpin’ else that’s happened, recently, could have a bearin’ on this case. Th’ Missin’ Persons Bureau has had lookouts posted several times widin th’ past three months fer persons last seen just th’ other side o’ Cranberry—on th’ Phillydelphia side, that is. O’ course, you know how so many o’ these disappearances is. Mostly they disappear because they wants to. But these wuz not th’ sort o’ cases ye’d think that of. A truck driver wuz th’ first, a fine young felly wid a wife an’ two kids: then a coupla college boys, an’ a young gur-rl from New York named Perinchief. Th’ divil a one of ’em had a reason for vamoosin’, but they all did. Just got in their cars an’ drove along th’ road till they almost reached Cranberry, then—bingo! no one ever heard o’ one of ’em again. It don’t seem natural-like. Th’ state police an’ th’ Middlesex authorities has searched for ’em, but th’ devil a trace has been turned up. Nayther they nor their cars have been seen or heard from. D’ye think that mebbe there is sumpin’ more than coincidence here?”
“It may not be probable, but it is highly possible,” de Grandin nodded. “As you say, when people disappear, it is often by their own volition, and that several persons should be missed in a short period may quite easily be coincidental. But when several people disappear in a particular locality, that is something else again.
“Is there not something we can do tonight?” he turned to Ingraham.
“No,” the Englishman replied, “I don’t believe there is. It’s blacker than the inside of a cow out there, and we can’t afford to attract attention lookin’ for the little blighter with flashlights. Suppose we do a move tomorrow before dawn and see what we can pick up in the neighborhood where Southerby was last reported.”
DAWN, A RAW, COLD February dawn well nigh as colorless and uninviting as a spoiled oyster, was seeping through the lowering storm clouds as we drove across the bridge at Perth Amboy and headed south toward Cranberry. Hiji and Costello occupied the rear seat; de Grandin rode beside me, chin buried in his greatcoat collar, hands thrust deep in his pockets.
“See here,” I asked him as an idea struck me, “d’ye suppose this lad has skipped? You heard Hiji say how valuable the papers he was carrying are, and apparently he begged to be allowed to carry them. These youngsters in the consular and diplomatic service usually live beyond their means, and sometimes they do queer things if they’re tempted by a large amount of cash.”
“I wish I could believe that,” he returned, cowering lower in his seat. “It would have saved me the discomfort of emerging from a warm bed into a chill morning. But I know les anglais, my friend. They are often stupid, generally dull; socially they are insufferable in many cases, but when it comes to loyalty Gibraltar is less firm. Your English gentleman would as soon consider eating breakfast without marmalade as selling out his honor or running from an enemy or doing anything original. Yes.”
A little light, but no sunshine, had strengthened in the sky when we drew up beside the roadway a half-mile beyond Cranberry. “All right,” Hiji called as he dismounted; “we might as well start here and comb the terrain. We have a fairly good line on our bird up to this point, and—hullo, there’s a prospect!”
He nodded toward a corduroyed Italian, obviously a laborer, who was trudging slowly up the road walking to the left and facing traffic, as pedestrians who hope to survive have to do on country highways.
“Com’ esta?” de Grandin called. “You live near here?”
The young man drew his chin up from his tightly buttoned reefer and flashed a smile at him. “Si, signor,” he returned courteously, and raised a finger to his cap. “I live just there, me.”
With a mittened hand he waved vaguely toward a patch of bottom land whence rose a cumulus of early-morning smoke.
“And you work long hours, one surmises?”
Again the young man smiled. “Si, all day I worka; mornin’, night, all time—”
“So you walk home in darkness?”
A smile and nod confirmed his surmise.
“Sometimes the motors cause you trouble, make you jump back from the road, hein?”
“Not moch,” the young Italian grinned. “In mornin’ when I come to work they not yet come. At night when I come back they all ’ave gone away. But sometimes I ’ave to jomp queek. Las’ night I ’ave to jomp away from a beega rad car—”
“I think we are upon the scent, my friends!” de Grandin whispered. Aloud: “How was that? Could he not see you?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders.
“I theenk ’e craz’,” he answered. “Always I walka dees side a road, so I can see car come, but dees a one ’e come from other side, an’ almost bang me down. Come ver’ fast, too, not look where he go. Down there”—again he waved a vague hand down the road—“’ e run into da woods. I theenk ’e get hurt, maybe, bot I not go see. I ver’ tired, me, and want for to get ’ome.”
De Grandin pursed his lips and rummaged in his pocket for a coin. “You say the young man left the road and ran into the woods? Did you see his car?”
“Si, signor. Heef I don’ see heem I not be ’ere now. Eet was a beega rad car, lika dose we see in old contry, not small like dose we see ’ere.”
“And where did this one leave the road?”
“You see dose talla tree down by de ’ill op dere?”
“Perfectly.”
“’E go off road about a honnerd meters farther on.”
“Thank you, my peerle
ss one,” the Frenchman smiled, as he handed the young man a half-dollar. “You have been most helpful.” To us: “I think that we are on the trail at last.”
“But I can’t think that Southerby would have stopped to take a drink, much less get drunk,” objected Ingraham, as we hastened toward the point the young Italian indicated. “He knew how devilishly important those things were—”
“Perhaps he was not drunk,” the Frenchman cut in cryptically as we walked toward the little copse of evergreens which lay back from the road.
An earth cart-track, deeply rutted with the winter rains, ran through the unkempt field which fringed the road and wound into the heart of the small wood lot, stopping at the edge of a creek which ran clattering between abrupt banks of yellow clay.
“Be gob,” Costello looked down at the swirling ochre water, “if yer little friend ran inter this, he shure got one good duckin’, Hiji.”
“Eh bien, someone has run into it, and not so long ago,” de Grandin answered, pointing to a double row of tire tracks. “Observe them, if you will. They run right down the bank, and there is nothing showing that the car was stopped or that its occupant alighted.”
“By Jove, you’re right, Frenchy,” Ingraham admitted. “See here”—he indicated a pair of notches in the bank—“here’s where he went down. Last night’s storm has almost washed ’em away, but there the tracks are. The blighted little fool! Wonder how deep, it is?”
“That is easily determined,” de Grandin drew his knife and began hacking down a sapling growing at the water’s edge. “Now”—he probed experimentally—“ one may surmise that—morbleu!”
“What is it?” we exclaimed in chorus.
“The depth, my friends. See, I have thrust this stick six feet beneath the surface, but I have not yet felt bottom. Let us see how it is here.” He poked his staff into the stream some ten feet beyond his original soundings and began to switch it tentatively back and forth. “Ah, here the bottom is, I think—non, it is a log or—mon Dieu, attend me, mes amis!”
We clustered around him as he probed the turbulent yellow water. Slowly he angled with his pole, swishing it back and forth, now with, now against the rushing current, then twirled it between his hands as if to entangle something in the protruding stubs of the roughly hacked-off boughs.
“Ha!” he heaved quickly upward, and as the stick came clear we saw some dark, sodden object clinging to its tip, rising sluggishly to the surface for a moment, then breaking free and sinking slowly back again.
“You saw it?” he demanded.
“Yes,” I answered, and despite myself I felt my breath come quicker. “It looked like a coat or something.”
“Indubitably it was something,” he agreed. “But what?”
“An old overcoat?” I hazarded, leaning over his shoulder to watch.
“Or undercoat,” he replied, panting with exertion as he fished and fished again for the elusive object. “Me, I think it was an—ah, here it is!” With a quick tug he brought up a large oblong length of checkered cloth and dragged it out upon the bank.
“Look at him, my Hiji,” he commanded. “Do you recognize him?”
“I think I do,” the Englishman responded gravely. “It’s the tartan of the clan MacFergis. Southerby had some Scottish blood and claimed alliance with the clan. He used that tartan for a motor rug—”
“Exactement. Nor is that all, my friend. The minute I began exploring with this stick I knew it was not bottom that I touched. I could feel the outlines of some object, and feel something roll and give beneath my pressure every now and then. I am certain that a motor car lies hidden in this stream. What else is there we cannot surely say, but—”
“Why not make sure, sor?” Costello broke in. “We’ve found th’ car, an’ if young Misther Southerby is drownded there’s nothin’ to be hid. Why not git a tow-line an’ drag whativer’s in there out?”
“Your advice is excellent,” de Grandin nodded. “Do you stay here and watch the spot, my sergeant. Hiji and I will go out to the road and see if we can hail a passing truck to drag whatever lies beneath that water out. Trowbridge, my friend, will you be kind enough to go to yonder house”—he pointed to a big building set among. a knot of pines that crowned a hill which swept up from the road—“and ask them if they have a car and tow-line we may borrow?”
THE STORM WHICH HAD been threatening for hours burst with berserk fury as I plodded up the unkempt, winding road that scaled the hill on which the old house stood enshrouded in a knot of black-boughed pine trees writhing in the wind. The nearer I drew to the place the less inviting it appeared. At the turning of the driveway from which almost all the gravel had been washed long since, a giant evergreen bent wrestling with the gale, its great arms creaking, groaning, shaken but invincible against the storm. Rain lashed against the walls of weathered brick; heavy shutters swung and banged and crashed, wrenched loose from their turn-buckles by the fury of the wind; the blast tore at the vines that masked the house-front till they writhed and shuddered as in torment; even the shadowy glimmer of dim light glowing through the transom set above the door seemed less an invitation than a portent, as if warning me that something dark and stealthy moved behind the panels. I pulled my hat down farther on my brow and pushed the collar of my greatcoat higher up around my ears.
“Someone’s up and stirring,” I told myself aloud as I glanced up at the feeble glow above the door. “They can’t very well refuse to help us.” Thus for the bolstering of my morale. Actually, I was almost shaking with a sort of evil prescience, and wanted more than anything to turn and run until I reached the roadway where my friends were waiting.
“Come, man, don’t be a blithering fool!” I bade myself, and seized the rusty iron knocker stapled to the weather-blasted door.
There was something reassuring in the shock of iron upon iron. Here was reality; just a commonplace old farmhouse, run down and ruinous, but natural and earthy. I struck the knocker twice more, making it sound sharply through the moaning wind and hissing rain, waited for a moment, then struck again.
What sort of response I’d expected I had no accurate idea. From the ruinous appearance of the place I had surmised it had been used as a multiple dwelling, housing several families of day-laborers, perhaps a little colony of squatters washed up by the rising tide of unemployment which engulfed our centers of industry. Perhaps a family of discouraged farmer folk used a portion of it and closed off the rest. Had a Negro or Italian answered my impatient knock I should not have been startled, but when the door swung open and a tall man in semi-military uniform looked at me with polite inquiry I was fairly breathless with surprise. A liveried chauffeur opening the door of the old ruin seemed somehow as utterly incongruous as a Zulu chieftain donning dinner-clothes for tribal ceremonies.
His expression of inquiry deepened as I told my errand. It was not until I had exhausted five minutes in futile repetitions that I realized he understood no word I spoke.
“See here,” I finally exclaimed, “if you don’t understand English, is there anybody here who does? I’m in a hurry, and—”
“In-gliss?” he repeated, shaking his head doubtfully. “No In-gliss ’ere.”
“No,” I responded tartly, “and I don’t suppose you’ve any Eskimos or Sioux here, either. I don’t want an Englishman. I have one already, and a Frenchman and an Irishman, to boot. What I want is someone who can help me haul a motor car out of the brook. Understand? Motor car—sunk—brook—pull out!” I went through an elaborate pantomime of raising a submerged vehicle from the muddy little stream.
His sallow, rat-like countenance lit up with a sudden gleam as I completed my dumb-show, and he motioned me to enter.
The door had seemed so old and weather-weakened that I’d feared my knocking might shake loose a panel, but it swung behind me with a solid bang, and the clicking of the lock that sounded as the portal closed struck a highly modern and efficient note.
Barely over the threshold, I came to a full stop. Som
ething faintly irritating, like a swarm of small black ants, seemed crawling up my neck and on my scalp. Instinct, untrammeled and unverbalized, was giving warning: “Here is peril!” But reason scoffed at instinct: “What peril can there be in an old farmhouse burdened with decrepitude, almost on the verge of falling in upon itself?”
But as I stared about me I realized the look of desolation and decay was but a shell of camouflage about a wholly different condition. New the place might not have been, but its interior repair was perfect. The air was heavy, scented like the atmosphere that permeates cathedrals after celebration of the Mass—the sharp and sweet, yet heavy, scent of incense borne from censers swung by priests.
The floor was brightly waxed and polished, the walls encrusted with a terra-cotta colored lacquer and, as church walls are embossed with stations of the Cross, were pitted with two rows of little niches framed in polished black wood. Before each framed recess there burned a little lamp, something like a sanctus light, which shed a wavering fulgent spot upon the image nested in the cavity. Each statuette was wrought in gleaming white stone, and though each differed from the others, all had one thing in common: they were uncompleted. Scarcely human, yet not exactly bestial, were the beings portrayed. Here a creature which seemed part ape, part man, was struggling with strained muscles to emerge from the rough ashlar from which the sculptor had but partly hewn it; there a female figure, perfect as to head and throat, seemed melting at the shoulders into a vague amorphousness as misshapen and unsymmetrical as the bloated body of an octopus shorn of tentacles, and hid her grief and horror-stricken face behind an arm clipped off at the elbow. Here was a head as bald of crown as any shaven-pated mediæval monk, but with a face obscured by long and matted hair, waving wildly as a harpy’s tresses whipped by tempest-winds. Beyond it was a niche in which a scarcely-started group of statuary rested. Vague and almost formless as a wisp of shifting cloud, it still showed outlines of a pair of figures, obviously masculine and feminine, as far as faces were concerned, but with bodies bulbous as the barrel of a squid, staring at each other with a look of surprised consternation, of terror mixed with loathing, as if each saw in the other a mirroring of his deformity, and abhorred his vis-à-vis as a reminder of his hideousness.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 74
