“But wait, my friend, there is more to come. Me, I have been most busy this day. I have run up and down and hither and yon like Satan seeking for lost souls. Out on the Albemarle Road, where the unfortunate Mademoiselle Weaver’s car was discovered this morning, I repaired when I had completed my researches in the city. Many feet had trampled the earth into the semblance of a pig-coop’s floor before I arrived, but grâce à Dieu, there still remained that which confirmed my worst suspicions.
“Finding nothing near the spot where the mired car lay, I examined the earth on the other side of the road. There I discovered that which made my hair to rise on end. Pardieu, my friend, there is the business of the Fiend himself being done here!
“Leading from the road were three distinct sets of footprints—girl’s footprints, made by small, high-heeled shoes. Far apart they were, showing they had been made by running feet, and all stopped abruptly at the same place.
“Back from the roadway, as you doubtless remember, stands a line of trees. It was at these the foot tracks halted, in each instance ending in two little pointed depressions, set quite close together. They were the marks of girls’ slippers, my friend, and appeared to have been made as the young women stood on tiptoe.
“‘Now,’ I ask me, ‘why should three young women leave the motor in which they ride, run from the road, halt on their toes beneath these trees, and leave no footprints thereafter?’
“‘It seems they must have been driven from the road like game in a European preserve at hunting time, then seized by those lying in wait for them among the tree-boughs as they passed beneath,’ I reply. ‘And you are undoubtlessly correct,’ I answer me.
“Nevertheless, to make my assurance sure, I examined all those trees and all the surrounding land with great injury to my dignity and clothing, but my search was not fruitless; for clinging to a tree-bough above one of the girls’ toe-prints I did find this.” From his pocket be produced a tiny skein of light-brown fiber and passed it across the table to me.
“U’m?” I commented as I examined his find. “What is it?”
“Burlap,” he returned. “You look puzzled, my friend. So did I when first I found it, but subsequent discoveries explained it—explained it all too well. As I have said, there were no footprints to be found around the trees, save those made by the fleeing girls, but, after much examination on my knees, I found three strange trails leading toward the road, away from those trees. Most carefully, with my nose fairly buried in the earth, I did examine those so queer depressions in the moist ground. Too large for human feet they were, yet not deep enough for an animal large enough to make them. At last I was rewarded by finding a bit of cloth-weave pattern in one of them, and then I knew. They were made by men whose feet had been wrapped in many thicknesses of burlap, like the feet of choleric old gentlemen suffering from gout.
“Nom d’un renard, but it was clever, almost clever enough to fool Jules de Grandin, but not quite.
“Feet so wrapped make no sound; they leave little or no track, and what track they do leave is not easily recognized as of human origin by the average Western policeman; furthermore, they leave no scent which may be followed by hounds. However, the miscreants failed in one respect: They forgot Jules de Grandin has traveled the world over on the trail of wickedness, and knows the ways of the East no less than those of the West. In India I have seen such trails left by robbers; today, in this so peaceful State of New Jersey, I recognized the spoor when I saw it. Friend Trowbridge, we are upon the path of villains, assassins, apaches who steal women for profit. Yes”—he nodded solemnly—“it is undoubtlessly so.”
“But how—” I began, when his suddenly upraised hand cut me short.
Seated in the next booth to that we occupied was a pair of young men who had dined with greater liberality than wisdom. As I started to speak they were joined by a third, scarcely more temperate, who began descanting on the sensational features of a current burlesque show.
“Aw, shut up, how d’ye get that way?” one of the youths demanded scornfully. “Boy, till you’ve been where Harry and I were last night you ain’t been nowhere and you ain’t seen nothin’. Say, d’je ever see the chonkina?”
“Dieu de Dieu!” de Grandin murmured excitedly even as the other young man replied:
“Chonkina? What dye mean, chonkina?”
“You’d be surprised,” his friend assured him. “There’s a place out in the country—mighty exclusive place, too—where they’ll let you see something to write home about—if you’re willing to pay the price.”
“I’m game,” the other replied. “What say we go there tonight? If they can show me something I never saw before, I’ll blow the crowd to the best dinner in town.”
“You’re on,” his companions accepted with a laugh, but:
“Quick, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin whispered, “do you go straightway to the desk and settle our bill. I follow.”
In a moment we stood before the cashier’s desk and as I tendered the young woman a bill, the Frenchman suddenly reeled as though in the last stages of drunkenness and began staggering across the room toward the booth where the three sportively inclined youths sat. As he drew abreast of them he gave a drunken lurch and half fell across their table, regaining his balance with the greatest difficulty and pouring forth a flood of profuse apologies.
A few moments later he joined me on the street, all traces of intoxication vanished, but feverish excitement shining in his small blue eyes.
“C’est glorieux!” he assured me with a chuckle. “Those three empty-headed young rakes will lead us to our quarry, or I am more mistaken than I think. In my pretended drunkenness, I fell among them and took time to memorize their faces. Also, I heard them make a definite appointment for their trip tonight. Trowbridge, my friend, we shall be there. Do you return home with all speed, bring the pistols, the flashlight and the horn-handled knife which you will find in my dressing-case, and meet me at police headquarters at precisely a quarter of midnight. I should be glad to accompany you, but there is a very great much for me to accomplish between now and then, and I fear there will be little sleep for Jules de Grandin this night. Allez, my friend, we have no time to waste!”
DE GRANDIN HAD EVIDENTLY perfected his arrangements by the time I reached headquarters; for a police car was waiting, and we drove in silence, with dimmed lights, through the chill March rain to a lonely point not far from the country club’s golf links, where, at a signal from the little Frenchman, we came to a halt.
“Now, Friend Trowbridge,” he admonished, “we must trust to our own heels, for I have no desire to let our quarry know we approach. Softly, if you please, and say anything you have to say in the lowest of whispers.”
Quietly as an Indian stalking a deer he led the way across the rolling turf of the links, pausing now and again to listen attentively, at length bringing up under a clump of mournful weeping willows bordering the Albemarle Road. “Here we rest till they arrive,” he announced softly, seating himself on the comparatively dry ground beneath a tree and leaning his back against its trunk. “Name of a name, but I should enjoy a cigarette; but”—he raised a shoulder in a resigned shrug—“we must have the self-restraint, even as in the days when we faced the sale boche in the trenches. Yes.”
Time passed slowly while we maintained our silent vigil, and I was on the point of open rebellion when a warning ejaculation in my ear and the quick clasp of de Grandin’s hand on my elbow told me something was toward.
Looking through the branches of our shelter, I beheld a long, black motor slipping noiselessly as a shadow down the road, saw it come to a momentary halt beside a copse of laurels some twenty yards away, saw three stealthy figures emerge from the bushes and parley a moment with the chauffeur, then enter the tonneau.
“Ha, they are cautious, these birds of evil,” the Frenchman muttered as be leaped from the shadows of the willows and raised an imperative hand beckoningly.
It was with difficulty I repressed an exc
lamation of surprise and dismay as a dozen shadowy figures emerged, phantomlike, from the shrubbery bordering the highway.
“Are you there, mon lieutenant?” de Grandin called, and I was relieved as an answering hail responded and I realized we were surrounded by a cordon of State Troopers in command of a young but exceedingly businesslike-looking lieutenant.
Motorcycles—two of them equipped with sidecars—were wheeled from their covert in the bushes, and in another moment we were proceeding swiftly and silently in the wake of the vanishing limousine, de Grandin and I occupying the none too commodious “bathtubs” attached to the troopers’ cycles.
It was a long chase our quarry led us and had our machines been less powerful and less expertly managed we should have been distanced more than once, but the automobile which can throw dust in the faces of the racing-cycles on which New Jersey mounts its highway patrols has not been built, and we were within easy hail of our game as they drew up before the gateway of a high-walled, deserted-looking country estate.
“Now, my lieutenant,” de Grandin asked, “you thoroughly understand the plans?”
“I think so, sir,” the young officer returned as he gathered his force about him with a wave of his hand.
Briefly, as the Frenchman checked off our proposed campaign, the lieutenant outlined the work to his men. “Surround the place,” he ordered, “and lie low. Don’t let anyone see you, and don’t challenge anyone going in, but—nobody comes out without permission. Get me?”
As the troopers assented, he asked, “All set?”
There was a rattle of locks as the constables swung their vicious little carbines up to “’spection arms,” and each man felt the butt of the service revolver and the riot stick swinging at his belt.
“All right, take cover. If you get a signal from the house, rush it. If no signal comes, close in anyhow at the end of two hours. I’ve got a search warrant here”—he patted his blouse pocket—“and we won’t stand any monkey business from the folks inside. Dr. de Grandin’s going in to reconnoiter; he’ll give the signal to charge with his flashlight, or by firing his pistol when he’s ready, but—”
“But you will advance, even though my signal fails,” de Grandin interrupted grimly.
“Right-o,” the other agreed. “Two hours from now—three o’clock—is zero. Here, men, compare your watches with mine; we don’t want to go into action in ragged formation.”
Two husky young troopers bent their backs and boosted de Grandin and me to the rim of the eight-foot brick wall surrounding the grounds. In a moment we had dropped silently to the yard beyond and de Grandin sent back a whispered signal.
Flattening ourselves to the ground we proceeded on hands and knees toward the house, taking advantage of every shrub and bush dotting the grounds, stealing forward in little rushes, then pausing beneath some friendly evergreen to glance cautiously about, listening for any sign or sound of activity from the big, darkened house.
“I’m afraid you’ve brought us out on a fool’s errand, old chap,” I whispered. “If we find anything more heinous than bootlegging here I’ll be surprised but—”
“S-s-sh!” his hissing admonition silenced me. “To the right, my friend, look to the right and tell me what it is you see.”
Obediently, I glanced away from the house, searching the deserted park for some sign of life. There, close to the ground, shone a faint glimmer of light. The glow was stationary, for we watched it for upward of ten minutes before the Frenchman ordered, “Let us investigate, Friend Trowbridge. It may betoken something we should know.”
Swerving our course toward the dim beacon, we moved cautiously forward, and as we approached I grew more and more puzzled. The illumination appeared to rise from the ground, and, as we drew near, it was intercepted for an instant by something which passed between it and us. Again and yet again the glow was obscured with methodical regularity. For a moment I thought it might be some signal system warning the inmate’s of the house of our approach, but as we crawled still nearer my heart began to beat more rapidly, for I realized the light shone from an old-fashioned oil lantern standing on the ground and the momentary interruptions were due to shovelfuls of earth being thrown up from a fairly deep excavation. Presently there was a pause in the digging operations and two objects appeared above the surface about three feet apart—the hands of a man in the act of stretching himself. Assuming he were of average height, the trench in which he stood would be some five feet deep, judging by the distance his hands protruded above its lip.
Circling warily about the workman and his work we were able to get a fairly clear view. The hole was some two feet wide by six feet long, and, as I had already estimated, something like five feet deep.
“What sort of trench usually has those dimensions?” The question crashed through my mind like an unexpected bolt of thunder, and the answer sent tiny ripples of chills through my cheeks and up my arms.
De Grandin’s thought had paralleled mine, for he whispered, “It seems, Friend Trowbridge, that they prepare sepulture for someone. For us, by example? Cordieu, if it be so, I can promise them we shall go to it like kings of old, with more than one of them to bear us company in the land of shadows!”
Our course brought the grave-digger into view as we crept about him, and a fiercer, more bloodthirsty scoundrel I had never before had the misfortune to encounter. Taller than the average man by several inches he was, with enormously wide shoulders and long, dangling arms like those of a gorilla. His face was almost black, though plainly not that of a Negro, and his cheeks and chin were adorned by a bristling black beard which glistened in the lantern light with some sort of greasy dressing. Upon his head was a turban of tightly twisted woolen cloth.
“U’m?” de Grandin murmured quizzically. “A Patan, by the looks of him, Friend Trowbridge, and I think no more of him for it. In upper India they have a saying, ‘Trust a serpent or a tiger, but trust a Patan never,’ and the maxim is approved by centuries of unfortunate experience with gentlemen like the one we see yonder.
“Come, let us make haste for the house. It may be we shall arrive in time to cheat this almost-finished grave of its intended tenant.”
Wriggling snakelike through the rain-drenched grounds, our progress rendered silent by the soft turf, we made a wide detour round the dark-faced gravedigger and approached the big, forbidding mansion through whose close-barred windows no ray of light appeared.
The place seemed in condition to defy a siege as we circled it warily, vainly seeking some means of ingress. At length, when we were on the point of owning defeat and rejoining the troopers, de Grandin came to a halt before an unbarred window letting into a cellar. Unbuttoning his leather topcoat, he produced a folded sheet of flypaper and applied the sticky stuff to the grimy windowpane, smoothed it flat, then struck sharply with his elbow. The window shattered beneath the impact, but the adhesive paper held the pieces firm, and there was no telltale clatter of broken glass as the pane smashed. “One learns more tricks than one when he associates with les apaches,” he explained with a grin as he withdrew the flypaper and glass together, laid them on the grass and inserted his hand through the opening, undoing the window-catch. A moment later we had dropped to the cellar and de Grandin was flashing his electric torch inquiringly about.
It was a sort of lumber room into which we had dropped. Bits of discarded furniture, an old rug or two and a pile of miscellaneous junk occupied the place. The stout door at the farther end was secured by an old-fashioned lock, and the first twist of de Grandin’s skeleton key sprung the bolt.
Beyond lay a long, dusty corridor from which a number of doors opened, but from which no stairway ascended. “U’m?” muttered the Frenchman. “There seems no way of telling where the stairs lie save by looking for them, Friend Trowbridge.” Advancing at random, he inserted his key in the nearest lock and, after a moment’s tentative twisting, was rewarded by the sound of a sharp click as the keeper shot back.
No ray of moonlight filte
red through the windows, for they were stopped with heavy wooden shutters. As we paused irresolute, wondering if we had walked into a cul-de-sac, a faint, whimpering cry attracted our attention. “Un petit chat!” Grandin exclaimed softly. “A poor little pussy-cat; he has been locked in by mistake, no doubt, and ha! Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu, regardez, mon ami! Do you, too, behold it?”
The beam of his questing flashlight swept through the darkness, searching for the feline, but it was no cat the ray flashed on. It was a girl.
She lay on a rough, bedlike contrivance with a net of heavily knotted, coarse rope stretched across its frame where the mattress should have been, and was drawn to fullest compass in the form of a St. Andrew’s cross; for leathern thongs knotted to each finger and toe strained tautly, holding hands and feet immovably toward the posts which stood at the four corners of the bed of torment. The knots were cruelly drawn, and even in the momentary flash of the light we saw the thongs were of rawhide, tied and stretched wet, but now dry and pulling the tortured girl’s toes and fingers with a fury like that of a rack. Already the flesh about fingers and toe-nails was puffy and impurpled with engorged blood cut off by the vicious cinctures of the tightening strings.
The torment of the constantly shortening thongs and the cruel pressure of the rope-knots on which she lay were enough to drive the girl to madness, but an ultimate refinement had been added to her agony; for the bed on which she stretched was a full eight inches shorter than her height, so that her head hung over the end without support, and she was obliged to hold it up by continued flexion of the neck muscles or let it hang downward, either posture being unendurable for more than a fraction of a minute.
The Devil's Rosary Page 16
