For a moment de Grandin bent above the battered little corpse, viewing it intently with the skilled, knowing eye of a pathologist, then, so lightly that they scarcely displaced a hair of her head, his fingers moved quickly over her, pausing now and again to prod gently, then sweeping onward in their investigative course. “Tiens, he was a gorilla for strength, that one,” he announced, “and a veritable gorilla for savagery, as well. What is there to tell me of the case, mes amis?” he called to the plainclothes men.
Such meager data as they had they gave him quickly. She was three and a half years old, the idol of her lately widowed father, and had neither brothers nor sisters. That afternoon her father had given her a quarter as reward for having gone a whole week without meriting a scolding, and shortly after dinner she had set out for the corner drug store to purchase an ice cream cone with part of her righteously acquired wealth. Attendants at the pharmacy remembered she had left the place immediately and set out for home; a neighbor had seen her proceeding up the street, the cone grasped tightly in her hand as she sampled it with ecstatic little licks. Two minutes later, from a spot where the privet hedge of a vacant house shadowed the pavement, residents of the block had heard a scream, but squealing children were no novelty in the neighborhood, and the cry was not repeated. It was not till her father came looking for her that they recalled it.
From the drug store Mr. Clark traced Hazel’s homeward course, and was passing the deserted house when he noticed a stain on the sidewalk. A lighted match showed the discoloration was a spot of blood some four inches across, and with panic premonition tearing at his heart he pushed through the hedge to unmowed lawn of the vacant residence. Match after match he struck while he called “Hazel! Hazel!” but there was no response, and he saw nothing till he was about to return to the street. Then, in a weed-choked rosebed, almost hidden by the foliage, he saw the gleam of her pink pinafore. His cries aroused the neighborhood, and the police were notified.
House-to-house inquiry by detectives finally elicited the information that a “short, stoop-shouldered man” had been seen walking hurriedly away a moment after the child’s scream was heard. Further description of the suspect was unavailable.
“Pardieu,” de Grandin stroked his small mustache thoughtfully as the plainclothes men concluded, “it seems we have to search the haystack for an almost microscopic needle, n’est-ce-pas? There are considerable numbers of small men with stooping shoulders. The task will be a hard one.”
“Hard, hell!” one of the detectives rejoined in disgust. “We got no more chance o’ findin’ that bird than a pig has o’ wearin’ vest-pockets.”
“Do you say so?” the Frenchman demanded, fixing an uncompromising cat-stare on the speaker. “Alors, my friend, prepare to meet a fully tailored porker before you are greatly older. Have you forgotten in the excitement that I am in the case?”
“Sergeant, sir,” a uniformed patrolman hurried into the mortuary, “they found th’ weapon used on th’ Clark girl. It’s a winder-sash weight. They’re testin’ it for fingerprints at headquarters now.”
“Humph,” Costello commented. “Anything on it?”
“Yes, sir. Th’ killer must ’a’ handled it after he dragged her body into th’ bushes, for there’s marks o’ bloody fingers on it plain as day.”
“O.K., I’ll be right up,” Costello replied. “Take over, Jacobs,” he ordered one of the plainclothes men. “I’ll call ye if they find out anything, Dr. de Grandin. So long!”
The Sergeant delayed his report, and next morning after dinner the Frenchman suggested, “Would it not be well to interview the girl’s father? I should appreciate it if you will accompany and introduce me.”
“He’s in the drawing room,” the maid told us as we knocked gently on the Clark door. “He’s been there ever since they brought her home, sir. Just sitting beside her and—” she broke off as her throat filled with sobs. “If you could take his mind off of his trouble it would be a Godsend. If he’d only cry, or sumpin—”
“Grief is a hot, consuming fire, Madame,” the little Frenchman whispered, “and only tears can quell it. The dry-eyed mourner is the one most likely to collapse.”
Coroner Martin had done his work as a mortician with consummate artistry. Under his deft hands all signs of the brutality that struck the child down had been effaced. Clothed in a short light-pink dress she lay peacefully in her casket, one soft pink cheek against the tufted silken pillow sewn with artificial forget-me-nots, a little bisque doll, dressed in a frock the exact duplicate of her own, resting in the crook of her left elbow. Beside the casket, a smile sadder than any grimace of woe on his thin, ascetic features, sat Mortimer Clark.
As we tiptoed into the darkened room we heard him murmur, “Time for shut-eye town, daughter. Daddy’ll tell you a story.” For a moment he looked expectantly into the still childish face on the pillow before him, as if waiting an answer. The little gilt clock on the mantel ticked with a sort of whispering haste, far down the block a neighbor’s dog howled dismally; a light breeze bustled through the opened windows, fluttering the white-scrim curtains and setting the orange flames of the tall candles at the casket’s head and foot to flickering.
It was weird, this stricken man’s vigil beside his dead, it was ghastly to hear him addressing her as if she could hear and reply. As the story of the old woman and her pig progressed I felt a kind of terrified tension about my heart. “… the cat began to kill the rat, the rat began to gnaw the rope, the rope began to hang the butcher—”
“Grand Dieu,” de Grandin whispered as he plucked me by he elbow, “let us not look at it, Friend Trowbridge—it is a profanation for our eyes to see, our ears to hear what goes on here. Sang de Saint Pierre, I, Jules de Grandin swear that I shall find the one who caused this thing to be, and when I find him, though he take refuge beneath the very throne of God, I’ll drag him forth and cast him screaming into hell. God do so to me, and more also, if I do not!” Tears were coursing down his cheeks, and he let them flow unabashed.
“You don’t want to talk to him, then?” I whispered as we neared the front door.
“I do not, neither do I wish to tell indecent stories to the priest as he elevates the Host. The one would be no greater sacrilege than the other, but—ah?” he broke off, staring at a small framed parchment hanging on the wall. “Tell me, my friend,” he demanded, “what is it that you see there?”
“Why, it’s a certificate of membership in the Rangers’ Club. Clark was in the Army Air Force, and—”
“Très bien,” he broke in. “Thank you. Our ideas sometimes lead us to see what we wish when in reality it is not there; that is why I sought the testimony of disinterested eyes.”
“What in the world has Clark’s membership in the Rangers got to do with—”
“Zut!” he waved me to silence. “I think, I cogitate, I concentrate, my old one. Monsieur Evans—Monsieur Wolkof, now Monsieur Clark—all are members of that club. C’est très étrange. Me, I shall interview the steward of that club, my friend. Perhaps his words may throw more light on these so despicable doings than all the clumsy, well-meant investigations of our friend Costello. Come, let us go away. Tomorrow will do as well as today, for the miscreant who fancies himself secure is in no hurry to decamp, despite the nonsense talked of the guilty who flee when no man pursueth.”
WE FOUND COSTELLO WAITING for us when we reached home. A very worried-looking Costello he was, too. “We’ve checked th’ fingerprints on th’ sash-weight, sir,” he announced almost truculently.
“Bon,” the Frenchman replied carelessly. “Is it that they are of someone you can identify?”
“I’ll say they are,” the sergeant returned shortly. “They’re Gyp Carson’s—th’ meanest killer th’ force ever had to deal with.”
“Ah,” de Grandin shook off his air of preoccupation with visible effort, “it is for you to find this Monsieur Gyp, my friend. You have perhaps some inkling of his present whereabouts?”
The ser
geant’s laugh was almost an hysterical cackle. “That we have, sir, that we have! They burnt—you know, electrocuted—him last month in Trenton for th’ murder of a milk-wagon driver durin’ a hold-up. By rights he should be in Mount Olivet Cemetery this minute, an’ by th’ same token he should ’a’ been there when the little Clark girl was kilt last night.”
“A-a-ah?” de Grandin twisted his wheat-blond mustache furiously. “It seems this case contains the possibilities, my friend. Tomorrow morning, if you please, we shall go to the cemetery and investigate the grave of Monsieur Gyp. Perhaps we shall find something there. If we find nothing we shall have found the most valuable information we can have.”
“If we find nothing—” the big Irishman looked at him in bewilderment. “All right, sir. I’ve seen some funny things since I been runnin’ round with you, but if you’re tellin’ me—”
“Tenez, my friend, I tell you nothing; nothing at all. I too seek information. Let us wait until the morning, then see what testimony pick and shovel will give.”
A SUPERINTENDENT AND TWO WORKMEN waited for us at the grave when we arrived at the cemetery next morning. The grave lay in the newer, less expensive portion of the burying ground where perpetual care was not so conscientiously maintained as in the better sections. Scrub grass fought for a foothold in the clayey soil, and the mound had already begun to fall in. Incongruously, a monument bearing the effigy of a weeping angel leaned over the grave-head, while a footstone with the inscription OUR DARLING guarded its lower end.
The superintendent glanced over Costello’s papers, stowed them in an inner pocket and nodded to the Polish laborers. “Git goin’,” he ordered tersely, “an’ make it snappy.”
The diggers’ picks and spades bored deep and deeper in the hard-packed, sun-baked earth. At last the hollow sound of steel on wood warned us their quest was drawing to a close. A pair of strong web straps was let down and made fast to the rough chestnut box in which the casket rested, and the men strained at the thongs to bring their weird freight to the surface. Two pick-handles were laid across the violated grave and on them the box rested. With a wrench the superintendent undid the screws that held the clay-stained lid in place and laid it aside. Within we saw the casket, a cheap, square-ended affair covered with shoddy grey broadcloth, the tinny imitation-silver name plate and crucifix on its lid already showing a dull brown-blue discoloration.
“Maintenant!” murmured de Grandin breathlessly as the superintendent began unlatching the fastenings that held the upper portion of the casket lid. Then, as the last catch snapped back and the cover came away:
“Feu noir de l’enfer!”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed.
“For th’ love o’ God!” Costello’s amazed antiphon sounded at my elbow.
The cheap sateen pillow of the casket showed a depression like the pillow of a bed recently vacated, and the poorly made upholstery of its bottom displayed a wide furrow, as though flattened by some weight imposed on it for a considerable time, but sign or trace of human body there was none. The case was empty as it left the factory.
“Glory be to God!” Costello muttered hoarsely, staring at the empty casket as though loath to believe his own eyes. “An’ this is broad daylight,” he added in a kind of wondering afterthought.
“Précisément,” de Grandin’s acid answer came back like a whipcrack. “This is diagnostic, my friend. Had we found something here it might have meant one thing or another. Here we find nothing; nothing at all. What does it mean?”
“I know what it means!” the look of superstitious fear on Costello’s broad red face gave way to one of furious anger. “It means there’s been some monkey-business goin’ on—who had this burying?” he turned savagely on the superintendent.
“Donally,” the other returned, “but don’t blame me for it. I just work here.”
“Huh, Donally, eh? We’ll see what Mr. Donally has to say about this, an’ he’d better have plenty to say, too, if he don’t want to collect himself from th’ corners o’ a four-acre lot.”
Donally Funeral Parlors were new but by no means prosperous looking. Situated in a small side street in the poor section of town, their only pretension to elegance was the brightly-gleaming gold sign on their window:
JOSEPH DONALLY
Funeral Director & Embalmer
Sexton St. Rose’s R.C. Church
“See here, young feller me lad,” Costello began without preliminary as he stamped unceremoniously into the small, dark room that constituted Mr. Donally’s office and reception foyer, “come clean, an’ come clean in a hurry. Was Gyp Carson dead when you had his funeral?”
“If he wasn’t we sure played one awful dirty trick on him,” the mortician replied. “What’d ye think would happen to you if they set you in that piece o’ furniture down at Trenton an’ turned the juice on? What d’ye mean, ‘was he dead’?”
“I mean just what I say, wise guy. I’ve just come from Mount Olivet an’ looked into his coffin, an’ if there’s hide or hair of a corpse in it I’ll eat it, so I will!”
“What’s that? You say th’ casket was empty?”
“As your head.”
“Well, I’ll be—” Mr. Donally began, but Costello forestalled him:
“You sure will, an’ all beat up, too, if you don’t spill th’ low-down. Come clean, now, or do I have to sock ye in th’ jaw an’ lock ye up in th’ bargain?”
“Whatcher tryin’ to put over?” Mr. Donally demanded. “Think I faked up a stall funeral? Look’t here, if you don’t believe me.” From a pigeon hole of his desk he produced a sheaf of papers, thumbed through them, and handed Costello a packet fastened with a rubber band.
Everything was in order. The death certificate, signed by the prison physician, showed the cause of death as cardiac arrest by fibrillar contraction induced by three shocks of an alternating current of electricity of 7½ amperes at a pressure of 2,000 volts.
“I didn’t have much time,” Donally volunteered. “The prison doctors had made a full post, an’ his old woman was one o’ them old-fashioned folks that don’t believe in embalmin’, so there was nothin’ to do but rush him to th’ graveyard an’ plant him. Not so bad for me, though, at that. I sold ’em a casket an’ burial suit an’ twenty-five limousines for th’ funeral, an’ got a cut on th’ monument, too.”
De Grandin eyed him speculatively. “Have you any reason to believe attempts at resuscitation were made?” he asked.
“Huh? Resuscitate that? Didn’t I just tell you they’d made a full autopsy on him at the prison? Didn’t miss a damn thing, either. You might as well to try resuscitatin’ a lump o’ hamburger as bring back a feller which had had that done to him.”
“Quite so,” de Grandin nodded. “I did but ask. Now—”
“Now we don’t know no more than we did an hour ago,” the sergeant supplied. “I might ’a’ thought this guy was in cahoots with Gyp’s folks, but th’ prison records show he was dead, an’ th’ doctors down at Trenton don’t certify nobody’s dead if there’s a flicker o’ eyelash left in him. Looks as if we’ve got to find some gink with a fad for grave-robbin’, don’t it, Dr. de Grandin?
“But say”—a sudden gleam of inspiration overspread his face, “suppose someone had dug him up an’ taken an impression of his fingerprints, then had rubber gloves made with th’ prints on th’ outside o’ th’ fingers? Wouldn’t it be a horse on th’ force for him to go around murderin’ people, an’ leave his weapons lyin’ round promiscuous-like, so’s we’d be sure to find what we thought was his prints, only to discover they’d been made by a gunman who’d been burnt a month or more before?”
“Tiens, my friend, your supposition has at least the foundation of reason beneath it,” de Grandin conceded. “Do you make search for one who might have done the thing you suspect. Me, I have certain searching of my own to do. Anon we shall confer, and together we shall surely lay this so vile miscreant by the heels.”
“AH, BUT IT HAS been a lovel
y day,” he assured me with twinkling eyes as he contemplated the glowing end of his cigar that evening after dinner. “Yes, pardieu, an exceedingly lovely day! This morning when I went from that Monsieur Donally’s shop my head whirled like that of an unaccustomed voyager stricken by sea-sickness. Only miserable uncertainty confronted me on every side. Now”—he blew a cone of fragrant smoke from his lips and watched it spiral slowly toward the ceiling—“now I know much, and that I do not actually know I damn surmise. I think I see the end of this so tortuous trail, Friend Trowbridge.”
“How’s that?” I encouraged, watching him from the corners of my eyes.
“How? Cordieu, I shall tell you! When Friend Costello told us of the murder of Monsieur Wolkof—that second murder which was made to appear suicide—and mentioned he met death at the Ranger’s Club, I suddenly recalled that Colonel Evans, whose death we had so recently deplored, was also a member of that club. It struck me at the time there might be something more than mere coincidence in it; but when that pitiful Monsieur Clark also proved to be a member, nom d’un asperge, coincidence ceased to be coincidence and became moral certainty.
“‘Now,’ I ask me, ‘what lies behind this business of the monkey? Is it not strange two members of the Rangers’ Club should have been slain so near together, and in such similar circumstances, and a third should have been visited with a calamity worse than death?’
“‘You have said it, mon garçon,’ I tell me. ‘It is indubitably as you say. Come, let us interview the steward of that club, and see what he shall say.’
“Nom d’un pipe, what did he not tell? From him I learn much more than he said. I learn, by example, that Messieurs Evans, Wolkof and Clark had long been friends; that they had all been members of the club’s grievance committee; that they were called on some five years ago to recommend expulsion of a Monsieur Wallagin—mon Dieu, what a name!
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