If the events of the afternoon had worried him de Grandin gave no evidence of it. He ate like a teamster, drank like a sailor, and, judging from the peals of laughter which came from the young people surrounding him, jested like a second Rabelais throughout the meal. But he excused himself when they urged him to join them in an after-dinner swim, and locked himself in Swearingen’s study, where he put through a number of urgent telephone calls.
“Little fools,” grumbled Swearingen as the youngsters raced toward the pool. “Someone’s bound to get hurt jumping in that frog-pond after dark. I’d have the thing filled in, only Margery puts up such a—”
“Mr. Swearingen, oh, Mr. Swearingen!” the hail came from the pool. “Look what we found.” A young man came running, followed by the other bathers. Holding it above his head, lest it trail against the lawn, he held a strip of canvas, cracked from rough handling and spoiled by water, but unmistakably a painting, the missing Virgin of Eckartsau. “I dived right into it,” the boy exclaimed breathlessly. “Fred Boerum hopped in ahead of me, and kicked the water up, and this thing must have come loose from the bottom where it lay and floated up—I stuck my face right into it when I went off the springboard.”
“Who the devil put it there?” demanded Swearingen. “When I missed that picture this morning I thought perhaps we had a thief in the crowd; now I think we’ve been entertaining a lunatic. No one in his right mind would cut a picture from its frame and sink it in the pool. That sort of thing just isn’t done.”
“You may have right, Monsieur,” de Grandin stepped from the house and examined the salvaged painting critically. “However, it appears to have been done here. Tell me, is it possible to drain the pool?”
“Yes, we can cut off the intake and open the drain—”
“Then I suggest we do so instantly. Who knows what more may lie concealed in it?”
In a few minutes the last drop went gushing down the pool’s waste pipe, and the rays of half a dozen electric torches played upon the shining tiles. Ten minutes’ inspection failed to produce anything more than a few waterlogged leaves, but de Grandin was not satisfied. Dropping to the shallow end of the bath, he began a methodical circuit of the tank, stopping now and then to thrust his fingers under the sill just beneath the coping. At last, as he reached the deep end, he called jubilantly, “To me, Friend Trowbridge; I have found them.”
He held three little water-soaked books up for inspection. Their bindings were warped and peeling, their pages mere pulpy ruins, but the gilt letters still adhering to their backs proclaimed them the Book of Common Prayer, the New Testament and “Elegant Extracts of Devotional Poetry.” As he regained the ground the Frenchman thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out a small, beautifully carved coral rosary.
“They were securely wedged beneath the ledge,” he explained. “Had we not drained the bath there is small doubt they would have lain there till the water had completely destroyed them. Eh bien, it is fortunate the young people decided to go swimming this evening.”
“But who could have done it?—Who would play a silly, senseless prank like that?” the guests chorused.
No sign of guilt appeared on any face, but every one looked at his neighbor with suspicion. “Tiens,” de Grandin broke the awkward silence, “we waste time here, my friends. Why do you not repair to the veranda and turn on the radio? It is a superb night for le jazz, n’est-ce pas?”
I WAS ON THE POINT of disrobing when he tapped at my door. “Do not retire yet, my friend,” he whispered. “We have work to do.”
“Work—”
“Precisely. It is her next move. We have called ‘check,’ but not ‘checkmate.’ You will take your station in the art gallery, if you please, and stop whoever tries to enter there, or having entered, tries to leave. Me, I shall patrol the corridors, for I have a feeling there will be strange things abroad tonight. Come, the house is silent; let us go.”
The wide, low-ceilinged gallery was ghostly-dark, only an occasional beam of moonlight entering the tall leaded windows as the trees outside shifted their boughs in the light breeze. The dim forms of the glassed-in cases filled with bric-à-brac, the shadowy outlines of framed pictures on the walls, and the wraithlike gleam of marbles through the darkness gave the place a curiously haunted air, and I shivered slightly in spite of myself as my vigil lengthened from quarter-hours to halves, and from halves to hours. Somewhere in the main hall a big clock struck three slow deliberate notes, seconded by the staccato triple beat of smaller timepieces; an owl hooted in the willows, and a freshening early morning breeze stirred the trees, momentarily unveiling the windows and letting in long oblique shafts of moonlight. I settled deeper in my chair, muttering a complaint at the task de Grandin had set me. “Foolishness,” I mumbled. “Who ever heard of putting a death-watch over a piece of statuary? Silliest thing I ever heard—” Insensibly, I nodded and my tired eyes blinked slowly shut.
How long I napped I do not know. It might have been half an hour, though the chances are it was less. At any rate, I started tensely into full wakefulness with the feeling something near me moved with soft inimical stealth. I looked apprehensively about, noting the ordered rows of glass-doored cases, the pictures, the pallid marble of the statues—ah! I half rose from my seat, my fingers tense on the chair arms as my glance fell on the corner where the funerary statue of the Silver Countess lay. The marble image seemed to have grown, to have risen from its marble bed, to be in slow, deliberate motion. There was a half-seen vision of a pair of carmine lips, of large, intent dark eyes, a curving throat of tawny cream—a mist of white, fine linen.
“Who’s there?” I challenged, leaping up and grasping the length of rubber-coated telephone cable de Grandin had handed me as a weapon. “Stand where you are, or—” my fingers felt along the wall, seeking the electric switch—
A gurgling, contemptuous titter, a flouncing of white draperies, the creaking of a window-hinge answered me. Next instant the light flooded on, and I blinked about the empty room.
“Trowbridge, Trowbridge, mon vieux, are you within—are you awake?” de Grandin’s anxious hail sounded from the hall, and the door behind me swung open. “What has happened—is all well—did you see anything?”
“No—yes—I don’t know!” I answered in a single breath. “I must have dropped off and dreamed—when I turned the lights on the place was empty. It must have been a dream.”
“And did you dream the tight-shut window open?” He pointed to the swinging casement. “And—grand Dieu des artichauts!—and this?” He bent above the supine statue of the Countess, his lips drawn back in a sardonic grin. I joined him, glanced once at the marble figure, and fell back with a gasp. The statue’s stony, carven lips were smeared with fresh red blood.
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What—”
“What, indeed?” he assented. “Attend me, Friend Trowbridge. ‘There is much and very potent evil in this house. Tonight, before I took up my patrol, I smeared the floor before the young Monsieur Rodman’s door with talcum powder, that anyone who passed the threshold might surely leave his foot-tracks on the carpet of the hall. When I came back that way I found them—found them plainly marked upon the carpet, and let myself into his room. And what did I find there? Attend me while I tell you. I found him weltering in blood, by blue! Another wound had been pierced in his throat, and yet another in his breast above the heart. I bandaged him forthwith, for he was bleeding freely, then came to tell you of my find. Behold, I find you blinking like in owl at midday, and the casement window open, then this”—he pointed to the statue’s gory mouth—“to mock at my precautions.
“Furthermore, my watchful, alert friend, as I rushed through the hall to tell you what I had found, I saw a form, a white form like that of Madame la Comtesse about to enter this room. Come, let us go up.”
“But—” I expostulated.
“No buts, if you will be so kind. Let us observe those footprints.”
On the carpet of the upper hall, beginning at Rodman�
�s door and growing fainter as they receded, was a perfectly defined set of footprints. Someone walking barefoot had stepped into the film of toilet powder and tracked the white dust on the red broadloom. Dropping to my knees I looked at them, looked again, and shook my head in incredulity. The tracks were short and narrow—woman’s footprints—and each was of a six-toed foot.
“What—who?” I began, but he silenced me with a bleak smile.
“Madame la Comtesse who lies downstairs with blood-stained mouth, has feet which might have made such tracks.”
“But that’s absurd—impossible! A stone image can’t walk. It’s against the course of nature—”
“And it is natural that an image should drink blood?” he asked with sarcastic mildness. “No matter. Let us not argue. There is still another explanation. Let us see about it.”
Leading me down the corridor he came to pause before a white-enameled door, listened intently at the keyhole a moment, then crept into the room.
By the early-morning greyness we descried a rumpled evening dress thrown carelessly across a chair, a pair of silver sandals on the floor, and draped across another chair a pair of laced-edge crepe panties and a wisp of bandeau.
He laid his finger to his lips and dropped to hands and knees to crawl toward the bedstead, and I did likewise, feeling extraordinarily foolish, but all thought of the ridiculous figure I made vanished as he paused beside the bed and pointed to the sleeper. She wore a filmy night dress of Philippine cotton, and neither sheet nor blanket lay over her. It was with difficulty I stifled a gasp as my gaze came to rest upon her feet. Along their plantar region was a thin film of white powder—talcum powder—and on each there grew an extra toe; not a rudimentary, deformed digit, but one as perfectly shaped as its companions, joining the instep between the bases of the fourth and little toes.
Once more the little Frenchman signaled my attention; then, bending above the sleeping girl, played his flashlight across her face. Her lips were crimson with fresh blood, and at each corner of her mouth a little half-dried trickle of it drooled.
“Voyez-vous, mon vieux, are you convinced?” he asked in a low voice.
I made a silencing gesture, but he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “No need for caution,” he returned. “Observe her respiration.”
I listened for a moment, then nodded agreement. Her inhalations gradually became faster and deeper, then slowly ebbed to shallowness and hesitancy—a perfect Cheyne-Stokes cycle. Unquestionably she lay in a light coma.
“What does it mean?” I asked as he piloted me toward the door.
“Parbleu, I damn think it explains the cryptic writing on that statue’s base,” he murmured. “Does it not say, ‘Behold, I will send my messenger’? And have we not just gazed upon her messenger in person? I should say damn yes.”
“But—”
“Ah bah, let us not stand here like two gossiping fishwives. Come with me and I shall show you something more.”
“DO YOU NOT THINK it rather cold in here?” he asked as we reentered the art gallery.
“Cold?”
“Mais oui, have I not said so?”
“It’s rather cool,” I admitted, “but what that has to do—”
“Be good enough to place your hand upon the brow of Madame la Comtesse,” he ordered.
Wondering, I rested my fingertips on the smooth marble features, but drew them away with a sharp exclamation. The lifeless stone was warm as fevered human flesh, velvet-soft and slightly humid to the hand, as if it had been living cuticle.
From the farther wall de Grandin reached down an eleventh century mace, an uncouth weapon consisting of a shaft of forged iron terminating in a metal sphere almost as large as a coconut and studded with angular iron teeth. The thing, designed to crush through tough plate armor and batter mail-protected skulls to splinters, was fully two stone in weight, and seemed grotesquely cumbersome in the little Frenchman’s dainty hands, but he swung it to his shoulder as a woodsman might bear his axe as he marched toward the statue.
“Whatever—” I began, but he shook his head.
“I shall complete the work the liberated peasants left unfinished,” he paused beside the effigy and raised his ponderous weapon. “Madame la Comtesse, your reign is at an end. No longer will you send your messengers before you; no more will guiltless ones go forth to garner nourishment for your vileness!” He swung the iron weapon in a wide arc.
“Good heavens, man, don’t! Stop it!” I cried, seizing the iron bludgeon’s shaft and deflecting the blow he was about to deliver.
He turned on me, his face almost livid. “You, too, my friend?” he asked, a sort of wondering pity in his tone.
“It seems like sacrilege,” I protested. “She’s too beautiful—see, anyone would think she knows what you’re about and asks mercy!”
It was true. Although the marble lids lay placidly above the eyes the whole look of the face seemed subtly altered, and about the sweet, full-lipped mouth was an expression of pleading, almost as though the image were about to speak and beg the furious little man to stay his hand.
“Cordieu, you have it right, my friend,” he agreed, “and thus do I requite her pleadings! Mercy, ha? Such mercy as she has shown others shall be hers!” The iron weapon thudded full upon the bloodstained marble lips.
Blow after shattering blow he struck; chip after chip of marble fell away. The classically lovely face was but a horrid featureless parody of its former self, devoid of lifelikeness as a dead thing far gone in putrefaction. The fragile hands that crossed demurely on the quiet breast were hewn to fragments; the exquisite six-toed feet were beaten from their tapering ankles and smashed to rubble, and still he swung the desecrating mace, hewing, crashing, splintering, obliterating every semblance to humanity in the statue, leaving only hideous desolation where the lovely simulacrum had lain a few minutes before.
At last he rested from his vandalism and leaned upon the helve of his weapon. “Adieu, Madame la Comtesse,” he panted, “adieu pour ce monde et pour l’autre.”
He dabbed his forehead with a lavender-bordered white silk handkerchief. “Parbleu, it was no child’s-play, that; that damnation statue was tougher than the devil’s own conscience. Yes, one requires time to catch one’s breath.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked reproachfully. “It was one of the most beautiful pieces of statuary I ever saw, and the idea of your venting your rage on it because that little she-devil upstairs—”
“Zut!” he shut me off. “Speak not so of the innocent instrument, my friend. Would you destroy the pen because some character-assassin uses it to write a scurrilous letter? Consider this, if you please.” He retrieved a scrap of marble from the floor, a finger from one of the smashed hands, and thrust it at me. “Examine it; closely, mon vieux.”
I held the pitiful relic up to the light, and nearly dropped it in amazement. “Wh—why, it can’t be!” I stammered.
“Nevertheless, it is,” he assured me. “With your own eyes you see it; can you deny it with your lips?”
Running through the texture of the ruptured stone, as though soaked into its grain, was a ruddy stain tinting the broken, rough-edged fragment almost to the hue of living flesh, and offering a warm, moist feel to my hand.
“But how—”
“How, indeed, my friend? You saw the stain of warm, new blood on her lips, and on her cheeks you felt the warmth of pseudo-life. Even in her stony veins you see the vital fluid. Is it not so?”
“Oh, I suppose so; but—”
“No buts, my friend; come now and see a further wonder; one I am sure has come to pass.”
Dreading some fresh horror I followed him to the telephone and waited while he dialed a number. “Allo,” he challenged finally, “is this the State Asylum for the Criminal Insane? Bon. I am Dr. Jules de Grandin, and ask concerning one of your inmates; one Sydney Weitzer. Yes, if you will be good enough.” To me he ordered, “Take up the adjoining ’phone, my friend; I would that you should hear th
e message I receive.”
“Hello,” a voice came faintly after we had waited a few minutes, “this is Dr. Butterforth. I’ve had charge of Weitzer the past few hours. He’s been unusually violent, and we had to strap him up about half an hour ago.”
“Ah?” de Grandin breathed. “And now?”
“Damn queer,” the other replied. “About ten minutes ago he stopped raving and came out of the delirium like a person waking from a dream. Didn’t know where he was or who we were, or what it’s all about. Almost had a fit when he found out he was here—couldn’t remember being arrested for burglary or anything leading up to his commitment. It’s too soon yet to start bragging, but I’m hanged if I don’t think the poor kid’s regained his sanity. Damnedest thing I ever saw.”
“Precisely, you speak truer than you know, my friend,” de Grandin returned as he hung up. To me he observed simply, “You see?”
“I’ll be shot if I do,” I denied. “I’m glad the poor boy’s on the mend, but I can’t see a connection—”
“Perhaps I can explain it to you,” he promised, “but not now.” He patted back a yawn and rose. “At present I am very tired. I shall feel better after sleep, a shower and breakfast. When I am rested I shall tell you everything I can. Till then, à bientôt, cher ami.”
HE DID NOT RISE till after luncheon, and Swearingen was on the verge of apoplexy while he ate an unhurried brunch, but finally he finished and joined us in the library. “It is but fitting what you see together, seeing what is pertinent, and understanding what you see,” he told us as he lit a cigarette.
“Let us, for example, take Mademoiselle Hatchot, whom I saw for the first time as we approached your house, Monsieur Swearingen. She was lying in a hammock, and as we passed by she slipped her shoe off, permitting us a glimpse of her so lovely foot. The glimpse was but a wink’s-time long, but long enough for me to see she had six toes.
“Now, in my travels I have learned that among all primitive peoples, and among those not so primitive, who still retain traditions of olden days, the possession of an extra toe or finger is regarded as more than a mere physical freak. Those having extra digits are thought to be peculiarly sensitive to either good or evil influence. Though angels may more readily commune with them the same holds true of demons, even the Arch Fiend himself. You may remember that Dulac the great English painter, in recognition of this once-widespread belief, depicted both Circe and Salome with six toes on each foot.
The Devil's Rosary Page 26
