“Judas Iscariot and Company,” de Grandin whispered to me as the queerly assorted couple set foot on the drawbridge; then with an imperative wave of his hand he beckoned them toward the house and set off up the driveway at a rapid walk. “We must not let them get close enough to suspect,” he whispered, quickening his pace. “All cats are gray in the dark, and we much resemble their friends at a distance, but it is better that we take no chances.”
Once or twice the other two called to us, demanding to know if we had encountered resistance, but de Grandin’s only answer was another gesture, urging them to haste, and we were still some ten feet in the lead when we reached the door, swung it open and slipped into the house, awaiting the others’ advent.
The candles burned with a flickering, uncertain light, scarcely more than staining the darkness flooding the big stone hall as the two men trailed us through the door. By the table, the candlelight falling full upon her mutilated face, stood Clarimonde Ducharme, her hideously distorted eyes rolling pathetically in their elongated sockets as she turned her head from side to side in an effort to get a better view of the intruders.
A shrill, cackling laugh burst from the smaller man. “Look at that; Henri,” he bade, catching his breath with an odd, sucking sound. “Look at that. That’s my work; isn’t it a masterpiece?”
Mockingly, he snatched the wide-brimmed soft black-felt hat from his head, laid it over his heart, then swept it to the floor as he bowed profoundly to the girl. “Señorita hermosa, yo beso sus manos!” he declared, then burst into another cackle of cachinnating laughter. As he removed his headgear I observed he was bald as an egg, thickly wrinkled, and wore a monocle of dark glass in his right eye.
His companion growled an inarticulate comment, then turned toward us with an expectant look. “Now?” he asked. “Shall I do it now and get it over?”
“Si, como no?—certainly, why not?” the smaller man lisped. “They’ve served their purpose, have they not?”
“Right,” the big man returned. “They did the job, and dead men tell no tales—”
There was murderous menace in every movement of his big body as he swaggered toward de Grandin. “Come, little duckie,” he bade mockingly in gamin French, “come and be killed. We can’t have you running loose and babbling tales of what you’ve seen tonight the first time you get your hide full of vin ordinaire. Say your prayers, if you know any; you’ve precious little time to do it. Come, duckie—” As he advanced he thrust his hand beneath his ill-fitting jacket and drew a knife of fearsome proportions, whetting it softly against the heel of his hand, smiling to himself as though anticipating a rare bit of sport.
De Grandin gave ground before the other’s onslaught. Two or three backward running steps he took, increasing the distance between them, then paused.
With a flick of his left hand he swept the disguising hood from his features and smiled almost tenderly at the astonished bully. “Monsieur,” he announced softly, “it sometimes happens that the weasel discovers the duck he hunts to be an eagle in disguise. So it would seem tonight. You have three seconds to live; make the most of them. Un—deux—trois!” The spiteful, whip-like report of pistol sounded sharp punctuation to his third count, and the bravo stumbled back a step, an expression of amazement on his coarse face, a tiny bruised-looking circle almost precisely bisecting the line of heavy, black brows which met above his nose.
“Wha—what?” the smaller villain began in a strangled, frightened scream, wheeling on de Grandin and snatching at a weapon beneath his cloak.
But George Ducharme leaped out of the darkness like a lion avenging the slaughter of its mate and bore him, screaming madly, to the floor. “At last, Leandro Ruiz—at last!” he shouted exultantly, fastening his fingers on the other’s thin, corded neck and pressing his thumb into the sallow, flaccid flesh. “At last I’ve got you! You killed my wife, you deformed my baby, you’ve made me live in a hell of fear for eighteen years; but now I’ve got you—I’ve got you!”
“Eh bien, have a care, Monsieur, you are unduly rough!” de Grandin protested, tapping Ducharme’s shoulder gently, “Be careful I implore you!”
“What?” George Ducharme cried angrily, looking up at the diminutive Frenchman, but retaining his strangling hold on his foeman’s throat. “D’ye mean I’m not to treat this dog as he deserves?”
The other’s narrow shoulders rose nearly level with his ears in an eloquent shrug. “I did but caution you, my friend,” he answered mildly. “When one is very angry one easily forgets one’s strength. Be careful, or you kill him too swiftly.
“Come, Friend Trowbridge, the night is fine outside. Let us admire the view.”
The prisoners in the bedroom were only too glad to take their departure without stopping to inquire concerning their late employer. From remarks they dropped while we hunted clothing to replace the conspicuous black tights of which we had relieved them, I gathered they had distrusted Ruiz’s good faith, and insisted on payment in advance. That Monsieur Ruiz had left, leaving no address, and consequently would not be in position to extort return of his fee with the aid of the gigantic Henri was the best possible news we could have given them, and they took speedy farewell of us.
THE FOLLOWING DAY DE Grandin and I set out for the North, accompanied by the Ducharmes. Clarimonde traveled closely veiled, and we occupied a drawing-room suite on the B. & O. fast train which bore us from Washington to Harrisonville. The first night in New Jersey was spent at my house, Clarimonde keeping closely to her room, lest Nora McGinnis, my faithful but garrulous Irish household factotum, behold her mutilated features and spread news of them along the kitchen-door telegraph line.
A suite of rooms at Mercy Hospital was engaged the following day, and true to his promise, de Grandin took up residence in the institution, eating sleeping and passing his entire time within half a minute’s walk of his patient.
What passed in the private operating-room Ducharme’s money made possible for his daughter’s case I did not know, for the press of my own neglected practise kept me busy through most of the daylight hours, and de Grandin performed his work unassisted except by three special nurses who, like him, spent their entire time on duty in the special suite secured for Clarimonde.
Nearly three months passed before my office telephone shrilled one bright Sunday morning and de Grandin’s excited voice informed me he was about to remove the bandages from his charge. Ten minutes later, out of breath, with haste, I stood in the comfortably furnished sitting-room of Clarimonde’s suite, and stared fascinated at the little Frenchman who posed and postured beside his patient like a lecturer about to begin his discourse.
“My friends,” he announced, sweeping the circle composed of Ducharme, the nurses and me with twinkling eyes, “this is one of the supreme moments of my life. Should my workmanship be successful, I shall proceed forthwith to get most vilely, piggishly intoxicated. If I have failed”—he paused dramatically, then drew a small, silver-mounted automatic pistol from his pocket and laid it on the table beside him—“if I have failed, Friend Trowbridge, I beseech you, write in the death certificate that, my suicide was induced by a broken heart. Allons.”
With a pair of surgical scissors he slit the outermost layer of bandages about the girl’s face and began unwinding the white gauze with slow, deliberate movements.
“A-a-ah!” The long-drawn exclamation came unbidden from all of us in chorus.
The wrinkled, blotched, leather-like skin which had covered the girl’s face had, by some alchemy employed by de Grandin, been bleached to an incredibly beautiful shade of light, suntanned écru, smooth as country cream and iridescent as an alloy of gold and platinum. Above a high, straight brow of creamy whiteness her soft auburn hair was loosely dressed in a gleaming diadem of sun-stained metallic luster. But it was the strange, exotic molding of her features which brought our hearts into our eyes as we looked. Her high, straight forehead continued down into her perfectly formed nose without the slightest indication of a curve�
��like the cameo-fine formation of the most beautiful faces found on recovered artistic treasures of ancient Greece. With consummate skill the Frenchman had made the enlargement of her eyes an ally in his work, for while he had somewhat decreased the length of the cuts with which Ruiz had mutilated the girl’s eyes, he had left the openings larger than normal and raised them slightly at the outer corners, imparting to the face which would have otherwise been somewhat too severe in its utter classicism a charming hint of Oriental piquancy. The mouth was still somewhat large, but perfect in its outline, and the lips were thin, beautifully molded lines of more than usual redness, in repose presenting an expression of singular sweetness, retracting only slightly when she smiled, giving her face an expression of languid, faint amusement which was as provocative in its appeal as the far-famed smile of Mona Lisa.
“My God—Clarimonde, you’re beautiful!” Ducharme cried brokenly, and stumbled across the floor to drop kneeling before his daughter, burying his face in her lap and sobbing hysterically.
“Pipe d’une souris!” de Grandin pocketed his pistol and bent above his patient. “Jules de Grandin and none other shall have the first kiss from these so beautiful lips!” He placed a resounding salute upon the girl’s scarlet mouth, then turned toward the adjoining room.
“Behind that door,” he announced, “I have secreted several pints of the hospital’s finest medicinal brandy, Friend Trowbridge. See to it, if you please, that I am not disturbed until I say otherwise. For the next four and twenty hours Jules de Grandin shall be delightfully engaged in acquiring the noblest case of delirium tremens the institution’s staff has ever treated!”
Children of Ubasti
JULES DE GRANDIN REGARDED the big red-headed man entering the breakfast room with a quick, affectionate smile. “Is it truly thou, mon sergent?” he asked. “I have joy in this meeting!”
Detective Sergeant Jeremiah Costello grinned somewhat ruefully as he seated himself and accepted a cup of steaming, well-creamed coffee. “It’s me, all right, sir,” he admitted, “an’ in a peck o’ trouble, as I usually am when I come botherin’ you an’ Dr. Trowbridge at your breakfast.”
“Ah, I am glad—I mean I grieve—no, pardieu, I mean I sorrow at your trouble, but rejoice at your visit!” the little Frenchman returned. “What is it causes you unhappiness?”
The big Irishman emptied his cup at a gigantic gulp and wrinkled his forehead like a puzzled mastiff. “I dunno,” he confessed. “Maybe it’s not a case at all, an’ then again, maybe it is. Have you been readin’ the newspaper accounts of the accident that kilt young Tom Cableson last night?”
De Grandin spread a bit of butter on his broiled weakfish and watched it dissolve. “You refer to the mishap which occurred on the Albemarle Pike—the unfortunate young man who died when he collided with a tree and thrust his face through his windshield?”
“That’s what they say, sir.”
“Eh? ‘They say?’ Who are they?”
“The coroner’s jury, when they returned a verdict of death by misadventure. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t any of my business, but bein’ on the homicide squad I thought I’d just drop round to the morgue and have a look at the body, an’ when I’d seen it I came over here hot-foot.”
“And what was it you saw that roused your suspicions, mon vieux?”
“Well, sir, I’ve seen lots of bodies of folks killed in motor accidents, but never one quite like young Cableson’s. The only wound on him was a big, jagged gash in the throat—just one, d’ye mind—an’ some funny-lookin’ scratches on his neck—” He paused apologetically, as if debating the wisdom of continuing.
“Cordieu, is it a game of patience we play here?” de Grandin demanded testily. “Get on with thy story, great stupid one, or I must twist your neck!”
I laughed outright at this threat of the sparrow to chastise the turkey cock, and even Costello’s gravity gave way to a grin, but he sobered quickly as he answered. “Well, sir, I did part of me hitch in China, you know, and once one of our men was picked up by some bandits. When we finally come to him we found they’d hung him up like a steer for th’ slaughter—cut his throat an’ left him danglin’ by th’ heels from a tree-limb. There wasn’t a tin-cupful o’ blood left in his pore carcass.
“That’s th’ way young Cableson looked to me—all empty-like, if you get what I mean.”
“Parfaitement. And—”
“Yes, sir, I was comin’ to that. I went round to th’ police garage where his car was, and looked it over most partic’lar. That’s th’ funny part o’ th’ joke, but I didn’t see nothin’ to laugh at. There wasn’t half a pint o’ blood spilled on that car, not on th’ hood nor instrument board, nor upholstery, an th’ windshield which was supposed to have ripped his throat open when he crashed through it, that was clean as th’ palm o’ my hand, too. Besides that, sir—did ye ever see a man that had been mauled by a big cat?”
“A cat? How do you mean—”
“Lions an’ tigers, an’ th’ like o’ that, sir. Once in th’ Chinese upcountry I seen th’ body of a woman who’d been kilt by a tiger, one o’ them big blue beasts they have there. There was something about young Cableson that reminded me of—”
“Mort d’un rat rouge, do you say so? This poor one’s injuries were like those of that Chinese woman?”
“Pre-cise-ly, sir. That’s why I’m here. You see, I figure if he had died natural-like, as th’ result o’ that accident, his car should ’a’ been wringin’ wet with blood, an’ his clothes drippin’ with it. But, like I was sayin’—”
“Parbleu, you have said it!” de Grandin exclaimed almost delightedly. “Come, let us go at once.” He swallowed the remaining morsel of his fish, drained his coffee cup and rose. “This case, he has the smell of herring on him, mon sergent.”
“Await me, if you please,” he called from the hall as he thrust his arms into his topcoat sleeves. “I shall return in ample time for Madame Heacoat’s soirée, my friend, but at present I am burnt with curiosity to see this poor, unfortunate young man who died of a cut throat, yet bled no blood. A bientôt.”
A LITTLE AFTER EIGHT O’CLOCK that night he came into my bedroom, resplendent in full evening dress. “Consider me, Friend Trowbridge,” he commanded. “Behold and admire. Am I not superb, magnificent? Shall I not be the pride of all the ladies and the despair of the men?” He pirouetted like a dancer for my admiration.
To do him justice, he was a sight to command a second look. About his neck hung the insignia of the Legion of Honor; a row of miniature medals including the French and Belgian war crosses, the Médaille Militaire and the Italian Medal for Valor decorated the left breast of his faultless evening coat; his little wheat-blond mustache was waxed to needle sharpness and his sleek blond hair was brushed and brilliantined until it fitted flat against his shapely little head like a skullcap.
“Humpf,” I commented, “if you behave as well as you look I suppose you’ll not disgrace me.”
“O, la, la!” He grinned delightedly as he patted the gardenia in his lapel with gentle, approving fingers. “Come, let us go. I would arrive at Madame Heacoat’s before all the punch is drunk, if you please.” He flung his long, military-cut evening cape about him with the air of a comic-opera conspirator, picked up his lustrous top hat and silver-headed ebony cane and strode debonairly toward the door.
“Just a moment,” I called as the desk ’phone gave a short, chattering ring.
“Hullo, Trowbridge, Donovan speaking,” came a heavy voice across the wire as I picked up the instrument. “Can you bring that funny little Frog friend of yours over to City Hospital tonight? I’ve got a brand new variety of nut in the psychopathic ward—a young girl sane as you or I—well, anyhow, apparently as sane as you, except for an odd fixation. I think she’d interest de Grandin—”
“Sorry,” I denied. “We’re just going to a shindig at Mrs. Heacoat’s. It’ll be a frightful bore, most likely, but they’re valuable patients, and—”
“
Aw, rats,” Dr. Donovan interrupted. “If I had as much money as you I’d tell all the tea-pourin’ old ladies to go fry an egg. Come on over. This nut is good, I tell you. Put your toad-eater on the ’phone, maybe he’ll listen to reason, even if you won’t.”
“Hélas, but I am desolated!” the Frenchman declared as Donovan delivered his invitation. “At present Friend Trowbridge and I go to make the great whoopee at Madame Heacoat’s. Later in the evening, if you please, we shall avail ourselves of your hospitality. You have whisky there, yes? Bon. Anon, my friend, we shall discuss it and the young woman with the idée fixe.”
MRS. HEACOAT’S WAS THE first formal affair of the autumn, and most of the élite of our little city were present, the men still showing the floridness of golf course and mountain trail, sun-tan, painfully acquired at fashionable beaches, lying in velvet veneer on the women’s arms and shoulders.
Famous lion-huntress that she was, Mrs. Heacoat had managed to impound a considerable array of exotic notables for her home-town guests to gape at, and I noted with amusement how her large, pale eyes lit up with elation at sight of Jules de Grandin. The little Frenchman, quick to understand the situation, played his rôle artistically. “Madame,” he bent above our hostess’s plump hand with more than usual ceremony, “believe me, I am deeply flattered by the honor you have conferred on me.”
What would have been a simper in anyone less distinguished than Mrs. Watson Heacoat spread over the much massaged and carefully lifted features of Harrisonville’s social arbiter. “So sweet of you to come, Dr. de Grandin. Do you know Monsieur Arif? Arif Pasha, Dr. Jules de Grandin—Dr. Trowbridge.”
The slender, sallow-skinned young man whom she presented had the small regular features, sleek black hair and dark, slumbrous eyes typical of a night club band leader, or a waiter in a fashionable café. He bowed jerkily from the hips in continental fashion and murmured a polite greeting in stilted English. “You, I take it, are a stranger like myself in strange company?” he asked de Grandin as we moved aside for a trio of newcomers.
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