Only the wide, terror-stricken stare of the motionless nude girl’s eyes replied, but the answer was eloquent.
“Do not think I can not do this—that your love for your husband can withstand my power,” the man went on. “I caused the break between the fool Norton and his wife; it was I who made the Baintree girl desert her husband and create a scandal with Norton. But they knew nothing of what they did—I commanded their memories to sleep, and they slept. Last night I wakened Norton—how the fool must have squirmed when he saw a strange woman in his home, and learned all which had happened while I kept his memory locked in the secret chamber of my mind! Last night I released my hold upon his wife, too, so that both awakened in a strange world, separated from the mates they loved, despised by all who knew them; found themselves parents of a child whose very existence they had not suspected till I released them from my spell. I think we shall find amusement watching their efforts to adjust themselves.” For the first time his thin, pale lips curved in a snarling smile.
“You wonder why I did this to them—why I do it to you?” he demanded. “Because I hate them, hate you—hate every hypocritical member of your two-faced race! In my country white men talk morality and honor, then take our women when they feel inclined; abandon them when they wish. In India I could do nothing; the English pigs prevented it. But in France I found a welcome,—they drew no color line there, but received me as a great artist. Ha—the Frenchmen proved almost as stupid as your Americans, but not quite; no nation in the world is composed of such utter fools as you! You welcomed me as a refugee from British oppression; I am free to work my will here. Your dull Western minds are malleable as wax to my superior will. I who can make multitudes believe they see me cast my rope into the sky, then climb it to the clouds, find the subjection of your wills to mine less than child’s play.
“Who am I?” he broke off with sudden sharpness, staring intently at her. “Answer!”
“My lord and my master,” she faltered.
“And who are you?”
“Your thing and creature, your less than slave, your chattel, to do with as you will, my lord.”
“What is your wish?”
“I have no wish, no will, no desire, no mind, save to do as you command, O lord and ruler of my existence,” she answered, slipping to her knees, laying her hands palm-upward on the floor, then bending forward and beating her smooth forehead softly on the rug between them.
“It is well. Resume your clothing and your duties, O monstrous uncouthness. Remember, from this time forward you know neither truth nor honor nor virtue nor fair dealing, save to make mock of them. It is understood?”
“It is understood, master.” Again she struck her brow against the floor between her supplicatingly outstretched hands.
“Like hell it is!” With a maddened roar Homer Abbot smashed through the rotting shutters, crashed the window-panes to a hundred fragments and hurled himself into the superheated room. “You damned ape-faced swine,” he shouted, “you might have broken Kit Norton’s home and made his name a byword all over town, but you don’t do it to me!”
He lunged frantically at the slender form reclining in the shabby arm-chair. Unconcerned as though there had been no interruption, his wife proceeded with the process of donning her flimsy silk undergarments.
“Ah? We have a caller, it seems,” the seated man remarked pleasantly. He made no move to defend himself, but his sable, deep-set eyes narrowed to mere specks of shining black flame as he focused them on the intruder.
Homer Abbot stopped stone-still in mid-stride as though he had run into an invisible wall of steel. A dazed, half-puzzled, half-frightened look came to his face as he bent every ounce of energy toward advancing, yet remained fixed as a thing carved of stone.
“You are right, my dear sir,” the yellow-faced one pursued; “I shall not make your name a scandal in the town—not in the sense you mean, at any rate. But concerning your wife’s name—ah, that is something different. I shall kill you and command her to remain here with your body till the police arrive. She will know how you died, but she will not tell. Oh, no; she will not tell, for I shall forbid her, and you yourself have heard her acknowledge my authority.”
He laughed soundlessly as he drew an automatic pistol from the pocket of his dressing-gown. It was one of those German monstrosities of murderousness, built like a miniature machine-gun, which sprays ten bullets from its muzzle at a single pressure of the trigger.
Slowly, seeming to delight in the delay, he raised the weapon till it covered Abbot’s heart, then:
“Have you prayed; are you prepared to meet the White Man’s God, all-conquering white man, who is so weak before the commands of my will?” he asked. “If so, I shall—”
“Chapeau d’un cochon, you shall do nothing, and damnably little of it!” Jules de Grandin shouted as he launched himself through the broken window.
The distance between them was quite eight feet, but the Frenchman cleared it with the lightning speed of a famished cat leaping on an unwary bird. Before the seated man could deflect his aim from Homer Abbot, de Grandin was beside him and the lamplight glittered on the wide, curved blade of his great knife as he swung it downward saberwise.
Through coat sleeve and shirt sleeve, through flesh and bone and sinew, the keen steel cut, severing the man’s arm midway between carpus and elbow as nearly as a surgical operation might have done.
The hand fell to the carpeted floor with a thud, the fingers clenching in muscular spasm, and the pistol, clutched in the severed fist, sputtered a fusillade of futile shots like a bunch of firecrackers set off together.
As a spilth of ruby blood spurted from his severed radial and brachial arteries, a look of stupefaction, of incredulous wonderment, replaced the grimace of tigerish fury which had been on the yellow-skinned one’s face. For a moment he regarded the bleeding stump and the small, almost femininely dainty hand lying on the floor with confounded astonishment; then his surprise seemed swallowed up in mad, unreasoning terror. In the twinkling of an eye he was changed from the calm, sinister personification of the inscrutable East to a groveling thing—a member of an inferior, dominated race trembling and defenseless before the resistless purpose of the all-conquering West. Frenziedly he clutched at his maimed arm, shrinking from de Grandin’s blazing eyes and menacing steel as a beaten dog might flinch from an angry master.
He was a pitiable object as he crouched and cowered in his chair, and despite the heartless cruelties he had confessed, I felt a wave of compassion for him.
“Mercy!” he implored, shrinking still further from the Frenchman. “Have pity, sahib, you have conquered; be merciful!”
Jules de Grandin’s little blue eyes, hot as molten lava from a volcanic crater, cold and hard as polar ice, never changed expression as he glared down upon the cringing man. “Make no mistake, Monsieur le Serpent,” he answered in a voice one tone above a whisper. “I am come not as foeman unto foeman, but as executioner to criminal. Vile, stinking swine, your boastings to Madame Abbot were your confession, and your confession was your doom. Such mercy as you showed to the draper of Lyons, and to Madame Betty, now dead by her own hand, and to her innocent babe slain by your devilishness as surely as though your accursed hands had done the deed—such mercy as that you may expect from Jules de Grandin.
“Trowbridge, my good one,” he called over his shoulder, “take them out. Lead Messieurs Norton and Abbot and Madame Marjorie, to the front gate and await me. I have one damnably pleasant duty to perform here, and can not be annoyed by your mistakenly merciful expostulations. Allez-vous-en-tout vite!”
We turned and left him, for there was a look of command in his face which would not be denied; but as we left I cast a single backward look, then hurried on, for in that fleeting glance I saw de Grandin seize the Hindu’s neck between his slim, strong hands and force his writhing face toward the glowing barrel of the red-hot stove.
A scream of unsupportable anguish echoed through the night as we reached the gate, bu
t I pushed my companions before me. “Don’t go back,” I urged. “He’s getting only what he deserves, but we couldn’t bear to watch it, even so.”
IT WAS SOME TEN minutes later as we trudged along the turnpike toward the nearest inter-urban bus station that Marjorie Abbot, who walked stiffly as a robot beside her husband, suddenly threw her hand to her brow and burst into a fit of wild, uncontrollable weeping. “Homer—oh, Homer!” she cried. “My dear, I can tell you, now. I love you, dear; I love you—I didn’t mean to do it, Homer, truly, I didn’t, but he made me! Oh, my dear, dear love, I don’t understand it; but I’m free; I’m free! My lips aren’t sealed any longer!”
Jules de Grandin chuckled delightedly. “Mais oui; mais certainement, Madame,” he laughed. “And never again shall that butter-faced son of a most unsavory and entirely immoral pig hold you, or any woman, in his thrall. No, by damn it, Jules de Grandin has made entirely certain of that. Yes, to be sure!”
A few minutes more we walked, Homer and Marjorie holding hands as frankly as country sweethearts, while they murmured soft, foolish little endearments in each other’s ears. Then:
“Tiens, Monsieur, look not so downhearted!” de Grandin ordered Kit Norton. “Tomorrow morning you and I—yes, and the good, slow-witted Trowbridge, too—shall seek out Madame Isabel and tell her the true state of affairs. She loves you, mon vieux, I’ll swear to it, and when she learns that what you did was not of your doing, but because of the black magic of that most damnable time-thief whom I have just sent to his proper place, I bet me your life she will understand and forgive, and you and she shall once more be happy in each other’s company.
“Not here,” he added after a moment’s thought. “The townsfolk would never understand, and your remarriage to Madame Isabel so soonly after poor Madame Betty’s tragic death—it would make fresh scandal for gossiping tongues to fondle. But there are other places, and I damn think one place is good as another, or better, when love is your companion. N’est-ce-pas, Friend Trowbridge?” he dug a sharp elbow into my ribs.
5
“SEE HERE, DE GRANDIN,” I remarked next morning at breakfast as I scanned the headlines of my paper, “that house we visited last night burned down. Here’s the story:
MAN DIES IN MYSTERY BLAZE
Fire of undetermined origin completely destroyed the old Spencer homestead, five miles from Harrisonville, late last night. The house, a frame structure, has been occupied by an East Indian gentleman, Mr. Chunda Lal, for the past several years. It contained no modern improvements, and it is thought the flames started from an overheated coal stove or an overturned oil lamp.
The blaze was first noticed by neighbors who lived a mile or more away, about one o’clock this morning, but the place was practically demolished before they could arrive on the scene. Search of the still smoking ruins today revealed a human body, charred past possibility of recognition among the debris. It is feared the unfortunate tenant perished in the fire. The loss, amounting to $4,500, was covered by insurance.
“U’m,” murmured Jules de Grandin as he returned the paper, “the account is graphic, though a trifle inaccurate. Howeverly, I fear I shall not point out the errors to the excellent journalist who wrote the story. No; it would be better not.”
“But it’s strange the house should have burned last night,” I returned. “I suppose it’s one of those fortunate accidents which—?”
“Non, not at all; by no means!” he cut in. “It would have been strange had it been otherwise, my friend, for I took greatest pains that things should be exactly as they were. After I had impressed on this Monsieur Chunda Lal that it is extremely poor policy to trifle with other people’s wives and husbands—that hot stove proved of greatest help in the process, I assure you—I carefully bound him in his chair, then arranged an alarm clock in such a way that it would spring the stove door open when one o’clock arrived. The door once open, a flood of glowing coals fell outward on the floor, which I had previously drenched with kerosene—and the inevitable process of combustion took place. However, the ‘East Indian gentleman’ of whom the paper speaks suffered no inconvenience thereby, since his soul had gone to the sub-cellar of hell some hours earlier.
“You remember how poor Madame Marjorie suddenly regained mastery of herself as we proceeded down the road last night?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“Very good. It was at that moment the rascally one departed this world for a place of everlasting torment. I had been at particular pains not to bind his wound, and—one can not bleed for long and remain alive, you know, my friend. The entirely unlamented Chunda Lal and his power over Madame Marjorie expired at the same happy instant. Yes.”
“But do you mean he actually did all those things he boasted of?” I demanded. “Is it possible a man, no matter how clever he might be as a hypnotist, could so entirely change people’s natures as he claimed to have done? Why, it seems incredible!”
“I agree,” the Frenchman nodded, “but nevertheless, it are true. Consider: In India, where he came from, the fakirs perform certain tricks which are explicable only by hypnotism. The rope trick, by example. He declared he could perform it, and it is one of the few unexplained Eastern illusions. They apparently throw a cord into the air, make it fast to nothing at all, then climb it until they are lost to sight. No one has ever explained that. Your own Monsieur Herman, the magician, tells in his memoirs how he offered much money to anyone who would show him the technique of the illusion, but no one came forward to claim the reward. Why? Because it is a mere illusion of the eye—a piece of superhypnotism.
“Consider the evidence here: Monsieur Norton tells how, just before he apparently became a knave of the first water, he encountered this evil time-thief in a theater lobby and how the despicable one waved a bright-set ring before his eyes. That single flash was enough to center the victim’s attention. Just what the relationship between the optic nerves and the brain centers of ratiocination is we do not certainly know, but all psychologists are agreed that shining objects, or swiftly whirling objects which confuse or blind the eyes, put the subject in ideal condition for quick and easy hypnosis. In any event, while Monsieur Norton’s thought-guards were overwhelmed by the flashing of that ring, the brain-thief leaped in and took complete possession of his consciousness, captured his will and made him break the heart of the wife he loved.
“How the villain captured poor Madame Betty’s mind we do not know; but we have the young Abbot’s story of how his wife was overcome by the quick flash of a bright object in the night club, and we have the evidence of the complete control the miscreant established over Madame Marjorie. Certainly. It is all most unusual and instances of such hypnotism are fortunately rare, but what we have seen in this case; two lives were destroyed and the happiness of Madame Betty’s first husband demolished completely. Had it not been for Jules de Grandin both Monsieur Norton and Madame Isabel, as well Monsieur and Madame Abbot, might also have been made helpless victims of the vile one’s plottings.
“Parbleu, when I recall the evil that one wrought it makes me entirely ill. Quick, Trowbridge, my friend, assist me. My mouth is filled with a most unpleasant taste at the very thought of that never-enough-to-be-accursèd man with the yellow face. Nothing but a drink—a nobly large drink—of brandy will remove it!”
The Priestess of the Ivory Feet
1
JULES DE GRANDIN REPLACED his Sèvres tea-cup on the tabouret and brushed the ends of his tightly waxed blond mustache with the tip of a well-manicured forefinger.
From the expression on his little, mobile face it was impossible to say whether he was nearer laughter than tears. “And the lady, chère Madame,” he inquired solicitously, “what of her?”
“What, indeed?” echoed our hostess. Plainly, it was no laughing matter to Mrs. Mason Glendower, and I sat in a sort of horrified fascination, expecting momentarily to see the multiple-chinned, florid society dictator dissolve in tears before my eyes. A young woman’s tears are
appealing, an old woman’s are pathetic, but a well-past-middle-aged, plump dowager’s are an awful sight. Flabby, fat women quiver so when they weep.
“What, indeed?” she repeated, all three of her chins trembling ominously. “It would have been bad enough if she’d been a respectable shop-girl, or even an actress, but this—oh, it’s too awful, Dr. de Grandin; it’s terrible!”
My worst fears were realized. Mrs. Mason Glendower wept copiously and far from silently, and her chins and biceps, even her fat wrists, quivered like a pyramid of home-made quince jelly on a Thanksgiving dinner table.
“Tch-tch,” de Grandin made a deprecating click with the tip of his tongue against his teeth. “It is deplorable, Madame. And the young Monsieur, your son, he is, then entirely smashed upon this reprehensibly attractive young woman—you can not dissuade him?”
“No!” Mrs. Mason Glendower dabbed at her reddened eyes with a wisp of absurdly inadequate cambric. “I’ve tried to appeal to his family pride—his pride of ancestry, I’ve even had Dr. Stephens in to reason with him, but it’s all useless. He just smiles in a sort of sadly superior way and says Estrella has shown him the light and that he pities our blindness—our blindness, if you please, and our family pew-holders in the First Methodist Church since the congregation was organized!
“Oh, Dr. Trowbridge”—she turned imploringly to me—“can’t you suggest something? You’ve known Raymond all his life, you know what a clean, manly, good boy he’s always been—it’s bad enough for him to be set on marrying the young person, but to have her change his religion, drag him from the faith of his fathers into this heathenish, outlandish cult—oh, it seems, sometimes, as though he’s actually losing his senses! If he’d ever drunk or caroused or inclined toward wildness it would be different, but—” And her emotion overcame her, and her words were smothered beneath an avalanche of sobs.
“Tiens, Madame Glendower,” de Grandin remarked matter-of-factly, “a man may love liquor and have his senses sometimes, but if he love a woman—hélas, his case is hopeless. Only marriage remains, and even that sometimes fails to cure.”
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