A Rival from the Grave Read online

  “Lord, no! As I’ve told you, it was a Chinese coffin, apparently hewn out of a single giant log, heavy as cast iron, and almost as hard, judging by the feel of it. The top was high, like a gabled roof, and fastened to the lower section by invisible dowels. I don’t know how we’d ever have managed to pry them apart, unless we’d used a buzz-saw, if Miss Haines had decided to let us furnish a new casket.”

  “And was it airtight and watertight?” de Grandin asked.

  “Perfectly. The whole thing had been coated and recoated with red lacquer, smooth and hard as porcelain. Dam’ clever people, these Chinese. From the standpoint of utility that coffin was as good as anything our best American factories can turn out.”

  “Thank you, you have helped us greatly, Monsieur Martin,” de Grandin answered. “What you have told is precisely what we wished to know.

  “Do you go home and see your silly patients,” he directed as we left the Martin mortuary. “Me, I have important duties to perform. I shall return at dinner time or sooner, and I pray that you will be in readiness to accompany me to Mademoiselle Haines’ this evening. We must watch with her until we can take steps to obviate the danger which is threatening.”

  IT WAS NEARLY SIX o’clock when he returned, and his temper was far from amiable. The unmentionable rules of that unnameable cemetery vexed him, he informed me. Because, parbleu! that seven-times-accursed Monsieur Haines had taken it into his never-to-be-sufficiently-anathematized head to die in a miserable hole of a place like the island of Manura with no physician in attendance, there had been no death certificate, and the cemetery people absolutely forbade disinterment of that Monsieur Haines’ eternally accursed body.

  “D’ye really think there’s any danger of Joan’s becoming a penanggalan?” I asked as we drove out the Andover Road toward the old Haines house. “The idea seems so incredibly bizarre that—”

  “There is a very real and present danger of her transformation, my friend,” he interrupted soberly. “I think the thing which was her stepmother fears me, and will not try to work her spells while I am present, but that makes our need of haste the more imperative. Come, my old one, tread upon the gas; already it grows dark, and darkness is a time of peril for Mademoiselle Jeanne.”

  Despite our haste, however, darkness had descended before we reached our destination, and the gaslights were flaring brightly in the hall when Ah Kee answered our summons.

  “Missy Jo-an all betta,” he informed us when we asked him how the patient did. “All day she sleep an’ lest. Ah Kee go up to loom one, two, three time for givum bleakfast, tiffin, dinner, she not wake no time. All time she sleep like little baby. Bimeby she call Ah Kee for ketchum food. I takee one piecee day up to loom ten-twenty minute ’fore you come. You like for see her now? Ah Kee think she all finish eat, maybe so.”

  De Grandin led the way up to the patient’s room, talking volubly. “Behold,” he boasted, “am I not the clever one? Did not my scheme for hypnotically induced rest work perfectly? But certainly. Shrewd this sacré demon from the East may be, but Jules de Grandin is shrewder still. He does not—

  “Ah, mon Dieu! Too late! Look, my friends, see the desolation she has wrought while we dallied on the road. Ohé!”

  I looked across his shoulder, saw Joan Haines sprawled face downward on the bed, hands outspread, clutching the mattress with stiffening fingers as if for anchorage; then, as he moved aside, my breath seemed to form a hot and sulfurous bolus in my throat and my heart beat quick with horror. For it was not Joan Haines who lay upon that bed. It was her headless body.

  “Missy Lady, Missy Lady; Missy Jo-an!” screamed Ah Kee despairingly, leaping forward to seize one of the stiff, white hands clutching at the bedding; but:

  “Back, my little one!” de Grandin ordered sharply. “Touch her not; we must—”

  A hideous screaming chorus of discordant laughter drowned his words, and as we turned to face the window we beheld two severed heads staring at us from the darkness.

  The Malay woman’s gold-bronze face was aflame with evil triumph, and her red lips writhed with devilish merriment as she sent forth peal on ringing peal of mocking cachinnation. Her red-flecked eyes of agate-green glowed brightly in her face, her white teeth flashed, her every feature was instinct with triumphant, hellish jubilation.

  Beside the black-tressed head another floated, a little, heart-shaped face with cheeks of golden tan, crowned with long ringlets of copper-colored hair which swirled and floated in the evening breeze like the loosened locks of a drowned woman floating round her still, dead face. And though she joined the other in the duet of derisive laughter, there was no quality of merriment in her tones. Rather, it was the despairing, hysterical shriek of one in whom all hope has died. And in her eyes there was the helpless, hopeless pleading of an animal in mortal pain, and down her cheeks there coursed. twin trails of shining tear-drops, even as she laughed.

  De Grandin suddenly went berserk. “Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu!” he shouted. “Am I to be mocked by this abomination?—made a monkey of by a head without a body?—ten million thousand damn times no!”

  Snatching up a heavy vase he struck it on the bedpost, breaking it across the bottom so that it terminated in a jagged, saw-toothed edge, and hurling it with all his frenzied might straight through the window-pane.

  The glass crashed outward with a deafening clash and the sharp-toothed missile flew straight to its mark, striking the dangling stomach sac beneath Salanga’s head with smashing, devastating impact.

  I saw the globular thing sway drunkenly as the broken crockery hit it, heard the anguished scream which cut short the discord of malicious laughter, then shuddered with physical sickness as a spilth of blood-stained liquid spurted from the ruptured sac.

  In a second all was quiet—quiet as the tomb. The cord which dangled from the window-blind flapped idly against the sill as a little breath of breeze crept through the broken pane; the gaslight hissed softly in the etched-glass globe; the still, stark body of Joan Haines lay sprawled immovably upon the bed. De Grandin, Ah Kee and I held our breaths in a very œstrum of horror. Suddenly:

  “Name of a name, why do we stand here gaping like three sacré fools?” the little Frenchman blazed. “Quick, Friend Trowbridge, to your car. Prepare to drive us back to town at once. My little one, I would have your immediate assistance.”

  He seized Ah Kee by the shoulder and fairly dragged him from the room.

  I had hardly had time to seat myself behind the steering-wheel when de Grandin and Ah Kee emerged from the house each bearing a great armful of the red thorn-flowers and a burlap sack.

  “Now, Friend Trowbridge, drive; drive like the devil; drive comme un perdu to that ninety-times-condemned Shadow Lawns cemetery. We must get there first!” he panted.

  “First?” I queried, setting the motor going. “Before whom?”

  “Oh, do not stop to talk or argue,” he besought. “Go, drive; fly. We must reach that grave before them!”

  I PUSHED MY MOTOR TO its utmost. When I bought the car the salesman had assured me that it would be valuable in responding to emergencies, and that night I proved that he had spoken truly. Sixty, sixty-five, seventy miles the speedometer registered. As we came in sight of the long green fence enclosing Shadow Lawns the needle indicated seventy-five, and a little plume of grayish steam was streaming backward from my radiator cap.

  “Très bon. It is enough,” de Grandin tapped me on the shoulder. “Come.”

  We scaled the cemetery fence and, led by him, hastened on among the quiet graves till we reached a level plot where a tall, imposing granite shaft displayed the one word:

  HAINES

  “Now quiet, on your lives,” de Grandin ordered as we sank to cover in the shadow of the monument and he and Ah Kee fell feverishly to work plaiting long loops of the thorny flower-stalks.

  I watched them in bewilderment, but so intent upon their work were they that neither took the slightest notice of my presence. At length:

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p; “Is all prepared?” the Frenchman asked.

  “Yup. All flinish; dam’ good,” Ah Kee returned.

  We waited silently for what seemed like an hour, and at last de Grandin seized my shoulder. “Observe, behold; they come!” he told me tensely.

  Skimming low above the mounded graves there came what looked like a pair of monstrous birds. They flew heavily, almost blindly, wavering from side to side, swooping near the ground one moment, then suddenly rising to a height of several feet with an awkward, bouncing motion. At last they approached near enough for me to recognize them.

  They were two severed human heads, each with a round, balloon-like thing dependent from it. The nearer one flew hesitantly, like a wounded bird, lobbing crazily from side to side, its companion following its flight like a timid, awkward child playing follow-the-leader.

  Waveringly they winged their way to a newly mounded grave, hovered in the air a moment, then swooped to earth, wriggling with a terrible, revolting snake-like movement down into the grass.

  “Pardonnez-moi, I do not think you will go home tonight, Mesdames,” announced de Grandin, stepping from the shadow of the monument. “I have other plans for you.”

  Deftly, like a skilled vaquero casting his lariat, he threw the loop of plaited thorn-bush over the nearer of the burrowing heads and began drawing in the spike-spurred tether as a fisherman might draw in his line.

  Inside the thorny bight the trapped thing bobbed about grotesquely, like a savage, wounded beast, gibbering and shrieking in a high, thin voice horribly reminiscent of the whimperings of a child in pain, and once or twice, when its struggles brought it into contact with the thorny noose, uttering little gasping mewls.

  It was pitiful to see the helpless thing’s vain struggles, and I felt the same involuntary sympathy which I should have felt at witnessing a beast held fast in the steel jaws of a trap, but pity changed to horror as de Grandin anchored his noose beneath one foot and opened wide his burlap sack, and the captive head sprang at him like a striking serpent. A sharp thorn tore its dangling stomach, widening the rent already made by de Grandin’s saw-toothed missile, but rage had made the thing insensible to pain, and, teeth flashing in the pale moonlight, it launched its gaping mouth directly at his throat.

  “Ça-ha, diablesse!” de Grandin cried, throwing up his left hand defensively, and the champing teeth fastened in his sleeve, so that the head hung swaying from his cuff, its long hair flowing nearly to the ground, vicious, growling noises issuing from between the tight-clenched teeth.

  With a fierce gesture the Frenchman swung his hand away from his face, reached quickly beneath his jacket and snatched out a hunting-knife.

  “E-e-e-ur-r-gh!” a kind of screaming grunt issued from the severed head dependent from his sleeve, and the thing fought desperately to free itself, but the saber-sharp white teeth had pierced clear through the cloth and were entangled in the fabric.

  De Grandin swung his knife as a woodsman might his ax. The keen blade sheared through the tough muscular tube of the esophagus pendent from the severed neck, and the dangling stomach sac fell to the graveyard grass.

  A wild and anguished cry, half screech, half groan, issued from the head, but the little Frenchman’s blade was merciless. Flashing in an arc, it swung again, striking heavily, ax-like, upon the vault of the penanggalan’s skull, shearing through black, gleaming hair and scalp and bone, burying itself deep in the brain.

  The scream of mortal terror died half uttered, like a cry that had been smothered at inception, but the teeth held firmly to his jacket, the jaws fast-locked in cadaveric spasm.

  With a wrenching twist he freed his knife-blade from the skull and jammed its gleaming point right in the dead thing’s mouth, prying the clenched jaws apart.

  Sick at the sight, I turned away.

  Ah Kee cast his loop of thorny flowers round the second head, but the savagery which Jules de Grandin had displayed was wholly absent as he gently coaxed the captive toward him. “No be ‘flaid, Missy Lady,” he crooned softly, twitching delicately at the lasso, lest a sharp thorn wound his catch. “Ah Kee not hurt you; no tly for lun away, you not get hurt!” Slowly, inch by careful inch, he drew the tether in.

  “Très bon, good work, my little old one!” de Grandin complimented. “Careful—gently—so!” Leaping forward he drew the opened mouth of his sack over the copper-crowned head as it rose a few inches from the grass in a futile struggle to escape the circling loop of thorns.

  Gently, as a lad might soothe a frightened kitten, he stroked the bulge in the big which told where the head lay. “Do not be afraid, ma pauvre, we shall not do you injury,” he whispered; then leaving the little half-caste to bear the burden, he paused a moment to stuff the knife-slashed remnants of the other head into the other sack.

  “Now, my friend, we must make haste,” he told me. “Drive first to your house, then to Mademoiselle Jeanne’s and do not dally on the road, I beg you; a life—cordieu, more than a life!—depends upon our speed this night.”

  I kept the motor running while he rushed into the house, reappearing in a little while with two emergency kits and a bulging bundle, then, at his whispered order, shoved the throttle forward and forgot there were such things as legal speed limits as we headed for the old Haines mansion.

  “There is no time for proper preparation,” he told me when we reached our destination; “we must use the things which are at hand.”

  To Ah Kee he ordered, “Fetch a shutter, quickly, if you please.”

  The little man departed, returning in a moment staggering under the burden of a tall window-blind, and the Frenchman threw a sheet across it, then seized one end, signing me to take the other. “It is our litter,” he explained as we bore the blind upstairs. “Come, make haste, my friend.”

  We put Joan Haines’ stiffened body on the blind and bore it down to the kitchen, where, beneath the glare of unshaded gaslights, we laid it on the sheet-spread table and de Grandin tore open his parcel, drawing forth two surgical robes.

  Donning one, he motioned me to put the other on, and unlatched the satchels, laid out a set of knives, artery-clips, thread and needles, last of all a can of ether.

  “À moi,” he told Ah Kee, indicating the sack the other held.

  “Do not be fearful, Mademoiselle,” he soothed as he took the burlap bag between his hands; “this brings forgetfulness and peace—perchance recovery.” Gently, caressingly, he stroked the sack, nodding to me to begin dropping ether from the can upon the coarse fabric.

  A whimpering cry of fright came from the bag as I dropped the anesthetic on the loosely woven meshes, but as the strong, sweet smell began to penetrate the room, the flutterings and whimpers lessened, finally subsided altogether.

  De Grandin drew the bag’s closed lips apart, peeked exploringly into the dark depths, then, with a nod of satisfaction, thrust his hand inside, rummaged about a moment, finally drew forth Joan Haines’ head.

  “We must be swift,” he murmured as he laid the pathetic thing on a small table covered with a clean, fresh cloth. “I do not know how long the anesthesia will last. Parbleu,” he drew on rubber gloves and took a knife up delicately between his thumb and forefinger, “I have operated many times, but never before have I seen ether applied to a patient with no lungs to breathe it!”

  “Patient?” I echoed wonderingly. Could he be referring to the dead that way?

  I watched him curiously as he set to work with that swiftness and dexterity which always characterized his surgery.

  Daintily as a watchmaker working at his delicate mechanism, he commenced the median incision, and I gasped with incredulity as I saw the ruby blood follow the knife in a thin, red ribbon.

  There was no time to lose. Snatching sponges and arterial clips, I stationed myself at his elbow. Swabbing, clipping, handing him the instruments, I watched in fascination as he made the Y-shaped transverse cut, laid open the thorax and, as calmly as though he were a toymaker constructing a mechanical doll, proceeded to repla
ce Joan Haines’ stomach, connect the duodenum and pylorus, close the throat about the esophagus and matter-of-factly sew the wounds together as though the operation which he had performed were one of everyday occurrence.

  “D’ye actually believe she’s living?” I asked as he completed his last stitch. “Why, it’s preposterous—rigor mortis—has set in, and—”

  “Did you observe the blood?” he interrupted, busy with his gloves.

  “Why, yes, it did seem strangely liquid,” I admitted. “You’d have thought coagulation would have started, but—”

  “‘But’ be everlastingly consigned to hell!” he blazed; “see this!”

  Leaning forward, he placed his lips against the dead girl’s mouth, and, hands beneath her ribs, bore down upon her diaphragm, at the same time forcing a great lungful of breath down her throat.

  Once, twice, three times the process was repeated, and as be raised his head to draw a fourth deep breath, I cried out sharply:

  “Look; look, de Grandin—she’s alive!”

  She was. There was no doubt of it. Faintly, so faintly that we could hardly see its motion, her chest was fluttering, like the breast of one who breathes his last, but as he leant above her with redoubled efforts, her respiration strengthened visibly. In a moment she was breathing naturally, drinking in the sultry summer air with deep, thirsty gulps, as a desert-famished woman might have drained cool water from a cup.

  We wrapped her inert form in blankets, placed it on our improvised stretcher and bore it to the bedroom where Ah Kee waited with a dozen bottles of boiling water which we placed around her in the bed.

  “I telephoned Mademoiselle Bradfield before we left the city,” de Grandin told me. “She is an excellent garde-malade for surgical cases, and le bon Dieu knows we shall need such an one for Mademoiselle Jeanne.”

  He had hardly finished speaking when a taxicab wheeled up to the door and Miss Bradfield, stiff, starched and looking extremely sterile and competent in her hospital whites, alighted.

  De Grandin prepared a hypodermic syringe and placed it on the bedside table. “Three-quarters of a grain of morphine in the arm the moment she shows signs of consciousness, if you please, Mademoiselle,” he told the nurse. “She has been through a serious ordeal, and retching would indubitably prove fatal.