A Rival from the Grave Page 17

  “Oh, you’re fantastic!” I derided.

  “Possibly,” he nodded gloomily. “But I am also right, my friend. I would that I were not.”

  3. The Phantom Lover

  MADAME SZEKLER, WHO PRESIDED at dinner, proved as representative of the old, vanished order of Hungarian society as her husband. Well beyond the borderline of middle age, she still retained appealing charm and beauty, with a slender, exquisitely formed figure which lent distinction to her Viennese dinner gown, a face devoid of lines or wrinkles as a girl’s, high-browed but heavy-lidded eyes of pansy blue and a pale but flawless skin. Her hair, close-cropped as a man’s and brushed straight back with a flat marcelle, was gleaming-white as a cloud adrift upon a summer sky, and gave added charm, rather than any impression of age, to her cameo-clear features.

  “Zita was too tired to come to dinner; I left her sleeping soundly shortly after you had gone,” Colonel Szekler apologized, and de Grandin bowed assent.

  “It is well for her to get as much rest as she can,” he answered; then, in an aside to me:

  “It is better so, Friend Trowbridge; I would observe Madame at dinner, and I can do so better in her daughter’s absence. Do you regard her, too, if you will be so kind. Ladies of her age are apt to become neurotic. I should value your opinion.”

  Dinner was quite gay, for de Grandin’s spirits rose perceptibly when the main course proved to be boned squab, basted in wine, stuffed with Carolina wild rice and served with orange ice. When the glasses were filled with vintage Tokay he seemed to have forgotten the existence of such a thing as trouble, and his witty sallies brought repeated chuckles from the colonel and even coaxed a smile to Madame Szekler’s sad, aristocratic lips.

  The meal concluded, we adjourned to the big living-room, where coffee and liqueurs were served while de Grandin and I smoked cigars and our host and hostess puffed at long, slim cigarettes which were one-third paper mouthpiece.

  “But it grows late,” the little Frenchman told us as he concluded one of his inimitable anecdotes; “let us go upstairs and see how Mademoiselle Zita does.”

  The girl was sleeping peacefully when we looked into her room, and I was about to go downstairs again when de Grandin plucked me by the sleeve.

  “Wait here, my friend,” he bade. “It yet wants a half-hour until midnight, and it is then that he is most likely to appear.”

  ‘You think she’s apt to have another—visitation?” Madame Szekler asked. “Oh, if I thought that wretched séance were the cause of this, I’d kill myself. I only wanted to be near my boy, but—”

  “Do not distress yourself, Madame,” de Grandin interrupted. “He was bound to find a way to enter in, that one. The séance did at most but hasten his advent—and that of Jules de Grandin. Leave us with her, if you please. If nothing happens, all is well; if she is visited, we shall be here to take such steps as may be necessary.”

  FOR HOURS OUR VIGIL by the sleeping girl was uneventful. Her breath came soft and regular: she did not even change position as she slept; and I stood by the window, smothering back a yawn and wishing that I had not drunk so much Tokay at dinner. Abruptly:

  “Trowbridge, my friend, observe!” de Grandin’s low, sharp whisper summoned my attention.

  Turning, I saw that the girl had cast aside the covers and lay upon her bed, her slender, supple body showing pale as carven alabaster through the meshes of her black-lace sleeping-suit. As I looked I saw her head move restlessly from side to side, and heard a little moan escape her. I was reminded of a sleepy, ailing child registering protest at being waked to take unpleasant-tasting medicine.

  But not for long was this reluctance shown. Slowly, almost tentatively, like one who feels her cautious way through darkness, she put forth one exquisitely small foot and then the other, hesitated for a breath, then rose up from her couch, a smile of blissful joy upon her face. And though her eyes were closed, she seemed to see her path as she walked half-way across the room, then halted suddenly, stretched out her arms, then clasped them tightly, as though she never would let go of what she held. Head back, lips parted, she raised herself and stood on tiptoe, scarcely seeming to touch the floor. It was as if, by some sort of levitation, she were lifted up and really floated in the air, anchored to earth only by the pink-tipped toes of her small feet. Or was it not—my heart stood still as the thought crashed through my mind—was it not as though she yielded herself to the embrace of someone taller than herself, someone who clasped her in his arms, all but lifting her from her feet while he rained kisses on her yearning mouth?

  A little, moaning gasp escaped her, and she staggered backward dizzily, still hugging something which we could not see against her breast, her every movement more like that of one who leaned upon another for support than one who walked unaided. She fell across the bed. Her eyes were still fast-shut, but she thrust her head a little forward, as though she seemed to see ecstatic visions through the lowered lids. Her pale cheeks flushed, her lips fell back in the sweet curve of an eager, avid smile. She raised her hands, making little downward passes before her face, as though she stroked the cheeks of one who leant above her, and a gentle tremor shook her slender form as her slim bosom seemed to swell and her lips opened and closed slowly, blissfully, in a pantomime of kissing. A deep sigh issued from between her milk-white teeth; then her breath came short and jerkily in quick exhausted gasps.

  “Grand Dieu—l’incube!” de Grandin whispered. “See, my friend?”

  “L’incube—incubus—nightmare? I should say so!” I exclaimed. “Quick, waken her, de Grandin; this sort of thing may lead to erotomania!”

  “Be still!” he whispered sharply. “I did not say an incubus, but the incubus. This is no nightmare, my friend, it is a foul being from the world beyond who woos a mortal woman—observe, behold, regardez-vous!”

  From Zita’s side, three inches or so below the gentle prominence of her left breast, there came a tiny puff of smoke, as from a cigarette. But it was renewed, sustained, growing from a puff to a stream, from a stream to a column, finally mushrooming at the top to form a nebulous, white pompon which whirled and gyrated and seemed to spin upon its axis, growing larger and more solid-seeming with each revolution. Then the grayish-whiteness of the vapor faded, took on translucence, gradually became transparent, and like a soap-bubble of gigantic size floated upward till it rested in the air a foot or so above the girl’s ecstatic countenance.

  And from the bubble looked a face—a man’s face, evil as Mefisto’s own, instinct with cruelty and lechery and wild, vindictive triumph. The features were coarse, gross, heavy; bulbous lips, not red, but rather purple as though gorged with blood; a great hooked nose, not aquiline, but rather reminiscent of a vulture; dank, matted hair which clung in greasy strands to a low forehead; deepset, lack-luster eyes which burned like corpse-lights showing through the hollow sockets of a skull.

  I started back involuntarily, but de Grandin thrust his hand into the pocket of his dinner coat and advanced upon the vision. “Gutter-spawn of hell,” he warned, “be off. Conjuro te; abire ad locum tuum!” With a wrenching motion he drew forth a flaçon, undid its stopper and hurled its contents straight against the gleaming bubble which encased the leering face.

  The pearly drops of water struck the opalescent sphere as though it had been glass, some of them splashing on the sleeping, girl, some adhering to the globe’s smooth sides, but for all the effect they produced they might as well not have been thrown.

  “Now, by the horns on Satan’s head—” the Frenchman began furiously, but stopped abruptly as the globe began to whirl again. As though it had derived its roundness from winding up the end of the smoke-column issuing from Zita’s side, so now it seemed that it reversed itself, becoming first oval as it turned, then elliptical, then long and sausage-shaped, finally merging with the trailing wisp of vapor which floated from the girl’s slim trunk, and which, even as we watched, was steadily withdrawn until it lost itself in her white flesh.

  Zita was l
ying on her back, her arms stretched out as though she had been crucified, her breath coming in hot, fevered gasps, tears welling from beneath the lashes of her lowered lids.

  “Now, look at this, my friend,” de Grandin ordered. “It was from here the vapor issued, was it not?”

  He placed a finger over the girl’s side, and as I nodded he drew a needle from his lapel and thrust it to the eye in her soft flesh. I cried aloud at his barbarity, but he silenced me with a quick gesture, parted the wide meshes of her lace pajamas and held the bedside lamp above the acupuncture. The steel was almost wholly fleshed in her side; yet not only did she not cry out, but there was no sign of blood about the point of incision. It might as well have been dead tissue into which he thrust the needle.

  “Whatever are you doing?” I demanded furiously.

  “Merely testing,” he replied; then, contritely: “Non, I would not play with you, my friend. I did desire to assure myself of a local anesthesia at the point from which the ectoplasm issued. You know the olden story that witches and all those who sold themselves to Satan bore somewhere on their bodies an area insensible to pain. This was said to be because the Devil had possessed them. I shall not say it was not so; but what if the possession be involuntary, if the evil spirit of possession comes against the will of the possessed? Will there still be such local insensitive areas? I thought there would be. Pardieu, now I know. I have proved it!

  “Now the task remains to us to devise some method of attack against this so vile miscreant. He has become as much physical as spiritual; consequently spiritual weapons are of little avail against him. Will the purely physical prevail, one wonders?”

  “How d’ye mean?”

  “Why, you saw what happened when I dashed the holy water on him—it did not seem to inconvenience him at all.”

  “But, good heavens, man,” I argued, “how can that—whatever it was we saw—be both spiritual and physical? Doesn’t it have to be one or the other?”

  “Not necessarily,” he answered. “You and I and all the rest of us are dually constructed: part physical body, part animating spirit. This unpleasant Czerni person was once the same, till Colonel Szekler killed him. Then he became wholly spirit, but evil spirit. And because he was a spirit he was powerless to work overt harm. He lacked a body for his evil work. Then finally came opportunity. At that cursed séance of Madame Claire’s, Mademoiselle Zita was an ideal tool to work his wickedness. It is a well-recognized fact among Spiritualists that the adolescent girl is regarded as the ideal medium, where it is desired that the spirits materialize. For why? Because such girls’ nerves are highly strung and their physical resistance weak. It is from such as these that imponderable, but nevertheless physical substance called ectoplasm is most easily ravished by the spirit desiring to materialize, to build himself a semi-solid body. Accordingly, Mademoiselle Zita was ideal for the vile Czerni’s purpose. From her he drew the ectoplasm to materialize at Madame Claire’s. When the ectoplasm flowed back to her, he went with it. This moment, Friend Trowbridge, he dwells within her, dominating her completely while she is asleep and the conscious mind is off its guard, drawing ectoplasm from her when he would make himself apparent. He can not do so often, she is not strong enough to furnish him the power for frequent materializations; but there he is, ever present, always seeking opportunity to injure her. We must cast him out, my friend, before he takes complete possession of her, and she becomes what the ancients called ‘possessed of a devil’; what we call insane.

  “Come, let us go. I do not think that he will trouble her again tonight, and I have much studying to do before we come to final grips, I and this so vile revenant of the Red Gauntlets.”

  4. Red Gauntlets of Czerni

  “TROWBRIDGE, MY FRIEND, AWAKE, arouse yourself; get up!” de Grandin’s hail broke through my early-morning sleep. “Rise, dress, make haste, friend; we are greatly needed!”

  “Eh?” I sat up drowsily and shook the sleep from my eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything, by blue!” he answered. “It is Mademoiselle Zita. She is hurt, maimed, injured. They have taken her to Mercy Hospital. We must hurry.

  “No, I can not tell you the nature of her injuries,” he answered as we drove through the gray light of early dawn toward the hospital. “I only know that she is badly hurt. Colonel Szekler telephoned a few minutes ago and seemed in great distress. He said it was her hands—”

  “Her hands?” I echoed. “How—”

  “Cordieu, I said I do not know,” he flashed back. “But I damn suspect, and if my suspicions are well founded we must hasten and arrive before it is too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “Oh, pour l’amour des porcs, talk less, drive faster, if you please, great stupid one!” he shouted.

  COLONEL SZEKLER, GRAY-FACED AS a corpse, awaited us in the hospital’s reception room. “Himmelkreuzsakrament,” he swore through chattering teeth, “this is dreadful, unthinkable! My girl, my little Zita—” a storm of retching sobs choked further utterance, and he bowed his forehead on his arms and wept as though his heart were bursting.

  “Courage, Monsieur,” de Grandin soothed. “All is not lost; tell us how it happened; what is it that befell Mademoiselle—”

  “All isn’t lost, you say?” Colonel Szekler raised his tear-scarred face, and the wolfish gleam in his eyes was so dreadful that involuntarily I raised my arm protectively. “All isn’t lost, when my little girl is hopelessly deformed?—when she wears the red gauntlets of Czerni?”

  “Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu, do you say it?” the Frenchman cried. “Attention, Monsieur; lay by your grief and tell me all—everything—immediately. There is not a moment to be wasted. I had the presentiment that this might be what happened, and I have made plans, but first I must know all. Speak, Monsieur! There will be time enough to grieve if our efforts prove futile. Now is the time for action.”

  Laying small, white hands upon the colonel’s shoulders, he shook him almost as a dog might shake a rat, and the show of unexpected strength in one so small, no less than the physical violence, brought the colonel from his maze of grief.

  “It was about three-quarters of an hour ago,” he began. “I’d gone to Zita’s room and found her resting peacefully; so, reassured, I lay down and fell asleep. Immediately, I began to dream. I was back in Buda-Pest again during the terror. Czerni was sitting in judgment on helpless victims of the Bolsheviki’s vengeance. One after another they were brought before him, soldiers of the king, nobles, members of the bourgeoisie—children, old men, women, anyone and everyone who had fallen into the clutches of his rowdies of the Red Guard. Always the judgment was the same—death. As well might a lamb have looked for mercy from the wolf-pack as a member of our class seek clemency from that mockery of a court where Tibor Czerni sat in judgment.

  “Then they brought Zita in. She stood before him, proud and silent, as became her ancient blood, not deigning to offer any defense to the accusation of counter-revolutionary activities which they brought against her. I saw Czerni’s eyes light with lust as he looked at her, taking her in from head to foot with a lecherous glance that seemed to strip the garments from her body as he puckered up his gross, thick lips and smiled.

  “‘The charges are not proved to my satisfaction,’ he declared when all the accusations had been made. ‘At least they are not sufficiently substantiated to merit the death sentence on this young lady. It would be a pity, too, to mar that pretty body with bullets or stretch that lovely throat out of proportion with the hangman’s rope. Besides, I know her parents, her charming mother and her proud, distinguished father. I owe them something, and I must pay my debt. Therefore, for their sakes, if not for her own charming self, I order this young lady to be set at liberty.’

  “I saw a look of incredulous relief sweep over Zita’s face as he gave the order, but it was replaced by one of horror as he finished:

  “‘Yes, comrades, set her free—but not until you’ve put red gauntlets on her!’
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  “And as I lay there gasping at the horror of my dream, I heard a laugh, high, cachinnating, triumphant, and awoke with the echo of it in my ears. Then, as I was about to fall asleep again, thanking heaven that I only dreamt, I heard Zita’s scream. Peal after peal of frenzied shrieks came from her room as she cried for mercy, called to me and her mother for help, then, becoming inarticulate, merely wailed in agony. As I ran headlong down the hall her screaming died away, and she was only moaning weakly when I reached her room.

  “She lay across her bed, groaning in exhausted agony, like a helpless beast caught in the hunter’s trap, and her hands were stretched straight out before her.

  “Her hands—Gott in Himmel, no! Her stumps! Her hands were crushed to bloody pulp and hung upon her wrists like mops of shredded cloth, sopping with red stickiness. Blood was over everything, the bed, the rug, the pillows and her sleeping-suit, and as I looked at her I could see it spurting from the mangled flesh of her poor, battered hands with every palpitation of her pounding heart.

  “‘This, too, is a dream,’ I told myself, but when I crossed the room and touched her, I knew it was no dream. How it happened I don’t know, but somehow, through some damned black magic, Tibor Czerni has been able to come back from that hell where his monstrous spirit waits throughout eternity and work this mischief to my child; to disfigure her beyond redemption and make a helpless cripple of her.

  “There was little I could do. I got some dressings from the bathroom and bound her hands, trying my best to staunch the flow of blood, ’phoned to Mercy Hospital for an ambulance; finally called you. We are lost. Czerni has triumphed.”

  “WILL YOU SIGN THIS, sir?” the young intern, sick with revulsion at the ghastly phases of his trade, stepped almost diffidently into the reception room and presented a filled-in form to Colonel Szekler. “It’s your authority as next of kin for the operation.”