The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 4

  We were standing in a long, straight passage, smoothwalled with panels of polished marble, and, like the larger apartment, tiled with alternate squares of black and white. No doorways led off the aisle, but other corridors crossed it at right angles at intervals of thirty to thirty-five feet. Like the larger room, the passage was lighted by oil lamps swung from the ceiling.

  Following our guides, we turned to the right down a passageway the exact duplicate of the first, entered a third corridor, and, after walking a considerable distance, made another turn and stopped before a narrow curtained archway. Through this we entered a large square room, windowless, but well lighted by lamps and furnished with two bedsteads of bamboo having strong China matting on them in lieu of springs or mattress. A low bamboo dressing table, fitted with a mirror of polished metal, and several reed chairs constituted the residue of the furniture.

  One of the boys signed to us to remove our clothes, while the other ran out, returning almost immediately dragging two sheet-iron bath tubs after him. Placing these in the center of the room he left us again, and reappeared in a few minutes with a wheeled contrivance something like a child’s express wagon in which stood six large earthen jars, four containing warm water, the other two cold.

  We stepped into the tubs and the lads proceeded to rub us down with an oily liquid, strongly perfumed with sandalwood and very soothing to feel. When this had been well worked into our skins the lads poured the contents of the warm-water jars over us, splashing us thoroughly from hair to feet, then sluiced us off with a five-gallon douche of almost ice-cold water. Towels of coarse native linen were unfolded, and in less than five minutes we were as thoroughly cleansed, dried and invigorated as any patron of a Turkish bath at home.

  I felt rather dubious when my personal attendant produced a clumsy native razor and motioned me to be seated in one of the cane chairs, but the lad proved a skillful barber, light and deft of touch and absolutely speechless—a great improvement upon the loquacious American tonsorialist, I thought.

  Dinner clothes and a suit of carefully laundered white drill, all scented with the pungent, pleasing odor of clove husks, were brought in on wicker trays, and as we put the finishing touches on our toilet one of the lads produced a small casket of polished cedar in which reposed a layer of long, black cigars, the sort which retail for a dollar apiece in Havana.

  “Nom d’un petit bonhomme!” de Grandin exploded as he exhaled a lungful of the fragrant smoke; “this is marvelous; it is magnificent; it is superb—but I like it not, Friend Trowbridge.”

  “Bosh,” I responded, puffing in placid content, “you’re afraid of your shadow, de Grandin! Why, man, this is wonderful—think where we were this morning, shipwrecked, pursued by man-eaters, with starvation as the least of our perils, and look at us now, both dressed in clean clothes, with every attention and convenience we could have at home, and safe, man, safe.”

  “Safe?” he answered dubiously. “‘Safe,’ do you say? Did you apprehend, my friend, how our host, that so mysterious Monsieur Goonong, almost spoke of Captain Van Thun when the question of clothing you came up?”

  “Why, now you speak of it, I do remember how he seemed about to say something about Captain Something-or-Other, and apparently thought better of it,” I agreed. “But what’s that to do with us?”

  The little Frenchman came close to me and sank his voice to a scarcely audible whisper: “Captain Franz Van Thun,” he breathed, “was master of the Dutch Indiaman Van Damm, which sailed from Rotterdam to Sumatra, and was lost, as far as known, with all on board, on her homeward voyage.”

  “But—” I protest.

  “She-s-sh!” he cut me off. “Those servant boys are beckoning: come, we are wanted elsewhere.”

  I looked up at the two mutes, and shuddered at sight of the leering grins on their faces.

  5

  THE LADS LED US through another bewildering series of corridors till our sense of location was completely obfuscated, finally paused, one on each side of an archway, and, bowing deeply, signaled us to enter.

  We strode into a long, marble-tiled room which, unlike every other apartment in the queer house, was not brilliantly lighted. The room’s sole illumination was furnished by the glow of fourteen wax candles set in two seven-branched silver candelabra which stood at opposite ends of a polished mahogany table of purest Sheraton design, its waxed surface giving back reflections of crystal, and silver dinner service fit for the table of a king.

  “Ah, gentlemen,” Goonong Besar, arrayed in immaculate evening clothes, greeted us from the farther end of the room. “I hope you have brought good appetites with you. I’m fairly ravenous, for my part. Will you join me?”

  The same Malay servitors who had accompanied him at our meeting stood behind him now, their semi-military khaki jackets and sarongs exchanged for costumes of freshly ironed white linen and their rifles replaced by a pair of large-caliber Luger pistols which each wore conspicuously tucked in his scarlet silk cummerbund.

  “Sorry I can’t offer you a cocktail,” our host apologized as we seated ourselves, “but ice is not among the improvements available in my modest little menage, unfortunately. However, we find the sea caves do quite well as refrigerators and I think you’ll find this chilled wine really acceptable as a substitute. Ah”—he looked diffidently from one of us to the other, finally fixing his gaze on me—“will you be good enough to ask the blessing, Dr. Trowbridge? You look as if you might be experienced in that line.”

  Startled, but greatly reassured by the request, I bowed my head and repeated the customary formula, almost springing from my chair with amazement as I opened my eyes at the prayer’s end. While de Grandin and I had bent above the table during grace, the servants had pulled back the rich batik with which the wall facing us was draped, revealing a series of heavy plate glass panels against which the ocean’s green waters pressed. We are looking directly on to the sea bottom.

  “Jolly clever idea, what?” Goonong Besar inquired smiling at our surprised faces. “Thought it all up myself; like to see the little finny fellows swim past, you know. Had a beastly hard time getting workmen to do the job for me, too; but all sorts of unbelievable persons trickle into these islands from time to time—architects gone ga-ga with drink, skilled artisans in all the trades and what-not—I finally managed to collect the men I wanted.”

  “But, Monsieur, the expense,” de Grandin protested with typical Gallic logic, “it must have been prodigious!”

  “Oh, no,” the young man answered negligently. “I had to feed the beggars, of course, but most of ’em were habituated to native food, and that’s not very expensive.”

  “But their salaries,” de Grandin persisted; “why Monsieur, this house is a work of genius, a marvel of engineering; even drink-ruined architects and engineers capable of producing such a place as this would demand fabulous fees for their services—and the laborers, the men who cut and polished the marble here, they must have been numerous as an army; their wages would be ruinous.”

  “Most of the marble was salvaged from deserted Dutch colonial palaces,” Goonong Besar replied. “You know, Holland built a mighty empire in these islands a century or so ago, and her planters lived in palaces fit for kings. When the empire crumbled the planters left, and he who cared to might help himself to their houses, wholly or in part. As for wages”—he waved a jeweled hand carelessly—“I am rich, but the wages made no great inroads on my fortune. Do you remember your medieval history, Dr. de Grandin?”

  “Eh? But certainly,” the Frenchman responded, “but …”

  “Don’t you recall, then, the precaution the nobles, ecclesiastical as well as temporal, took to insure the secrecy of their castle or cathedral plans?” He paused, smiling quizzically at de Grandin.

  “Parbleu! But you would not; you could not, you would not dare!” the Frenchman almost shouted, half rising from his chair and staring at our host as though a mad dog sat in his place.

  “Nonsense, of course I would—an
d did,” the other replied good-humoredly. “Why not? The men were bits of human flotsam, not worth salvaging. And who was to know? Dead men are notoriously uncommunicative, you know. Proverbially so, in fact.”

  “But, you tell this to me?” de Grandin looked at him incredulously.

  Our host’s face went perfectly expressionless as he stared directly at de Grandin for a period while one might count five slowly, then his dark, rather sullen face lighted with a smile. “May I offer you some more wine, my dear doctor?” he asked.

  I LOOKED ALTERNATELY AT MY companions in wonderment. Goonong Besar had made some sinister implication which de Grandin had been quick to comprehend, I knew, and their subsequent conversation concerning dead men telling no tales contained a thinly veiled threat; but try as I would I could not find the key to their enigmatic talk. “Medieval castles and cathedrals? Dead men tell no tales?” I repeated to myself. What did it all mean?

  Goonong Besar broke in on my thought: “May I offer you a bit more of this white meat, Dr. Trowbridge?” he asked courteously. “Really, we find this white meat” (the words were ever, so slightly emphasized) “most delicious. So tender and well flavored, you know. Do you like it?”

  “Very much, thank you,” I replied. “It’s quite different from anything I’ve ever tasted. In a way it reminds me of delicate young pork, yet it’s different, too. Is it peculiar to the islands, Mr. Goonong?”

  “Well—er”—he smiled slightly as he cut a thin slice of the delicious roast and placed it on my plate—“I wouldn’t say it is peculiar to our islands, though we have an unusual way of preparing it in this house. The natives hereabouts refer to the animal from which it comes as ‘long pig’—really a disgusting sort of beast while living; but quite satisfactory when killed and properly cooked. May I serve you again, Dr. de Grandin?” He turned toward the Frenchman with a smile.

  I sat suddenly upright in utter, dumfounded amazement as I beheld Grandin’s face. He was leaning forward in his chair, his fierce little blue eyes very round and almost protruding from his head, his weather-tanned cheeks gone the color of putty as he stared at our host like a subject regarding a professional hypnotist. “Dieu, grand Dieu!” he ejaculated in a choking whisper. “‘Long pig,’ did you say? Sang de St. Denis! And I have eaten it!”

  “My dear chap, are you ill?” I cried, leaping from my chair and hastening to his side. “Has your dinner disagreed with you?”

  “Non, non!” he waved me away, still speaking that choking whisper. “Sit down, Friend Trowbridge, sit down; but par l’amour de Dieu, I beseech you, eat no more of that accurst meat, at least not tonight.”

  “Oh, my dear sir!” Goonong Besar protested mildly. “You have spoiled Dr. Trowbridge’s appetite, and he was enjoying this delicious white meat so much, too. This is really too bad, you know. Really, it is!”

  He frowned at the silver meat platter before him a moment, then signaled one of his attendants to take it away, adding a quick command in Malayan as he did so.

  “Perhaps a little entertainment will help us forget this unfortunate contretemps,” he suggested. “I have sent for Miriam. You will like her, I fancy. I have great hopes for her; she has the makings of a really accomplished artiste, I think.”

  The servant who had taken away the meat returned and whispered something in our host’s ear. As he listened, Goonong Besar’s thin, well-bred face took on such an expression of fury as I had never before seen displayed by a human being. “What?” he shouted, forgetting, apparently, that the Malay did not understand English. “I’ll see about this—we’ll soon see who says ‘must’ and ‘shall’ in this house.”

  He turned to us with a perfunctory bow as he rose. “Excuse me, please,” he begged. “A slight misunderstanding has arisen, and I must straighten it out. I shan’t keep you waiting long, I hope; but if you wish anything while I am gone, Hussein”—he indicated the Malay who stood statue-still behind his chair—“will attend your wants. He speaks no English, but you can make him understand by signs, I think.”

  “Quick, de Grandin, tell me before he comes back,” I besought as Goonong, accompanied by one of the Malays, left the room.

  “Eh?” replied the Frenchman, looking up from an absorbed contemplation of the tableware before him. “What is it you would know, my friend?”

  “What was all that word-juggling about medieval builders and dead men telling no tales?” I demanded.

  “Oh, that?” he answered with a look of relief. “Why, do you not know that when a great lord of the Middle Ages commissioned an architect to build a castle for him it was almost tantamount to a death sentence? The architect, the master builders, even the principal workmen, were usually done to death when the building was finished in order that they might not divulge its secret passages and hidden defenses to an enemy, or duplicate the design for some rival noble.”

  “Why—why, then, Goonong Besar meant he killed the men who built this submarine house for him!” I ejaculated, horror-stricken.

  “Precisely,” de Grandin answered, “but, bad as that may be, we have a more personal interest in the matter. Did you notice him when I showed surprise he should confess his guilt to us?”

  “Good heavens, yes!” I answered. “He meant—”

  “That, though still breathing, we are, to all intents dead men,” de Grandin supplied.

  “And that talk of ‘white meat,’ and ‘long pig’?” I asked.

  He drew a shuddering breath, as though the marble-lined cavern had suddenly gone icy-cold. “Trowbridge my friend,” he answered in a low, earnest whisper, “you must know this thing; but you must control yourself, too. Not by word or sign must you betray your knowledge. Throughout these devil-ridden islands, wherever the brown fiends who are their natives eat men, they refer to the cannibal feast as a meal of long pig. That so unfortunate man we saw dead at the stake this morning, and that pitiful Dutch woman we saw clubbed to death—they, my friend, were ‘long pigs.’ That was the white meat this devil out of lowest hell set before us this night. That is the food we have eaten at this accurst table!”

  “My God!” I half rose from my chair, then sank back, overcome with nausea. “Did we—do you suppose—was it her flesh—?”

  “S-s-sh!” he warned sharply. “Silence, my friend; control yourself. Do not let him see you know. He is coming!”

  As though de Grandin’s words had been a theatrical cue for his entrance, Goonong Besar stepped through the silken portieres at the doorway beyond the table, a pleased smile on his swarthy face. “So sorry to keep you waiting,” he apologized. “The trouble is all adjusted now, and we can proceed with our entertainment. Miriam is a little diffident before strangers, but I—er—persuaded her to oblige us.” He turned toward the door through which he had entered and waved his hand to someone behind the curtains.

  Three Malays, one a woman bent with age and hideously wrinkled, the other two vacant-faced youths, came through the doorway at his gesture. The woman, bearing a section of bamboo fitted with drumheads of rawhide at each end, led the way, the first boy rested his hand on her shoulder, and the second lad, in turn, held tightly to his companion’s jacket. A second glance told us the reason for this procedure. The woman, though aged almost to the point of paralysis, possessed a single malignant, blood-shot eye; both boys were sightless, their scarred and sunken eyelids telling mutely of eyeballs gouged from their faces by unskilled hands which had torn the surrounding tissues as they ripped the optics from the quivering flesh.

  “Ha-room; ha-room!” cried the old crone in a cracked treble, and the two blind boys seated themselves cross-legged on the marble floor. One of them raised a reed pipe to his lips, the other rested a sort of zither upon his knees, and each began trying his instrument tentatively, producing a sound approximating the complaints of a tomcat suffering with cholera morbus.

  “Ha-room; ha-room!” the hag cried again, and commenced beating a quick rhythm on her drum, using her fingertips and the heels of her hands alternately for drum
sticks. “Tauk-auk-a—tauk-auk-a—tauk-auk-a!” the drum-beats boomed hollowly, the first stroke heavily accented, the second and third following in such quick succession that they seemed almost indivisible parts of one continuous thrumming.

  Now the pipe and zither took up the tribal tune, and a surge of fantastic music swirled and eddied through the marble-walled apartment. It was unlike anything I had ever heard, a repetitious, insistent, whining of tortured instruments, an air that pleaded with the hearers’ evil nature to overthrow restraint and give the beast within him freedom, a harmony that drugged the senses like opium or the extract of the cola-nut. The music raced and soared, faster, shriller and higher, the painted-silk curtains swung apart and a girl glided out upon the tessellated pavement.

  SHE WAS YOUNG—SIXTEEN, OR seventeen at the most—and the sinuous, lithe grace of her movements was as much due to healthy and perfectly co-ordinated muscles as to training. The customary sarong of the islands encased her nether limbs, but, instead of the native woman’s jacket, her sarong was carried up beyond the gold six-inch wide belt about her waist and tightly wrapped about her bosom so that it formed a single comprehensive garment covering her from armpits to ankles. Save for a chaplet of blazing cabochon rubies about her slender throat, her neck and shoulders were bare, but ornaments in the form of flexible golden snakes with emerald eyes twined up each arm from elbow to shoulder, and bangles of pure, soft gold, hung with triple rows of tiny hawk-bells, circled her wrists. Other bangles, products of the finest goldsmiths of India, jangled about her white ankles above the pearl-encrusted slippers of amethyst velvet, while the diamond aigrette fastened comb-fashion in her sleekly parted black hair was worth a king’s ransom. Fit to ransom a monarch, too, was the superb blue-white diamond of her nose-stud, fixed in her left nostril, and the rope of pearls which circled her waist and hung swaying to the very hem of her sarong of Philippine pineapple gauze was fit to buy the Peacock Throne of the Grand Mogul himself.

  Despite the lavishly applied cosmetics, the antimony which darkened her eyelids to the color of purple grape skins, the cochineal which dyed her lips and cheeks a brilliant scarlet and the powdered charcoal which traced her eyebrows in continuous, fluted line across her forehead, she was beautiful with the rich, ripe beauty of the women who inspired Solomon of old to indite his Song of Songs. None but the Jewish race, or perhaps the Arabian, could have produced a woman with the passionate, alluring beauty of Miriam, the dancer in the house beneath the sea.