A Rival from the Grave Page 6

  “And that ‘car-barn’ or whatever it was her captor said to her—what does that mean?” I asked.

  “Kurban is a Hindoo word denoting human sacrifice,” he answered, “a sacrifice at which the victim, in order to attain forgiveness for sins committed in this or a prior incarnation, offers herself voluntarily to death.”

  “Good heavens, then—” I stopped aghast at the implication his words had raised.

  “Precisely, exactly, quite so,” he answered in a level, toneless voice. “You apprehend me perfectly, my friend.”

  NORA MCGINNIS, MY HIGHLY efficient household factotum, has a knack of securing her own way. Devout Catholic that she is, she would as soon think of strangling a sleeping infant in its crib as of eating meat on Friday, or (though I am a vestryman in the Episcopal Church and a past potentate of the Shrine) permitting me to do so. Accordingly, the next morning de Grandin and I found the table set with baked bloaters and waffles when we descended to the breakfast room.

  “Hélas, I am worried, I am apprehensive and distrait, I can not eat; I have no appetite, me,” the little Frenchman told me dolorously as he pushed away his thrice-replenished plate and drained his fourth cup of well-creamed coffee. “Behold, it is already after nine o’clock and Monsieur Édouard has not yet telephoned. I fear for their safety, my friend. That Karowli Singh, he is a rascal of the finest brew. I know him. He is altogether and decidedly no good. While I served as captain in the army of his late and unlamented papa I had abundant opportunity to observe the present maharajah of Dhittapur, then a charming little coffee-colored brat who sadly needed cuffing. I have seen him torture helpless animals for pure love of cruelty; have a peacock plucked alive or a leopard’s claws and teeth pulled out before he fought the poor beast with his sword, prodding it repeatedly with his steel until he wearied of the sport and had the maimed and helpless thing thrown to his savage dogs or clubbed to death by his grooms. Eh bien, yes; I know him, and I should dearly love to twist his nose.”

  He lighted a cigarette and blew a twin column of smoke through his nostrils toward the ceiling. “Unless they telephone soon,” he began, but the cachinnating summons of the ’phone bell cut him short, and he hastened to the farther room to answer it.

  “But certainly,” I heard him reply to the caller’s query. “And how is Madame—mon Dieu, you can not mean it! But certainly, right away, at once; immediately.

  “Come, my friend,” he bade as he rejoined me in the breakfast room, “let us hasten, let us rush, let us fly with all expedition!”

  “Where—”

  “To those Durham Courts. She—Madame Anspacher—has gone away, vanished, evaporated completely.”

  Edward Anspacher met us in the foyer of his apartment, wonder and apprehension struggling for mastery of his features. “We were both pretty well tired with packing and making preparations for our trip,” he told us, “and I think Madeline fell asleep at once. I know I did. I was so tired I overslept, for I remember distinctly that the clock was striking nine when I woke up with a raging toothache.

  “Madeline was sleeping peacefully as a child and I hated to disturb her; so I got up quietly as possible and went into the bathroom for some aspirin. I couldn’t have been five minutes, altogether, but when I came back she was gone, and my toothache had stopped as suddenly as it began.”

  “U’m?” de Grandin murmured. “You have been suffering with mal de dents recently, Monsieur?”

  “No. My teeth are exceptionally healthy, and I’d finished my semi-yearly visit to the dentist last week. He told me there wasn’t a sign of a cavity or diseased root anywhere; in fact, all he did was clean them. Why I should have had that sudden ache is more than I can—”

  “But it is no mystery to me, my friend,” the Frenchman interrupted. “I damn think it was the same sort of toothache that the tiger which frightened good Friend Trowbridge was a beast—a juggler’s trick, by blue!”

  The room was in confusion. Two wardrobe trunks, one a man’s, one a woman’s, stood on end by the door, and beside them rested several kit-bags and suitcases. On the chaise-longue at the bed’s foot lay a woman’s tan polo coat and a knitted silk-and-wool sports dress neatly folded. A pair of brown suède oxfords stood toe to toe on the floor beneath, dark-brown silk stockings neatly rolled in rings beside them. Beige crêpe step-ins, bandeau and garter belt reposed beside the dress, and a pair of pigskin gloves with purse to match and a hat of brown felt were on the bureau beside a packed, but open, case of toilet accessories.

  “Everything else is packed,” young Anspacher told us with a nod toward the feminine apparel. “Madeline laid those things out to travel in. She must have gone out in her pajamas, for nothing else is missing—even her mules are here,” he indicated a pair of frivolous black-crêpe sandals on the floor beside the bed.

  “U’m?” repeated Jules de Grandin musingly, walking toward the bedroom’s single window. Parting the pale gold silk-gauze curtains he looked down to the cement-paved areaway beneath. “Ten meters, at the least,” he estimated, “and no sign of—ah? A-a-ah? Que diable?

  “Observe this, if you will be so kind, Friend Trowbridge,” he commanded. “What is it, if you please?”

  “H’m,” I examined the object he had lifted from the sill wonderingly, “I’m hanged if I know. It looks like a strand of hair—human hair, I’d say if it weren’t for—” I broke off, regarding his find with bewilderment.

  “Yes—yes?” he prompted tartly. “If it were not for what you would classify it as which, my old one?”

  “Why, the color,” I replied. “It’s blue, and—”

  “Precisely, it is blue, but if it were brown or black or white, or any color save blue or green or purple, you would say that it is human?” he pressed.

  “Yes, I think I should.”

  “And you should be right. It is human hair, my friend.”

  “Blue human hair?” I replied incredulously.

  “Blue hair; blue human hair, no less. Have you ever seen such hair before; do not you know its use?”

  “No, I can’t say I have—” I began, but Edward Anspacher interrupted:

  “I’ve seen blue hair; I know its use!” he burst out suddenly. “The fakirs in India when they do their famous rope trick use a strand of human hair dyed blue. I’ve seen ’em use those ropes in Benares when the pilgrims come to bathe and—”

  “Tu parles, mon vieux,” de Grandin told him, “and what was it that they did with them?”

  “Why, the fakir would uncoil his rope and swish it round his head like a lasso, then toss it up in the air, pronouncing an incantation, and the thing would stand there, straight and rigid as a pole. An assistant would climb up it and disappear, then suddenly reappear and slide down to the ground. Do you”—he broke off as though ashamed to put his guess in words—“do you suppose there’s really anything to that trick—anything but mere optical illusion, I mean? I’ve seen it worked dozens of times, but—”

  “Eh bien, here is one time you did not see it worked, but it was apparently successful,” de Grandin interrupted dryly. “Yes, mon pauvre, I think that there is decidedly more than mere optical illusion to that trick. How they do it I do not know, any more than they know why a voice comes from the empty air when we dial a radio machine; our science is a tight-shut book to them, theirs is equally inscrutable to us; but I make no doubt that the ache which came into your sound and healthy tooth and roused you from your sleep, driving you from your bed to seek an anodyne, was a fakir’s trick, and I also have no doubt that while you ministered to your toothache which was no toothache at all they threw their cursed blue rope up into the air, climbed it and abstracted Madame your wife from her bed.”

  “Good God!” exclaimed young Anspacher.

  “Precisely,” nodded Jules de Grandin gravely. “Prayers for her are in order, Monsieur.” Then:

  “And so is action, by damn it! Me, I shall seek the good Costello and enlist his services. We shall turn this city inside out—take it to pieces
bit by little bit, but we shall find her, and there shall we find him. Then”—he smiled unpleasantly—“then Jules de Grandin shall deal with the human reptile as he would with one which crawls upon its belly!”

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT COSTELLO OF the Harrisonville police force, Captain Chenevert of the State Constabulary and Jules de Grandin bent above the assessor’s map in the county building. “Somewhere inside this circle it will be,” the Frenchman declared, tapping the chart with his pencil point. “Mademoiselle Frierson declares it was here that she was seized by Karowli Singh’s agents, after which, according to her reckoning, she was driven rapidly for some twenty minutes. It is unlikely that they traveled more than sixty miles an hour; accordingly the place where she was taken lies somewhere inside the circle we have traced. Of that much we are fairly certain.”

  “Sure, an’ we may be fairly certain a needle’s hidden somewheres in a haystack, but it’s a hell of a job sayin’ where,” Costello answered gloomily. “That circle’s twenty miles acrost, Doctor de Grandin, sor, an’ that’s some territory to find one little gur-rl in, ’specially when she’s likely to be kilt unless we find her pretty quick.”

  The Frenchman nodded agreement, but: “That is where you and Captain Chenevert can assist in the process of elimination,” he returned. “Here are dwellings indicated. You can identify most of them, and tell something of their tenants. This, for instance”—he indicated the outline of a church and its appurtenant buildings—“is a house of worship. Either you or Captain Chenevert can tell us something of the clergyman in charge. At least you can say definitely that it could not have been here that Karowli Singh was when Mademoiselle Frierson was brought to him by mistake for Madame Anspacher. N’est-ce-pas?”

  “Sure, I git ye,” Costello answered. “I don’t know every one whose house is indicated on th’ plat, neither does th’ Captain, but between us we can git th’ necessary information, I from th’ city policemen on th’ beats, an’ he from th’ throopers who patrol those parts o’ th’ country outside th’ city limits. How long can ye give us fer to git th’ dope, sor?”

  De Grandin consulted the watch strapped to his wrist. “It is now half-past two,” he answered. “I do not think that they will start their devilment before sundown. Report to me at half-past six at least, and we can then plan our strategy. You agree?”

  “Surest thing ye know, sor,” the big detective answered; then, to Captain Chenevert:

  “Let’s git goin’, sor; we’ve a power o’wor-rk to do, an’ divilish little time to do it in, I’m thinkin’.”

  “ARRAH, DOCTOR DE GRANDIN, sor, it’s dead I thought ye were entirely when I seen them big, black shiny cars all parked in th’ side yard,” declared Costello when he and Captain Chenevert called with their report. “Phwat’s th’ idea of all th’ funeral scenery, if I may ask?”

  “I should be desolated if you failed to do so,” the Frenchman answered with a grin. “We have a still hunt to make tonight. Somewhere in a quite extensive territory there is secreted a single small woman and we do not know how many miscreants who are spoiling for a slight degree of killing. We must take them by surprise, or all is lost, for they will surely murder her if they realize we are near. Very good. It is, therefore, doubly necessary that we do not advertise our advent. Did we go upon our expedition in police cars and motorcycles we might as well march in battalion formation with field music. Accordingly I have borrowed from Monsieur Martin, the amiable mortician, six limousines, each capable of carrying eight passengers in comfort. These cars will cruise the country over and create no comment. You apprehend my strategy?”

  “True fer ye, sor,” the sergeant complimented, and Captain Chenevert nodded approbation, “there was one dam’ fine policeman lost when ye decided to retire from th’ wor-rk.”

  “Tiens, priests, soldiers, doctors and policemen never retire, my friend,” de Grandin answered with a smile. “They may enter other lines of work, but always, underneath, they cling all tightly to the instincts of their one-time calling.”

  SO CAREFULLY HAD COSTELLO and Chenevert canvassed their respective divisions of the suspected territory that only ten or a dozen buildings remained on their lists of possibilities. These were mostly vacant residences, deserted factories or houses whose occupants were known or suspected of having traffic with the underworld. It was agreed that a limousine loaded with policemen and state troopers should go immediately to each place, the officer in charge of each detachment being armed with a John Doe search warrant. If no signs of Madeline Anspacher or the retinue of Karowli Singh were found, the cars were to return to their rendezvous at my house, where further strategy would be planned.

  An hour, two, passed, and one by one the cars returned, each with reports of failure. Eight strokes were sounding on the Town Hall tower clock when the final car drove up, and de Grandin, the two officers, young Edward Anspacher and I gathered in the study for a council of war.

  “Looks like we skipped a bet, afther all,” Costello began wearily. “Maybe if ye’d ‘a’ drawn yer circle wider, sor—”

  “Attendez!” de Grandin’s sharp admonition broke him off. “What place is this, mes amis?” he pointed to a sketch upon the map. “Has any one been there?”

  “That? Why, it’s old St. Malachy’s Home,” responded Captain Chenevert. “It was used as an orphanage twenty years ago, then turned into some sort of sanitarium for the feeble-minded, taken over as a recuperation home for sick and wounded officers during the war, and finally abandoned when the archdiocese acquired the new home over at Shelbyville. The place is just a ruin and—”

  “And we shall go there tout de suite, by blue!” de Grandin cut in sharply. “It lies a good five miles outside our circle of suspicion, but Mademoiselle Frierson may easily have been mistaken in her calculations, and we, by damn, we can not afford to reject a single clue. Come, let us be upon our way. En avant, mes braves.”

  As we drove quietly out the Albemarle Road toward the deserted orphanage, we passed a group of greenhouses, and de Grandin called a halt.

  “Monsieur, is it that you have the souci—how do you call him? the marigold—here?” he asked the florist.

  “Plenty,” the other answered. “Want a couple o’ dozen?”

  “A dozen? Two? Mais non, I will take your entire stock, and quickly, if you please,” replied the Frenchman. “Give them to us right away, immediately, at once, if you will be so kind.”

  “What the devil—” Captain Chenevert began wonderingly as de Grandin distributed the tawny blooms to each member of the raiding-party with injunctions to wear them fastened to their blouses.

  “To circumvent the Evil One and his sworn assistants, my friend,” the little Frenchman answered. “Tonight we go out against those who fight with weapons of the flesh and of the spirit also. I would not have it said that we were unprepared.”

  SILENTLY AS A FLEET of gondolas our motorcade swept out the broad turnpike, circled the rise of ground on which the half-dismantled orphans’ home stood, and came to a halt. De Grandin called the officers around him for a final conference before the attack. “You will see strange things, mes enfants,” he warned, “but do not be dismayed. Press forward steadily, and on no account discharge your weapons until you hear my whistle. You, mon capitaine, will take your men, form them in a crescent and proceed up the slope from the south; you, Sergeant, will please deploy your force in another half-moon and advance from the north. Doctor Trowbridge, Monsieur Anspacher and I will take three troopers and two policemen and press forward from this point. Keep in contact with us, if you please, for we shall lead the reconnaissance.

  “Should any try to pass you, you will stop them.”

  “Did you say stop ’em, sir?” asked a state trooper, dropping his hand negligently on the butt of his service pistol.

  The little Frenchman grinned appreciatively. “Your judgment is unquestionably sound, mon vieux,” he answered. “Use it.

  “When you have drawn your cordon round the house, give a sof
t owl’s hoot,” he continued. “You understand? Bon. Allez-vous-en!”

  CAUTIOUSLY WE TOILED UP the steep slope, taking advantage of such cover as offered, keeping our gaze fixed on the gloomy pile which crowned the hill.

  Almost at the crest of the rise we paused a moment, and I thrust my gloved hand into my mouth to stifle the involuntary cry of horror which pressed against my lips. “Look—look, de Grandin!” I whispered fearfully. “There—there must be thousands of them!”

  Coiling, twisting, hissing, writhing in a horrid living chain about the hill-top was a veritable chevaux-de-frise of serpents, their small eyes gleaming balefully in the pale moonlight, peaked heads rearing menacingly, forked tongues darting warning and defiance. Another forward step and we should have walked right into the venomous cordon, and I shuddered as I realized what we had escaped.

  “Jeez!” cried the trooper at my right as he snatched his pistol from its holster and leveled it at the seething mass of serpents.

  “Fool! Remember my commands; no shooting!” de Grandin hissed, seizing the man’s wrist and twisting the muzzle of his pistol toward the ground. “Would you advertise our coming? Regardez—”

  Plucking a marigold blossom from his lapel he tossed it into the center of the writhing snakes.

  Only once before had I seen anything comparable to what resulted. That was when a careless passer-by had dropped a glowing cigarette stump into the curb side exhibit of a peddler of celluloid toys. Now, as the inflammable playthings had caught fire and vanished in a puff of flame, just so did the picket-line of snakes suddenly dissolve before us, vanishing in the twinkling of an eye, and leaving our way clear and unobstructed across the frost-jeweled grass.

  “Onward, my friends; quickly, they are at their devil’s work already!” the Frenchman ordered in a low, tense voice, and even as he spoke the deep, reverberant tolling of a gong sounded from the darkened house ahead.

  Forward we hurried, creeping from tree trunk to tree trunk, crawling on hands and knees from bush to bush, wriggling ventre à terre when the cover was too scant to hide us otherwise.