A Rival from the Grave Page 8

  “Odd,” I reflected as we struggled through the drenching rain, “there shouldn’t be a light up there, The only house within a mile is the old Haines mansion, and that hasn’t been occupied since—”

  Shaking the water from my eyes I brought my cogitations to a stop. Only a fool would pause for thoughts like these when shelter from the storm was offered.

  “Holà, à la maison!” de Grandin shouted, hammering on the rain-polished panels of the mansion’s heavy door. “Make open the door all quickly, pour l’amour de Dieu! We drown, we perish; we are very uncomfortable!”

  His hail was twice repeated before we heard a shuffling step and the big door was moved back a scant six inches to permit an old and very wrinkled yellow man to inspect us critically with small, unwinking eyes which somehow reminded me of those of a monkey.

  “I am Doctor—” began the Frenchman, and at the title the door swung fully open and the porter motioned us to enter.

  “You docta feller?” he asked as we dodged gratefully into the proffered shelter. “You get here pretty quick. Me telefone you ten-twenty minute, you say no can do for long time while God feller make big lain, then you come chop-chop, all same. Me think you dam’ good feller for come like that through storm. Missy Lady all same pletty sick. You not chase devil feller out, me think maybe so she die pletty quick, You come now. She wait up stair.” Peremptorily he motioned us to follow him.

  My surmise had been right. It was the old Haines mansion where we were, though who our strange host and the mysterious “Missy Lady” who waited upstairs for us might be, and what they did in a house of evil memories which had been closed for twenty years, was more than I could guess.

  Whoever they were, they had gone far toward making the old ruin habitable. Broken windows had been reglazed, the rosewood wainscoting had been oiled and polished and the oaken floors freshly waxed and strewn with an abundance of warm-colored Indian rugs. Electric light had been in the experimental stage when the foundations of the old house were dug, but some one had evidently rehabilitated the carbide gas plant in the cellar, and flames burned brightly in the ruby-glass globes of the ceiling chandelier with a scarcely audible hiss. Cedar logs blazed comfortably on the newly polished brass fire-dogs beneath the high mantel; curtains of bright silk and lambrequins of split bamboo, such as had been fashionable in the middle eighties, hung at the arched doorways leading from the hall.

  We paused a moment by the cheerful fire, but: “You come,” our guide admonished in a high, cracked voice, glancing back across his shoulder. “Bime-by dly clothes. Now you come chase devil-devil out Missy Lady’s neck. You savvy?” He shuffled almost soundlessly toward the wide stairway above which our unexpected patient waited.

  Surprising as the rejuvenated mansion was, our guide was more so. Scarcely five feet tall, he was as thin as almost fleshless bones could make him, and his butter-colored skin was stretched drumtight upon his skeleton everywhere except his face. There it was cut and etched and crisscrossed with innumerable deep-cleft wrinkles till his countenance resembled the rind of a frost-bitten pumpkin. A little green-silk cap was perched rakishly upon his hairless head; a tightly buttoned jacket of freshly washed and starched white drill encased his torso; in lieu of trousers his nether limbs were cased in a length of brightly batiked cotton wound so tightly in a skirt-like drapery that it forced him to proceed with a hobbled, shuffling gait. Heelless shoes of woven straw, like the slippers Chinese laundrymen wear at their work, were on his feet, and their straw soles grated softly with a whish-whish at each sliding step he took across the polished floor.

  The unmistakably sickly-sweet scent of burning joss-sticks assailed our nostrils as we followed up the stairs and down the upper corridor to a darkened bedroom where our conductor paused and called softly. “Missy Lady, docta fella come all quick for dlive off devil-devil. You see ’um now?”

  An odd-sounding, half-articulate gurgle like the cry of some one being slowly strangled, answered him, and he motioned us to enter. No light burned in the room, but here and there the gloom was dotted by the ruddy glow of smoldering punk sticks, and the air reeked with the cloying sweetness of the incense.

  “Morbleu, it is intolerable!” de Grandin cried. “Lights, my ancient one, and quickly; then fling away these so abominable inventions of the devil. No wonder she is ill! This stink, it is enough to make a camel weep for envy!”

  A match scratched, and a moment later a gas flame flared behind the etched glass shade of a wall fixture. By its light we saw a woman lying in a great sleigh bed, pillows heaped behind her till she seemed to sit more than to recline. A silken coverlet was drawn close about her chin. A bunch of bright red flowers, oddly reminiscent of a funeral wreath, lay on the comforter. There was something coppery, almost metallic, about her. Her hair, thick and very glossy, was the color of new-minted copper, and simply parted in the middle, drawn above her ears and knotted low upon her neck. Her eyes were almost bronze in shade, and shone as if with unshed tears. Her features were small and straight and regular, chin pointed, lips rather thin, but exquisitely curved, her skin an even golden tan which told of long exposure to the sun.

  “Eh bien, Mademoiselle, it seems we are arrived in time to save you from asphyxiation,” de Grandin announced. “Your—the excellent old one who admitted us—informed us that you were indisposed. What seems to be—”

  He paused beside the bed, and his thin, sensitive mouth drew sharply down at the corners. “La diphthérie?” his lips formed the words silently as he looked at me for confirmation of the diagnosis.

  I looked sharply at the patient. Her face was slightly cyanotic, her lips were slightly parted and her breathing stertorous. Constantly her throat was working, as though she sought to swallow some obstruction, and, there was no doubt about it, her eyes were definitely protuberant, as from a pressure on the trachea, perhaps a consequence of Graves’ disease. No swelling of lymphatics at the angle of the jaw appeared, however, and I withheld my opinion till I had an opportunity of examining the fauces and tonsils.

  “Will you open your mouth?” I asked, leaning over her; then:

  “I say, de Grandin, look at this!” I cried, incredulity in my voice as I pointed to the patient’s throat. Around her neck, midway between the jaw and shoulders, was a plainly marked depression, smooth and circular, as from an invisible ligature which seemed to be drawing steadily tighter with garroting force, for even as we looked we saw the indentation grow white and whiter, saw the shrinking flesh sink further as the unseen tourniquet was tightened.

  “Mon Dieu,” exclaimed the Frenchman, “she is strangling!” and even as he spoke the girl sat up in bed, clawing at her throat with frenzied hands while he mouth gaped open horribly and her tongue protruded. A choking, gasping sob escaped her tortured lips; then she fell back limply on the pillows, eyes closed, chest heaving, little whimpering noises sounding in her throat.

  But the spasm seemed definitely over. Her breath came naturally, though with considerable labor, and the white ring on her throat began to fade.

  “Attendez-vous,” de Grandin hailed the little yellow man. “Ammonia, aromatic spirits of ammonia—non, ten thousand small blue devils, you can not understand!—where in Satan’s name is the bathroom?”

  “Bathloom?” the other echoed uncomprehendingly.

  “Précisément; la salle de bain—the place where medicines are kept!”

  “Oh, me savvy,” said the other in a flat and uninflected voice. “You come; I show you.”

  They hurried down the hall and presently de Grandin returned with a glass of ammonia and water, which he administered to the patient. “I would we had some belladonna on hand, he murmured as the girl drained the draft and settled back upon her pillows. “It would be of assistance. There is nothing but cosmetics to be had back there, and paint and powder are no use in such a case. If—”

  “What do you make of it?” I interrupted, thinking wonderingly of the cincture we had seen form round the girl’s slim throat, appare
ntly for no earthly reason.

  “Parbleu, I do not know,” he told me earnestly. “If it were not for certain things I should have said it was the work of—”

  A wild, high wail from the little yellow man cut short his words. “Ahee, ahee—penanggalan, penanggalan!” he shrieked, falling to his knees and bowing forward like a closed-up jack-knife. “Ahee, awah!”

  “Que diable?” snapped de Grandin; then:

  “Ohé, mon Dieu, one sees! Behold, my friend, he speaks the truth!” Seizing my shoulder he whirled me round to face the window, and pointed to the rain-glazed pane.

  There, limned against the background of the tempest’s blackness, hung a face.

  I say “hung” advisedly, for it showed against the window in the very center of the pane, and from above and underneath there was nothing to support it. It was a handsome woman’s face, beautiful with a sort of eery beauty, but deadly in its look of hatred and malignancy. The skin was an incredibly lovely shade of golden brown, smooth and faintly iridescent, the hair which framed it was a dull cloud of ebon splendor. The features were clear cut, classic, but exotic; high, wide brow, straight, thin nose with faintly flaring nostrils, sharp, pointed chin and thin, black-penciled brows curving like circumflexes above a pair of wide, green eyes with pupils flecked with red, burning like live cinders, unwinking, mesmeric. The mouth was large, with thin, cruel, scarlet lips and white and gleaming teeth which showed their vicious sharpness as the lips curled back in a soundless snarl of leopardine fury.

  Beneath the head there was no body, but a length of esophagus hung pendently below the severed neck, and from this in turn hung a stomach sac. It was incredible, impossible, bizarre; but there it was: a living, grimacing face with unsheathed stomach and esophagus was floating in the air outside the bedroom window.

  “Good heavens,” I exclaimed, “what is it?”

  “The penanggalan, did not you hear him say so?” de Grandin answered, and, it seemed to me, he had grown calmer since the dreadful apparition showed outside the window. Whirling toward the bed he snatched up the wreath of scarlet flowers. As he did so I noticed for the first time that their stems were set with long, curved thorns.

  “Allez, Madame,” he commanded, stepping toward the window. “Allez-vous-en! I have here that which will render you decidedly uncomfortable if—” he threw the window open and swept the thorn-set flowers in a wide half-circle. As he did so the half-dissected horror gave ground, hovered menacingly in the swirling rain a moment, then disappeared from view with a shrieking, cachinnating laugh which was half sardonic merriment, half despairing scream.

  “So,” he murmured as he closed the window and replaced the flowers on the bed. “At last one understands—in part, at least. One might have damn suspected something of the kind, yet it is strange, infernally strange that such a one should be here in New Jersey. If this were Borneo or Flores or the Peninsula, one might look for her, but here? Non, we must seek further information.”

  “Docta Tuan blave man!” the little yellow individual complimented with a low, ingratiating bow. “Him not ’flaid Missy Penanggalan; him dlive her off pletty dam’ quick!”

  De Grandin looked at him with interest. “How long has she been flying round the house, my friend?” he asked.

  “Long time, three-four week,” the other answered. “Missy Joan bling one piecee coffin here from Manula; bury ’um in glaveyard. Pletty soon Miss Penanggalan come fly all lound house.

  “Missy Lady ketchum plenty sickness; get devil-devil in neck. All same maybe turn into penanggalan pletty soon if Doctor Tuan not come chop-chop for dlive devil-devil off.

  “Ah Kee ketchum plenty thorn-flower for lay on bed. Maybe Missy Penanggalan not love that thorn-feller velly much. Ah Kee burn joss-stick all lound loom, too. No dam’ good. Missy Penanggalan come all time, fly lound house, make bad face outside window. Ah Kee can do no more; he tefelone Docta Tuan for come all soon. You dlive devil-devil out Missy Lady’s neck, maybe so?”

  There was a look of child-like faith and pleading in his wrinkled visage as he spoke. Jules de Grandin beamed on him. “Pardieu, that we shall, mon vieux, or may I dine upon stewed turnips!” he replied. “And as we speak of dining I remind myself that I have not yet supped. Have you anything to eat about the place? We shall be here all night, it seems, and I would not care to fast till morning.”

  “All light, me ketchum food,” the little man responded. “You stay for look at Missy Lady?”

  “We shall most indubitably stay,” returned de Grandin. “Bring the food to us when it has been prepared, and do not stint the quantity; this is a very devil of a devil-devil we must fight, and we fight poorly on an empty stomach, my little old one.”

  As the diminutive yellow man shuffled off, de Grandin turned to me, brows arched, lips pursed quizzically. “This is of interest, my friend,” he assured me. “This creature, this penanggalan we saw tonight, she is a rare specimen; I have heard of her, but—”

  “Ah Kee, Ah Kee, are you there?” a weak voice called. “Did it come again, Ah Kee? I’m afraid; terribly afraid it will come back and—”

  “Compose yourself, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin answered. “Ah Kee is gone but we are here. I am Doctor Jules de Grandin, this is my good friend and colleague, Doctor Samuel Trowbridge. We were driving past your charming house when the storm broke and we knocked upon your door for shelter. It appeared your excellent intendant had summoned medical assistance, but the one he called had been unable to respond. Accordingly he requested that we help you, and we arrived in time to drive away a most unpleasant visitor. Now—”

  “It came, then?” the woman interrupted.

  “It came, Mademoiselle,” agreed de Grandin, “but it also went. ‘Allez,’ I told it, and pouf! like that it went. Me, I am very clever, Mademoiselle.”

  Despite her fear, the girl smiled wanly as he finished speaking. Women, animals and children took instinctively to Jules de Grandin, and our latest patient was no exception to the rule.

  “How did you drive it off?” she asked.

  “How? By telling it it was not welcome—and by threatening to lacerate its appendages with the thorns of these flowers,” he answered with a grin. Then, sobering suddenly:

  “Mademoiselle, I have said I am a doctor. That is true; I hold degrees from Vienna and the Sorbonne; but I am more than a physician. I am a practised occultist, and have spent as much time grappling with the foes of the spirit as with those of the flesh. Also I have traveled much, and have spent some time in the Malay Archipelago and Peninsula. When we heard your servant cry out in terror that the penanggalan was come, I realized the import of his words, and though I have never come to grips with a demon of this order, I welcome the challenge which it brings. Will you permit that I assist you, Mademoiselle?”

  “Oh, yes!” the girl responded. “I’ve been so terrified; if you will help me—”

  “Très bon, it is a bargain, Mademoiselle,” the Frenchman interrupted, possessing himself of one of the slim hands lying on the counterpane and lifting it to his lips. “Now—as you Americans so drolly say—to business. Begin at the commencement, if you please, and tell us everything leading to the advent of these most unwelcome visits. Your servant told us something of your bringing back a coffin to America and having it interred. How was it that you came to do so?”

  “It was the body of my father,” the girl replied. “I brought it back from Manura for burial in the family plot in Shadow Lawns, and—”

  She paused a moment, and a shudder rippled through her frame; then, taking a firm hold upon her quaking nerves, she began anew:

  “My name is Joan Haines. I am twenty years old. I was born in this house, and my mother died when I was born. My father, Henry Haines, had spent several years on the island of Manura, and made a considerable fortune and restored the family home before his marriage. When Mother died he was almost beside himself with grief, declared he never wanted to see this place again, and left almost immediately for the islands. I wa
s taken by my father’s cousin, Thomas Haines, who lived in Harrisonville, and reared as a member of his family. I lived with him until a year ago, and his son Philip and I fell desperately in love.

  “During all the years when I was growing up my father never wrote me. He sent regular remittances to my uncle—Cousin Tom was so much my senior that I always called him uncle—for my support and education, but though I wrote him frequent little-girl letters, trying desperately to make him love me, he never answered. Uncle Tom kept in correspondence with him, though, and every time I had a picture taken a print of it was sent my father; so he knew what I looked like, though I had no idea of his appearance.

  “My cousin Philip and I had been inseparable as children, went to grammar and high school together, and matriculated at the same college and graduated together. Just after graduation I wrote Father that Phil and I wanted to be married, and then I got the first and only letter which I ever had from him.

  “It was stilted and unfriendly, the kind of letter which a stranger might have written, and refused permission for our marriage. He accused Phil and Uncle Tom of wanting my money, and ordered me to come out to Manura at once, as, he said, he had other plans for me.

  “I hardly knew which way to turn. Phil and Uncle Tom urged me to ignore Father’s orders, but, somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I don’t know why it was; perhaps the fact that I’d grown up as a sort of orphan made a difference; possibly the strange, aloof attitude my father had always assumed regarding me piqued my curiosity as much as it excited my vague longings for a real father’s affection. At any rate, I decided to go out to him and tell him everything about Phil and me. I was sure that I could win him over. So it was arranged.

  “Manura is a little island—just a flyspeck on the map—which lies on the Celebes side of Flores. It took me nearly a month to get out there, and when I finally got there it was too late.”

  “Too late?” de Grandin echoed.

  “Too late, yes,” she answered. “My father was dead.