Wednesday's Good Reading: “Amour, Trois Pages du Livre d'un Chasseur” by Guy de Maupassant (in French).

 

... Je viens de lire dans un fait divers de journal un drame de passion. Il l'a tuée, puis il s'est tué, donc il l'aimait. Qu'importent Il et Elle ? Leur amour seul m'importe ; et il ne m'intéresse point parce qu'il m'attendrit ou parce qu'il m'étonne, ou parce qu'il m'émeut ou parce qu'il me fait songer, mais parce qu'il me rappelle un souvenir de ma jeunesse, un étrange souvenir de chasse où m'est apparu l'Amour comme apparaissaient aux premiers chrétiens des croix au milieu du ciel.

Je suis né avec tous les instincts et les sens de l'homme primitif, tempérés par des raisonnements et des émotions de civilisé. J'aime la chasse avec passion ; et la bête saignante, le sang sur les plumes, le sang sur mes mains, me crispent le cœur à le faire défaillir.

 

Cette année-là, vers la fin de l'automne, les froids arrivèrent brusquement, et je fus appelé par un de mes cousins, Karl de Rauville, pour venir avec lui tuer des canards dans les marais, au lever du jour.

Mon cousin gaillard, de quarante ans, roux, très fort et très barbu, gentilhomme de campagne, demi-brute aimable, d'un caractère gai, doué de cet esprit gaulois qui rend agréable la médiocrité, habitait une sorte de ferme-château dans une vallée large où coulait une rivière. Des bois couvraient les collines de droite et de gauche, vieux bois seigneuriaux où restaient des arbres magnifiques et où l'on trouvait les plus rares gibiers à plume de toute cette partie de la France. On y tuait des aigles quelquefois ; et les oiseaux de passage, ceux qui presque jamais ne viennent en nos pays trop peuplés, s'arrêtaient presque infailliblement dans ces branchages séculaires comme s'ils eussent connu ou reconnu un petit coin de forêt des anciens temps demeuré là pour leur servir d'abri en leur courte étape nocturne.

Dans la vallée, c'étaient de grands herbages arrosés par des rigoles et séparés par des haies ; puis, plus loin, la rivière, canalisée jusque-là, s'épandait en un vaste marais. Ce marais, la plus admirable région de chasse que j'aie jamais vue, était tout le souci de mon cousin qui l'entretenait comme un parc. A travers l'immense peuple de roseaux qui le couvrait, le faisait vivant, bruissant, houleux, on avait tracé d'étroites avenues où les barques plates, conduites et dirigées avec des perches, passaient, muettes, sur l'eau morte, frôlaient les joncs, faisaient fuir les poissons rapides à travers les herbes et plonger les poules sauvages dont la tête noire et pointue disparaissait brusquement.

J'aime l'eau d'une passion désordonnée : la mer, bien que trop grande, trop remuante, impossible à posséder, les rivières si jolies mais qui passent, qui fuient, qui s'en vont, et les marais surtout où palpite toute l'existence inconnue des bêtes aquatiques. Le marais c'est un monde entier sur la terre, monde différent, qui a sa vie propre, ses habitants sédentaires, et ses voyageurs de passage, ses voix, ses bruits et son mystère surtout. Rien n'est plus troublant, plus inquiétant, plus effrayant, parfois, qu'un marécage. Pourquoi cette peur qui plane sur ces plaines basses couvertes d'eau ? Sont-ce les vagues rumeurs des roseaux, les étranges feux follets, le silence profond qui les enveloppe dans les nuits calmes, ou bien les brumes bizarres, qui traînent sur les joncs comme des robes de mortes, ou bien encore l'imperceptible clapotement, si léger, si doux, et plus terrifiant parfois que le canon des hommes ou que le tonnerre du ciel, qui fait ressembler les marais à des pays de rêve, à des pays redoutables cachant un secret inconnaissable et dangereux.

Non. Autre chose s'en dégage, un autre mystère, plus profond, plus grave, flotte dans les brouillards épais, le mystère même de la création peut-être ! Car n'est-ce pas dans l'eau stagnante et fangeuse, dans la lourde humidité des terres mouillées sous la chaleur du soleil, que remua, que vibra, que s'ouvrit au jour le premier germe de vie ?

J'arrivai le soir chez mon cousin. Il gelait à fendre les pierres.

Pendant le dîner, dans la grande salle dont les buffets, les murs, le plafond étaient couverts d'oiseaux empaillés, aux ailes étendues, ou perchés sur des branches accrochées par des clous, éperviers, hérons, hiboux, engoulevents, buses, tiercelets, vautours, faucons, mon cousin pareil lui même à un étrange animal des pays froids, vêtu d'une jaquette en peau de phoque, me racontait les dispositions qu'il avait prises pour cette nuit même.

Nous devions partir à trois heures et demie du matin, afin d'arriver vers quatre heures et demie au point choisi pour notre affût. On avait construit à cet endroit une hutte avec des morceaux de glace pour nous abriter un peu contre le vent terrible qui précède le jour, ce vent chargé de froid qui déchire la chair comme des scies, la coupe comme des lames, la pique comme des aiguillons empoisonnés, la tord comme des tenailles, et la brûle comme du feu.

Mon cousin se frottait les mains : « Je n'ai jamais vu une gelée pareille, disait-il, nous avions déjà douze degrés sous zéro à six heures du soir. »

J'allai me jeter sur mon lit aussitôt après le repas, et je m'endormis à la lueur d'une grande flamme flambant dans ma cheminée.

A trois heures sonnantes on me réveilla. J'endossai, à mon tour, une peau de mouton et je trouvai mon cousin Karl couvert d'une fourrure d'ours. Après avoir avalé chacun deux tasses de café brûlant suivies de deux verres de fine champagne, nous partîmes accompagnés d'un garde et de nos chiens : Plongeon et Pierrot.

Dès les premiers pas dehors, je me sentis glacé jusqu'aux os. C'était une de ces nuits où la terre semble morte de froid. L'air gelé devient résistant, palpable tant il fait mal ; aucun souffle ne l'agite ; il est figé, immobile ; il mord, traverse, dessèche, tue les arbres, les plantes, les insectes, les petits oiseaux eux-mêmes qui tombent des branches sur le sol dur, et deviennent durs aussi, comme lui, sous l'étreinte du froid.

La lune, à son dernier quartier, toute penchée sur le côté, toute pâle, paraissait défaillante au milieu de l'espace, et si faible qu'elle ne pouvait plus s'en aller, qu'elle restait là-haut, saisie aussi, paralysée par la rigueur du ciel. Elle répandait une lumière sèche et triste sur le monde, cette lueur mourante et blafarde qu'elle nous jette chaque mois, à la fin de sa résurrection.

Nous allions, côte à côte, Karl et moi, le dos courbé, les mains dans nos poches et le fusil sous le bras. Nos chaussures enveloppées de laine afin de pouvoir marcher sans glisser sur la rivière gelée ne faisaient aucun bruit ; et je regardais la fumée blanche que faisait l'haleine de nos chiens.

Nous fûmes bientôt au bord du marais, et nous nous engageâmes dans une des allées de roseaux secs qui s'avançait à travers cette forêt basse.

Nos coudes, frôlant les longues feuilles en rubans, laissaient derrière nous un léger bruit ; et je me sentis saisi, comme je ne l'avais jamais été, par l'émotion puissante et singulière que font naître en moi les marécages. Il était mort, celui-là, mort de froid, puisque nous marchions dessus, au milieu de son peuple de joncs desséchés.

Tout à coup, au détour d'une des allées, j'aperçus la hutte de glace qu'on avait construite pour nous mettre à l'abri. J'y entrai, et comme nous avions encore près d'une heure à attendre le réveil des oiseaux errants, je me roulai dans ma couverture pour essayer de me réchauffer.

Alors, couché sur le dos, je me mis à regarder la lune déformée, qui avait quatre cornes à travers les parois vaguement transparentes de cette maison polaire.

Mais le froid du marais gelé, le froid de ces murailles, le froid tombé du firmament me pénétra bientôt d'une façon si terrible, que je me mis à tousser.

Mon cousin Karl fut pris d'inquiétude : « Tant pis si nous ne tuons pas grand'-chose aujourd'hui, dit-il, je ne veux pas que tu t'enrhumes ; nous allons faire du feu. » Et il donna l'ordre au garde de couper des roseaux.

On en fit un tas au milieu de notre hutte défoncée au sommet pour laisser échapper la fumée ; et lorsque la flamme rouge monta le long des cloisons claires de cristal, elles se mirent à fondre, doucement, à peine, comme si ces pierres de glace avaient sué. Karl, resté dehors, me cria : « Viens donc voir ! » Je sortis et je restai éperdu d'étonnement. Notre cabane, en forme de cône, avait l'air d'un monstrueux diamant au cœur de feu poussé soudain sur l'eau gelée du marais. Et dedans, on voyait deux formes fantastiques, celles de nos chiens qui se chauffaient.

Mais un cri bizarre, un cri perdu, un cri errant, passa sur nos têtes. La lueur de notre foyer réveillait les oiseaux sauvages.

Rien ne m'émeut comme cette première clameur de vie qu'on ne voit point et qui court dans l'air sombre, si vite, si loin, avant qu'apparaisse à l'horizon la première clarté des jours d'hiver. Il me semble à cette heure glaciale de l'aube, que ce cri fuyant emporté par les plumes d'une bête est un soupir de l'âme du monde !

Karl disait : « Éteignez le feu. Voici l'aurore. »

Le ciel en effet commençait à pâlir, et les bandes de canards traînaient de longues taches rapides, vite effacées, sur le firmament.

Une lueur éclata dans la nuit, Karl venait de tirer ; et les deux chiens s'élancèrent.

Alors, de minute en minute, tantôt lui et tantôt moi, nous ajustions vivement dès qu'apparaissait au-dessus des roseaux l'ombre d'une tribu volante. Et Pierrot et Plongeon, essoufflés et joyeux, nous rapportaient des bêtes sanglantes dont l'œil quelquefois nous regardait encore.

Le jour s'était levé, un jour clair et bleu ; le soleil apparaissait au fond de la vallée et nous songions à repartir, quand deux oiseaux, le col droit et les ailes tendues, glissèrent brusquement sur nos têtes. Je tirai. Un d'eux tomba presque à mes pieds. C'était une sarcelle au ventre d'argent. Alors, dans l'espace au-dessus de moi, une voix, une voix d'oiseau cria. Ce fut une plainte courte, répétée, déchirante ; et la bête, la petite bête épargnée se mit à tourner dans le bleu du ciel au-dessus de nous en regardant sa compagne morte que je tenais entre mes mains.

Karl, à genoux, le fusil à l'épaule, l'œil ardent, la guettait, attendant qu'elle fût assez proche.

 — Tu as tué la femelle, dit-il, le mâle ne s'en ira pas.

Certes, il ne s'en allait point ; il tournoyait toujours, et pleurait autour de nous. Jamais gémissement de souffrance ne me déchira le cœur comme l'appel désolé, comme le reproche lamentable de ce pauvre animal perdu dans l'espace.

Parfois, il s'enfuyait sous la menace du fusil qui suivait son vol ; il semblait prêt à continuer sa route, tout seul à travers le ciel. Mais ne s'y pouvant décider il revenait bientôt pour chercher sa femelle.

 — Laisse-la par terre, me dit Karl, il approchera tout à l'heure.

Il approchait, en effet, insouciant du danger, affolé par son amour de bête, pour l'autre bête que j'avais tuée.

Karl tira ; ce fut comme si on avait coupé la corde qui tenait suspendu l'oiseau. Je vis une chose noire qui tombait ; j'entendis dans les roseaux le bruit d'une chute. Et Pierrot me le rapporta.

Je les mis, froids déjà, dans le même carnier... et je repartis, ce jour-là, pour Paris.

Saturday's Good Reading: “The Dead Hand” by Seabury Quinn (in English).

 

 

"Morbleu," exclaimed Jules de Grandin, passing his coffee cup across the breakfast table for its third replenishment, "but it seems, almost, Friend Trowbridge, as if I exercise some sinister influence on your patients! Here I have been your guest but one little week, and you all but lose that Mademoiselle Drigo, while, hélas, the so excellent Madame Richards is dead altogether entirely."

“I hardly think you can be blamed for Mrs. Richards' death," I replied as I handed back his refilled cup. "The poor lady suffered from mitral stenosis for the past two years, and the last time I examined her I was able to detect a diastolic murmur without the aid of a stethoscope. No, her trouble dated back some time before your coming, de Grandin."

"You relieve me," he asserted with a serio-comic expression on his alert face. "And now you go to offer your condolences to her sorrowing husband, yes? May I accompany you? Always, Friend Trowbridge, there is an opportunity for those who will to learn something."

 

 

"Nom d'un nom, but it is the good Sergeant Costello!" de Grandin cried delightedly as a heavy-set man closed the door of the Richards mansion behind him and strode across the wide veranda toward the steps. "Eh bien, my friend, do you not remember me?" He stretched both his slender, carefully groomed hands toward the huge Irishman. "Surely, you have not forgotten——"

"I'll say I haven’t," the big detective denied with a welcoming grin, shaking hands cordially. "You sure showed me some tricks I didn’t know was in th' book. Dr. de Grandin, when we was in that Kalmar case. Maybe you can give me a lift in this one, too. Sure, it’s like a bughouse in there." He jerked an indicative thumb over his shoulder toward the Richards residence.

"Eh, what is it you say?" de Grandin demanded, his little blue eyes dancing with sudden excitement. "A mystery? Cordieu, my friend, you interest me!"

"Will you help?" the big plain-clothes man asked with almost pathetic eagerness, half turning in his tracks.

"But most certainly," my companion assented. "A mystery to me is what the love of woman is to weaker men, my friend. Pardieu, how far I should have traveled in the profession of medicine if I had but been able to leave the solving of matters which did not concern me alone! Come, let us go in; we will shake the facts from this mystery of yours as a mother shakes stolen cookies from her enfant's blouse, cher sergent."

 

 

Willis Richards, power in Wall Street and nabob in our little sub-metropolitan community, stood on the hearth-rug before his library fire, a living testimonial to the truth of the axiom that death renders all mankind equals. For all his mop of white hair, his authoritative voice and his imposing embonpoint, the great banker was only a bereft and bewildered old man, borne down by his new sorrow and unable to realize that at last he confronted a condition not to be remedied by his signature on a five-figured check.

"Well, Sergeant," he asked, with a pitiful attempt at his usual brusk manner, as he recognized Costello at de Grandin’s elbow, "have you found out anything?"

"No, sir," the policeman confessed, "but here's Dr. de Grandin, from Paris, France, and he can help you out if anyone can. He’s done some wonderful work for us before, and——"

"A French detective!" Richards scoffed. "You don't need to get one of those foreigners to help you find a few stolen jewels, do you? Why——"

"Monsieur!" de Grandin’s angry protest brought the irate financier's expostulation to an abrupt halt; "you do forget yourself. I am Jules de Grandin, occasionally connected with the Service de Sureté, but more interested in the solution of my cases than in material reward."

"Oh, an amateur, eh?" Richards replied with even greater disgust. "This is a case for real detective work, Costello. I'm surprized that you’d bring a dabbler into my private affairs. By George, I'll telephone a New York agency and take the entire case out of your hands!"

"One moment, Mr. Richards," I interposed, relying on my position as family medical adviser to strengthen my argument. "This is Dr. Jules de Grandin, of the Sorbonne, one of Europe’s foremost criminologists and one of the world’s greatest scientists. The detection of crime is a phase of his work, just as military service was a phase of George Washington's; but you can no more compare him with professional police officers than you can compare Washington with professional soldiers."

Mr. Richards looked from de Grandin to me, then back again. "I'm sorry," he confessed, extending his hand to the little Frenchman, "and I shall be very glad for any assistance you may care to render, sir.

"To be frank"—he motioned us to seats as he began pacing the floor nervously—"Mrs. Richards' death was not quite so natural as Dr. Trowbridge believes. Though it’s perfectly true she had been suffering from heart disease for some time, it was not heart disease alone which caused her death. She was scared to death, literally.

"I returned from New York, where I’d been attending a banquet given by my alumni association, about 2 o’clock this morning, I let myself in with my latch key and went upstairs to my room, which adjoined my wife’s, and was beginning to undress when I heard her call out in terror. I flung the connecting door open and ran into her bedroom just in time to see her fall to the floor beside her bed, clutching at her throat and trying to say something about a hand."

"Ah?" de Grandin looked at our host with his sharp cat-stare. "And then?"

"And then I saw—well, I fancied I saw a—a something drift across the room, about level with my shoulders, and go out the window. I ran over to where my wife lay, and—and when I got there she was dead."

"Ah?" murmured de Grandin thoughtfully, inspecting his well-manicured nails with an air of preoccupation.

Richards gave him an annoyed look as he continued: "It was not till this morning that I discovered all my wife’s jewels and about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of unregistered Liberty bonds had disappeared from the wall-safe in her room.

"Of course," he concluded, "I didn’t really see anything in the air when I ran from my room. That’s impossible."

"Quite obviously," I agreed.

"Sure," Sergeant Costello nodded.

"Not at all," Jules de Grandin denied, shaking his head vigorously in dissent. "It is more possible your eyes did not deceive you, Monsieur. What was it that you saw?"

Richards’ annoyance deepened into exasperation. "It looked like a hand," he snapped. "A hand with four or five inches of wrist attached to it, and no body. Silly rot, of course. I didn’t see any such thing!"

"Quod erat demonstrandum!" de Grandin replied softly.

"What say?" Mr. Richards demanded testily.

"I said this is truly a remarkable case."

"Well, do you want to look at the room?" Richards turned toward the door leading to the stairway.

"But no, Monsieur," de Grandin blandly refused. "The good Sergeant Costello has already looked over the ground. Doubtless he can tell me all I need to know. I shall look elsewhere for confirmation of a possible theory."

"Oh, all right," Richards agreed with a snort of ill-concealed contempt; "tackle the matter in your own way. I’ll give you forty-eight hours to accomplish something; then I’ll call up Blynn’s agency and see what real detectives can do."

"Monsieur is more than generous in his allowance," de Grandin replied icily.

To me, as we left the house, he confided, "I should greatly enjoy pulling that Monsieur Richards’ nose. Friend Trowbridge."

 

 

"Can you come over to my house right away, Dr. Trowbridge?" a voice hailed me as de Grandin and I entered my office.

"Why, Mr. Kinnan," I answered, as I recognized the caller, "what’s the matter?"

"Huh!" he exploded. "What isn’t the matter? Hell’s broken loose. My wife’s had hysterics since this morning and I’m not sure I oughtn’t ask you to commit me to some asylum for the feeble-minded."

"Pardieu, Monsieur," de Grandin exclaimed, "that statement, he is vastly interesting, but not very instructive. You will explain, n’est-ce-pas?"

"Explain?" growled the other. "How am I going to explain something I know isn’t so? At twenty minutes past 5 this morning my wife and I saw something that wasn’t there, and saw it take the Lafayette cup, to boot!"

"Sacré nom d’un porc!" de Grandin swore. “What is it that you say? You saw that which was not there, and saw it take a cup of le Marquis de Lafayette? Non, non, non; it is I who am of the deranged mind. Friend Trowbridge, look to me. I hear remarks which this gentleman has not made!"

In spite of himself, Kinnan laughed at the little Frenchman’s tragic face. "I’ll be more explicit," he promised, seating himself opposite me and drawing a cigar case from his pocket. "Smoke?" he asked, proffering the case to each of us in turn.

"Now, here goes, and I don’t care whether you believe me or not, for I’m not at all sure I’m not a liar myself.

"The baby was fretful the entire early part of the evening, and we didn’t get him to sleep till well after midnight. Along about 5 o’clock he woke up on another rampage, and my wife and I went into the nursery to see what we could do.

"Ella, the maid, had gone to New York for the night, and, as usual, there wasn’t a drop of milk ready for the youngster. So Mrs. Kinnan and I trotted down to the dining room and I started to pasteurize some milk in the chafing dish. I can place the time exactly, for the library clock has been running erratically lately, and only yesterday I’d gotten it so it ran just ten minutes fast. Well, that clock had just struck half-past 5 when —like an echo of the gong—there came a crash at the window, and the pane was shattered, right before our eyes."

"Ah?" observed de Grandin, non-committally.

Kinnan shot him a sidelong glance as he continued, "It had been broken by a hammer."

"Ah?" de Grandin edged slightly forward on his chair.

"And whether you believe me or not, that hammer was held in a hand—a woman’s hand—and that was all! No arm, no body, just a hand—a hand that smashed that windowpane with a hammer, and floated through the air, as if it were attached to an invisible body, and took the Lafayette cup from the sideboard, then floated away with it!"

"A-a-ah!" de Grandin ejaculated on a rising accent, forgetting to puff at the cigar our caller had given him.

"Oh, I don’t expect you to believe me," Kinnan shot back. "I’d say anyone who told me such a story was full of dope, or something, myself; but I tell you I saw it—or thought I did—and so did my wife. Anyhow"—he turned to us with a gesture of finality—"the Lafayette cup is gone."

"On the contrary, Monsieur," de Grandin assured him gravely, "I do believe you, most implicitly. That same bodiless hand was seen at Monsieur Richards’ home last night."

"The deuce!" This time it was Kinnan who looked skeptical. "You say someone else saw that hand? Wh— why, they couldn't!"

"Nevertheless, my friend, they did," the Frenchman asserted. "Now tell me, this Lafayette cup, what was it?"

"It’s a silver wine goblet which belonged to my great-grandfather," Kinnan replied. "Intrinsically, I don’t suppose it’s worth more than twenty-five or thirty dollars; but it’s valuable to us as a family heirloom and because Lafayette, when he made his second visit to this country, drank out of it at a banquet given in his honor. I’ve been offered up to a thousand dollars for it by collectors."

"Morbleu!" De Grandin ground the fire from his cigar in the ash-tray and beat his fingertips together in a nervous tattoo. "This is a remarkable burglar we have here, Messieurs, a most remarkable burglar. He—or she—has a hand, but no body; he enter sick ladies’ bedrooms and frightens away their lives, then steal their jewelry; he break honest men’s windows with a hammer, then deprives them of their treasured heirlooms while they heat the milk for their babies. Cordieu, he will bear investigating, this one!"

"You don’t believe me," Kinnan declared, half truculently, half shamefacedly.

"Have I not said I do?" the Frenchman answered, almost angrily. "When you have seen what I have seen, Monsieur,—parbleu, when you have seen one-half as much!—you will learn to believe many things which fools declare impossible.

"This hammer"—he rose, almost glaring at Kinnan, so intent was his stare—"where is he? I would see him, if you please."

"It’s over at the house," our visitor answered, "lying right where it fell when the hand dropped it. Neither my wife nor I would touch it for a farm."

"Tremendous, gigantic, magnificent!" de Grandin ejaculated, nodding his head vigorously after each adjective. "Come, mes amis, let us hasten, let us fly. Trowbridge, my friend, you shall attend the so excellent Madame Kinnan. I, I shall go on the trail of this bodiless burglar, and it shall go hard, but I shall find him. Morbleu, Monsieur le Fantôme, when you kill that Madame Richards with fright, that is one thing; when you steal Monsieur Kinnan’s cup of le Marquis de Lafayette, that is also one thing, but when you think to thumb your invisible nose at Jules de Grandin,—parbleu, that is something else again! We shall see who will make one sacré singe out of whom, and that right quickly."

 

 

The hammer proved to be an ordinary one, with a nickeled head and imitation ebony handle, such as could be bought at any notion store for twenty-five cents; but de Grandin pounced on it like a hungry tom-cat on a mouse or a gold prospector on a two-pound nugget or a Kimberley miner on a twelve-carat diamond.

"But this is wonderful; this is superb!" he almost cooed as he swaddled the implement in several layers of paper and stowed it tenderly away in an inside pocket of his great coat.

"Trowbridge, my friend"—he threw me one of his quick, enigmatic smiles—"do you attend the good Madame Kinnan. I have important duties to perform elsewhere. If possible, I shall return for dinner, and if I do, I pray you will have your amiable cook prepare for me one of her so delicious apple pies. If I return not"— his little blue eyes twinkled a moment with frosty laughter—"I shall eat all that pie for breakfast, like a good Yon-kee."

 

 

Dinner was long since over, and the requested apple pie had been reposing untouched on the pantry shelf for several hours when de Grandin popped from a taxicab like a jack-in-the-box from its case and rushed up the front steps, the waxed ends of his little blond mustache twitching like the whiskers of an excited tom-cat, his arms filled with bundles—a look of triumphant exhilaration on his face. "Quick, quick, Friend Trowbridge," he ordered as he deposited his packages on my office desk, "to the telephone! Call that Monsieur Richards, that rich man who so generously allowed me forty- eight hours to recover his lost treasures, and that Monsieur Kinnan, whose so precious cup of the Marquis de Lafayette was stolen—call them both and bid them come here, right away, at once, immediately!

"Pardieu"—he strode back and forth across my office with a step which was half ran, half jig—"this Jules de Grandin, never is the task imposed too great for him!"

"What in the world’s the matter with you?" I demanded as I rang up the Richards house.

"Non, non," he replied, lighting a cigarette, then flinging it away unpuffed. "Ask me no questions, good friend, I do beseech you. Wait, only wait till those others come, then you shall hear Jules de Grandin speak. Morbleu, but he shall speak a great mouthful!"

 

 

The Richards limousine, impressive in size, like its owner, and, like its owner, heavily upholstered, was panting before my door in half an hour, and Kinnan drove up in his modest sedan almost as soon. Sergeant Costello, looking mystified, but concealing his wonder with the inborn reticence of a professional policeman, came into the office close on Kinnan’s heels.

"What’s all this nonsense, Trowbridge?" Richards demanded testily as he sank into a chair. "Couldn’t you have come over to my house, instead of dragging me out at this hour o’ night?"

"Tut, tut, Monsieur," de Grandin cut him short, running the admonitions so close together that they sounded like the exhaust of a miniature motorboat. "Tut, tut, Monsieur, is it not worth coming out into the cold to recover these?" From a brown-paper parcel before him he produced a purple velvet case which he snapped open with a dramatic gesture, disclosing an array of scintillating gems.

"These, I take it," he announced, "were once the property of Madame, your wife?"

"Great Scott!" gasped Richards, reaching out his hands for the jewels, "why, you got ’em!"

"But of course," de Grandin agreed, deftly withdrawing the stones from Richards’ reach and restoring them to their paper bag. "Also, Monsieur, I have these." From another parcel he drew a sheaf of Liberty bonds, ruffling through them as a gambler might count his cards. "You said twenty thousand dollars’ worth, I believe? Trés bien, there are just twenty one-thousand dollar certificates here, according to my count.

"Monsieur Kinnan," he bowed to our other visitor, "permit that I restore to you the cup of Monsieur le Marquis Lafayette." The Lafayette cup was duly extracted from another package and handed to its owner.

"And now," de Grandin lifted an oblong pasteboard box of the sort used for shoes and held it toward us as a prestidigitator might hold the hat from which he is about to extract a rabbit, "I will ask you to give me closest attention. Regardez, s'il vous plait. Is this not what you gentlemen saw last night?"

As he lifted the box lid we beheld, lying on a bed of crumpled tissue paper, what appeared to be the perfectly modeled reproduction of a beautiful feminine hand and wrist. The thumb and fingers, tipped with long, almond-shaped nails, were exquisitely slender and graceful, and the narrow palm, where it showed above the curling digits, was pink and soft-looking as the under side of a La France rose petal. Only the smear of collodion across the severed wrist told us we gazed on something which once pulsated with life instead of a marvelously exact reproduction.

"Is this not what you gentlemen saw last night?" de Grandin repeated, glancing from the lovely hand to Richards and Kinnan in turn.

Each nodded a mute confirmation, but forebore to speak, as though the sight of the eery, lifeless thing before him had placed a seal of silence on his lips.

"Very good; very, very good," de Grandin nodded vigorously. "Now attend me, if you please:

"When Monsieur Kinnan told me of the hammer which broke his window last night I decided the road by which to trace this bodiless burglar was mapped out on that hammer's handle. Pourquoi? Because this hand which scares sick ladies to death and breaks windowpanes is one of three things. First"—he ticked off on his fingers—"it may be some mechanical device. In that case I shall find no traces. But it may be the ghost of someone who once lived, in which case, again, it is one of two things: a ghost hand, per se, or the reanimated flesh of one who is dead. Or, perchance, it is the hand of someone who can render the rest of him invisible.

"Now, then, if it is a ghost hand, either true ghost or living-dead flesh, it is like other hands, it has ridges and valleys and loops and whorls, which can be traced and recognized by fingerprint experts. Or, if a man can, by some process unknown to me, make all of him, save his hand, invisible, why, then, his hand, too, must leave finger marks. Hein?

"'Now,' Jules de Grandin asked Jules de Grandin, 'is it not highly probable that one who steal jewels and bonds and the cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette, has stolen before, perchance been apprehended, and fingerprinted?'

"'Parbleu! It is even as you say,' Jules de Grandin answer Jules de Grandin.

"Thereupon I take that hammer from Monsieur Kinnan's house and go with it to New York. I see the Commissioner of Police. 'Monsieur le Prefet,' I say to him, 'I am Jules de Grandin. Do you know me?'

"'Morbleu, but I do,' reply that so excellent gentleman. 'Who but a fool has not heard of Jules de Grandin?'"

He paused a moment, easting a pregnant glance at Richards, then continued:

"'Monsieur le Prefet' I reply, 'I would that you permit your identification experts to examine this hammer and tell me, of their kindness, whose fingerprints appear thereon.'

"Bien, the order was given, and in good time come the report that the hammer handle is autographed with the fingerprints of one Katherine O’Brien, otherwise known to the police as Catherine Levoy, and also known as Catherine Dunstan.

"The police of New York have a dossier for this lady which would do credit to the Paris Sûreté. They tell me she was in turn a shoplifter, a decoy-woman for some badger game gentlemen, a forger and the partner of one Professor Mysterio, a theatrical hypnotist. Indeed, they tell me, she was married to this professor à l’Italienne, and with him she traveled the country, sometimes giving exhibitions, sometimes indulging in crime, such as, for instance, burglary and pocket-picking.

"Now, about a year ago, while she and the professor are exhibiting themselves at Coney Island, this lady died. Her partner gave her a most remarkable funeral; but the ceremonies were marred by one untoward incident—while her body lay in the undertaker’s mortuary some thief did climb in the window and remove one of her hands. In the dead of night he severed from the beautiful body of that wicked woman the hand which had often extracted property from other people’s pockets, and made off with it; nor could all the policemen’s efforts find out who did so ghoulish a deed.

"Meantime, the professor who was this woman’s theatrical partner has retired from the stage and lives in New Jersey on the fortune he has amassed.

"'New Jersey, New Jersey,' I say to me. 'Why, that is the place where my dear Trowbridge lives, and where these so mysterious burglaries have taken place.'

"So back I come to Sergeant Costello and ask him if any stranger whose mode of income is unknown has lately moved into this vicinity. I have a picture of this Professor Mysterio which the New York police give me from their archives, and I show the picture to the good Costello.

"'Pardieu' (in English) he say, 'but I know the gentleman! He live in the Berryman house, out on the Andover Road, and do nothing for his living but smoke a pipe and drink whisky. Come, let us gather him in.'

"While Sergeant Costello and I ride out to that house I do much thinking. Hypnotism is thought, and thought is a thing—a thing which does not die. Now, if this dead woman had been in the habit of receiving mental commands from Professor Mysterio for so long, and had been accustomed to obey those commands with all parts of her body as soon as they were given, had she not formed a habit of obedience? Trowbridge, my friend, you are a physician, you have seen men die, even as I have. You know that the suddenly killed man falls in an attitude which was characteristic of him in life, is it not so?"

I nodded agreement.

"Very well, then," de Grandin continued, "I ask me if it is not possible that the hand this professor have commanded so many times in life can not be made to do his bidding after death? Mon Dieu, the idea is novel, but not for that reason impossible! Did not that so superb Monsieur Poe hint at some such thing in his story of the dying man who remained alive because he was hypnotized? Most assuredly.

"So, when we get to the house of Professor Mysterio, Sergeant Costello points his pistol at the gentleman and says, 'Put 'em up, buddee, we've got the deceased wood upon you!' Meanwhile, I search the house.

"I find Monsieur Richards' jewelry and his bonds; I find Monsieur Kinnan's cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette. I find much else, including this hand of a dead woman which are not itself dead. Dieu de Dieu! When I go to take it from its case it attack me like a living thing, and Sergeant Costello have to promise he will blow the top from the professor’s head before he order it to be quiet. And it obeyed his voice! Parbleu! When I see that, I have the flesh of the geese all over me."

"Rot!" Richards flung the contemptuous comment like a missile. "I don’t know what kind of hocus-pocus made that hand move; but if you expect to make me believe any such nonsense as this stuff you’ve been telling, you’ve got the wrong pig by the ear. I shouldn’t be surprized if you and this Professor What's-His-Name were in cahoots in this thing, and you got cold feet and left your confederate holding the bag!"

I stared aghast at the man. De Grandin's vanity was as colossal as his ability, and though he was gentle as a woman in ordinary circumstances, like a woman, he was capable of sudden flares of vixenish temper when his regard for human life became no greater than his concern for a troublesome fly. If the little Frenchman had launched himself at his traducer like a bobcat attacking a hound I should have been less surprized than I was at the ominous calm with which he replaced the cover of the cardboard box containing the hand.

"Friend Trowbridge," he asked, the muscles of his jaws standing out like whipcords as he strove to prevent a telltale quiver from creeping into his face, "will you be good enough to represent me—ha!"

With the ejaculation he dodged suddenly downward, almost falling to the floor in his haste to avoid the flashing, white object which dashed at his face.

Nor was his dodge a split-second too soon. Like the lid of a boiling kettle, the top of the shoe box had lifted, and the slender, quiescent hand which lay within had leaped through the opening, risen throat-high in the air and hurtled across the intervening space like a quarrel from a crossbow. With delicate, firm-muscled fingers outspread, it swooped through the air like a pouncing hawk, missed de Grandin’s throat by the barest fraction of a second—and fastened itself, snapping like a strong-springed steel-trap, in the puffy flesh sagging over the collar of Willis Richards' dress shirt.

"Ah—ulp!" gasped, or, rather, croaked, the startled financier, falling backward in his chair and tearing futilely at the eldritch thing which sank its long, pointed nails into his purple skin. "Ah—God, it’s choking me!"

Costello was at his side, striving with all his force to pry those white, slender fingers open. He might as well have tried to wrench apart the clasp of a chrome-steel handcuff.

"Non, non," de Grandin shouted, "not that way, Sergeant. It is useless!"

Leaping across the room he jerked open the door of my instrument case, seized an autopsy knife and dashed his shoulder against the burly detective, almost sending him sprawling. Next instant, with the speed and precision of an expert surgeon, he was dissecting away the deadly white fingers fastened in Richards' dewlap.

"C'est complet," he announced matter-of-factly as he finished his grisly task. "A restorative, if you please, Friend Trowbridge, and an antiseptic dressing for the wounds from the nails. He will not suffer un- necessarily."

Wheeling, he seized the receiver from my desk telephone and called authoritatively: "Allo, allo, the jail, if you please, Mademoiselle Central!"

There was a brief parley, finally he received his connection, then: "Allo, Monsieur le Geôlier, can you tell me of Professor Mysterio, please? How is he; what does he do?"

A pause: "Ah, do you say so? I thought as much. Many thanks, Monsieur."

He turned to us, a look of satisfaction on his face. "My friends," he announced solemnly, "Professor Mysterio is no more. Two minutes ago the authorities at the city prison heard him call out distinctly in a loud voice, 'Katie, kill the Frenchman; I command you. Kill him!' When they rushed to his cell to discover the cause for his cries they were but in time to see him dash himself from his bed, having first bound his waist-belt firmly to his throat and the top of his barred door. The fall broke his neck. He died before they could cut him down.

"Eh bien," he shook himself like a spaniel emerging from a pond, " 'twas a lucky thing for me I saw that box top begin to lift and had the sense to dodge those dead fingers. None of you would have thought of the knife, I fear, before the thing had strangled my life away. As it is, I acted none too soon for Monsieur Richards' good."

Still red in the face, but regaining his self-possession under my ministrations, Willis Richards sat up in his chair. "If you’ll give me my property, I’ll be getting out of this hell-house," he announced gruffly, reaching for the jewels and bonds de Grandin had placed on the desk.

"Assuredly, Monsieur," de Grandin agreed. "But first you will comply with the law, n’est-ce-pas? You have offered a reward of five thousand dollars for your property's return. Make out two checks, if you please, one for half the amount to the good Sergeant Costello, the other, for a similar amount, to me."

"I'll be hanged if I do," the banker declared, glaring angrily at de Grandin. "Why should a man have to buy his own stuff back?"

Sergeant Costello rose ponderously to his feet and gathered the parcels containing Richards' belongings into his capacious hands. "Law's law," he announced decisively. "There'll be no bonds or jools returned till that reward's been paid."

"All right, all right," Richards agreed, reaching for his checkbook, "I'll pay you; but it's the damndest hold-up I've ever had pulled on me."

 

 

"H'm," growled Costello as the door slammed behind the irate banker, "if I ever catch that bird parkin' by a fireplug or exceedin' th' speed limit, he'll see a hold-up that is a hold-up. I'll give 'im every summons in my book, an' holler for more."

"Tiens, my friends, think of the swine no more,” de Grandin commanded. "In France, had a man so insulted me, I should have called him out and run him through the body. But that one? Pouf! Gold is his life’s blood. I hurt him far more by forcing the reward from him than if I had punctured his fat skin a dozen times.

"Meantime, Friend Trowbridge"—his little eyes snapped with the heat-lightning of his sudden smile—"there waits in the pantry that so delicious apple pie prepared for me by your excellent cook. Sergeant—Monsieur Kinnan, will you join us? Wind and weather permitting, Friend Trowbridge and I purpose eating ourselves into one glorious case of indigestion."