Devil’s Rosary

JULES DE GRANDIN REGARDED the big red-headed man entering the breakfast room with a quick, affectionate smile. “Is it truly thou, mon sergent?” he asked. “I have joy in this meeting!”

Detective Sergeant Jeremiah Costello grinned somewhat ruefully as he seated himself and accepted a cup of steaming, well-creamed coffee. “It’s me, all right, sir,” he admitted, “an’ in a peck o’ trouble, as I usually am when I come botherin’ you an’ Dr. Trowbridge at your breakfast.”

“Ah, I am glad—I mean I grieve—no, pardieu, I mean I sorrow at your trouble, but rejoice at your visit!” the little Frenchman returned. “What is it causes you unhappiness?”

The big Irishman emptied his cup at a gigantic gulp and wrinkled his forehead like a puzzled mastiff. “I dunno,” he confessed. “Maybe it’s not a case at all, an’ then again, maybe it is. Have you been readin’ the newspaper accounts of the accident that kilt young Tom Cableson last night?”

De Grandin spread a bit of butter on his broiled weakfish and watched it dissolve. “You refer to the mishap which occurred on the Albemarle Pike—the unfortunate young man who died when he collided with a tree and thrust his face through his windshield?”

“The coroner’s jury, when they returned a verdict of death by misadventure. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t any of my business, but bein’ on the homicide squad I thought I’d just drop round to the morgue and have a look at the body, an’ when I’d seen it I came over here hot-foot.”

“Well, sir, I’ve seen lots of bodies of folks killed in motor accidents, but never one quite like young Cableson’s. The only wound on him was a big, jagged gash in the throat—just one, d’ye mind—an’ some funny-lookin’ scratches on his neck—” He paused apologetically, as if debating the wisdom of continuing.

“Cordieu, is it a game of patience we play here?” de Grandin demanded testily. “Get on with thy story, great stupid one, or I must twist your neck!”

I laughed outright at this threat of the sparrow to chastise the turkey cock, and even Costello’s gravity gave way to a grin, but he sobered quickly as he answered. “Well, sir, I did part of me hitch in China, you know, and once one of our men was picked up by some bandits. When we finally come to him we found they’d hung him up like a steer for th’ slaughter—cut his throat an’ left him danglin’ by th’ heels from a tree-limb. There wasn’t a tin-cupful o’ blood left in his pore carcass.

“That’s th’ way young Cableson looked to me—all empty-like, if you get what I mean.”

“Yes, sir, I was comin’ to that. I went round to th’ police garage where his car was, and looked it over most partic’lar. That’s th’ funny part o’ th’ joke, but I didn’t see nothin’ to laugh at. There wasn’t half a pint o’ blood spilled on that car, not on th’ hood nor instrument board, nor upholstery, an th’ windshield which was supposed to have ripped his throat open when he crashed through it, that was clean as th’ palm o’ my hand, too. Besides that, sir—did ye ever see a man that had been mauled by a big cat?”

“Lions an’ tigers, an’ th’ like o’ that, sir. Once in th’ Chinese upcountry I seen th’ body of a woman who’d been kilt by a tiger, one o’ them big blue beasts they have there. There was something about young Cableson that reminded me of—”

“Mort d’un rat rouge, do you say so? This poor one’s injuries were like those of that Chinese woman?”

“Pre-cise-ly, sir. That’s why I’m here. You see, I figure if he had died natural-like, as th’ result o’ that accident, his car should ’a’ been wringin’ wet with blood, an’ his clothes drippin’ with it. But, like I was sayin’—”

“Parbleu, you have said it!” de Grandin exclaimed almost delightedly. “Come, let us go at once.” He swallowed the remaining morsel of his fish, drained his coffee cup and rose. “This case, he has the smell of herring on him, mon sergent.”

“Await me, if you please,” he called from the hall as he thrust his arms into his topcoat sleeves. “I shall return in ample time for Madame Heacoat’s soirée, my friend, but at present I am burnt with curiosity to see this poor, unfortunate young man who died of a cut throat, yet bled no blood. A bientôt.”

A LITTLE AFTER EIGHT O’CLOCK that night he came into my bedroom, resplendent in full evening dress. “Consider me, Friend Trowbridge,” he commanded. “Behold and admire. Am I not superb, magnificent? Shall I not be the pride of all the ladies and the despair of the men?” He pirouetted like a dancer for my admiration.

To do him justice, he was a sight to command a second look. About his neck hung the insignia of the Legion of Honor; a row of miniature medals including the French and Belgian war crosses, the Médaille Militaire and the Italian Medal for Valor decorated the left breast of his faultless evening coat; his little wheat-blond mustache was waxed to needle sharpness and his sleek blond hair was brushed and brilliantined until it fitted flat against his shapely little head like a skullcap.

“Humpf,” I commented, “if you behave as well as you look I suppose you’ll not disgrace me.”

“O, la, la!” He grinned delightedly as he patted the gardenia in his lapel with gentle, approving fingers. “Come, let us go. I would arrive at Madame Heacoat’s before all the punch is drunk, if you please.” He flung his long, military-cut evening cape about him with the air of a comic-opera conspirator, picked up his lustrous top hat and silver-headed ebony cane and strode debonairly toward the door.

“Just a moment,” I called as the desk ’phone gave a short, chattering ring.

“Hullo, Trowbridge, Donovan speaking,” came a heavy voice across the wire as I picked up the instrument. “Can you bring that funny little Frog friend of yours over to City Hospital tonight? I’ve got a brand new variety of nut in the psychopathic ward—a young girl sane as you or I—well, anyhow, apparently as sane as you, except for an odd fixation. I think she’d interest de Grandin—”

“Sorry,” I denied. “We’re just going to a shindig at Mrs. Heacoat’s. It’ll be a frightful bore, most likely, but they’re valuable patients, and—”

“Aw, rats,” Dr. Donovan interrupted. “If I had as much money as you I’d tell all the tea-pourin’ old ladies to go fry an egg. Come on over. This nut is good, I tell you. Put your toad-eater on the ’phone, maybe he’ll listen to reason, even if you won’t.”

“Hélas, but I am desolated!” the Frenchman declared as Donovan delivered his invitation. “At present Friend Trowbridge and I go to make the great whoopee at Madame Heacoat’s. Later in the evening, if you please, we shall avail ourselves of your hospitality. You have whisky there, yes? Bon. Anon, my friend, we shall discuss it and the young woman with the idée fixe.”

MRS. HEACOAT’S WAS THE first formal affair of the autumn, and most of the élite of our little city were present, the men still showing the floridness of golf course and mountain trail, sun-tan, painfully acquired at fashionable beaches, lying in velvet veneer on the women’s arms and shoulders.

Famous lion-huntress that she was, Mrs. Heacoat had managed to impound a considerable array of exotic notables for her home-town guests to gape at, and I noted with amusement how her large, pale eyes lit up with elation at sight of Jules de Grandin. The little Frenchman, quick to understand the situation, played his rôle artistically. “Madame,” he bent above our hostess’s plump hand with more than usual ceremony, “believe me, I am deeply flattered by the honor you have conferred on me.”

What would have been a simper in anyone less distinguished than Mrs. Watson Heacoat spread over the much massaged and carefully lifted features of Harrisonville’s social arbiter. “So sweet of you to come, Dr. de Grandin. Do you know Monsieur Arif? Arif Pasha, Dr. Jules de Grandin—Dr. Trowbridge.”

The slender, sallow-skinned young man whom she presented had the small regular features, sleek black hair and dark, slumbrous eyes typical of a night club band leader, or a waiter in a fashionable café. He bowed jerkily from the hips in continental fashion and murmured a polite greeting in stilted English. “You, I take it, are a stranger like myself in strange company?” he asked de Grandin as we moved aside for a trio of newcomers.

Further conversation developed he was attached to the Turkish consulate in New York, that he had met Mrs. Heacoat in England the previous summer, and that he would be exceedingly glad when he might bid his hostess good night.

“Tiens, they stare so, these Americans,” he complained. “Now, in London or Paris—”

“Monsoor and Modom Bera!” announced the butler, his impressive, full-throated English voice cutting through the staccato of chatter as the booming of the surf sounds through the strains of a seaside resort band.

We turned casually to view the newcomers, then kept our eyes at gaze; they were easily the most interesting people in the room. Madame Bera walked a half-pace before her husband, tall, exquisite, exotic as an orchid blooming in a New England garden. Tawny hair combed close to a small head framed a broad white brow, and under fine dark brown brows looked out the most remarkable eyes I had ever seen. Widely separated, their roundness gave them an illusion of immensity which seemed to diminish her face, and their color was a baffling shade of greenish amber, contrasting oddly with her leonine hair and warm, maize-tan complexion. From cheek to cheek her face was wide, tapering to a pointed chin, and her nostrils flared slightly, like those of an alert feline scenting hidden danger. Her evening dress, cut rather higher than the prevailing mode, encased her large, supple figure with glove tightness from breast to waist, then flared outward to an uneven hem that almost swept the floor. Beneath the edge of her sand-colored chiffon gown her feet, in sandals of gold kid, appeared absurdly small for her height as she crossed the room with a lithe, easy stride that seemed positively pantherine in its effortless grace.

Older by a score of years than his consort, Monsieur Bera yet had something of the same feline ease of movement that characterized her. Like hers, his face was wide from cheek to cheek, pointed at the chin and with unusually wide nostrils. Unlike his wife’s, his eyes were rather long than round, inclined to be oblique, and half closed, as if to shade them from the glitter of the electric lights. Fast-thinning grey hair was combed back from his brow in an effort to conceal his spreading bald spot, and his wide mouth was adorned by a waxed mustache of the kind affected by Prussian officers in pre-Nazi days. Through the lens of a rimless monocle fixed in his right eye he seemed to view the assemblage with a sardonic contempt.

“Ye Allah!” the young Turk who stood between de Grandin and me sank his fingers into our elbows. “Bism’ allah ar-rahman ar-rahim! Do you see them? They look as if they were of that people!”

“Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, I understand you very well, indeed. Some little time ago I had to go to Tunis to make investigation of a threatened uprising of the tribesmen. Disguised as a Père Blanc—and other things—I mingled with the natives. It was vile—I had to shave off my mustaches!—but it was instructive. I learned much. I learned, by example, of the djinn that haunt the ruins of Carthage, and of the strange ones who reside in tombs; a weird and dreadful folk without a name—at any rate, without a name which can be mentioned.”

Arif Pasha looked at Jules de Grandin fearfully. “You have seen them?” he asked in a low breath.

“I have heard much of them, and their stigmata has been described to me. Come, let us seek an introduction to la belle Bera.”

The lady proved gracious as she was beautiful. Viewed closely, her strange eyes were stranger still, for they had a trick of contracting their pupils in the light, bringing out the full beauty of their fine irises, and expanding in shadow till they seemed black as night. Too, I noted when she smiled her slow wide smile, all four canine teeth seemed overprominent and sharp. This, perhaps, accounted for the startling contrast between her crimson lips and her perfect dentition. Her hands were unusual, too. Small and fine they were, with supple, slender fingers but unusually wide palms, and the nails, shaped to a point and brightly varnished, curved oddly downward over the fingertips; had they been longer or less carefully tended they would have suggested talons. Her voice was a rich heavy contralto, and when she spoke slow hesitant English there was an odd purring undertone beneath her words.

The odd characteristics which seemed somehow exotically attractive in his wife were intensified in Monsieur Bera. The over-prominent teeth which lent a kind of piquant charm to her smile were a deformity in his dun-lipped mouth; the overhanging nails that made her long fingers seem longer still were definitely claw-like on his hands, and the odd trick of contracting and expanding his pupils in changing lights gave his narrow eyes a furtive look unpleasantly reminiscent of the eyes of a dope-fiend or a cruel, treacherous cat.

“Madame, I am interested,” de Grandin admitted with the frankness only he could employ without seeming discourteous. “Your name intrigues me. It is not French, yet I heard you introduced as Monsieur and Madame—”

The lady smiled languidly, showing pearly teeth and crimson lips effectively. “We are Tunisians,” she answered. “Both my husband and I come from North Africa.”

“Ah, then I am indeed fortunate,” he smiled delightedly. “Is it by some great fortune you reside in this city? If so I should greatly esteem permission to call—”

I heard no summons, but Madame Bera evidently did, for with another smile and friendly nod she left us to join Mrs. Heacoat.

“Beard of a small blue man!” de Grandin grinned wryly as we rejoined the young Turk, “it seems that Jules de Grandin loses his appeal for the sex. Was ever the chilled shoulder more effectively presented than by la charmante Bera?

“Come, mes amis,” he linked his hands through our elbows and drew us toward the farther room, “women may smile, or women may frown, but champagne punch is always pleasant to the taste.”

We sampled several kinds of punch and sandwiches and small sweet cakes, then made our adieux to our hostess. Outside, as Arif Pasha was about to enter his taxi, de Grandin tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “If we should hear more of them, I can find you, my friend?” he asked cryptically.

“WOULD YOU GUYS LIKE a spot o’ proletarian whisky to take the taste of all that champagne out o’ your mouths?” asked Dr. Donovan as we joined him in his office at the hospital.

“A thousand thanks,” de Grandin answered. “Champagne is good, but whisky, as your saying puts it so drolly, hits the spot. By all means, let us indulge.

“You are not drinking?” he asked as Donovan poured a generous portion for him, and a like one for me.

“Nope, not on duty. Might give some o’ my nuts bad ideas,” the other grinned. “However, bottoms up, you fellers, then let’s take a gander at my newest curio.

“It was early this morning, half-past four or so, when a state constabulary patrol found her wandering around the woods west of Mooreston with nothing but a nightdress on. They questioned her, but could get nowhere. Most of the time she didn’t speak at all, and when she did it was only to slobber some sort o’ meaningless gibberish. According to Hoyle they should have taken her to the State Hospital for observation, but they’re pretty full over there, and prefer to handle only regularly committed cases, so the troopers brought her here and turned her over to the city police.

“Frankly, the case has my goat. Familiar with dementia præcox, are you, Doctor?” he turned questioningly to de Grandin.

“Quite,” the Frenchman answered. “I have seen many poor ones suffering from it. Usually it occurs between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, though most cases I have observed were in the early thirties. Wherever I have seen it the disease was characterized by states of excitement accompanied by delusions of aural or visual type. Most patients believed they were persecuted, or had been through some harrowing experience—occasionally they posed, gesticulated and grimaced.”

“Just so,” agreed Donovan. “You’ve got it down pat, Doctor. I thought I had, too, but I’m not so sure now. What would be your diagnosis if a patient displayed every sign of ataxic aphasia, couldn’t utter a single intelligent word, then fell into a stupor lasting eight hours or so and woke up with a case of the horrors? This girl’s about twenty-three, and absolutely perfect physically. What’s more, her reflexes are all right—knee-jerks normal, very sensitive to pain, and all that, but—” He looked inquiringly at de Grandin.

“From your statement I should suggest dementia præcox. It is well known that such dements frequently fall into comatose sleeps in which they suffer nightmares, and on awaking are so mentally confused they cannot distinguish between the phantoms of their dreams and their waking surroundings.”

“Precisely. Well, I had a talk with this child and heard her story, then gave her a big dose of codeine in milk. She slept three hours and woke up seemingly as normal as you or I, but I’m damned if she didn’t repeat the same story, chapter and verse, that she gave me when she first came out of her stupor. I’d say she’s sane as a judge if it weren’t for this delusion she persists in. Want to come up now and have a look at her?”

Donovan’s patient lay on the neat white-iron hospital cot, staring with wide frightened eyes at the little observation-grille in the unlocked door of her cell. Even the conventional high-necked, long-sleeved muslin bed-gown furnished by the hospital could not hide her frail prettiness. With her pale smooth skin, light short hair and big violet eyes in which lay a look of perpetual terror, she was like a little frightened child, and a wave of sympathy swept over me as we entered her room. That de Grandin felt the same I could tell by the kindly smile he gave her as he drew a chair to her bedside and seated himself. He took her thin blue-veined hand in his and patted it gently before placing his fingers on her pulse.

“I’ve brought a couple of gentlemen to see you, Annie,” Dr. Donovan announced as the little Frenchman gazed intently at the tiny gold watch strapped to the underside of his wrist, comparing its sweep second hand with the girl’s pulsation. “Dr. de Grandin is a famous French detective as well as a physician; he’ll be glad to hear your story; maybe he can do something about it.”

A tortured look swept across the girl’s thin face as he finished. “You think I’m crazy,” she accused, half rising from her pillow. “I know you do, and you’ve brought these men here to examine me so you can put me in a madhouse for always. Oh, it’s dreadful—I’m not insane, I tell you; I’m as sane as you are, if you’d only listen—”

“Now, Annie, don’t excite yourself,” Donovan soothed. “You know I wouldn’t do anything like that; I’m your friend—”

“My name’s not Annie, and you’re not my friend. Nobody is. You think I’m crazy—all you doctors think everyone who gets into your clutches must be crazy, and you’ll send me to a madhouse, and I’ll really go crazy there!”

Donovan cast a quick wink at me, then turned a serious face to the girl. “I thought your name was Annie. I must have been mistaken. What is it?”

“I’ve told you it’s Trula, Trula Petersen. I used to live in Paterson, but lost my place there and couldn’t get anything to do, so I came to Harrisonville looking for work, and—”

“Very good, Friend Donovan,” de Grandin announced, relinquishing the girl’s wrist, but retaining her fingers in his, “when first this young lady came here she could not tell her name. Now she can. Bon, we make the progress. Her heart action is strong and good. I think perhaps we shall make much more progress. Now, Mademoiselle,” he gave the girl one of his quick friendly smiles, “if you will be so good as to detail your adventures from the start we shall listen with the close attention. Believe me, we are friends, and nothing you say shall be taken as a proof of madness.”

The girl’s smile was a pitiful, small echo of his own. “I do believe you, sir,” she returned, “and I’ll tell you everything, for I know I can trust you.

“When the Clareborne Silk Mills closed down in Paterson I lost my place as timekeeper. Most of the other mills were laying off employees, and there wasn’t much chance of another situation there. I’m an orphan with no relatives, and I had to get some sort of work at once, for I didn’t have more than fifty dollars in the bank. After trying several places with no luck I came to Harrisonville where nobody knew me and registered at a domestic servants’ agency. It was better to be a housemaid than starve, I thought.

“The very day I registered, a Mrs. d’Afrique came looking for a maid, and picked two other girls and me as possibilities. She looked us all over, asked a lot of questions about our families, where we were born, and that sort of thing, then chose me because she said she preferred a maid without relatives or friends, who wouldn’t be wanting to run out every evening. Her car was waiting outside, and I had no baggage except my suitcase, so I went along with her.”

“I don’t know, sir. It was a big foreign car with a closed body, and she had me sit in the tonneau with her instead of up front with the chauffeur. When we’d started I noticed for the first time that the windows were of frosted glass, and I couldn’t see where we went. We must have gone a long way, though, for the car seemed traveling very fast, and there were no traffic stops. When we finally stopped we were under a porte-cochère, and we entered the house directly from the car, so I couldn’t get any idea of surroundings.”

A look of terror flared in the girl’s eyes and her pale lips writhed in a grimace of fear. “The days that followed!” she repeated in a thin scream; “it’s the days that followed that brought me here!”

“Now we’re gettin’ it!” Donovan whispered in my ear with a low chuckle. “Go ahead and ask her, de Grandin; you tell him, Annie. This is goin’ to be good.”

His voice was too low for de Grandin and the girl to catch his words, but his tone and laugh were obvious. “Oh!” the patient wailed, wrenching her hand from de Grandin’s and putting it to her eyes. “Oh, how cruel! You’re all making fun of me!”

“Be silent, imbécile,” de Grandin turned on Donovan savagely. “Parbleu, cleaning the roadways would be more fitting work for you than treating the infirm of mind! Do not attend him, Mademoiselle.” He repossessed himself of the girl’s hand and smoothed it gently. “Proceed with your narrative. I shall listen, and perhaps believe.”

For a moment the little patient shook as with an ague, and I could see her grip on his fingers tighten. “Please, please believe me, Doctor,” she begged. “It’s really the truth I’m telling. They wanted—they wanted to—”

“Did they so, pardieu?” de Grandin replied. “Very good, Mademoiselle, you escaped them. No one shall hurt you now, nor shall you be persecuted. Jules de Grandin promises it. Now to proceed.”

“I was frightened,” she confessed, “terribly frightened from the moment I got into the car with Mrs. d’Afrique and realized I couldn’t look out. I thought of screaming and trying to jump out, but I was out of work and hungry; besides, she was a big woman and could have overpowered me without trouble.

“When we got to the house I was still more terrified, and Mrs. d’Afrique seemed to notice it, for she smiled and took me by the arm. Her hands were strong as a man’s—stronger!—and when I tried to draw away she held me tighter and sort of chuckled deep down in her throat—like a big cat purring when it’s caught a mouse. She half led, half shoved me down a long hall that was almost bare of furniture, through a door and down a flight of steps that led to the basement. Next thing I knew she’d pushed me bodily into a little room no bigger than this, and locked the door.

“The door was solid planking, and the only window was a little barred opening almost at the ceiling, which I couldn’t reach to look through, even when I pushed the bed over and stood on it.

“I don’t know how long I was in that place. At first I thought the window let outdoors, but the light seemed the same strength all the time, so I suppose it really looked out into the main basement and what I thought weak sunlight was really reflected from an electric bulb somewhere. At any rate, I determined to fight for my freedom the first chance I had, for I’d read stories of white slavers who kidnaped girls, and I was sure I’d fallen into the hands of some such gang. If I only had!

“How they timed it I don’t know, but they never opened that door except when I was sleeping. I’d lie awake for hours, pretending to be asleep, so that someone would open the door and give me a chance to die fighting; but nothing ever happened. Then the moment I grew so tired I really fell asleep the door would be opened, my soiled dishes taken out and a fresh supply of food brought in. They didn’t starve me, I’ll say that. There was always some sort of meat—veal or young pork, I thought—and bread and vegetables and a big vacuum bottle of coffee and another of chilled milk. If I hadn’t been so terribly frightened I might have enjoyed it, for I’d been hungry for a long time.

“One night I woke up with a start. At least, I suppose it was night, though there was really no way of telling. There were voices outside my door, the first I’d heard since I came there. ‘Please, please let me go,’ a girl was pleading sobbingly. ‘I’ve never done anything to you, and I’ll do anything—anything you ask if you’ll only let me go!’

“Whoever it was she spoke to answered in a soft, gentle, purring sort of voice, ‘Do not be afraid, we seek only to have a little sport with you; then you are free.’

“It was a man’s voice, I could tell that, and I could hear the girl sobbing and pleading in terror till he took her upstairs and closed the basement door.

“I didn’t know what to think. Till then I’d thought I was the only prisoner in the house, now I knew there was at least one more. ‘What were they doing to her—what would they do to me when my turn came?’ I kept asking myself. I’d read about the white-slave stockades of Chicago where young girls were ‘broken in’ by professional rapists, and when I heard the sound of several people running back and forth in the room right above me I went absolutely sick with terror. It seemed to me that several people were running about in tennis shoes or bare feet, and then there was a scream, then more running, and more screams. Then everything was still, so still that I could hear my heart beating as I lay there. I kept listening for them to bring her back; but they never did. At last I fell asleep.”

De Grandin tweaked the waxed ends of his little blond mustache. “This Madame d’Afrique, what did she look like, ma pauvre?”

“She was a big woman—tall, that is, sir, with lots of blond hair and queer-looking brown-green eyes and odd, long nails that turned down over her finger-tips, like claws. She—”

“Name of an intoxicated pig, they are undoubtlessly one and the same! Why did I not recognize it at once?” de Grandin exclaimed. “Say on, my child. Tell all; I wait with interest.”

The girl swallowed convulsively and gave her other hand into his keeping. “Hold me, Doctor, hold me tight,” she begged. “I’m afraid; terribly afraid, even now.

“I knew something dreadful was going to happen when he finally came for me, but I hadn’t thought how terrible it would be. I was sound asleep when I felt someone shaking me by the shoulder and heard a voice say, ‘Get up. We’re going to let you go—if you can.’

“I tried to ask questions, to get him to wait till I put on some clothes, but he fairly dragged me, just as I was, from the bed. When I got upstairs I found myself in a big bare room brightly lighted by a ceiling chandelier, and with only a few articles of furniture in it—one or two big chairs, several small footstools, and a big couch set diagonally across one corner. It was night. I could see the rain beating on the window and hear the wind blowing. In the sudden unaccustomed light I saw a tall old man with scant white hair and a big white mustache held me by the shoulder. He wore a sort of short bathrobe of some dark-colored cloth and his feet were bare. Then I saw the woman, Mrs. d’Afrique. She was in a sort of short nightgown that reached only to her knees, and like the man she, too, was barefooted. The man shoved me into the middle of the room, and all the time the woman stood there smiling and eyeing me hungrily.

“‘My wife and I sometimes play a little game with our guests,’ the old man told me. ‘We turn out the lights and enjoy a little romp of tag. If the guest can get away in the darkness she is free to go; if she can not—’ He stopped and smiled at me—the cruellest smile I’ve ever seen.

“He put his hand out and stroked my bare arm. ‘Very nice,’ he murmured, ‘nice and tender, eh?’ The woman nodded and licked her red lips with the tip of her red tongue, while her queer green eyes seemed positively shining as she looked at me.

“‘If the guest can not get away,’ the man answered with a dreadful low laugh, then he looked at the woman again. ‘You have eaten well since you came here,’ he went on, apparently forgetting what he’d started to say. ‘How did you like the meat we served?’

“I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. Then: ‘Why, it was very nice,’ I whispered, fearing to anger him if I kept silent.

“‘Ye-es, very nice,’ he agreed with another laugh. ‘Very nice, indeed. That meat, dear, tender young lady—that meat was the guests who couldn’t get away!’

“I closed my eyes and thought hard. This couldn’t be true, I told myself. This was just some dreadful dream. They might be going to maul and beat me—even kill me, perhaps—to satisfy their sadistic lust, but to kill and eat me—no, such things just couldn’t happen in New Jersey today!

“It was a lucky thing for me I’d closed my eyes, for while I stood there swaying with nauseated horror I heard a faint click. Instantly I opened my eyes to find the light had been shut off and I was standing alone in the center of the great room.

“How’d you know you were alone if the light had been shut off?” demanded Donovan. “You say the room was pitch-dark.”

The girl never turned her head. Her terrified eyes remained steadily, pleadingly, on de Grandin’s face as she whispered:

“The woman stood at one end of the room, the man had moved to the other, though I’d heard no sound, and in the darkness I could see their eyes, like the phosphorescent orbs of wild jungle-beasts at night.

“The steady, green-gleaming eyes came slowly nearer and nearer, sometimes moving in a straight line, sometimes circling in the darkness, but never turning from me for an instant. I was being stalked like a mouse by hungry cats—the creatures could see in the dark!

“I said a moment ago it was fortunate for me I’d closed my eyes. That’s all that saved me. if they’d been open when the lights went out I’d have been completely blinded by the sudden darkness, but as it was, when I opened them the room was just a little lighter than the absolute darkness of closed eyes. The result was I could see their bodies like moving blotches of shadow slightly heavier than that of the rest of the room, and could even make out the shapes of some of the furniture. I could distinguish the dull-grey of the rain-washed window, too.

“As I turned in terror from one creeping shadow-thing to the other the woman let out a low, dreadful cry like the gradually-growing miaul of a hunting cat, only deeper and louder. The man answered it, and it seemed there was an undertone of terrible, half-human laughter in the horrible caterwaul.

“It seemed to me that all the forces of hell were let loose in that great dark room. I heard myself screaming, praying, shrieking curses and obscenities I’d never realized I even knew, and answering me came the wild, inhuman screeches of the green-eyed things that hunted me.

“Scarcely knowing what I did I snatched up a heavy footstool and hurled it at the nearer pair of eyes. They say a woman can’t throw straight, but my shot took effect. I saw the blurred outline of a body double up with an agonized howl and go crashing to the floor, where it flopped and contorted like a fish jerked from the water.

“With a shrill, ear-splitting scream the other form dashed at me, and I dropped to my knees just in time to avoid a thrashing blow it aimed at me—I felt my nightdress rip to tatters as the long sharp nails slashed through it.

“I rolled over and over across the floor with that she-devil leaping and springing after me. I snatched another hassock as I rolled, and flung it behind me. It tripped her, and for a moment she went to her knees, but her short dress offered no hindrance to her movement, and she was up and after me, howling and screaming like a beast, in another second.

“I’d managed to roll near the window, and as I came in contact with another stool I grasped it and hurled it with all my might at the panes. They shattered outward with a crash, and I dived through the opening. The ground was scarcely six feet below, and the rain had softened it so it broke my fall almost like a mattress. An instant after I’d landed on the rain-soaked lawn I was on my feet and running as no woman ever ran before.”

The girl shook her slim, muslin-clad shoulders and shuddered in the ague of a nervous chill. “That’s all there is to tell, sir,” she stated simply. “The next thing I knew I was in this bed and Dr. Donovan was asking me about myself.”

“That’s letter-perfect,” Donovan commented. “Exactly the way she told it twice before. What’s your verdict, gentlemen?”

I shook my head pityingly. It was all too sadly evident the poor girl had been through some terrifying experience and that her nerves were badly shaken, but her story was so preposterous—clearly this was a case of delusional insanity. “I’m afraid,” I began, and got no farther, for de Grandin’s sharp comment forestalled me.

“The verdict, mon cher Donovan? What can it be but that she speaks the truth? But certainly, of course!”

“By damn-it, I mean that the beauteous Madame Bera and her so detestably ugly spouse have overreached themselves. There is no doubt that they and the d’Afriques are one and the same couple. Why should they not choose that name as a nom de ruse; are they not from Tunis, and is Tunis not in Africa? But yes.”

“Holy smoke!” gasped Donovan. “D’ye mean you actually believe this bunk?”

“Mais certainement,” de Grandin answered. “So firmly do I believe it I am willing to stand sponsor for this young lady immediately if you will release her on parole to accompany Friend Trowbridge and me.”

“Well, I’m a monkey’s uncle, I sure am,” declared Dr. Donovan. “Maybe I should have another room swept out for you an’ Trowbridge.” He sobered at the grim face de Grandin turned on him. “O.K. if that’s the way you want it, de Grandin. It’s your responsibility, you know. Want to go with these gentlemen, Annie?” He regarded the girl with a questioning smile.

“Yes! I’ll go anywhere with him, he trusts me,” she returned; then, as an afterthought, “And my name’s not Annie.”

“All right, Annie, get your clothes on,” Donovan grinned back. “We’ll be waitin’ for you in the office.”

AS SOON AS WE had reached the office de Grandin rushed to the telephone. “I would that you give this message to Sergeant Costello immediately when he arrives,” he called when his call to police headquarters had been put through. “Request that he obtain the address given by Monsieur and Madame d’Afrique when they went to secure domestic help from Osgood’s Employment Agency, and that he ascertain, if possible, the names and addresses of all young women who entered their employ from the agency. Have him take steps to locate them at once, if he can.

“Très bon,” he nodded as Trula Petersen made her appearance dressed in some makeshift odds and ends of clothing found for her by the nurses. “You are not chic, my little one, but in the morning we can get you other clothes, and meantime you will sleep more comfortably in an unbarred room. Yes, let us go.”

A little after four o’clock next afternoon Costello called on us. “I got some o’ th’ dope you’re wantin’, Dr. de Grandin,” he announced. “Th’ de Africays hired four girls from Osgood’s about a week apart; but didn’t seem to find any of ’em satisfactory. Kept comin’ back for more.”

“None of ’em’s been located as yet sir. It happens they was all strangers in town, at least, none of ’em had folks here, an’ all was livin’ in furnished rooms when they was hired. None of ’em’s reported back to her roomin’ house or applied to Osgood’s for reëmployment. We’ll look around a bit more, if you say so, but I doubt we’ll find out much. They’re mostly fly-by-nights, these girls, you know.”

“I fear that what you say is literally true,” de Grandin answered soberly. “They have flown by night, yes flown beyond all mortal calling, if my fears are as well grounded as I have reason to believe.

“And the address of Monsieur and Madame Ber—d’Afrique? Did you ascertain it from the agency?”

“Ah bah; I fear that you have spoiled it all. I did not wish them to suspect we knew. Now, I much fear—”

“I sure do. But I got something solid for us to sink our teeth into. I think I’ve uncovered a lead on th’ Cableson case.”

“Well, it ain’t much, but it’s more’n we knew before. He wasn’t alone when he died; least wise, he wasn’t alone a few minutes before. I ran across a pair o’ young fellers that saw him takin’ a lady into his coupé on th’ Albermarle Pike just a little way outside Mooreston late th’ night before he was found dead with his car jammed up against a tree.”

“Chapeau d’un bouc vert, is it so? Have you a description of the lady of mystery?”

“Kind of, yes, sir. She was big and blond, an’ wrapped in some sort o’ cloak, but didn’t wear a hat. That’s how they know she was a blonde, they saw her hair in th’ light o’ th’ car’s lamps.”

The little Frenchman turned from the policeman to our guest. “My child,” he told her, “the good God has been most kind to you. He has delivered those who harried you like a brute beast into the hands of Jules de Grandin.”

“Do?” His waxed mustaches quivered like the whiskers of an irritable tom-cat. “Do? Parbleau, should one slap the face of Providence? Mille nons. Me, I shall serve them as they deserve, no less. May Satan fry me in a saucepan with a garnish of mushrooms if I do not so!”

A moment later he was thumbing through the telephone directory. “Ah, Madame Heacoat,” he announced when the lady finally answered his call, “I am unhappy, I am miserable; I am altogether desolate. At your charming soirée I met the so delightful Monsieur and Madame Bera, and we discovered many friends in common. Of the goodness of their hearts they invited me to call, but hélas I have misplaced my memorandum of their address. Can you—ah, merci bien; merci bien une mille fois—a thousand thanks, Madame!

“My friends,” he turned on us as he laid down the ’phone, “we have them in a snare. They are the clever ones, but Jules de Grandin is more clever. They dwell near Mooreston; their house abuts upon the Albermarle Pike. To find them will be a small task.

“Trowbridge, my old and rare, I pray you have the capable Nora McGinnis, that queen among cooks, prepare us a noble dinner this night. There is much to be done, and I would do it on a well-fed stomach. Meantime I shall call that Monsieur Arif and request his presence this evening. It was he who first roused my suspicions; he deserves to be here at the finish.”

A LITTLE BEFORE DINNER A special messenger from Ridgeway’s Hardware Store arrived with a long parcel wrapped in corrugated paper which de Grandin seized and bore to his room. For half an hour or more he was engaged in some secret business there, emerging with a grin of satisfaction on his face as the gong sounded for the evening meal.

He took command at table, keeping up a running fire of conversation, most of it witty, all of it inconsequential. Stories of student days at the Sorbonne, droll tales of the War, anecdotes of travel in the far places of the world—anything but the slightest reference to the mystery of Monsieur and Madame Bera he rattled off like a wound-up gramophone.

Finally, when coffee was served in the drawing room, he lighted a cigar, stretched his slender patent-leather-shod feet to the blazing logs and regarded Trula Petersen and me in turn with his quick, birdlike glance. “You trust me, ma petite?” he asked the girl.

“Très bon. We shall put that trust to the test before long.” He smiled whimsically, then:

“Sir? No! I’ve never been anywhere except Norway where I was born, and this country, where I’ve lived since I was ten.”

“Then it seems I must enlighten you. In India, when they would bring the stripèd one within gunshot, they tether a so small and helpless kid to a stake. The tiger scents a meal, approaches the small goat; the hunter, gun in hand, squeezes the trigger and—voilà, there is a tigerskin rug for some pretty lady’s boudoir. It is all most simple.”

“I—I don’t think I understand, sir,” the girl faltered, but there was a telltale widening of her eyes and a constriction of the muscles of her throat as she spoke.

“Very well. It seems I must explain in detail. Anon our good friend Arif Pasha comes, and with him comes the good Sergeant Costello. When all is ready you are to assume the same costume you wore when they brought you to the hospital, and over it you will put on warm wrappings. Thereafter Friend Trowbridge drives us to the house of Monsieur Bera, and you will descend, clad as you were when you fled. You will stagger across the lawn, calling pitifully for help. Unless I am much more mistaken than I think one or both of them will sally forth to see who cries for help in the night. Then—”

“O-o-o-oh, no!” the girl wailed in a stifled voice. “I couldn’t! I wouldn’t go there for all the money in the world—”

“It is no question of money, my small one. It is that you do it for the sake of humanity. Consider: Did you not tell me you woke one night to hear the odious Bera leading another girl to torture and death? Did not you thereafter hear the stamping of feet which fled and feet which pursued, and the agonized scream of one who was caught?”

“Suppose I tell you four girls were hired by these beast-people from the same agency whence you went into their service. That much we know; it is a matter of police record. It is also a matter of record that none of them, save you, was ever seen again. How many other unfortunate ones went the same sad road is a matter of conjecture, but unless you are willing to do this thing for me there is a chance that those we seek may escape. They may move to some other place and play their infernal games of hide-and-seek-in-the-dark with only the good God knows how many other poor ones.

“Attend me further, little pretty one: The night you escape by what was no less than a miracle a young man named Thomas Cableson—a youth of good family and position—young, attractive, in love; with everything to live for, drove his coupé through Mooreston along the Albermarle Pike. A short distance from Mooreston he was accosted by a woman—a big, blond woman who sought for something in the roadside woods.

“In the kindness of his heart he offered her a ride to Harrisonville. Next morning he was found dead in his motor. Apparently he had collided with a roadside tree, for his windshield was smashed to fragments, and through the broken glass his head protruded. But nowhere was there any blood. Neither on the car nor on his clothing was there any stain, yet he had bled to death. Also, I who am at once a physician and an observer of facts, examined his poor, severed throat. Such tears as marred his flesh might have been made by teeth, perhaps by claws; but by splintered glass, never. What happened in that young man’s car we cannot know for certain, but we can surmise much. We can surmise, by example, that a thing that dotes on human flesh and blood had been thwarted of its prey and hunted for it in those roadside woods. We can surmise that when the young man, thinking her alone upon the highroad, offered her a ride, she saw an opportunity. Into his car she went, and when they were come to a lonely spot she set upon him. There was a sudden shrill, inhuman scream, the glare of beast-eyes in the dark, the stifling weight of a body hurled on unsuspecting shoulders, and the rending of shrinking flesh by bestial teeth and claws. The car is stopped, then started; it is run against a tree; a head, already almost severed from its body, is thrust through the broken windshield, and—the nameless horror which wears woman’s shape returns to its den, its lips red from the feast, its gorge replenished.”

“De Grandin!” I expostulated. “You’re raving. Such things can’t be!”

“Ha, can they not, parbleu?” he tweaked the ends of his diminutive mustache, gazing pensively at the fire a moment, then:

“Regard me, my friend. Listen, pay attention: Where, if you please, is Tunis?”

“No buts, if you please. Both lie on the same dark continent, that darksome mother of dark mysteries whose veil no man has ever completely lifted. Now, regard me: In lower Egypt, near Zagazig, are the great ruins of Tell Besta. They mark the site of the ancient, wicked city of Bubastis, own sister of Sodom and Gomorrah of accursèd memory. It was there, in the days of the third Rameses, thirteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, that men and women worshiped the cat-headed one, she who was called Ubasti, sometimes known as Bast. Yes. With phallic emblems and obscenities that would shock present-day Montmartre, they worshipped her. Today her temples lie in ruins, and only the hardest stones of her many monuments endure.

“But there are things much more enduring than granite and brass. The olden legends tell us of a race apart, a race descended from the loins of this cat-headed one of Bubastis, who shared her evil feline nature even though they wore the guise of women, or, less often, men.

“The fellaheen of Egypt are poor, wretchedly poor, and what the bare necessities of living do not snatch from them the tax-collector does; yet not for all the English gold that clings and jingles at Shepard’s Hotel in Cairo could one bribe a fella to venture into the ruins of Tell Besta after sunset. No, it is a fact; I myself have seen it.

“For why? Because, by blue, that cursèd spot is ghoul-haunted. Do not laugh; it is no laughing matter; it is so.

“The ancient gods are dust, and dust are all their worshippers, but their memories and their evil lives after them. The fellaheen will tell you of strange, terrible things which dwell amid the ruins of Bubastis; things formed like human creatures, but which are, as your own so magnificent Monsieur Poe has stated,

‘… neither man nor woman,

… neither brute nor human

They are ghouls!’

“Yes, certainly. Like a man’s or woman’s, their faces are, so too are their bodies to some extent; but they see in the dark, like her from whom they are whelped, they wear long nails to seize their prey and have beast-teeth to tear it, and the flesh and blood of living men—or dead, if live be not available—they make their food and drink.

“Not only at Tell Besta are they found, for they are quick to multiply, and their numbers have spread. In the ruined tombs of all North Africa they make their lairs, awaiting the unwary traveler. Mostly they are nocturnal, but they have been known to spring on the lone voyager by day. The Arabs hate and fear them also, and speak of them by indirection. ‘That people,’ they call them, nor does one who has traveled in North Africa need ask a second time what the term connotes.

“Very well, then. When our friend Arif Pasha first showed fright, like a restive horse in the presence of hidden danger, at sight of those we know as Monsieur and Madame Bera, I was astonished. Such things might be in darker Africa, perhaps in Persia, or Asiatic Turkey, but in America—New Jersey—non!

“However, Jules de Grandin has the open mind. I made it a duty to meet this so strange couple, to observe their queer catlike eyes, to note the odd, clawlike nails of their hands, but most of all to watch their white, gleaming teeth and hear the soft, purring intonation of their words.

“‘These are queer folk, Jules de Grandin,’ I say to me. ‘They are not like others.’

“That very night we visited the City Hospital and listened to our little Trula tell her fearsome story. What she had to say of those who hired her and would have hunted her to death convinced me of much I should otherwise not have believed.

“Then came Sergeant Costello’s report of the four girls hired by this Madame d’Afrique, whom we now know to be also Madame Bera—girls who went but did not return. Then comes the information of the strange woman who rode with the young Cableson the night he met his death.

“‘Jules de Grandin,’ I tell me, ‘your dear America, the place in which you have decided to remain, is invaded. The very neighborhood of good Friend Trowbridge’s house, where you are to reside until you find yourself a house of your own, is peopled by strange night-seeing things.’

“‘Very well, then, Jules de Grandin,’ I ask me, ‘what are we to do about it?’

“‘Mordieu,’ I answer me, ‘we shall exterminate the invaders. Of course.’

“Now, all is prepared. Mademoiselle Trula, my little pretty one, my small half orange, I need your help. Will you not do this thing for me?”

“I—I’m terribly afraid,” the girl stammered, “but I—I’ll do it, sir.”

“Bravely spoken, my pigeon. Have no fear. Your guardian angel is with you. Jules de Grandin will also be there.

ARIF PASHA AND COSTELLO waited on the porch, and de Grandin gave a hand to each. “I haven’t any more idea what th’ pitch is than what th’ King o’ Siam had for breakfast this mornin’,” Costello confessed with a grin when introductions had been made, “but I’m bankin’ on you to pay off, Dr. de Grandin.”

“I hope your confidence is not misplaced, my friend,” the Frenchman answered. “I hope to show you that which killed the poor young Cableson before we’re many hours older.”

“What’s that?” asked the detective. “Did you say ‘that,’ sir. Wasn’t it a person, then? Sure, after all our bother, you’re not goin’ to tell me it was an accident after all?”

De Grandin shrugged. “Let us not quibble over pronouns, my old one. Wait till you have seen, then say if it be man or woman, beast or fiend from hell.”

Led by de Grandin as ceremoniously as though he were escorting her to the dance floor, Trula Petersen ascended the stairs to don the ragged bedgown she wore the night she fled for life through the shattered window. She returned in a few moments, her pale childish face suffused with blushes as she sought to cover the inadequate attire by wrapping de Grandin’s fur-lined overcoat more tightly about her slim form. Above the fleece-lined bedroom slippers on her feet I caught a glimpse of slender bare ankle, and mentally revolted against the Frenchman’s penchant for realism which would send her virtually unclothed into the cold autumn night.

But there was no time to voice my protest, for de Grandin followed close behind her with the corrugated cardboard carton he had received from Ridgeway’s in his arms. “Behold, my friends,” he ordered jubilantly displaying its contents—four magazine shotguns—“are these not lovely? Pardieu, with them we are equipped for any contingency!”

The guns were twelve-gauge models of the unsportsmanlike “pump” variety, and the barrels had been cut off with a hack-saw close to the wood, shortening them by almost half their length.

“What’s th’ armament for, sir?” inquired Costello, examining the weapon de Grandin handed him. “Is it a riot we’re goin’ out to quell?”

The little Frenchman’s only answer was a grin as he handed guns to Arif Pasha and me, retaining the fourth one for himself. “You will drive, Friend Trowbridge?” he asked.

Obediently, I slipped into a leather windbreaker and led the way to the garage. A minute later we were on the road to Mooreston.

He had evidently made a reconnaissance that afternoon, for he directed me unerringly to a large greystone structure on the outskirts of the suburb. On the north was the dense patch of second-growth pine through which the autumn wind soughed mournfully. To east and west lay fallow fields, evidently reservations awaiting the surveyor’s stake and the enthusiastic cultivation of glib-tongued real estate salesmen. The house itself faced south on the Pike, on the farther side of which lay the grove of oak and chestnut into which Trula had escaped.

“Quiet, my friends, pour l’amour d’un rat mort!” de Grandin begged. “Stop the motor, Friend Trowbridge. Attendez, mes braves. Allons au feu!

“Now, my little lovely one!” With such courtesy as he might have shown in assisting a marchioness to shed her cloak, he lifted the overcoat from Trula Petersen’s shivering shoulders, bent quickly and plucked the wool-lined slippers from her feet, then lifted her in his arms and bore her across the roadway intervening between us and the lawn, that gravel might not bruise her unshod soles. “Quick, toward the house, petite!” he ordered. “Stagger, play the drunken one—cry out!”

The girl clung trembling to him a moment, but he shook her off and thrust her almost roughly toward the house.

There was no simulation in the terror she showed as she ran unsteadily across the frost-burnt lawn, nor was the deadly fear that sounded in her wailing, thin-edged cry a matter of acting. “Help, help—please help me!” she screamed.

“Excellent; très excellent,” applauded from his covert behind a rhododendron bush. “Make ready, mes amis, I damn think they come!”

A momentary flash of light showed on the dark background of the house as he spoke, and something a bare shade darker than the surrounding darkness detached itself from the building and sped with pitiless quickness toward the tottering, half-swooning girl.

Trula saw it even as we did, and wheeled in her tracks with a shriek of sheer mortal terror. “Save me, save me, it’s he!” she cried wildly.

Half a dozen frenzied, flying steps she took, crashed blindly into a stunted cedar, and fell sprawling on the frosty grass.

A wild, triumphant yell, a noise half human, half bestial, came from her pursuer. With a single long leap it was on its quarry.

“Mordieu, Monsieur le Démon, we are well met!” de Grandin announced, rising from his ambush and leveling his sawed-off shotgun.

The leaping form seemed to pause in midair, to retrieve itself in the midst of its spring like a surprised cat. For an instant it turned its eyes on de Grandin, and they gleamed against the darkness like twin spheres of phosphorus. Next instant it pounced.

There was a sharp click, but no answering bellow of the gun. The cartridge had misfired.

“Secours, Friend Trowbridge; je suis perdu!” the little Frenchman cried as he went down beneath an avalanche of flailing arms and legs. And as he fought off his assailant I saw the flare of gleaming green eyes, the flash of cruel strong teeth, and heard the snarling beastlike growl of the thing tearing at his throat.

Nearer than the other two, I leaped to my friend’s rescue, but as I moved a second shadowy form seemed to materialize from nothingness beside me, a battle-cry of feline rage shrilled deafeningly in my cars, and a clawing, screaming fury launched itself upon me.

I felt the tough oiled leather of my windbreaker rip to shreds beneath the scoring talons that struck at me, looked for an instant into round, infuriated phosphorescent eyes, then went down helpless under furious assault.

“There is no power nor might nor majesty save in Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate!” Arif Pasha chanted close beside me. “In the glorious name of Allah I take refuge from Shaitan, the stoned and rejected!” A charge of BB shot sufficient to have felled a bear tore through the clawing thing above me, there was a sharp snapping of metal, and a second blaze of searing light as the riot gun roared again.

The ear-piercing scream of my assailant diminished to a growl, and the growl sank to a low, piteous moan as the form above me went limp, rolled from my chest and lay twitching on the frosted earth.

I fought unsteadily to my knees and went faint at the warm stickiness that smeared the front of my jerkin. No need to tell a doctor the feel of blood; he learns it soon enough in his grim trade.

Costello was battering with his gunstock at the infernal thing that clung to de Grandin, not daring to fire for fear of hitting the struggling Frenchman.

“Thanks, friend,” the little fellow panted, wriggling from beneath his adversary and jumping nimbly to his feet. “Your help was very welcome, even though I had already slit his gizzard with this—” He raised the murderous double-edged hunting knife with which he had been systematically slashing his opponent from the moment they grappled.

“Good Lord o’ Moses!” Costello gasped as de Grandin’s flashlight played on the two forms quivering on the grass. “’Tis Mr. an’ Mrs. Bera! Who’d ’a’ thought swell folks like them would—”

“Folks? Parbleu, my friend, I damnation think you call them out of their proper name!” de Grandin interrupted sharply. “Look at this, if you please, and this, also!”

Savagely he tore the black-silk negligee in which the woman had been clothed, displaying her naked torso to his light. From clavicle to pubis the body was covered with coarse yellowish hair, curled and kinky as a bushman’s wool, and where the breasts should have been was scarcely a perceptible swelling. Instead, protruding through the woolly covering was a double row of mammillae, unhuman as the dugs of a multiparous beast.

“For the suckling of her whelps, had she borne any, which the good God forbid,” he explained in a low voice. He turned the shot-riddled body over. Like the front, the back was encased in yellowish short hair, beginning just below the line of the scapulae and extending well down the thighs.

A quick examination of the male showed similar pelage, but in its case the hair was coarser, and an ugly dirty grey shade. Beneath the wool on its front side we found twin rows of rudimentary teats, the secondary sexual characteristics of a member of the multiparæ.

“No, I’m damned if I do,” I denied as the others held silence. “These are dreadful malformations, and their brains were probably as far from normal as their bodies, but—”

“Ah bah,” he interrupted. “Here is no abnormality, my friend. These creatures are true to type. Have I not already rehearsed their history? From the tumuli of Africa they come, for there they were pursued with gun and dog like the beast-things they are. In this new land where their kind is unknown they did assume the garb and manners of man. With razor or depilatories they stripped off the hair from their arms and legs, and other places where it would have been noticeable. Then they lived the life of the community outwardly. Treasure from ravished tombs gave them much money; they had been educated like human beings in the schools conducted by well-meaning but thickheaded American missionaries, and all was prepared for their invasion. America is tolerant—too tolerant—of foreigners. More than due allowance is made for their strangeness by those who seek to make them feel at home, and unsuspected, unmolested, these vile ones plied their dreadful trade of death among us. Had the she-thing not capitulated to her appetite for blood when she slew young Cableson, they might have gone for years without the danger of suspicion. As it was”—he raised his shoulders in a shrug—“their inborn savageness and Jules de Grandin wrought their undoing. Yes, certainly; of course.