Devil’s Rosary

“PARADE—REST! SOUND OFF!” PLAYING in quick time, the academy band marched the field, executed a perfect countermarch and returned to its post at the right of the ordered ranks of cadets. As the bandsmen came to a halt the trumpets of the drum corps, gay with fringed tabards, belled forth the slow, appealing notes of retreat, and: “Battalion—’tention! Present—arms!” came the adjutant’s command as “The Star-Spangled Banner” sounded and the national color floated slowly from its masthead.

Jules de Grandin’s white-chamois gloved right hand cupped itself before his right ear in a French army salute, his narrow, womanish shoulders squared back and his little, pointed chin thrust up and forward as the evening sun picked half a thousand answering beams from the burnished bayonets on the presented rifles. “Parfait, exquis; magnifique!” he applauded. “C’est très beau, that, my friend. You have here a fine aggregation of young men. Certainly.”

I nodded absently. My thoughts were not on the stirring spectacle of the parade, nor upon the excellence of Westover Military Academy’s student body. I was dreading the ordeal which lay before me when, the parade dismissed, I must tell Harold Pancoast of his father’s awful death. “He’ll take it better than you, Doctor Trowbridge!” the widow had whispered between tremulous lips, and:

“Poor boy, this is tragic!” the headmaster had told me deprecatingly. “Won’t you wait till after parade, Doctor? Pancoast is Battalion Adjutant, and I think it would be kinder to let him complete his duties at parade before we break the news.”

“Confound it!” I complained bitterly more than once; “why did they have to give me this job? The family lawyer, or—”

”Mais non, my friend,” de Grandin comforted. “It is the way of life. We are born in others’ pain; we perish in our own, and between beginning and end stands the physician. We help them into the world, we watch beside their sickbeds, we make their exits into immortality as painless as possible—at the last we stay to comfort those who remain. These are the obligations of our trade.” He sighed. “It is, hélas, too true. Had kindly heaven given me a son I should have sternly forbid him to study medicine—and I should most assuredly have cracked his neck had he done otherwise!”

The last gold rays of the dying October sun were slanting through the red and russet leaves of the tree-lined avenue leading to the administration building as we waited in the headmaster’s office for young Pancoast. At last he came, sauntering easily along the red-brick walk, plainly in no haste to answer the official summons, laughing as only carefree youth can laugh, and looking with more than friendly regard into the face of his companion. Indeed, she was a sight to brighten any eye. A wistful, seeking look was on her features, her fine dark hair lay round her delicate, pale face like a somber nimbus, and the Chinese coat of quilted black satin she wore against the light evening chill was lined and collared with soft orange-pink which set off her brunette pallor to perfection. “Parbleu, he chooses nicely, that one,” de Grandin approved as the lad bade his companion adieu with a smart military salute and turned to mount the steps to the headmaster’s sanctum.

I drew a deep breath and braced myself, but I might have known the boy would take the blow like the gentleman he was. “Dead—my Dad?” he murmured slowly, unbelievingly as I concluded my evil tidings. “How? When?”

“Last night, mon pauvre,” de Grandin took the conversation from me. “Just when, we do not know, but that he met his death by foul play there is no room for doubting. The steel of the assassin struck him from behind—a sneaking, cowardly blow, but a mighty one, mon brave—so that he died instantly, without pain or struggle. It is for us—you and us—to find the one responsible and give him up to justice. Yes. Certainly. You accept the challenge? Good! Bravely spoken, like the soldier and the gentleman you are; I do salute you—” He drew himself to rigid attention, raising his hand with precise military courtesy.

Admiringly, I saw the Gallic subtlety with which he had addressed the lad. Had I been telling him, I should have minimized the tragic aspects of his father’s death as much as possible. The Frenchman, on the contrary, had thrown them brutally before the boy, and then, with sure psychology, diverted thoughts of grief and horror by holding out the lure of vengeance.

“You’re right!” the youngster answered, his chin thrust forth belligerently. “I don’t know who’d want to harm my Dad—he never hurt a fly that didn’t bite him first—but when we find the one who did it, we—by God, sir, we’ll hang him high as Haman!”

Arrangements were quickly made. Indefinite leave was granted Harold, and I parked my car before his dormitory while he completed hurried packing for the journey to his desolated home.

“Strikes me he’s taking an unconscionable time to stuff his bags,” I grumbled when we had waited upward of an hour. “Perhaps he’s broken down, de Grandin—I’ve seen sturdier lads than he collapse like deflated balloons in similar circumstances—will you excuse me while I run in and see if he’s all right?”

The little Frenchman nodded and I hastened to the upper-story room young Pancoast shared with a classmate.

“Pancoast? No, sir,” his roommate replied to my hurried inquiry. “He came in about an hour ago and told me his trouble, then stuffed his gear into his kit bag there”—he indicated the great pigskin valise resting in a corner of the room—“and said he had to see some one before he left for home. I thought perhaps he’d decided to go on without his grip and would send for it later. Terrible thing, his father’s death, wasn’t it, sir?”

“Quite,” I answered. “You’ve no idea where he went, or why, I suppose?”

“Out with it!” I ordered curtly. “His mother’s on the verge of collapse at home, and he’s needed there. It’s the better part of three hours’ steady drive, too.”

“I’m not sure, sir,” the cadet answered, evidently of divided mind whether to hold fast the confidence imposed in him or break the school’s unwritten law in deference to the emergency. “I’m not certain where he went, but—well, he’s been pretty spoony on a femme ever since the semester started, and—maybe—he ran over to say good-bye. But it shouldn’t take him this long, and—”

”All right,” I broke in brusquely, “never mind the details. Where’s this young woman likely to be found? We’re in a hurry, son.” I bent and seized the waiting kit-bag as I spoke, then paused significantly at the door.

“I haven’t her address, sir,” the lad replied, “Panny never mentioned it to me, but you’ll be likely to find him down in Rogation Walk—that’s the little lane south of the campus by the old Military Road, you know—they usually meet there between retreat and tattoo.”

“Very well, I’ll hunt him there,” I answered. “Thanks for the information. Good-night.”

HAROLD PANCOAST LAY AS he had fallen, his uniform cap, top down, on the bricks of the shaded walk, the black-braided collar and gray shoulders of his blouse stained rusty red. Transversely across the back of his head, where hair-line joined the neck, gaped a long incised wound from which blood, already beginning to congeal, was welling freely, and in which there showed a trace of the grayish-white of cerebro-spinal fluid. His hands were stretched above him and clenched convulsively. The blow which struck him down must have been a brutally powerful one, delivered with some sharp, heavy instrument and wielded with monstrous force, for it had hacked its way half through the atlas of his spine and, glacing upward, cut deeply in the lower occiput. No need to ask if he were dead; the guillotine could scarcely have worked with more efficiency upon the poor lad’s neck.

As I gazed at him in horror another horror crept over me. Though I had not inspected his father’s injuries, Parnell, the coroner’s physician, had described them with the ghoulish gusto of his trade, and there before me on the son there lay the very reproduction of the wound which cost the father’s life not twenty hours earlier!

“Good heavens!” I gasped, and my pounding heart-beats almost stopped my breath. “This is devilish!”

I turned and raced along the quiet, tree-rimmed walk in search of Jules de Grandin.

“SURE, DOCTOR DE GRANDIN, sor, ’tis, th’ divil’s own puzzle we’ve got here, an’ no mistake,” confided Detective Sergeant Jeremiah Costello as he knocked an inch of ash from his cigar and turned worried blue eyes on the diminutive Frenchman. “First off, we’ve got th’ murther o’ this here now Misther Pancoast—an’ th’ divil’s own murther it were, too, sor—an’ now we’ve got th’ case of his kid to consider; though, th’ blessèd saints be praised, that case is what ye might call academic, since it happened outside me jurisdiction entirely, an’ catchin’ o’ th’ scoundrel as done it is none o’ me official business, unless, belike—”

Jules de Grandin nodded shortly. “It is very exceedingly belike, indeed, my friend,” he interrupted. “Consider, if you please. What are the facts?” He raised his small left hand and spread the fingers fanwise, then counted on them in succession. “First we have this Monsieur Pancoast the elder, a fine and honest gentleman, if all reports be true. Very good. Night before last he leaves the dinner table for a meeting of his lodge, and drives off in his motor car. He shows no sign of worriment at the meeting; he is his usual smiling self. Very well. Precisely at eleven o’clock he leaves, for they have worked the third degree, and food is being served, but he is on a diet and can not stay to eat. That is too bad. Two fellow members see him enter his sedan and drive away toward home. What happens afterward we do not surely know; but in the morning he is found beside the door of his garage, face downward on the ground, and weltering in blood. His neck is chopped across the back, his spine is all but severed and the instrument of death has cloven through his skull and struck the corpus dentatum of his brain.”

He nodded solemnly. “‘Why has this thing been done?’ I ask. To find the criminal in this case means we must find the motive, but where can it be found? We can not say. This Monsieur Pancoast is a most estimable citizen, a member of the church and of the Rotary Club, a bank director, a one-time city councilman. Yet he is dead—murdered. The case is veiled in mystery.

“Eh bien, if the father’s case is obscure, what shall we think of the son’s? A fine young man, who had harmed no one, and whom no one could reasonably wish to harm. Yet he, too, is dead—murdered—and murdered with the same strange technique as that which killed his father.

“Attend me: You, Sergent, have seen much killing, both in war and peace; Trowbridge, my friend, you are a surgeon and anatomist; can either of you match the wounds which slew these poor ones in all of your experience?”

I shook my head. “Not I,” I answered. “I can understand how a blow might be delivered in such a way as to cut the tip of the spine, or how the base of the skull could be cut through, but these wounds are beyond me. Parnell described Pancoast’s injuries to me, and it seems they were identical with Harold’s. His opinion was that no such upward-slanting blow could have been struck unless the victim lay prone, and even then the weapon used would have to be curved, like a carpenter’s adz, for instance, to permit the course these incisions followed.”

“Ah bah, Parnell, he is an old woman in trousers!” de Grandin shot back. “Better would he exercise such talents as he has in a butcher shop, I think. Consider him: He says the victim must be prone. Grand dieu des cochons! Did we not examine the poor petit Monsieur? But certainly. And did we not find him stretched face downward on the earth? Yes, again. But with his tight-clenched hands above his head, as though he clutched at nothing while he fell? Of course. His attitude was one of having fallen, and he who lies upon the earth must find it impossible to fall. Voilà, he was killed standing; for had he lain flat upon the ground when he was struck, he must inevitably have writhed in reflex death-agony when that blow shore through his spine and skull; but standing he would have made a single wild clutch for support, then stiffened as he fell upon his face. His nerves and muscles were disposed to hold him upright, and when death comes from sudden wounding of the brain, reaction of rigidity is almost instant. You have seen it, Sergent; so have I. A soldier in the charge, by example, is drilled through the head by a rifle ball. He staggers on a step or two, perhaps, and then he falls, or it is better to say he topples forward, stiff and straight as though at attention, and hours afterward his poor, dead hands still grasp his musket tightly. But if that same man lies on the earth when he meets death that way, the chances are nine hundred in a thousand that he will twist and writhe, at least in one final spasm, before he stiffens. But certainly. It is for that reason that the condemned one is strapped tight to the cradle of the guillotine. If he were not, the reflex nervous action consequent upon decapitation—which is no more than a sudden injury to the spine, my friends—would surely cause him to roll sidewise on the scaffold floor, and that would rob the execution of its dignity. Yes, it is undoubtlessly so.”

“Well, be gob, sor, ye’re makin’ th’ dose harder to take than ever,” Costello muttered. “First ye tell us that th’ same felly kilt th’ both o’ them; then ye demonstrate beyant th’ shadder o’ a doubt that no one livin’ could ’a’ struck th’ blows as kilt ’em. What’s th’ answer, if anny?”

“Hélas, as yet there is none,” de Grandin returned. “Tomorrow, when the funeral has been held, I shall investigate, and probably I shall be wiser when I finish. Until that time we only know that some one for some motive as yet unguessed has done away with son and father, and from the difficult technique of both the murders, I am most confident is was the same assassin who perpetrated them. As for the motive—”

“Précisément, mon vieux, as I was saying, this seeming absence of motive may prove most helpful to us in our researches. It is better to be lost in the midst of impenetrable night than to be witch-led by will-o’-the-wisps. So in this case. With no false leads, we commence from the beginning—start from scratch, as your athletes say. Yes, it is better so.”

“Ye—ye mean to say because there’s nayther hide nor hair o’ motive, nor rime nor reason to these here killin’s, th’ case is easier?” Costello demanded.

“Glory be to God—’tisn’t Jerry Costello who’d like to see what ye’d be afther callin’ a har-rd case, then!” the Irishman exclaimed.

The little Frenchman grinned delightedly. “Forgive me if I seem to jerk your leg, my old one,” he apologized. “Let us gather here tomorrow at this time, and we shall talk more straightly to the point, for we shall then know what we know not now.”

“Be gob, ’tis meself that’s hopin’ so,” Costello responded with none too much optimism in his tone.

A MOTORCADE OF BLACK AND shining limousines was ranked beneath the Lombardy poplars which stood before the Pancoast house. Frock-coated gentlemen and ladies in subdued attire ascended the front steps, late floral deliveries were unostentatiously shunted to the kitchen door and signed for by a black-coated, gray-gloved gentleman. The air in the big drawing-room was heavy with the scent of carnations and tuberoses.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Trowbridge; how are you, Doctor de Grandin?” Coroner Martin, officiating in his private capacity of funeral director, met us in the hall. “There are two seats over by that window,” he added in an undertone. “Take my advice and get them while you can, the air in here is thick enough to choke you.”

“Bien merci,” de Grandin murmured, treading an assortment of outstretched feet as he wove his way between the rows of folding chairs to the vacant seats beside the window. Arrived, he perched on the extreme forward rim of the chair, his silk hat held tenderly with both hands on his knees, his little, round blue eyes fixed unwinkingly upon the twin caskets of polished mahogany, as though he would drag their secrets from them by very force of will.

The funeral rites began. The clergyman, a man in early middle life who liked to think that Beecher’s mantle had fallen on him, was more than generous with his words. Unrelated and entirely inapposite excerpts from Scripture were sandwiched between readings from the poets, his voice broke and quavered artistically as he spoke feelingly of “these our dear departed brethren;” when the time came for final prayer I was on the verge of sleep.

“Capote d’une anguille,” de Grandin murmured angrily, “does he take the good God for a fool? Must he be telling him these poor ones met their deaths by murder? Does le bon Dieu not yet know what everyone in Harrisonville already knows by heart? Bid him say ‘Amen’ and cease, Friend Trowbridge; my neck is breaking; I can no longer bow my head!”

“S-s-s-sh!” I ordered in a venomous whisper, reinforcing my order with a sharp dig of my elbow in his ribs. “Be quiet; you’re irreverent!”

“Mordieu, I am worse; I am impatient,” he breathed in my ear, and raised his head to cast a look of far from friendly import on the praying divine.

“Ah?” I heard him breathe between his teeth. “A-a-ah?” Abruptly he bowed his head again, but I could see his sidelong glance was fixed on some one seated by the farther window.

When the interminable service was at length concluded and the guests had filed out, de Grandin made excuse to stay. The motor cars had left, and only one or two assistants of the mortician remained to set the funeral room in order, but still he lingered in the hall. “This cabinet, my friend,” he drew me toward an elaborate piece of furniture finished in vermilion lacquer and gold-leaf, “is it not a thing of beauty? And this”—he pointed to another piece of richly inlaid brass and tortoise-shell—“surely this is a work of art.”

I shrugged impatiently. “Do you think it good taste to take inventory of the furniture at such a time?” I asked acidly.

“One wonders how they came here, and when,” he answered, ignoring my remark; then, as a servant hurried by with brush and dustpan, “Can you tell me whence these came?” he asked.

The maid, a woman well past middle life, gave him a look which would have withered anyone but Jules de Grandin, but he met her frown with a smile of such frank artlessness that she relented despite herself.

“Yes, sir,” she returned. “Mr. Carlin—Mr. Pancoast, sir—God rest him!—brought them home with him when he returned from India. We used to have a ruck of such-like things, but he sold ’most all of ’em; these two are all that’s left.”

“Well, I don’t rightly know about that, sir. I only know the talk around the house; you see, I’ve only been here twenty years, and he came back long before that. It’s only what Mrs. Hussy—she used to cook here, and had worked for the family long before I came—it’s only what she told me that I know for certain, sir, and even that’s just hearsay.”

“Bien, quite so, exactement,” he answered thoughtfully and slipped a folded bill into her hand. “And can you by some happy chance tell one where he may find this queen among cooks, this peerless Madame Hussé?”

“Yes, sir, that I can; she’s living at the Bellefield Home. She bought an an-uty and—”

“An an-uty—a steady income, sir. She bought it when she left service and went to live at the home. She’s past eighty years old, and—”

“Parbleu, then we must hurry if we wish to speak with her!” de Grandin interrupted with a bow. “I thank you for the information.

“Expect me when I return, my friend,” he told me as we reached the street. “I may be early or I may be late; that depends entirely upon this Madame Hussé’s powers as a conversationist. At any rate, it would be wiser if you did not wait for me at dinner.”

IT WAS FORTUNATE WE did not wait on him, for nine o’clock had struck and dinner was long over when he came bursting in the door, his little round blue eyes alight with excitement, a smile of satisfaction on his lips. “Has the good Costello yet arrived?” he asked as he looked hastily around the study as though he half suspected the great Irishman might be hidden beneath the couch or desk.

“Not yet,” I answered, “but—” The ringing of the doorbell cut me short, and the big detective entered. A parenthesis of worry-wrinkles lay between his brows, and the look he gave de Grandin was almost one of appeal.

“Well, Doctor de Grandin, sor,” he remarked, brightening as he noted the little Frenchman’s expression, “what’s in th’ news-bag? There’s sumpin’ up yer sleeve beside yer elbow, I can see it be th’ look o’ ye.”

“You have right, my friend,” de Grandin answered. “Did not I tell you that the absence of a motive was a cheerful sign for us? But yes. Attend me!

“At Monsieur Pancoast’s late abode this afternoon I chanced to spy two objects of vertu the like of which we do not ordinarily find outside of museums. Jules de Grandin, he has traveled much, and what he knows he knows. The importation of such things is rare, for they are worth their weight in gold and—a thousand pardons if I give offense—Americans as a class are not yet educated to their beauty. Only those who have lived long in the East appreciate them, and few have brought them home. Therefore I asked a most excellently garrulous maidservant who was passing if she could tell me whence they came, and though she knew but little she gave to me the clue for which I searched, for she said first that Monsieur Pancoast brought them from India—which was not so—and that she had heard as much from a former cook, which was indubitably true.

“Alors, to Bellefield I did go to interview this Madame Hussé who had once been cook for Monsieur Pancoast, and she did tell me much. Mais oui, she told me a very great deal, indeed.

“She told me, by example, that he had studied for the ministry as a young man, and had gone to preach the Gospel in Burma. She had known him from a lad, and much surprised she was when he decided on the missioner’s vocation, for he had been a—how do you say? a gay dog?—among the ladies, and such behavior as his and the minister’s black coat did not seem to her in harmony.

“Eh bien, there is no sinner so benighted he can not see the light if he will but look toward it, and so it was with this one. Young Pancoast assumed the ministry and off he went to battle with the Evil One and teach the heathen to wear clothes.

“Now what transpired in the East she does not know; but that he returned home again and not with empty pockets, she knows full well, for great was the surprise of everyone when the erstwhile poor clergyman returned and set himself up in business. And he did prosper mightily. Tiens, it was the wonder of the city how everything he touched seemed transmuted into gold. Yes. And then, though well along in years for marrying, he wedded Mademoiselle Griggsby, whose father was most wealthy and whose social standing was above reproach. By her he had one son, whose name was Harold. Does not an explanation, or at least a theory, jump to your eye?”

“Because he married Griggsby’s daughter an’ had a son named Harold?” Costello asked with heavy sarcasm. “Well, no sor; I can’t say as how me eye is troubled with any explanation jumpin’ in it yet awhile.”

“Zut, it is permissible to be stupid, but you abuse the privilege!” the little Frenchman snapped. “You know something of the East, I take it? Monsieur Kipling has nearly phrased it:

… somewheres East of Suez,

Where the best is like the worst,

And there ain’t no Ten Commandments—

“Ah? You begin to perceive? In that sun-flogged land of Burma the best is like the worst, or becomes so shortly after arrival. The white man’s morale—and morals—break down, the saint becomes a sinner overnight. The native men are worse than despicable, the native women—eh bien, who suffers hunger in an orchard or dies of thirst amid running brooks, my friends? Yes, strange things happen in the East. The laws of man may be enforced, but those of God are flouted. The man who is respectable at home has no shame in betraying any woman whose skin bears the sun’s kiss marks or at turning any shabby deal which lines his purse with gold and takes him home again in affluence. No. And Pancoast quit the ministry in Burma. A Latin or a Greek or Anglican priest may not quit his holy orders unless he is ecclesiastically unfrocked, but clergymen of the Protestant sects may lay their office down as lightly as a businessman resigning his position. Pancoast did. He said as much to Madame Hussé when once he had a bursting-out of confidence. Remember, she had known him from a little lad.

“Well, sor,” Costello answered slowly, “I know ye’re speakin’ truth about th’ East. I served me time in th’ Philippines, an’ seen many a man go soft in morals underneath that sun, which ain’t so different from th’ sun in Burma. I’m afther thinkin’, but—”

“There is a friend of Monsieur Pancoast, a boyhood chum, who went in business with him after his return,” de Grandin broke in. “By good chance it may be that you know him; his name is Dalky, and he was associated with Pancoast until some ten years since, when they had a quarrel and dissolved their partnership. This Monsieur Dalky, perhaps, can be of ser—”

“Hullo? Sure—been here fer—Howly Mither, is it so? I’ll be right over!”

“Gentlemen,” he announced, “here’s wor-rk fer us, an’ no time to delay. Whilst we’ve been settin’ here like three dam’ fools, talkin’ o’ this an’ that, there’s murther bein’ done. ’Tis Missis Pancoast. They got her. Th’ Lord help us—they’ve wiped out the whole family, sors, right beneath our very noses!”

THE SERVANT WE HAD talked with after the funeral met us in the hall when we reached the Pancoast home. “No, sir,” she answered Costello’s inquiries, “I can’t tell you much about it. Mrs. Pancoast came back from the cemet’ry in a terrible state—not crying nor taking on, but sort o’ all frozen up inside, you know. I didn’t hear her speak a word, except once. She’d gone into her bow-duer upstairs and laid down on the couch, and along about four o’clock I thought maybe a cup o’ tea might help her some, so I went up with it. She’d got up, and was standing looking at a picture o’ Mr. Harold in his uniform that hung on the wall—an almost life-sized portrait it is. Just as I come into the room—I didn’t knock, for I didn’t want to disturb her if she was sleeping—she said, ‘O, my baby; my belovèd baby boy!’ Just that and nothing else, sir. No crying or anything, you understand. Then she turned and seen me standing there with the tea, and said, ‘Thank you, Jane, put it on the table, please,’ and went back and lay down on the couch. She was calm and collected as she always was, but I could see the heart of her was breaking inside her breast, all the same.

“She didn’t come down to supper, of course, so I took some toast and eggs up to her. The tea I’d brought earlier was standing stone-cold on the table, sir; she hadn’t poured a drop of it. When I went in she thanked me for the supper and had me set it on the table, and I left.

“It was something after nine o’clock, maybe, when the young woman called.”

“Eh? A young woman? Do you tell me? This is of interest. Describe her, if you please,” de Grandin ordered.

“I can’t say as I can, sir,” the woman answered. “She wasn’t very tall, and she wasn’t exactly what you’d call short, either. She was just medium, not tall nor short, thin nor fat. Her hair, as far as I could see, was dark, and her face was rather pale. I guess you’d call her pretty, though there was a sort o’ queer, goggle-eyed expression to her that made me think—well, sir, you know how young folks are these days, what with Prohibition and cocktail parties and all—if I’d smelled anything, I’d have said she’d been drinking too much, but there wasn’t any odor of alcohol about her, though she did have some kind o’ strong, sweet perfume. She asked to see Mrs. Pancoast, and when I said I didn’t think she could be seen, she said it was most urgent; that Mrs. Pancoast would surely see her if I’d take her card up. So she handed me a little note in an envelope—not just a visiting-card, sir—and I took it up, though I didn’t feel right about doing it.

“Mrs. Pancoast didn’t want to be bothered at first; told me to send the young lady away, but when she read what was written on the card her whole manner changed. She seemed all nervous and excited-like, right away, and told me to show the visitor right up.

“They stayed there talking about fifteen minutes, I should judge; then the two of ’em came down, the young lady still blear-eyed and sort o’ dazed-looking and Mrs. Pancoast in an awful hurry. She was more excited than I’d ever seen her in all the twenty years I’ve worked here. It seemed to me like she was all trembly and twitching-like, sir. They got into the taxi, and—”

“Ye did not; an’ ye’re neglecting to tell whether ’twas th’ same one she came in that took them off, but—’

“I’m not exactly certain it was a taxi, sir, now I come to think of it. It was sort o’ dark-colored, and—”

“An’ had four wheels wid rubber tires on each o’ em, I suppose? Ye’re bein’ mighty helpful to us, so ye are, I must say. Now git on wid it. What happened next?”

“Nothing happened, sir. They drove off and I went on about my work. First I tidied up the bow-duer and took away the supper tray—Mrs. Pancoast hadn’t touched a bite—then I came downstairs and—”

“Howly St. Bridget! Will ye be gittin’ on wid it?” Costello almost roared. “We’ll admit fer th’ sake o’ argyment that ye done yer duties and done ’em noble, but what we’re afther tryin’ to find out, if ye’d please be so kind as to tell us, is when ye first found out Mrs. Pancoast had been kilt, and how ye found it out.”

The woman’s eyes snapped angrily. “I was coming to that,” she answered tartly. “I’d come down to the basement to wash the supper things from Mrs. Pancoast’s tray, when I heard a ringing at the lower front door—the tradesmen’s door, you know. I went to answer it, for Cook had gone, and—oh, Mary, Mother! It was terrible!

“She lay there, gentlemen, head-foremost down the three steps that leads to the gate under the porch stairs, and blood was running all over the steps. I almost fainted, but luckily I remembered to call the coroner to come and take it—her, I mean—away. Oh, I’ll never, never be able to go up those service steps again!”

“Ten thousand small and annoying active little blue devils!” de Grandin swore. “Do you tell me they took her away—removed the body before we had a chance to view it?”

“Yes, sir; of course. I knew the proper thing to do was not to touch it—her, I mean—until the coroner had come, so I ’phoned him right away and—”

“Oh, ye did, did ye?” Costello broke in. “I don’t suppose ye ever heard that th’ city pays policemen to catch those that commits murther? Ye called th’ coroner and had him spoil what little clues we might o’ found, an’—”

The goaded woman turned on him in fury. “The city may pay police to catch murderers,” she blazed, “but if it does it’s wasting its money on the likes o’ you! Do you know who killed Mr. Carlin? No! Do you know who killed Mr. Harold? No! Will you find out who murdered poor, innocent Mrs. Pancoast? Don’t make me laugh! You couldn’t catch cold on a rainy day, let alone catch a sneaking murderer like the one which did these killings! You and your talk o’ spoiled clues!” She tossed her head disdainfully. “Was I to leave the poor lady’s remains laying by her own front door while you looked round for fingerprints and the like o’ that? Not for all the police in Harrisonville would I—”

“Tiens, my friends, this is interesting, but not instructive. There is little to be gained from calling hard names, and time presses. Had you first notified the police, Mademoiselle, you would have rendered apprehension of the miscreants more certain, but as it is we must make the best of what we have to work with. No amount of weeping will restore spilled milk.”

To Costello he added: “Let us inspect Madame Pancoast’s boudoir. Perhaps we shall find something.”

A BRIGHT FIRE BURNED BEHIND the brass fender in the cheerful apartment Maria Pancoast had quit to go to her death an hour earlier; pictures, mostly family portraits, adorned the walls, the windows were gay with bright-figured chintz. A glance at the mahogany table revealed nothing. The gayly painted wastebasket contained only a few stray wisps of crumpled notepaper; the Colonial escritoire which stood between the windows was kept with spinsterish neatness; nothing like a hastily opened note or visiting-card showed on its fresh green blotter.

“Voilà, my friends, I think I have it!” de Grandin cried, peering into the bed of glowing coke as he crouched on hands and knees before the fireplace. “It is burned, but—careful, very careful, my friend, a strong breath may destroy it!” He motioned Costello back, took up the brazen fire-tongs and, gently as a chemist might handle an explosive mixture, lifted a tiny curl of crackling gray-black ash from the blue flames. “Prie Dieu she wrote in ink!” he muttered as he bore his find to the table and laid it tenderly upon the sheet of clean white paper Costello spread before him.

The parchment shades were stripped from the lamps and at Costello’s order Jane, the maid, ran to the dining-room to fetch stronger electric bulbs. Meanwhile de Grandin reached into his waistcoat pocket and took out a pair of delicate steel tweezers and a collapsible-framed jeweler’s loop which he inserted in his right eye.

Carefully, almost without breathing, lest the gentle current of air from lips or nostrils destroy the carbonized cardboard, he turned the blackened relic underneath the lens of his glass.

“M—i—s—s— A—l—l,” he spelled out slowly, then fell to studying the cone of blackened paper intently again. “No use, my friends, the printing is effaced by the fire beyond that part,” he told us. “Now for the message on the card. If she used ink all is well, for the metallic pigment in it will have withstood the heat. If she wrote in pencil—we are luckless, I fear. Let us see.”

For several minutes he turned the little cone of ash beneath the lights, then with a shrug of impatience laid it on the paper, and holding one end in a gentle, steady grip with the tweezers, dipped his fingers in a tumbler and let fall a drop of water on the charred pasteboard. The burned paper trembled like a living thing in torture as the liquid touched it, and a tiny crackling rose from it. But after a moment the moisture seemed to spread through the burned fiber, rendering it less brittle. Twice more he repeated the experiment, each time increasing the pressure of his tweezers. At length he succeeded in prying the cone of heat-contorted paper partly open.

“Ah?” he exclaimed exultantly. “It was prepared beforehand. See, she did use ink—thanks be to God!”

Again be studied the charred pasteboard and spelled out slowly: “lp—ho—ban—so—”

“Name of a name; it is plain as any flagpole!” he cried. “In vain is the evidence of crime burned, my friends. We have them, we know the bait by which they lured poor Madame Pancoast to her death! You see?” He turned bright eyes on Costello and me in turn.

“Mordieu, must I then teach school to you great stupid-heads?” he asked. “Consider:

“A young woman comes to see poor Madame Pancoast, scarcely four hours after she has laid away all that remained to her of son and husband. Would Madame be likely to see a stranger in such circumstances? Mademoiselle Jane, the maid, thought not, and she was undoubtlessly right. But Madame Pancoast saw this visitor. For why? Because of something written on a card. Now, what could move a woman with a shattered heart to see an unknown visitor—more, to go away with her, seemingly in a fever of impatience? The answer leaps to the eye. Certainly. It is this: Fill in the missing letters of these words, and though they make but fragments of a sentence, they speak to us in trumpet-tones. Four parts of words we have, the first of which is ‘lp.’ Add two letters to it, and we have ‘help.’ N’est-ce-pas? But certainly. Perform the same office for the other three and we have this portion of the message: ‘help—who—husband—son.’ What more is needed? Tonight came one who promised—in writing, grâce à Dieu—to help the stricken wife and mother bring to justice the slayer of her husband and her son! Is it to be wondered that she went with her? Pardieu, though she had known for certainty that the path led to the death she met tonight, she would have gone. Yes.

“Madame Pancoast”—he wheeled and faced a portrait of the murdered woman which hung upon the wall and brought his hand up in salute—“your sacrifice shall not be in vain. Although they know it not, these vile miscreants who lured you to your death have paved the way for Jules de Grandin to seek them out. I swear it!”

“To Monsieur Dalky’s, of course. I think that he can do us a favor. I know we can do him one, if it be not already too late. Allez-vous-en!”

“NO SIR, MR. DALKY’S not in,” the butler answered de Grandin’s impatient inquiry. “He went out about fifteen or twenty minutes ago, and—

“Really, I couldn’t say, sir,” the man’s manner was eloquent of outraged dignity as de Grandin demanded his employer’s destination. “Mr. Dalky was not accustomed to tell me where he intended—”

“Dix mille mousquites, what do we care of his customs?” the Frenchman cut in. “This is of importance. We must know whither he went at once, right away—”

”I really couldn’t say, sir,” the butler returned imperturbably, and swung the door to.

“Listen here, young felly,” Costello inserted the broad toe of his boot in the rapidly diminishing space between door and jamb and brought his broad shoulder against the panels, “d’ye see this?” He turned back the lapel of his jacket, displaying his badge. “Ye’ll tell us where Dalky went, an’ tell it quick, or else—”

Statement of the alternative was unnecessary. “I’ll ask Mrs. Dalky, sir,” the man began, but:

“Ye’ll not,” Costello denied. “Ye’ll take us to her, an’ we’ll do our own askin’, savvy?” The butler led us to the room where Mrs. Dalky sat beneath a reading-lamp conning the current issue of The New Yorker.

“A thousand pardons, Madame,” de Grandin apologized, “but we come in greatest haste to consult Monsieur your husband. It is in relation to the so strange deaths of Monsieur Pancoast and—”

”Mr. Pancoast!” Mrs. Dalky dropped her magazine and her air of slight hauteur at once. “Why, that’s what Herbert went to see about.”

“Ten thousand crazy monkeys!” de Grandin swore beneath his breath, then, aloud: “When? Where, if you please? It is important!”

“We were sitting here reading,” the lady replied, “when the telephone rang. Some one wanted to speak with Mr. Dalky privately, concerning the murder of Mr. Pancoast and his son. It seemed, from what I overheard, that this person had stumbled on the information accidentally and wanted to consult my husband about one or two phases of the case before they went to the police. Mr. Dalky wanted him to come here, but he said they must act at once if they were to catch the murderers, so he would meet my husband at Tunlaw and Emerson Streets in twenty minutes, then they could go directly to police headquarters, and—”

“Your pardon, Madame, we must go!” de Grandin almost shouted, and seizing Costello with one hand and me with the other, he fairly dragged us from the room.

“Rush, hasten, fly, my friend!” he bade me. “We have perhaps five little minutes of grace. Let us make the most of it. To those Tunlaw and Emerson Streets, with all celerity, if you please!”

The gleaming, baleful eyes of a city ambulance’s red-lensed headlights bore down upon us from the opposite direction as we raced to the designated corner, and the r-r-r-rang! of its gong warned traffic from the road. A crowd had already begun to congregate at the curb, staring with hang-jawed wonder at something on the sidewalk.

“Jeez, Sergeant,” exclaimed the patrolman who stood guard above the still figure lying on the concrete, “I never seen nothing like it. Talk about puttin’ ’em on th’ spot! Lookit this!” He put back the improvised shroud covering Dalky’s features, and I went sick at the sight. The left side of the man’s head, from brow to hair-line, was scooped away, like an apple bitten into, and from the awful, gaping wound flowed mingled blood and brain. “No need for you here, Doc,” the officer added to the ambulance surgeon as the vehicle clanged to a halt and the white-jacketed intern elbowed his way through the crowd. “What this pore sucker needs is th’ morgue wagon.”

“Well, sir, it was all so sudden I can’t rightly tell you,” the patrolman answered. “I seen this here bird standin’ on th’ corner, kind o’ lookin’ round an’ pullin’ out his watch every once in a while, like he had a heavy date with some one, when all of a sudden a car comes rushin’ round th’ corner, goin’ like th’ hammers o’ hell, an’ before I knew it, it’s swung up that way through Emerson Street, and this pore feller’s layin’ on th’ sidewalk with half his face missin’.” He passed a hand meditatively across his hard-shaven chin. “It musta been th’ car hit ’im,” he added, “though I can’t see how it could ’a’ cut him up that way, but I’d ’a’ swore I seen sumpin sort o’ jump out o’ th’ winder at him as th’ automobile dashed past, just th’ same. I suppose I’m all wet, but—”

“By no means, mon vieux,” de Grandin interrupted. “What was it you saw flash from the passing car, if you please?”

“That’s hard to say, sir,” the officer responded. “I can say what it looked like, though.”

“Well, sit, don’t think I’m a nut; but it looked like a sad-iron hitched onto a length o’ clothesline. I’d ’a’ swore some one inside th’ car flung th’ iron out th’ winder, mashed th’ pore chap in th’ face with it, an’ yanked it back—all in one motion, like. Course, it couldn’t ’a’ been, but—”

“Looked like a taxi, sir. One o’ them new, shiny black ones with a band o’ red an’ gold checkers runnin’ round the tonneau, you know. It had more speed than any taxi I ever saw, an’ it got clear away before I got a good look at it, for I was all taken up with this pore man, but—”

“All right, turn in your report when th’ coroner’s car comes for him,” Costello ordered. “Annything y’ed like to ask, Doctor de Grandin?”

“I think not,” the Frenchman answered. “But, if you please, I should like to have you put a guard in Mrs. Dalky’s house. In no circumstances is anyone not known to the servants to be allowed to see her, and no telephone calls whatever are to be put through to her. You will do this?”

“H’m, I’ll try, sor. If th’ lady objects, o’ course, there’s nothin’ we can do, for she’s not accused o’ crime, an’ we can’t isolate her that way agin her will; but I’ll see what we can do.

“This burns me up,” he added dismally. “Here this felly, whoever he is, goes an’ pulls another murther off, right while we’re lookin’ at ’im, ye might say. It’s monkeys he’s makin’ out o’ us, nothin’ less!”

“By no means,” de Grandin denied. “True, he has accomplished his will, but for the purpose of his final apprehension, it is best that he seems to have the game entirely his own way. Our seeming inability to cope with him will make him bold, and boldness is akin to foolishness in a criminal. Consider: We were at fault concerning Monsieur Pancoast’s murder; the murder of his son likewise gave us naught to go upon; almost while we watched he lured poor Madame Pancoast from her house and slew her, and as far as he can know, we know no more about the bait he used in her case than we knew of the other killings. Now comes Monsieur Dalky. The game seems all too easy; he thinks that he can kill at will and pass among us unsuspected and unmolested. Assuredly he will try the trick again, and when he does,—parbleu, the strongest pitcher comes to grief if it be taken to the well too often! Yes.”

“What made ye think that Dalky’d be th’ next to go?” Costello asked as we drove slowly through the quiet street to notify the widow.

“A little by-play which I chanced to notice at the funeral this afternoon,” de Grandin answered. “It happened that I raised my head while the good clergyman was broadcasting endlessly, and as I did so I perceived a hand reach through the open window and drop a wad of paper at Monsieur Dalky’s feet. He did not seem to notice it at first, and when he did he thrust it unread into his waistcoat pocket.

“There I was negligent, I grant you. I should have followed him and asked to see the contents of the note—for a note of some kind it was undoubtlessly. Why else should it have been dropped before him while he was at the funeral of his one-time partner? But I did not follow my intention. Although the incident intrigued me, I had more pressing business to attend to in searching out Monsieur Pancoast’s antecedents that we might find some motive for his murder. It was not till I had interviewed Madame Hussé at the Bellefield Home that I learned of the former partnership between Pancoast and Dalky, and even then I did not greatly apprehend the danger to the latter; for though he was associated with the murdered man, he, at least, had never traveled to the East. But when the vengeful one slew Madame Pancoast, who was most surely innocent of any wrong, my fears for Monsieur Dalky were roused, and so we hastened to his house—too late, hélas.”

We drove in silence a few moments, then: “What we have seen tonight confirms my suspicions almost certainly,” he stated.

“Very good. I do. On more than one occasion I had dodged him, and he requires artful dodging, I assure you. Yes. Couteau de table du diable—the devil’s table knife—he has been called, and rightly so. Something like the bolo of your Filipinos it is, but with a curved blade, a blade not curved like a saber, but bent lengthwise, the point toward the hilt, so that the steel describes an arc. Sharpened on both edges like a razor—five inches across its widest part, weighted at the handle, it is the weapon of the devil—or of Dakaits, who are the foul fiend’s half-brothers. They fling it with lightning speed and such force that it will sheer through iron—or one’s skull. Then with a thin, tough cord of gut they pull it back again. Yes, it is true. Very well. Such a blade, Friend Trowbridge, hurled at a man’s back would cut his spine and also cleave his lower skull. You apprehend me?”

“Précisément. No less. I did not at first identify it by the wound it made on the poor Pancoasts, but when I saw the so unfortunate Monsieur Dalky’s cloven face, my memory bridged the gulf of years and bore me back to Burma—and the throwing-knives. With Pancoast’s history in our minds, with these knife wounds to bear it out, the conclusion is obvious. The Oriental mind is flexible, but it is also conservative. Having started on a course of action, it will carry it through without the slightest deviation. I think we shall soon lay this miscreant by the heels, my friends.”

“Attend me carefully, and you shall see. Jules de Grandin has sworn an oath to poor, dead Madame Pancoast, and Jules de Grandin is no oath-breaker. By no means. No.”

THE SHOCK WAS ALMOST more than Mrs. Dalky could bear. Both de Grandin and I were busy for upward of an hour with sedatives and soothing words. Meanwhile her condition simplified the Frenchman’s program, for a policewoman who also held a nurse’s license was installed beside her bed with orders to turn away all callers, and a plainclothes man was posted in the hall.

“And now, mon vieux,” de Grandin told the butler, “you will please get me at once the formal coat and waistcoat Monsieur Dalky wore to the Pancoast funeral this afternoon. Hasten; my time is short and my temper shorter!”

Feverishly he turned the dead man’s pockets out. In the lower left waistcoat was a tiny wad of crumpled rice-paper, the kind of thin, gray-white stuff which Eastern merchandise is wrapped in. Across it, roughly scrawled in red was the grotesque figure of a pointing man, a queer-looking figure in tight trousers and a conical cap, pointing with clenched fists at a row of smaller figurines. Obviously three of the smaller characters were men, their bifurcated garments proclaimed as much. Two more, judging by the crudely pictured skirts, were women. Two of the male figures had toppled over, the third and the two women stood erect.

“Ha, the implication here is plain. You see it?” de Grandin asked excitedly. “It was a warning, though the poor Dalky knew it not, apparently. Observe”—he tapped the two prone figures with his finger tip—“here lie the Pancoasts, père et fils. There, ready for the sacrifice is Madame Pancoast, and here is Monsieur Dalky, the sole remaining man. The last one in the group, the final woman, is who? Who but Madame Dalky, my friends? All, all are designed to die, and two are already dead, according to this drawing. Yes.” He glared across the room as though in challenge to an invisible personage. “Ha, Monsieur Murderer, you may propose, but Jules de Grandin will dispose of this case and of you. I damn think I shall take you in your own trap and call your vengeance down on your own head. May Satan serve me stewed with parsley if I do not so!”

“SURE, IT WAS AN elegant job Coroner Martin did on Misther Dalky,” Sergeant Costello commented as he stretched his feet to the fire of birch logs crackling on my study hearth and drew appreciatively at the cigar de Grandin gave him. “Were ye mindin’ th’ way he’d patched th’ pore gentleman’s face up so y’ed never notice how th’ haythen murtherer done ’im in, Doctor Trowbridge, sor?”

I nodded. “Martin’s a clever man at demi-surgery,” I answered. “one of the best I’ve ever seen, and—”

“Excuse me, sor.” Nora McGinnis, who is nominally my cook and household factotum, but who actually rules both my house and me with a hand of iron, appeared in the study doorway, “there’s a lady in th’ consultin’-room askin’ to see Doctor de Grandin.”

“Me?” the Frenchman asked. “You are sure? I do not practise medicine here; it must be Doctor Trowbridge whom she—”

“Th’ divil a bit,” Nora contradicted. “Sure, she’s askin’ fer th’ little gentleman wid light hair an’ a waxed mustache, an’ Doctor Trowbridge has nayther light nor anny kind o’ hair, nor does he wax his mustache.”

“You win, ma belle, certainly it is I,” de Grandin answered with a laugh and rose to follow her.

A moment later he rejoined us, walking softly as a cat, his little round blue eyes alight with excitement. “Trowbridge, Costello, my friends,” he whispered almost soundlessly, “come quietly, comme une souris, and see who is within. Adhere your ears to the keyhole, my friends, and likewise your eyes; I would that you should hear, as well as see!” He turned and left us and, as quietly as we could, we followed through the passage.

The writing-lamp burned on my office desk, its emerald shade picking out a spot of glowing green in the shadows of the room, and de Grandin moved it deftly so that its light fell full upon the visitor, yet left his face in dusk. At the door between the surgery and consulting-room we paused and watched the tables. Despite myself I started as my eyes rested on the face turned toward the Frenchman.

Devoid of rouge or natural coloring, save for the glowing carmine of the painted lips, the face was pale as death’s own self and the texture of the fine white skin seemed more that of a Dresden blond than a brunette, although the hair beneath the modishly small hat was almost basalt-black. The nose was delicate, with slender nostrils that seemed to palpitate above the crimson lips. The face possessed a strange, compelling charm, its ivory pallor enhanced by the shadow of the long, silken lashes that lay against the cheeks, half veiling, half revealing purple eyes which slanted downward at the outer corners, giving the countenance a quaint, pathetic look. “It’s she!” I murmured, forgetting that Costello could not understand, since he had never looked on her before. But I recognized her instantly. When first I saw her, she had walked with Harold Pancoast, an hour or less before he met his tragic death.

“It is my uncle, sir,” she told de Grandin as we halted at the door. “He suffers from an obscure disease he contracted in the Orient years ago. The attacks are more violent at changes of the season—spring and autumn always affect him—and at present he’s suffering acutely. We’ve had several doctors already, but none of them seems to understand the case. Then we heard of you.” She folded her slender pale hands in her lap and looked placidly at him, and it seemed to me there was an odd expression in her gaze, like that of a person just aroused and still heavy with sleep, or one suffering from a dose of some narcotic drug.

The little Frenchman twisted the waxed tips of his diminutive blond mustache, obviously much pleased. “How was it they bade you come to me, Mademoiselle?” he asked.

“We heard—my uncle heard, that is—that you were a great traveler and had studied in the clinics of the East. He thought if anyone could give him relief it would be you.” There was a queer, indefinable quality to her speech, her words were short, close-clipped, and seemed to stand out individually, as though each were the expression of a separate thought, and her semivowels and aspirates seemed insufficiently stressed.

For a long moment de Grandin studied her, and I thought I saw a look of wondering speculation in his face as he gazed directly into her luminous dark-blue eyes. Then: “Very well, Mademoiselle, I will come,” he assented. “Do but wait a moment while I write out this prescription—” he took a pad of notepaper from the corner of the blotter and drew it towards him.

Crash! The atmosphere seemed shattered by the detonation and the room was plunged in sudden darkness.

I leaped forward, but a sharp, warning hiss from de Grandin stopped me in my tracks, and next instant I felt his little hand against my shoulder, pushing me insistently back to my hiding-place. Hardly had I regained the shelter of the door when the lights in the ceiling chandelier snapped on, flooding the room with brightness. Amazement almost froze me as I looked.

Calm and unmoved as a graven image the girl sat in her chair, her mild, impersonal gaze still fixed on Jules de Grandin. No charge in expression or attitude had taken place, though the desk lamp lay shattered on the floor, its shade and bulbs smashed into a thousand fragments.

“Right away, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin remarked, as though he also were unaware of any untoward happening. “Come, let us go.”

A long, black taxicab, its tonneau banded with squares of alternate gold and red, stood waiting at the curb before my door. The engine must have been running all the while, for de Grandin and the girl had hardly entered before it was away, traveling at a furious pace.

“Howly Moses, Trowbridge, sor, can’t ye tell me what it’s all about?” Costello asked as we re-entered the consulting-room and gazed upon the havoc.

“I’m afraid not,” I returned, “but it looks as though a twenty-dollar lamp has been ruined, and—” I stopped, gazing at the two white spots upon my green desk-blotter. One was a woman’s visiting card, engraved in neat block letters:

Friend Trowbridge:

In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird, and I am not caught napping by their ruse. I think the murderer suspects I am too hot upon his trail, and has decided to dispose of me; but his chances of success are small. Await me. I shall return.

J. DE G.

“Lord knows I hope his confidence is justified,” I exclaimed fervently. The thought of my little friend entering the lair of the pitiless killer appalled me.

“Wurra, if I’d ’a’ known it he’d never gone off wid her unless I went along,” Costello added. “He’s a good little divil, Doctor Trowbridge, sor, an’ if they do ’im injury, I’ll—”

“Merci, my friend, you are most complimentary,” de Grandin’s laughing voice came from the doorway. “You did think I had the chance of the sparrow in the cat’s mouth, hein? Eh bien, I fear this sparrow proved a highly indigestible morsel, in that event. Yes.

“If by any chance you should go to a corner, not so far away, my friend, you will find there a taxicab in a most deplorable state of disrepair. It is not healthy for the chauffeur to try conclusions with a tree, however powerful his motor may be. As for that one—” he paused, and there was something more of grimness than merriment in his smile.

“Tiens, he surely did,” de Grandin interrupted, “but with less success than a monkey would have had, I think. As for his present whereabouts”—he raised his narrow shoulders in an expressive shrug—“let us be charitable and say he is in heaven, although I fear that would be too optimistic. Perhaps I should have waited, but I had but little time to exercise my judgment, and so I acted quickly. I did not like the way he put speed to his motor the moment we had entered it, and as he was increasing the distance between you and me with each turn of his wheels, I acted on an impulse and struck him on the head. I struck him very hard, I fear, and struck him with a blackjack. It seemed to bother him considerably, for he lost control of his wheel immediately and ran into a tree. The vehicle stopped suddenly, but he continued on. The windshield intervened, but he continued on his way. Yes. He was a most unpleasant sight when last I looked at him.

“It took but half my eye,” he continued, “to tell me the fellow was a foreigner, an Indian or Burmese. The trap was evidently well oiled, but so was I. Alors, I did escape.

“Eh bien, they are clever, those ones. It was a taxicab I entered, a new and pretty taxicab with lines of red and gold squares round its tonneau. The wrecked car from which I crawled a few minutes later had no such marks. No. By a device easily controlled from the driver’s cab a shutter, varnished black to match the body of the car, could be instantly raised over the red and golden checkers, thus transforming what was patently a taxicab into a sumptuous private limousine. Had I not come back, you might have searched long for the taxi I was last seen in, but your search would have been in vain. It was a taxi, so the maid thought, which bore poor Madame Pancoast to her death, and it was a taxi, according to the officer, from which the death-knife was hurled at Monsieur Dalky, but neither of them could identify it accurately, and if instant chase had been given in either instance, the vehicle could have changed its identity almost while the pursuers watched, and gotten clean away. A clever scheme, n’est-ce-pas?”

He looked at us with something like wonder in his eyes. “Do you recall how she sat stone-still, and seemed to notice not at all when I hurled your desk-lamp to the floor, and plunged the room in darkness?” he asked irrelevantly. “You saw that, for all she seemed to notice, nothing had happened, and that she took up the conversation where we left off when I turned on the lights again?”

“Parbleu, you have as yet seen nothing, or at the most, but very little,” he returned. “Come.”

The girl sat calmly on the sofa in the study, her lovely, violet eyes staring with bovine placidity into the fire.

The little Frenchman tiptoed in and took up his position before her. “Mademoiselle?” he murmured questioningly.

“Doctor de Grandin?” she asked, turning her odd, almost sightless gaze on him.

“I’ve come to see you about my uncle. He suffers from an obscure disease he contracted in the Orient years ago. The attacks are most violent at changes of the season—spring and autumn always affect him—and at present he is suffering acutely. We’ve had several doctors already, but none of them seems to understand the case. Then we heard of you.”

Sergeant Costello and I looked at her, then at each other in mute astonishment. Obviously unaware that she had seen him before, the girl had stated her errand in the precise words employed in the consulting-room not half an hour earlier.

The Frenchman looked at me above her head and his lips formed a single soundless word: “Morphine.”

I regarded him questioningly a moment, and he repeated the silent disyllable, holding his hand beside his leg and going through the motion of making an injection at the same time, then glancing significantly at the girl.

I nodded understandingly at last and went to fetch the drug. She seemed not to be aware of what transpired as I took a fold of skin between my thumb and finger, pinched it lightly, and thrust the needle in.

“We heard—my uncle heard, that is—that you were a great traveler and had studied in the clinics of the East,” she was telling de Grandin as I shot the plunger home, and still repeating her message parrotwise, word for word as she had delivered it before, she fell asleep beneath the power of three-quarters of a grain of alkaloid of somniferum.

“AND NOW, MY EXCELLENT one,” de Grandin told Costello as he and I returned from putting the unconscious girl to bed, “I would that you telephone headquarters and have them send us two good men and a chien de police without delay. We shall need them, I damn think, and that without much waiting, for the spider will be restless when the fly comes not, and will undoubtlessly be seeking explanations here.”

“Be dad, sor, if he comes here lookin’ for flies he’ll find a flock o’ horseflies, an’ th’ kind that can’t be fooled, at that!” Costello answered with a grin as he picked up the ’phone.

“NOW, MES AMIS, YOU can not be too careful,” de Grandin warned the two patrolmen who answered Costello’s summons. “This is a vicious one we deal with, and a clever one, as well. He thinks no more of murder than you or I consider the extermination of a bothersome gnat, and he is also quick and subtle. Yes. It is late for anyone to call. Should a visitor mount the steps, one of you inquire his business, but let the other keep well hidden and have his pistol ready. At the first hostile move you shoot, and shoot to hit. Remember, he has already killed three men and a defenseless woman. No mercy is deserved by such as he.”

The officers nodded understandingly, and we disposed our forces for defense. Costello, de Grandin and I were to join the policemen alternately on the outside watch, relieving each other every hour. The two remaining in the house were to stay in the room where the girl Allura lay in drugged sleep, for the Frenchman had a theory the killer would attempt to find her if he managed to elude the guard outside. “She who was bait for us will now be bait for him,” he stated as he concluded arrangements. “Let us proceed, my friends, and remember what I said, let no false notions of the preciousness of life delay your hands—he is troubled with no such scruples, I assure you.”

Midnight passed and one o’clock arrived, still no indications of the visitant’s approach. Costello had gone to join the outside guard, I lounged and yawned in the armchair by the bed where Allura lay, de Grandin lighted cigarette from cigarette, beat a devil’s tattoo on his chair-arm and gazed impatiently at his watch from time to time.

“I’m afraid it’s no use, old chap,” I told him. “This fellow probably took fright when his messenger and chauffeur failed to return—he’s very likely putting as much distance between himself and us as possible this very minute. If—”

Bang! the thunderous detonation drowned my voice as an explosion, almost under our window, shook the air. I leaped to my feet with a cry, but:

“Not the window, my friend—keep away, it is death!” de Grandin warned, seizing me by the arm and dragging me back. “This way—it is safest!”

As we raced downstairs the sharp, staccato discharge of a revolver sounded, followed by a mocking laugh. The Frenchman opened the front door, and dropping to his hands and knees glanced out into the night. Another pistol shot, followed by a cry of pain, sounded from the farther end of the yard; then the deep, ferocious baying of the police dog and a crashing in the rhododendron bushes told us contact of some sort had been made with the enemy.

“D’je get hit, Clancy?” called one of the policemen, charging across the lawn.

“Never mind me, git him!” the other cried, and his mate rushed toward the thicket where the savage dog was worrying something. A nightstick flashed twice in the rays of a street lamp, and two dull, heavy thuds told us the locust club struck flesh both times.

“Sure, let’s have a look at him,” Costello answered. “Are ye hurt bad, Clancy?”

“Not much, sir,” the other answered. “He flang a knife or sumpin at me, but Ludendorff jumped ’im so quick it spoilt his aim. I could do with a bit o’ bandage, though.”

While Costello and the uninjured policeman dragged the infuriated dog from the unconscious man and prepared to bring him into the house, de Grandin and I assisted Clancy to the surgery. He was bleeding profusely from a long crescent-shaped incised wound in the right shoulder, but the injury was superficial, and a first-aid pack of boric and salicylic acid held in place by a figure-eight bandage quickly reduced the hemorrhage.

“I’ll say he’s cute, sir,” Clancy commented as de Grandin deftly pinned the muslin bandage into place. “We none o’ us suspected he was anywheres around—he must ’a’ walked on his hands, for he surely didn’t make no footsteps we could hear—when all of a sudden we heard sumpin go bang! alongside th’ house, an’ a flare o’ fire like a Fourth o’ July rocket went up. I yanks out me gun an’ fires, like you told us, an’ then some one laughs at me, right behind me back, an’ sumpin comes whizzin’ through th’ air like a little airplane an’ I feels me shoulder getting numb an’ blood a-runnin’ down me arm.

“Lucky thing for me old Ludendorff was with me. The son-of-a-gun could make a monkey out o’ me, flingin’ his contact bomb past me an’ drawin’ me out in th’ open with me back turned to ’im, so’s he could fling his knife into me, but he couldn’t fool th’ dawg. No, sir! He smelt th’ feller forty feet away an’ made a bee-line for him, draggin’ ’im down before you could say Jack Robinson.”

The Frenchman nodded. “You were indeed most fortunate,” he agreed. “In a few minutes the ambulance will come, and you may go. Meantime—you will?”

“I’m tellin’ th’ cock-eyed world I will!” Officer Clancy responded as de Grandin moved the brandy bottle and a glass toward him. “Say, Doc, they can cut me up every night o’ th’ week, if I git this kind o’ medicine afterward!”

“Mon vieux, your comrade waits in the next room,” de Grandin told the other officer. “He is wounded but happy, and I suspect you would like to join him—” he glanced invitingly through the opened door, and as the officer beheld the treatment Clancy was taking for his hurt, he nearly overset the furniture in hasty exit.

“Now, my friends—to business,” the Frenchman cried as he closed the surgery door on the policemen and turned to eye our prisoner.

I held a bottle of sal volatile under the man’s nose, and in a moment a twitching of the nostrils and fluttering of lids told us he was coming round. He clutched both chair-arms and half heaved himself upright, but:

“Slowly my friend; when your time comes to depart, you will not go alone,” de Grandin ordered, digging the muzzle of his pistol into the captive’s ribs. “Be seated, rest yourself, and give us information which we much desire, if you please.”

“Yes, an’ remember annything ye say may be used agin ye at yer trial,” Costello added officially.

“Pains of a dyspeptic Billy-goat! Must you always spoil things?” de Grandin snapped, but:

“It’s quite all right sir, the game seems played, and I appear to have lost,” the prisoner interrupted. “What is it you would like to know?”

He was a queer figure, one of the queerest I had ever seen. A greatcoat of plum-colored cloth, collared and cuffed with kolinsky, covered him from throat to knees, and beneath the garment his massive legs, arrayed in light gray trousers, stuck forward woodenly, as though his joints were stiff. He was big, huge; wide of shoulder, deep of chest and almost obscenely gross of abdomen. His head was oversized, even for his great body, and nearly round, with out-jutting, sail-like ears. Somehow, his face reminded me of one of those old Japanese terror-masks, mahogany-colored, mustached with badger hair, and snarling malignantly. A stubble of short, gray hair covered his scalp, the fierce gray mustache above his month was stiff as bristles from a scrubbing-brush, and the smile he turned on Jules de Grandin was frozen cruelty warmed by no slightest touch of human pity, while terrible, malignant keenness lurked in his narrow, onyx-black eyes. A single glance at him convinced me that the ruthless murderer of four innocent people was before us, and that his trail of murder would be ended only with his further inability to kill. He waved a hand, loosely, wagging it from the wrist as though it were attached to his forearm by a well-oiled hinge, and I caught the gleam of a magnificent octagonal emerald—a gem worth an emperor’s ransom—on his right forefinger. “What was it you wished to know?” he repeated. Then: “May I smoke?”

The Frenchman nodded assent, but kept the prisoner covered with his weapon until sure he meant to draw nothing more deadly than a silver cigarette case from his pocket.

“Begin at the beginning, if you please, Monsieur,” he bade. “We know how you did slay Monsieur Pancoast and his poor son, and how you murdered his defenseless widow, also the poor Monsieur Dalky, but why, we ask to know. For why should four people you had never seen be victims of your lust for killing? Speak quickly; we have not long to wait.”

The prisoner smiled, and once again I felt the chills run down my back at sight of the grimace.

“East is East and West is West,

And never the twain shall meet.”

he quoted ironically. “I suppose it’s no use attempting to make you share my point of view?”

“That depends on what your viewpoint is,” de Grandin answered. “You killed them—why?”

“Because they deserved it richly,” the other returned calmly. “Listen to this charming little story, if you can spare the time:

“I was born in Mangadone. My father was a chetty—they call them bania in India. A money-lender—usurer—in fine. You know the breed; unsavory lot they are, extracting thirty and forty per cent on loans and keeping whole generations in their debt. Yes, my father was one of them.

“He was Indian by birth, but took up trade in Burma, and flourished at it like the proverbial green bay tree. His ideas for me, though, were different from the usual Indian’s. He wanted me to be a burra sahib—a ‘somebody,’ as you say. So when the time came he packed me off to England and college to study Shakespeare and the musical classes, but particularly law and finance. I came back a licensed barrister and with a master’s degree in economics.

“But”—again his evil smile moved across his features—“I came back to a desolated home, as well. My father had a daughter by a second wife, a lovely little thing called Mumtaj, meaning moonflower. He cherished her, was rather more fond of her than the average benighted Indian is of his girl-children; and because of the wealth he had amassed, looked forward to a brilliant match for her.

“‘Man proposes but God disposes,’ it has been said, you know. In this case it was the White Man’s God, through one of his accredited ministers, who disposed. In the local American mission was an earnest young sahib known as the Reverend Carlin Pancoast, a personable young man who wrestled mightily with Satan, and made astonishing progress at it. My father was liberal-minded; he saw much good in the ways of the sahiblog, believing that our ancient customs were outmoded; so it was not difficult to induce him to send my little sister Moonflower to the mission school.

“But though he was progressive, my father still adhered to some of the old ways. For instance, he kept the bulk of his wealth in precious metals and jewels, and much of it in gold and silver currency—this last was necessary in order to have ready cash for borrowers, you see. So it was not very difficult for Pancoast Thakin and my sister to lay hands on gold and jewels amounting to three lakhs of rupees—about a hundred thousand dollars—quite a respectable little sum, and virtually every farthing my father had.

“They fled to China, ‘cross the bay,’ where no one was too inquisitive and British extradition would not reach, except in the larger cities. Then they went inland and to the sea by boat. At Shanghai they parted. It was impossible for a sahib, especially an American preacher-sahib, to take a black girl home with him as wife. But it was not at all embarrassing for him to take home her father’s money, which she had stolen for him, plus my sister’s purchase price.

“What? Oh, dear me, yes. He sold her. She was ‘damaged goods,’ of course, but proprietors of the floating brothels that ply the China coasts and rivers aren’t over-particular concerning the kind of woman-flesh they buy, provided the price is low enough. So the Reverend Pancoast Sahib was rid of an embarrassing incumbrance, and in a little cash to boot by the deal. Shrewd businessmen, these Yankees.

“My father was all for prosecuting in the sahibs’ way, but I had other plans. A few odd bits of precious metals were dug up here and there—literally dug up, gentlemen, for Mother Earth is Mother India’s most common safe deposit vault—and with these we began our business life all over again. I profited by what I’d learned in England, and we prospered from the start. In fifteen years we were far wealthier than when the Reverend Carlin Pancoast eloped with my father’s daughter and fortune.

“But as the Chinese say, ‘we had lost face’—the memory of the insult put on us by the missionary still rankled, and I began to train myself to wipe it out. From fakirs I learned the arts of hypnotism and jugglery, and from Dakaits whom I hired at fabulous prices I acquired perfect skill at handling the throwing-knife. Indeed, there was hardly a budmash in all lower Burma more expert in the murderer’s trade than I when I had completed my training.

“Then I came here. Before the bloody altar of Durga—you know her as Kali, goddess of the thags—I took an oath that Pancoast and all his tribe should perish at my hands, and that everyone who had profited by what he stole from my father should also die.

“And—I can’t expect you to appreciate this subtlety—I brought along a very useful tool in addition to my knives. I called her Allura. Not bad, eh? She certainly possesses allure, if nothing else.

“I found her in a London slum, a miserable, undernourished brat without known father and with a gin-soaked female swine for mother. I bought her for thirty shillings, and could have had her for half that, except it pleased me to make sure her dam would drink herself to death, and so I gave her more cash than she had ever seen at one time for the child.

“I almost repented of my bargain at first, for the child, though beautiful according to Western standards, was very meagerly endowed with brains, almost a half-wit, in fact. But afterward I thanked whatever gods may be that it was so.

“Her simplicity adapted her ideally to my plan, and I began to practise systematically to kill what little mind she had, substituting my own will for it. The scheme worked perfectly. Before she had reached her twelfth year she was nothing but a living robot—a mechanism with no mind at all, but perfectly responsive to my lightest wish. With only animal instinct to guide her to the simplest vital acts, she would perform any task I set her to, provided I explained in detail just what she was to do. I’ve sent her on a five-hundred-mile journey, had her buy a particular article in a particular shop, and return with it, as if she were an intelligent being; then, when the task was done, she lapsed once more into idiocy, for she has become a mere idiot whenever the support of my will is withdrawn.

“It was rare sport to send her to be made love to by Pancoast’s cub. The silly moon-calf fell heels over head in love with her at sight, and every day I made her rehearse everything he said—she did it with the fidelity of a gramophone—and told her what to say and do at their next meeting. When I had disposed of his father I had Allura bring the son to a secluded part of the campus and—how is it you say in French, Doctor de Grandin? Ah, yes, there I administered the coup de grâce. It was really droll. She didn’t even notice when I cut him down, just stood there, looking at the spot where he had stood, and saying, ‘Poor Harold; dear Harold; I’m so sorry, dear!’

“She was useful in getting Pancoast’s widow out of the house and into my reach, too.

“Dalky I handled on my own, using the telephone in approved American fashion to ‘put him on the spot,’ as your gangsters so quaintly phrase it.

“Your activities were becoming annoying, though, Doctor de Grandin, so I reluctantly decided to eliminate you. Tell me, how did you suspect my trap? Did Allura fail? She never did before.”

“I fear you underestimated my ability to grasp the Oriental viewpoint, my friend.” de Grandin answered dryly. “Besides, although it had been burned, I rescued Mademoiselle Allura’s card from Madame Pancoast’s fire, and read the message on it. That, and the warning we found in Monsieur Dalky’s waistcoat pocket—I saw it thrown through the window to him at the Pancoast funeral—these gave me the necessary clues. Now, if you have no more to say, let us be going. The Harrisonville gendamerie will be delighted to provide you entertainment, I assure you.”

“A final cigarette?” the prisoner asked, selecting one of the long, ivory-tipped paper tubes from his case with nice precision.

“Mais oui, of course,” de Grandin agreed, and held his flaming lighter forward.

“I fear you do underestimate the Oriental mind, after all, de Grandin,” the prisoner laughed, and thrust half the cigarette into his mouth, then bit it viciously.

“Mille diables, he has tricked us!” the Frenchman cried as a strong odor of peach kernels flooded the atmosphere and the captive lurched forward spasmodically, then fell back in his chair with gaping month and staring, death-glazed eyes. “He was clever, that one. All camouflaged within his cigarette he had a sac of hydrocyanic acid. Less than one grain produces almost instant death; he had a least ten times that amount ready for emergency.

“Eh bien, my friend,” he turned to Costello with a philosophical shrug, “it will save the state the expense of a trial and of electric current to put him to death. Perhaps it is better so. Who knows?”

He pondered a moment, then: “I hope he was mistaken,” he returned. “If she could be made intelligent by hypnotism, as he said, there is a chance her seeming idiocy may be entirely cured by psychotherapy. It is worth the trial, at all events. Tomorrow we shall begin experiments.

“Where?” he echoed, as though surprised at our stupidity. “Where but to see if those so thirsty gentlemen of the police have left one drink of brandy in the bottle for Jules de Grandin, pardieu!”