# Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 6/Flames of Vengeance

Flames of Vengeance
By SEABURY QUINN
A strange doom hung over young Pemberton and his wife, a brooding horror spawned in India and transplanted to America in all its murderous potency—a brilliant exploit of Jules de Grandin
WITH intently narrowed eyes, lips pursed in concentration, Jules de Grandin stood enveloped in a gayly flowered apron while he measured out the olive oil as an apothecary might decant a precious drug. In the casserole before him lay the lobster meat, the shredded bass, the oysters, the crab-meat and the eel. Across the stove from him Nora McGinnis, my household factotum and the finest cook in northern Jersey, gazed at him like a nun breathless with adoration.
"Mon Dieu," he whispered reverently, "one little drop too much and he is ruined, a single drop too few and he is simply spoiled! Observe me, ma petite, see how I drop l'essence de l'olive——"
The door-bell's clangor broke the silence like a raucous laugh occurring at a funeral service. Nora jumped a full six inches, the olive oil ran trickling from the cruet, splashing on the prepared sea-food in the sauce-pan. Small Frenchman and big Irishwoman exchanged a look of consternation, a look such as the Lord Chancellor might give the Lord Chief Justice if at the moment of anointment the Archbishop were to pour the ampulla's entire contents on the unsuspecting head of Britain's new-crowned king.
The bouillabaisse was ruined! "Bring him here!" bade Jules de Grandin in a choking voice. "Bring the vile miscreant here, and I shall cut his black heart out; I shall pull his so vile nose! I shall——"
"Indade an' ye'll not," protested Nora. "'Tis meself as'll take me hand off'n th' side of 'is face "
"I'd better leave you with your sorrow," I broke in as I tiptoed toward the door. "It's probably a patient, and I can't afford to have you commit mayhem on my customers."
"Doctor de Grandin?" asked the young man at the door. "I've a letter to you from——"
"Come into the study," I invited. "Doctor de Grandin's occupied right now, but he'll see you in a minute."
The visitor was tall and lean, not thin, but trained down to bone and muscle, and his face possessed that brownish tinge which tells of residence in the tropics. His big nose, high cheekbones and sandy hair, together with his smartly clipped mustache, would have labeled him a Briton, even had he lacked the careless nonchalance of dress and Oxford accent which completed his ensemble.
"Jolly good of Sergeant Costello to give me a chit to you," he told de Grandin as the little Frenchman came into the study and eyed him with cold hatred. "I'm sure I don't know where I could have looked for help if he'd not thought of you."
De Grandin's frigid manner showed no sign of thawing. "What can I do for you, Monsieur le Capitaine—or is it lieutenant?" he asked.
The caller gave a start. "You know me?" he demanded.
​"I have never had the pleasure of beholding you before," the Frenchman answered. His tone implied he was not anxious to prolong the scrutiny.
"But you knew I was in the service?"
"Naturally. You are obviously English and a gentleman. You were at least eighteen in 1914. That assures one you were in the war. Your complexion shows you have resided in the tropics, which might mean either India or Africa, but you called the sergeant's note a chit, which means you've spent some time in India. Now, if you will kindly state your business——" he paused with raised eyebrows.
"It's a funny, mixed-up sort o' thing," the other answered. "You're right in saying that I've been in India; I was out there almost twenty years. Chucked it up and went to farmin'; then a cousin died here in the province of New Jersey, leavin' me a mass o' rock and rubble and about two hundred thousand pounds, to boot."
The look of long-enduring patience deepened on de Grandin's features. "And what is one to do?" he rejoined wearily. "Help you find a buyer for the land? You will be going back to England with the cash, of course."
The caller's tanned complexion deep-
"A line of flame was rising, flickering and dancing."
De grandin's air of cold hostility had been moderating steadily. As the caller finished speaking he leant forward with a smile. "You have spoken of a family curse, Monsieur; just what is it, if you please?"
An embarrassed look came in the other's face. "Don't think that I'm an utter ass," he begged. "I know it sounds a bit thick when you put it into words, but—well, the thing has seemed to work, and I'd rather not take chances. All right for me, of course; but there's Avis and the little chap to think of.
"Old Albert Pemberton, my great-grandfather's brother and the founder of the family in America, left two sons, John and Albert, junior. They were willing enough to pass their year of residence, but neither of 'em finished it. John left two sons, and they died trying to live out the year at Foxcroft. So did their two sisters, and their husbands. The chap I take it from was the younger daughter's son, and not born on the property. There's never been a birth in the old manor house, though there have been twelve sudden deaths there; for every legatee attempting to observe the dictates of old Albert's will has died. Yet each generation has passed the estate down with the same proviso for a year's residence as condition precedent to inheritance. Seems as if they're all determined to defy the curse——"
"Mille tourments, this everlasting curse; what is this seven times accursed curse of which you speak so glibly and tell us absolutely nothing?"
For answer Pemberton readied in his jacket and produced a locket. It was made of gold, slightly larger than an old-time watch, and set with rows of seed-pearls round the edge. Snapping it open, he disclosed two portraits painted with minute detail on ivory plaques. One was of a young man in a tightly-buttoned jacket of white cloth, high-collared, gilt-braided, with insignia of some military rank upon the shoulders. Upon his head he wore a military cap shaped something like the képi which the French wore in Algeria about the middle of the Nineteenth Century, hooded in a linen sheath which terminated in a neck-cloth trailing down between his shoulders. Despite the mustache and long sideburns the face was youthful; the man could not have been much more than three and twenty.
"That's Albert Pemberton," our visitor announced. "And that's his wife Maria, or, as she was originally known, Sarastai."
"Parbleu!"
"Quite so. Lovely, wasn't she?"
She was, indeed. Her hair, so black it seemed to have the blue lights of a ​cockerel's ruff within its depths, was smoothly parted in the middle and brought down each side her face across the small and low-set ears, framing an oleander-white forehead. Her wide-spaced, large, dark eyes and her full-lipped mouth were exquisite. Her nose was small and straight, with fine-cut nostrils; her chin, inclined to pointedness, was cleft across the middle by a dimple. Brows of almost startling black curved in circumflexes over her fine eyes in the "flying gull" formation so much prized by beauty connoisseurs of the early eighteen hundreds. Pearl-set pendants dangled from her ear-lobes nearly to the creamy shoulders which her low-necked gown exposed. One hand was laid upon her bosom, and the fingers were so fine and tapering that they seemed almost transparent, and were tipped by narrow, pointed nails almost as red as strawberries. She was younger than her husband by some three or four years, and her youthful look was heightened by the half-afraid, half-pleading glance that lay in her dark eyes.
"Que e'est belle; que e'est jeune!" de Grandin breathed. "And it was through her——"
Our caller started forward in his chair. "Yes! How'd you guess it?"
I looked at them in wonder. That they understood each other perfectly was obvious, but what it was they were agreed on I could not imagine.
De Grandin chuckled as he noticed my bewilderment. "Tell him, mon ami," he bade the Englishman. "He cannot understand how one so lovely—morbleu, my friend," he turned to me, "I bet myself five francs you do not more than half suspect the lady's nationality!"
"Of course I do," I answered shortly. "She's English. Anyone can see that much. She was Mrs. Pemberton, and——"
"Non, non," he answered with a laugh, "that is the beauty of the tropics which we see upon her face. She was—correct me if I err, Monsieur"—he bowed to Pemberton—"she was an Indian lady, and, unless I miss my guess, a high-caste Hindoo, one of those in whom the blood of Alexander's conquering Greeks ran almost undefiled. N'est-ce-pas?"
"Correct!" our visitor agreed. "My great-great-uncle met her just before the Mutiny, in 1856. It was through her that he came here, and through her that the curse began, according to the family legend."
Lights were playing in de Grandin's eyes, little flashes like heat-lightning flickering in a summer sky, as he bent and tapped our caller on the knee with an imperative forefinger. "At the beginning, if you please, Monsieur," he bade. "Start at the beginning and relate the tale. It may help to guide us when we come to formulate our strategy. This Monsieur Albert Pemberton met his lady while he served with the East India Company in the days before the Sepoy Mutiny. How was it that he met her, and where did it occur?"
Pemberton smiled quizzically as he lighted the cigar the Frenchman proffered. "I have it from his journal," he replied. "They were great diarists, those old boys, and my uncle rated a double first when it came to setting down the happenings of the day with photographic detail. In the fall of '56 he was scouting up Bithoor way with a detail of North Country sowars—mounted troops, you know—henna-bearded, swaggering followers of the Prophet who would cheerfully have slit every Hindoo throat between the Himalayas and the Bay of Bengal. They made temporary camp for tiffin in a patch of wooded land, and the ​fires had just been lighted underneath the troopers' cook-pots when there came a sort of ominous murmur from the roadway which wound past the woodland toward the river and the burning-ghats beyond. Little flickers of the flame that was about to burst into a holocaust next year were already beginning to show, and my uncle thought it best to take no chances; so he sent a file of troopers with a subadar to see what it was all about. In ten or fifteen minutes they came back, swearing such oaths as only Afghan Mussulmans can use when speaking of despised Hindoos.
"'Wah, it is a burning, Captain Sahib,' the subadar reported. 'The Infidels—may Allah make their faces black!—drag forth a widow to be burnt upon her husband's funeral pyre.'
"Now the British Raj forbade suttee in 1829, and made those taking any part in it accessories to murder. Technically, therefore, my uncle's duty was to stop the show, but he had but twenty sowars in his detail, and the Hindoos probably would number hundreds. He was, as you Americans say, in a decided spot. If he interfered with the religious rite, even though the law forbade it, he'd have a first-class riot on his hands, and probably lose half of his command, if the whole detail weren't massacred. Besides, his orders were to scout and bring reports in to the Residency, and he'd not be able to perform his mission if he lost too many men, or was killed in putting down a riot. On the other hand, here was a crime in process of commission under his immediate observation, and his duty was to stop it, so——"
"Morbleu, one understands!" de Gran- din chuckled. "He was, as one might say, between the devil and the ocean. What did he do, this amiable ancestor of yours, Monsieur? One moment, if you please——" he raised his hand to shut off Pemberton's reply. "I make the wager with myself. I bet me twenty francs I know the answer to his conduct ere you tell it. Bon, the wager is recorded. Now, if you please, proceed."
A boyish grin was on the Briton's face as he replied: "It was a tight fix to be in, but I think the old boy used his head, at that. First of all, he bundled his dispatches in a packet and told a sowar off to take them to the Residency. It was no child's-play to select a messenger, for every man in his command itched to sink a saber-blade in Hindoo flesh; so finally they compromised by drawing lots. They're a bunch of fatalistic johnnies, those Mohammedans, and the chap who drew the short straw said it was the will of Allah that he be denied the pleasure of engaging in the shindy, and rode away without another murmur. Then my uncle told the men to stand to arms while he left them with the subadar and took two others to go scouting with him.
"At the forest edge they saw the Hindoos coming, and it must have been a sight, according to his diary. They were raising merry hell with drums and cymbals and tom-toms, singing and wailing and shrieking as if their luncheon disagreed with them. In the van came Brahmin priests, all decked out in robes of state and marching like a squad of sergeants major on parade. Then came a crowd of gurus—they're holy men, you know, and my uncle knew at once that these were specially holy; for whereas the average fakir shows enough bare hide to let you guess at his complexion, these fellows were so smeared with filth and ashes that you couldn't tell if they were black or white, and you could smell 'em half a mile away if you happened to get down-wind of 'em. They were jumpin' and contortin' round a four-wheeled cart to which a span of bullocks had been harnessed, and in which stood a ten-foot ​image of the goddess Kali, who's supposed to manifest the principles of love and death. If you've ever seen those idols you know what this one looked like—black as sin and smeared with goat's blood, four arms branchin' from its shoulders, tongue hangin' out and all a-wash with betel-juice and henna. There's a collar o' skulls strung round its neck and a belt of human hands tied round its waist. Not an appetizin' sight at any time, when it's plastered thick with half-dried blood and rancid butter it's enough to make a feller gag.
"Followin' the Kali-cart was another crowd o' Brahmins, all dressed up for a party, and in their midst they dragged—for she could scarcely walk—a girl as white as you or I."
"A white woman, you say?" I interrupted.
"You ought to know, you've just looked at her picture," answered Pemberton, raising the locket from his knee and holding out the sweet, pale face for my inspection. "That was my Aunt Maria—or Sarastai, as she was then.
"I suppose she must have looked a little different in her native dress, but I'll wager she was no less beautiful. My uncle's diary records that she was fairly loaded down with jewels. Everywhere a gem could find a resting-place had been devoted to her decoration. There was a diadem of pearls and rubies on her head; a 'golden flower,' or fan-like ornament of filigree in which small emeralds and seed-pearls were set, had been hung in her nose, and dropped so low across her lips that he could hardly see her mouth. Her cars and neck and shoulders and arms and wrists and ankles and every toe and finger bore some sort of jewel, and her gold-embroidered sari was sewn about the border with more gems, and even her white-muslin veil was edged with seed-pearls.
"Two Brahmins held her elbows, half leading and half dragging her along, and her head swayed drunkenly, now forward on her breast, now falling to one shoulder or the other as she lurched and staggered on the road.
"Last of all there marched a company of men with simitars and pistols and a few long-barreled muskets. In their midst they bore a bier on which a corpse lay in full-dress regalia, pearl-embroidered turban, robe of woven silk and gold, waist-shawl set with diamonds. From the richness of the widow's jewels and the magnificent accouterments the corpse displayed, as well as by the size of the escort, my uncle knew the dead man was of great importance in the neighborhood; certainly a wealthy landlord, probably an influential nobleman or even petty prince."
"Poor child!" I murmured. "No wonder she was frightened to the point of fainting. To be burned alive——"
"It wasn't terror, sir," said Pemberton. "You see, to be sati, that is, to offer oneself as a voluntary sacrifice upon the funeral pyre, was considered not only the most pious act a widow could perform, it enhanced her husband's standing in the future world. Indian women of that day—and even nowadays—had that drilled into them from infancy, but sometimes the flesh is weaker than the spirit. In Sarastai's case her husband was an old man, so old that she had never been his wife in anything but name, and when he died she flinched at the decree that she must burn herself upon his funeral pyre. To have a widow backslide, especially the widow of such an influential man as he had been, would have cast dishonor on the family and brought undying scandal to the neighborhood; so they filled her up with opium and gunjah, put her best clothes on her and marched her ​to the burning-ghat half conscious and all but paralyzed with drugs——"
"Ah, yes, one comprehends completely," broke in Jules de Grandin. "But your uncle, what of him? What did he then do?"
"You can't use cavalry in wooded terrain, and the forest came down thick each side the road. Besides, my uncle had but two men with him, and to attempt a sortie would have meant sure death. Accordingly he waited till the procession filed past, then hurried back to his command and led them toward the burning-ghat. This lay in a depression by the river bank, so that the partly burned corpses could be conveniently thrown into the stream when cremation rites were finished. The Hindoos had a quarter-hour start, but that was just as well, as they took more time than that to make their preparations. The funeral pyre had been erected, and over it they poured a quantity of sandal-oil and melted butter. Paraffin was not so common in the Orient those days.
"When all had been prepared they took the dead man's costly garments off and stripped the widow of her jewels and gorgeous sari, wrapping each of them in plain white cotton cloth like winding-sheets and pouring rancid butter over them. They laid the corpse upon the pyre and marched the widow seven times around it with a lighted torch held in her hand. Then they lifted her up to the pyre, for the poor kid still was only semi-conscious, made her squat cross-legged, and laid the dead man's head upon her knees. A Brahmin gave the signal and the dead man's eldest son ran forward with a torch to set the oil-soaked wood afire, when my uncle rode out from the woods and ordered them to halt. He spoke Hindustani fluently, and there was no mistaking what he said when he told them that the Raj had banned suttee and commanded them to take the widow down.
"The thing the blighters didn't know was that nineteen Afghan cavalrymen were waiting in the underbrush, praying as hard as pious men could pray that the Hindoos would refuse to heed my uncle's orders.
"Allah heard their prayers, for the only answer that the Brahmins gave was a chorus of shrill curses and a barrage of stones and cow-dung. The dead man's son ran forward to complete the rite, but before he could apply the torch my uncle drew his pistol and shot him very neatly through the head.
"Then all hell broke loose. The guard of honor brought their muskets into play and fired a volley, wounding several of the crowd and cutting branches from the trees behind my uncle. But when they drew their swords and rushed at him it was no laughing-matter, for there must have been two hundred of them, and those fellows are mean hands with the bare steel.
"'Troop advance! Draw sabers! Trot, gallop, charge!' When the natives heard my uncle's order they halted momentarily, and it would have been a lot more healthy if they'd turned and run, for before they could say 'knife' the Afghans were among 'em, and the fat was in the fire.
"'Yah Allah, Allah—Allah!" cried the subadar, and his men gave tongue to the pack-cry that men of the North Country have used when hunting lowland Hindoos since the days when Moslem missionaries first converted Afghanistan.
"There were only nineteen of them, and my uncle, while the Hindoos must have totaled half a thousand, but"—the pride an honest man takes in his trade shone in his eyes as Pemberton grinned at us—"you don't need more than twenty professional soldiers to scatter a mob of ​scum like that any more than you need even numbers when you set the beagles on a flock of rabbits!"
"À merveille!" de Grandin cried. "I knew that I should win my bet. Before you told us of your uncle's actions you recall I made a wager with myself? Bien. I bet me that he would not let that lot of monkey-faces commit murder. Très bon. Jules de Grandin, pay me what you owe!" Solemnly he extracted a dollar from his trouser pocket, passed it from his right hand to his left, and stowed it in his waistcoat. "And now—the curse?" he prompted.
"Quite so, the curse. They took Sarastai from the funeral pyre and carried her to safety at the station, but before they went a guru put a curse on all of them. None should die in bed, he swore. Moreover, none of them should ever take inheritance of land or goods till kinsman had shed kinsman's blood upon the land to be inherited.
"And the maledictions seemed to work," he ended gloomily. "My Uncle Albert married Sarastai shortly after he had rescued her, and though she was as beautiful as any English girl, he found that he was ostracized, and had to give up his commission. English folk were no more cordial when he brought his 'tar-brush' bride back home to Surrey. So he emigrated to the States, fought the full four years of your great Civil War, and founded what has since become one of the largest fortunes in New Jersey. Still, see the toll the thing has taken. Not one of Albert Pemberton's descendants has long enjoyed the estate which he built, and death by fire has come to all his heirs. Looks as if I'm next in line."
De Grandin looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Death by fire, Monsieur?"
"Quite. Foxcroft's been burned down eight times, and every time it burned one or more of Albert Pemberton's descendants died. The first fire killed old Albert and his wife; the second took his eldest son, and——"
"One would think rebuilding with materials impervious to fire would have occurred to them——"
'Ha!" Our visitor's short laugh was far from mirthful. "It did, sir. In 1900 Robert Pemberton rebuilt Foxcroft of stone, with cement walls and floors. He was sitting in his libr'y alone at night when the curse took him. No fire was burning on the hearth, for it was early summer, but somehow the hearth-rug got afire and the flames spread to the armchair where he dozed. They found him, burned almost to a crisp, next morning. Cyril Pemberton, from whom I take the estate, died in his motorcar three months ago. The thing caught fire just as he drove in the garage, and he fried like an eel before he could so much as turn the handle of the door.
"See here, Doctor de Grandin, you've just got to help me. When little Jim was born I resigned from the army so I could be with Avis and the kid. I bought a little farm in Hampshire and had settled down to be a country gentleman of sorts when Cyril died and news of this inheritance came. I sold the farm off at a loss to raise funds to come here. If I fail to meet the will's provisions and complete the twelve months' residence I'm ruined, utterly. You see the fix I'm in?"
"Completely," Jules de Grandin nodded. "Is there any other of your family who could claim this estate?"
"H'm. Yes, there is. I've a distant cousin named John Ritter who might be next in line. We were at Harrow together. Jolly rotten chap he was, too. Sent down from Oxford when they caught him cheatin' in a game o' cards, fired out o' the Indian Civil Administration for a lack of recognition of meum ​el tuum where other fellows' wives were concerned. Now, if Avis and I don't make good and live in this old rookery for a full twelve months, we forfeit our succession and the whole estate goes to this bounder. Not that he could make much use of it, but——"
"How so? Is he uninterested in money?"
"Oh, he's interested enough, but he's in jail."
"Hem? In durance?"
"Quite. In a Bombay jail, doin' a life stretch for killin' an outraged husband in a brawl. Jolly lucky he was that the jury didn't bring him in guilty of wilful murder, too."
"One sees. And how long have you resided at Foxcroft?"
"Just six weeks, sir, and some dam' queer things have taken place already."
"By example——"
"Our first night there the bedroom furniture caught fire. My wife and I were sound asleep, dog-tired from gettin' things in shape, and neither of us would have smelled the smoke until it was too late, but Laird, my Scottish terrier, was sleepin' by the bed, and he raised such a row he woke us up. Queer thing about it, too. There was no fire laid in the room, and neither Avis nor I'd been smokin', but the bedclothes caught fire, just the same, and we didn't have a second's spare time standin' clear. Two days later Laird died. Some stinkin' blighter poisoned him.
"The second week I was ridin' out from the village with some supplies when something whizzed past my head, almost cuttin' the tip o' my nose off. When I dismounted for a look around I found a knife-blade almost buried in a tree beside the road.
"We'd stocked the place with poultry, so that we could have fresh eggs, and every bloomin' chicken died. We can't keep a fowl in the hen-house overnight.
"Not only that; we've heard the damn'dest noises round the house—things crashing through the underbrush, hangings at the doors and windows, and the most infernal laughter from the woods at dead of night. It's got us nervy as a lot o' cats, sir.
"My wife and I both want to stick it, as much from principle as for the money, but Annie, Avis' old nurse, not to mention Appleby, my batman, are all for chuckin' the whole business. They're sure the curse is workin'."
De Grandin eyed him thoughtfully. "Your case has interest, Monsieur Pemberton," he said at last. "If it is convenient, Doctor Trowbridge and I will come to Foxcroft tomorrow afternoon."
We shook hands at the front door. "See you tomorrow afternoon," I promised as our caller turned away, "if anything——"
Whir-r-r-rr! Something flashing silver-gray beneath the street lamp's light came hurtling past my head, and a dull thud sounded as the missile struck the panel of the door.
"Ha, scélérat, coquin, assassin!" cried de Grandin, rushing out into the darkened street. "I have you!"
But he was mistaken. The sound of flying footsteps pounding down the street and vanishing around the corner was the sole clue to the mystery.
Breathing hard with rage as much as from exertion, he returned and wrenched the missile from my scarred front door. It was the blade of a cheap iron knife, such as may be bought at any ten-cent store, its point and edges ground to razor sharpness, its wooden helve removed and the blade-heel weighted with ten ounces of crude lead, roughly welded on.
"Ah-ha!" the little Frenchman ​murmured as he balanced the crude weapon in his palm. "Ah-ha-ha! One begins to understand. Tell me, Monsieur, was the other knife thrown at you like this one?"
"Yes, sir, just exactly!" gasped the Englishman.
"One sees, one comprehends; one understands. You may be out of India, my friend, but you are not away from it."
"What d'ye mean?"
"Me, I have seen the knife-blade weighted in this manner for assassination, but only in one place."
"Where?" asked Pemberton and I in chorus.
"In the interior of Burma. This weapon is as much like those used by dakaits of Upper Burma as one pea is like another in the pod. Tell me, Monsieur le Capitaine, did you ever come to grips with them in India?"
"No, sir," Pemberton replied. "All my service was in the South. I never got over into Burma."
"And you never had a quarrel with Indian priests or fakirs?"
"Positive. Fact is, I always rather liked the beggars and got on with 'em first rate."
"This adds the moutarde piquante to our dish. The coincidence of strange deaths you relate might be the workings of a fakir's curse; this knife is wholly physical, and very deadly. It would seem we are attacked on two sides, by super-physical assailants operating through the thought-waves of that old one's maledictions, and by some others who have reasons of their own for wishing you to be the center of attraction at a funeral. Good-night again, Monsieur, and a healthy journey home."
Foxcroft lay among the mountains almost at the Pennsylvania border, and after consulting road maps we voted to go there by train. It was necessary to change cars at a small way station, and when the local finally came we found ourselves unable to get seats together. Fortunately for me there was a vacant place beside a window, and after stowing my duffle in the rack I settled down to read an interesting but not too plausible article on the use of tetraiodophenol-phthalein in the diagnosis of diseases of the gall bladder.
Glancing up from my magazine once or twice while the baggage car was being filled, I noticed several young yokels, white and black, lounging on the station platform, and wondered idly why two young Negroes failed to join the laughing group. Instead, they seemed intent on something down the track, finally rose from the luggage truck on which they lounged and walked slowly toward the train. Beneath the window where I sat they paused a moment, and I noticed they were thin almost to emaciation, with skins of muddy brown rather than the chocolate of the Negro full-blood. Their hair, too, was straight as wire, and their eyes slate-gray rather than the usual brown of Africans.
"Odd-looking chaps," I mused as I resumed my reading.
Like most trains used in strictly local service, ours was composed of the railway's almost cast-off stock. Doors would not stay shut, windows would not open. Before we'd gone two miles the air within our coach was almost fetid. I rose and staggered up the swaying aisle to get a drink of water, only to find the tank was empty. After several unsuccessful efforts I succeeded in forcing back the door to the next coach and was inserting a cent in the cup-vending machine when a furious hissing forward told me someone had yanked the emergency cord. The train came to a bumping stop within its length, and I stumbled back to our coach to find de Grandin, a trainman and ​several passengers gathered in a knot about the seat I had just vacated.
"This is hideux, my friend!" the little Frenchman whispered. "Observe him, if you please."
I looked, and turned sick at the sight. The big countryman who had shared the seat with me was slumped down on the green-plush covered bench, his throat so deeply gashed the head sagged horribly upon one shoulder. A spate of blood from a severed jugular smeared clothing, seat and floor. The window beside which I'd sat was smashed to slivers, and bits of broken glass lay all around.
"How—what——" I stammered, and for answer Jules de Grandin pointed to the floor. Midway in the aisle lay something that gleamed dully, the counterpart of the lead-weighted blade which had been thrown at Pemberton as he left my house the night before.
"Good heavens!" I exclaimed; "if I hadn't gone for water——"
"Mais oui," de Grandin interrupted. "For the first time in a long and useful life I find that I can say a word for water as a beverage. Undoubtlessly that knife was meant for you, my friend."
"But why?"
"Are you not a friend of Monsieur Pemberton's?"
"Of course, but——"
"No buts, Friend Trowbridge. Consider. There were two of those assassins at your house last night; at least I judge so from the noise they made in flight. You stood directly in the light from the hall lamp when we bid our guest goodnight; they must have made a note of your appearance. Apparently we have been under surveillance since then, and it is highly probable they heard us say that we would visit him today. Voilà."
We descended from the car and walked along the track. "Regardez-vous!" he ordered as we reached the window where I had been seated.
Upon the car-side was the crude outline of a grinning skull drawn in white crayon.
"Good Lord—those brown men at the station!" I jerked out. "They must have drawn this—it seemed to me they were not Negroes——"
"But no. But yes!" he nodded in agreement. "Indubitably they were not Africans, but Burmans. And very bad ones, too. This skull is the official signet of the goddess Kali, patron deity of thags, and the cult of thaggee makes its headquarters in Burma. It is useless to attempt to apprehend the thrower of the knife. By now he has had time to run half-way to Burma. But it behooves us to be careful how we step. We know not where to look for it, or when the blow will fall, but deadly peril walks with us from this time on. I do not think this task which we have undertaken is a very healthy one, my friend."
Dressed in shabby Oxford bags and a khaki shooting-coat, Pemberton was waiting for us at the little railway station.
"Cheerio!" he greeted as we joined him. "All quiet on the jolly old Potomac, what?"
"Decidedly," de Grandin answered, then told him of the tragedy.
"By Jove!" our host exclaimed; "I'm shot if I don't feel like cutting the whole rotten business. Taking chances is all right for me, just part of the game, but to lug my wife into this hornets' nest——" he cranked the antiquated flivver standing by the platform, and we drove in moody silence through the groves of black-boughed, whispering pines that edged the roadway.
British genius for getting order out of chaos was evident as we arrived at Fox​croft. The straggling lawn was neatly trimmed, the raffish privet hedge was clipped, on the small grass plot were several wicker chairs with brightly colored sailcloth cushions. A line of lush-green weeping willows formed a background for the weather-mellowed, ivy-covered house with its many gables, mullioned windows and projecting bays. As we chugged and wheezed between the tall posts of the gateless entranceway a young woman quit a gayly-colored canvas hammock and walked toward us, waving cheerful greeting.
"Don't say anything about what happened on the train, please," begged Pemberton as he brought the coughing motor to a halt.
Though definitely brunette, Avis Pemberton was just as definitely British. She had wide-spaced, slightly slanting hazel eyes, straight, dark hair smoothly parted in the middle and drawn low across her ears, a broad, white forehead, a small, straight nose set above a full-lipped, rather wide and humorous mouth, and a small and pointed chin marked with the faint suspicion of a cleft. When she smiled, two dimples showed low in her cheeks, making a merrily incongruous combination with her exotic eyes. She was dressed in a twin sweater combination, a kilted skirt of Harris tweed, Shetland socks and a pair of Scotch grain brogues which, clumsy as they were, could not disguise the slimness of her feet. Every line of her was long, fine-cut, and British as a breath of lavender.
"Hullo-hullo, old thing," her husband greeted. "Anything untoward occur while the good old bread-winner was off?"
"Nothing, lord and master," she answered smilingly as she acknowledged his quick introductions, but her hazel eyes were wide and thoughtful as the little Frenchman raised her fingers to his lips at presentation, and I thought I saw her cast a frightened glance across her shoulder as her husband turned to help us drag our duffle from the car.
Dinner was a rite at Foxcroft, as dinner always is with Britons. A flat bouquet of roses graced the table, four tall candles flickered in tall silver standards; the soup was cool and underseasoned, the joint of mutton tough and underdone, the burgundy a little sour, the apple tart a sadly soggy thing which might have made a billy-goat have nightmares. But Pemberton looked spick and span in dinner clothes and his wife was a misty vision in rose lace. Appleby, the "batman" who served Pemberton as servant through three army terms and quit the service to accompany him in civil life, served the meal with faultless technique, and brought us something he called coffee when the meal was over and we congregated on the lawn beneath a spreading poplar tree. De Grandin's air of gloom grew deeper by the minute. When the servant tendered him a Sevres cup filled with the off-brown, faintly steaming mixture, I thought he would assault him. Instead, he managed something like a smile as he turned to our hostess.
"I have heard Monsieur Pemberton speak of your son, Madame; is he with you in America?" he asked.
"Oh, dear, no; he's with my father at Lerwick-on-Tyne. You see, we didn't know just what conditions here might be, and thought that he'd be safer at the vicarage."
"Your father is a churchman, then?"
"Very much so. It was not till after we had Little Jim that he managed to forgive me; even now I'm not quite sure that he regards me as a proper person to have custody of a small boy."
"Madame, I am confused. How is it you say——"
The girl laughed merrily. "Father's ​terribly low church and mid-Victorian. He classes foreigners and Anglo-Catholics, heathens, actors and Theosophists together. When I joined a troupe of unit dancers at the Palace he said public prayers for me; when I went out to the colonies to dance he disowned me as a vagabond. I met Big Jim while dancing in Bombay, and when I wrote I'd married him the only answer Father sent was a note congratulating me on having found an officer and gentleman to make an honest woman of me. I almost died when Little Jim was born, and the doctors said I could not stand the Indian climate, so Big Jim gave up his commission and we all went back to England. Father wouldn't see us for almost a year, but when we finally took our baby to him for baptism he capitulated utterly. He's really an old dear, when you penetrate his shell, but if he ever saw me do an Indian dance——"
"You'd have to start from scratch again, old thing," her husband chuckled as he lit his pipe.
"She used to sneak off every chance she got and take instructions from the native dancers. Got so perfect in the technique that if she'd been a little darker-skinned she could have passed in any temple as a deva-dasi—by Jove, I say!" He looked at her as though he saw her for the first time.
"What is it, Jim?"
"I say, you know, I never noticed it before, but there's a look about you like Sarastai. Fine and beautiful, and all that sort of——"
"Oh, Jim darling, stop it! Anyone would think—what's that?"
"'elp, 'elp, somebody—'elp!" the shriek came from the house behind us, each quavering syllable raw-edged with terror.
We rushed around the angle of the building, through the neatly planted kitchen garden and up the three low steps that reached the kitchen door.
"What is it—who is here?" cried de Grandin as we paused upon the big room's threshold.
In the corner farthest from the door crouched an aged woman, or perhaps I should have said a creature with a woman's body, but a face like nothing human. Seamed and lined with countless wrinkles, yellowed teeth bared in a senseless grin, she squatted by an open casement, elbows stiffly bent, hands hanging loosely, as a begging terrier might hold its paws, and mouthed and gibbered at us as we stared.
"Good God!" our host ejaculated. "Annie——"
"Annie! Oh, my poor dear Annie!" cried our hostess as she rushed across the lamplit kitchen and threw her arms around the human caricature crouching in the angle of the wall. "What's wrong with her?" she called across her shoulder as she hugged the mouthing crone against her bosom. "What's—O God, she's mad!"
The woman cringed away from the encircling arms. "You won't 'urt ole Annie, will 'ee?" she whimpered. "You won't let the black man get 'er? See"—she bared a skinny forearm—"'e 'urt me! 'e 'urt me with a shiny thing!"
De Grandin drew his breath in sharply as he examined the tiny wound which showed against the woman's wrinkled skin. "Up to the elbow, mes amis," he told us solemnly. "We have stepped in it up to the elbow. Me, I know this mark. But yes, I have seen him before. The devotees of Kali sometimes shoot a serum in a victim's arm with such results. I know not what this serum is—and probably no white man does—but the Indian police know it. Whom the gods destroy ​they first make mad' is no idle proverb with the thags of Burma. Non. There is no antidote for it. This poor one will be gone by morning. Meantime"—he put his hands beneath the woman's arms and raised her—"she might as well die in bed in Christian fashion. Will you lead us to her room, Friend Pemberton?"
De Grandin on one side, I on the other, we half led, half carried the chuckling, weeping crone along the passageway. A gust of wind swung the long casement open and I crossed to close it. From the night outside where thickly-growing rhododendron shut the moonlight out there came a laugh like that the fiends of hell might give at the arrival of a new consignment of lost souls. "Ha-ha!—ha-ha-ha!—ha-ha!"
"Sacré nom, I'll make you laugh upon the other side of your misshapen face!" de Grandin cried, dropping the old woman's arm and rushing to the window where he leant across the sill and poured the contents of his automatic pistol at the shadows whence the ghostly laughter came.
A crash of twigs and the flapping-back of displaced branches answered, and from the further distance came an echo of the wild, malignant cachinnation: "Ha-ha!—ha-ha-ha!—ha-ha!"
"And now, my friends, it is for us to formulate our strategy," de Grandin told us as we finished breakfast. "From the things which we have seen and heard I'd say we are beset by human and sub-human agencies; possibly working independently, more probably in concert. First of all I must go to the village to make some purchases and notify the coroner of your late lamented servant's death. I shall return, but"—he cast the phantom of a wink at me—"not for luncheon."
He was back a little after noon with a large, impressive bundle which clanked mysteriously each time he shifted it. When the papers were removed he showed a set of heavy padlocks, each complete with hasp and staple. Together we went round the big house, fixing locks at doors and windows, testing fastenings repeatedly; finally, when our task was done, repairing to the lawn where Appleby awaited us with a teacart-load of toasted muffins, strawberry preserve and steaming oolong.
"What was in that old beer bottle that you stood beside the bed?" I asked. "It looked like ordinary water."
"Water, yes," he answered with a grin, "but not ordinary, I assure you. I have the—what you call him?—hunch?—my friend. Tonight, perhaps tomorrow, we shall have use for what I brought out from the village."
"But what——"
"Hullo, there, ready for a spot of tea?" called Pemberton. "I'm famished, and the little woman's just about to haul her colors down."
"You are distrait, Madame?" de Grandin asked, dropping into a willow chair and casting a suspicious glance upon the tray of muffins Appleby extended.
"Indeed, I am. I've been feeling devils all day long." She smiled at him a little wearily above her teacup rim. "Something's seemed to boil up in me—it's the queerest thing, but I've had an urge to dance, an almost irresistible impulse to put an Indian costume on and do the Bramara—the Bee-dance. I know it's dreadful to feel so, with poor old Annie's body lying by the wall and this menace hanging over us, but something seems to urge me almost past resistance to put my costume on and dance——"
"Tiens, Madame, one comprehends," he smiled agreement. "I, too, have felt these so queer urges. Regardez, s'il vous plaît: We are beset by mental stress, we ​look about us for escape and there seems none; then suddenly from somewhere comes an urge unbidden. Perhaps it is to take a drink of tea; maybe we feel impelled to walk out in the rain; quite possibly the urge comes to sit down and strum at the piano, or, as in your case, to dance. Reason is a makeshift thing, at best. We have used it but a scant half-million years; our instincts reach back to the days when we crawled in primeval ooze. Trust instinct, Madame. Something boils within you, you declare? Très bien. It is your ego seeking liberation. Permit the boiling to continue; then, when the effete matter rises to the top, we skim him off"—with his hand he made a gesture as of scooping something up—"and throw him out. Voilà. We have got rid of that which worries us!"
"You think I should give way to it?"
"But certainly, of course; why not? This evening after dinner, if you still have the urge to dance, we shall delight to watch you and applaud your art."
Tea finished, Appleby, de Grandin and I set out on a reconnaissance. We walked across the grass plot to the copse of evergreens from which the weird laughter came the night before and searched the ground on hands and knees. Our search was fruitless, for pine needles lay so thick upon the ground that nothing like a footprint could be found.
Behind the house stood barn and hen-coops, the latter empty, Pemberton's archaic flivver and two saddle-horses tenanting the former. "It's queer the place should be so much run down, considering the family's wealth," I murmured as we neared the stable.
"The former howner was a most hexcentric man, sir," Appleby supplied. "'e never seemed to care about the plyce, and didn't live 'ere hany more than necess'ry. Hi've 'eard 'e honly used hit as a sort o'—my Gawd, wot's that?" He pointed to a little mound of earth beside the barn foundation.
De Grandin took a step or two in the direction of the little hillock, then paused, his small nose wrinkled in disgust. "It has the perfume of corruption," he remarked.
"W'y, hit's pore hold Laird, the master's dawg, sir," Appleby returned excitedly. "Who's done this thing to 'im? Hi dug 'is gryve meself, sir, w'en we found 'im dead, hand Hi took partic'lar pynes to myke hit deep hand strong, 'eaped a thumpin' boulder hon 'im, sir, Hi did, but now——"
"One sees, and smells," de Grandin interrupted. "He has been resurrected, but not restored to life."
The cockney leant above the violated grave to push the earth back in. "Picked clean 'e is, sir," he reported. "'e couldn't be no cleaner hif a stinkin' buzzard 'ad been hat 'im."
The little Frenchman tweaked the needle points of his wheat-blond mustache between a thoughtful thumb and forefinger. "It is possible—quite probable," he murmured. "They have imported every other sort of devilment; why not this one?"
"What?" I demanded. "Who's imported what——"
"Zut! We have work to do, my friend. Do you begin here at this spot and walk in ever-widening circles. Eventually, unless I miss my guess, you will come upon the tracks of a large dog. When you have found them, call me, if you please."
I followed his instructions while he and Appleby walked toward the house. In fifteen or twenty minutes I reached a patch of soft earth where pine needles did not lie too thick to cover tracks, and there, plain as the cannibals' mark on the sands of Crusoe's island, showed the paw-print of a giant dog.
​"Hullo, de Grand in!" I began. "I've found——"
A crashing in the undergrowth near by cut short my hail, and I drew the pistol which de Grandin had insisted that I carry as the thing or person neared me.
The rhododendron branches parted as a pair of groping hands thrust forth, and Appleby came staggering out. "Th' black 'un, sir," he gasped in a hoarse voice. "Hi passed 'im 'fore I knew it, sir, then seen 'is turban shinin' hin th' leaves. I myde to shoot 'im, but 'e stuck me with a forked stick. Hi'm a-dyin', sir, a-dy——"
He dropped upon the grass, the fatal word half uttered, made one or two convulsive efforts to regain his feet, then slumped down on his face.
"De Grandin!" I called frenziedly. "I say, de Grandin——"
He was beside me almost as I finished calling, and together we cut the poor chap's trouser leg away, disclosing two small parallel pin-pricks in the calf of his left leg. A little spot of ecchymosis, like the bruise left by a blow, was round the wounds, and beyond it showed an area of swelled and reddened skin, almost like a scald. When de Grandin made a small incision with his knife in the bruised flesh, then pressed each side the wounds, the blood oozed thickly, almost like a semi-hardened gelatin.
"C'est fini," he pronounced as he rose and brushed his knees. "He did not have a chance, that poor one. This settles it."
"What settles what?"
"This, parbleu! If we needed further proof that we are menaced by a band of desperate dakaits we have it now. It is the mark and sign-manual of the criminal tribes of Burma. The man is dead of cobra venom—but these wounds were not made by a snake's fangs."
"But good heavens, man, if this keeps up there won't be one of us to tell the tale!" cried Pemberton as we completed ministering to Appleby's remains. "Twice they almost got me with their knives; they almost murdered Doctor Trowbridge; they've done for Annie and poor Appleby——"
"Exactement," de Grandin nodded. "But this will not keep up. Tonight, this very evening, we shall call their promontory—non, I mean their bluff. The co-incidences of your kinsmen's deaths by fire, those might have been attributed to Hindoo curses; myself, I think they are; but these deliberate murders and attempts at murder are purely human doings. Your cousin, Monsieur Ritter——"
"Not an earthly!" Pemberton smiled grimly. "Did you ever see a British Indian jail? Not quite as easy to walk out of 'em as it is from an American prison——"
"Notwithstanding which, Monsieur"—the little Frenchman smiled sarcastically—"this Monsieur Ritter is at large, and probably within a gun-shot of us now. When I was in the village this forenoon I cabled the police at Bombay. The answer came within three hours:
John Ritter, serving a life term, escaped four months ago. His whereabouts unknown.
"You see? His jail-break almost coincided with the passing of your kinsman in America. He knew about the family curse, undoubtlessly, and determined to make profit by it. But he was practical, that one. Mais oui. He did not intend to wait the working of a curse which might be real or only fanciful. Not he, by blue! He bought the service of a crew of Burman cutthroats, and they came with all their bag of villain's tricks—their knives, their subtle poisons, even an hyena! That it was your servants and not you who met their deaths is not ​attributable to any kindness on his part, but merely to good fortune. Your turns will come, unless——"
"Unless we hook it while we have the chance!"
"Unless you do exactly as I say," de Grandin finished without notice of the interruption. "In five minutes it will be ten o'clock. I suggest we seek our rooms, but not to sleep. You, Monsieur, and you, Madame, will see that both your doors and windows are securely fastened. Meantime, Doctor Trowbridge and I will repair to our chamber and—eh bien, I think we shall see things!"
Despite de Grandin's admonition, I fell fast asleep. How long I'd slept I do not know, nor do I recall what wakened me. There was no perceptible sound, but suddenly I was sitting bolt-upright, staring fascinated at our window's shadowed oblong. "Lucky thing we put those locks on," I reassured myself; "almost anything might——"
The words died on my tongue, and a prickling sensation traced my spine. What it was I did not know, but every sense seemed warning me of dreadful danger.
"De Grandin!" I whispered hoarsely. "De Grandin——"
I reached across the bed to waken him. My hand encountered nothing but the blanket. I was in that tomb-black room with nothing but my fears for company.
Slowly, scarcely faster than the hand that marks the minutes on the clock, the window-sash swung back. The heavy lock we'd stapled on was gone or broken. I heard the creak of rusty hinges, caught the faint rasp of a bar against the outer sill, and my breath went hot and sulfurous in my throat as a shadow scarcely darker than the outside night obscured the casement.
It was like some giant dog—a mastiff or great Dane—but taller, heavier, with a mane of unkempt hair about its neck. Pointed ears cocked forward, great eyes gleaming palely phosphorescent, it pressed against the slowly yielding window-frame. And now I caught the silhouette of its hog-snouted head against the window, saw its parted, sneering lips, smelled the retching stench that emanated from it, and went sick with horror. The thing was a hyena, a grave-robber, offal-cater, most loathsome of all animals.
Slowly, inch by cautious inch, it crept into the room, fangs bared in a snarl that held the horrible suggestion of a sneer. "Help, de Grandin—help!" I shrieked, leaping from the bed and dragging tangled blankets with me as a shield.
The hyena sprang. With a cry that was half growl, half obscene parody of a human chuckle, it launched itself through the intervening gloom, and next instant I was smothered underneath its weight as it worried savagely at the protecting blanket.
"Sa-ha, Monsieur Hyène, you seek a meal? Take this!" Close above me Jules de Grandin swung a heavy kukri knife as though it were a headsman's ax, striking through the wiry mane, driving deep into the brute's thick neck, almost decapitating it.
"Get up, my friend; arise," he ordered as he hauled me from beneath the bed-clothes, already soaking with the foul beast's blood. "Me, I have squatted none too patiently behind the bed, waiting for the advent of that one. Morbleu, I thought that he would never come!"
"How'd you know about it——" I began, but he cut me short with a soft chuckle.
"The laughter in the bush that night, the small dog's ravished grave, finally the tracks you found today. They made the case complete. I made elaborate show of opening our window, and they must ​have found the others fastened; so they determined to send their pet before them to prepare the way. He was savage, that one, but so am I, by blue! Come, let us tell our host and hostess of our visitor."
The next day was a busy one. Sheriff's deputies and coroner's assistants came in almost ceaseless streams, questioning endlessly, making notes of everything, surveying the thicket where Appleby was killed and the kitchen where old Annie met her fate. At last the dreary routine ended, the mortician took away the bodies, and the Pembertons faced us solemn-eyed across the dinner table.
"I'm for chucking the whole rotten business," our host declared. "They've got two of us——"
"And we have one of them," supplied de Grandin. "Anon we shall have——"
"We're cutting out of here tomorrow," broke in Pemberton. "I'll go to selling cotton in the city, managing estates or clerking in a shop before I'll subject Avis to this peril one more day."
"C'est enfantillage!" declared de Grandin. "When success is almost in your hand you would retreat? Fi donc, Monsieur!"
"Fi donc or otherwise, we're going in the morning," Pemberton replied determinedly.
"Very well, let it be as you desire. Meantime, have you still the urge to dance, Madame?"
Avis Pemberton glanced up from her teacup with something like a guilty look. "More than ever," she returned so low that we could scarcely catch her words.
"Trés bien. Since this will be our last night in the house, permit that we enjoy your artistry."
Her preparations were made quickly. We cleared a space in the big drawing-room, rolling back the rugs to bare the polished umber tiles of which the floor was made. Upon a chair she set a small hand-gramophone, needle ready poised, then hurried to her room to don her costume.
"Ecoutez, s'il vous plaît," de Grandin begged, tiptoeing from the drawing-room, returning in a moment with the water-filled beer bottle which he had brought from the village, the kukri knife with which he killed the hyena, and a pair of automatic pistols. One of these he pressed on me, the other on our host. "Have watchfulness, my friends," he bade in a low whisper. "When the music for the dance commences it is likely to attract an uninvited audience. Should anyone appear at either window, I beg you to shoot first and make inquiries afterward."
"Hadn't we better close the blinds?" I asked. "Because if we're likely to be watched——"
"Mais non," he negatived. "See, there is no light here save that the central lamp casts down, and that will shine directly on Madame. We shall be in shadow, but anyone who seeks to peer in through the window will be visible against the moonlight. You comprehend?"
"I'd like to have a final go at 'em," our host replied. "Even if I got only one, it'd help to even things for Appleby and Annie."
"I quite agree," de Grandin nodded. "Now—s-s-sh; silence. Madame comes!"
The chiming clink of ankle bells announced her advent, and as she crossed the threshold with a slow, sensuous walk, hips rolling, feet flat to floor, one set directly before the other, I leant forward in amazement. Never had I thought that change of costume could so change a personality. Yet there it was. In tweeds and Shetlands Avis Pemberton was British as a sunrise over Surrey, or a Christmas pageant Columbine; this sleekly ​black-haired figure rippling past us with the grace of softly flowing water was a daughter of the gods, a temple deva-dasi, the mystery and allure and unfathomable riddle of the East incarnate. Her bodice was of saffron silk, sheer as net. Cut with short shoulder-sleeves and rounded neck it terminated just below her small, firm breasts and was edged with imitation emeralds and small opals which kindled into witch-fires in the lamplight's glow. From breast to waist her slim, firm form was bare, slender as an adolescent boy's, yet full enough to keep her ribs from showing in white lines against the creamy skin. A smalt-blue cincture had been tightly bound about her slender waist, emphasizing gently swelling hips and supporting a full, many-pleated skirt of cinnabar-red silken gauze. Across her smoothly parted blue-black hair was thrown a sari of deep blue with silver edging, falling down across one shoulder and caught coquettishly within the curve of a bent elbow. Silver bracelets hung with little hawk-bells bound her wrists; heavy bands of hammered silver with a fringe of silver tassels that flowed rippling to the floor and almost hid her feet were ringed about each ankle. Between her startlingly black brows there burned the bright vermilion of a caste mark.
Pemberton pressed the lever of the gramophone and a flood of liquid music flowed into the room. Deep, plaintive chords came from the guitar, the viols wept and crooned by turns, and the drums beat out an amatory rhythm. She paused a moment in the swing-lamp's golden disk of light, feet close together, knees straight, arms raised above her head, wrists interlaced, the right hand facing left, the left turned to the right, and each pressed to the other, palm to palm and finger against finger. The music quickened and she moved her feet in a swift, shuffling step, setting ankle bells a-chime, swaying like a palm tree in the rising breeze. She took the folds of her full skirt between joined thumbs and forefingers, daintily, as one might take a pinch of snuff, spread the gleaming, many-pleated tissue out fanwise, and advanced with a slow, gliding step. Her head bent sidewise, now toward this sleek shoulder, now toward that; then slowly it sank back, her long eyes almost closed, like those of one who falls into a swoon of unsupportable delight; her red lips parted, fell apart as though they had gone flaccid with satiety after ecstasy. Then she dropped forward in a deep salaam, head bent submissively, both hands upraised with thumbs and forefingers together.
I was about to beat my hands together in applause when de Grandin's grip upon my elbow halted me. "Les flammes, mon ami, regardez-vous—les flammes!" he whispered.
Across the vitric umber tiles that made the floor, a line of flame was rising, flickering and dancing, wavering, flaunting, advancing steadily, and I could smell the spicy-sweet aroma of burnt sandalwood. "It is the flame from that old, cheated funeral pyre," he breathed. "The vengeance-flame that burned the old one to a crisp while he lay in a fireproof room; the flame that set this house afire eight times; the flame of evil genius that pursues this family. See how easily I conquer it!"
Back and forth across the line of fire he hurried, throwing water on the fluttering, dazzling flares till all were dead and cold.
"The window, mes amis, look to the window! Shoot if you see faces!" he ordered as he fought the dying fire.
Both Pemberton and I looked up as he called out, and I felt a sudden tightening in my throat as my eyes came level with the window. Framed in the panes were three faces, two malignant, brown and scowling, one a sun-burned white, but no less savage. The dark men I remembered instantly. It was they who stood beside the train the day the knife was thrown to kill the man who shared the seat with me. But the frowning, cursing white man was a stranger.
Even as I looked I saw one of the brown men draw his hand back and caught the glimmer of a poised knife-blade. I raised my pistol and squeezed hard upon the trigger, but the mechanism jammed, and I realized the knife-man had me at his mercy.
But Pemberton' s small weapon answered to his pressure, and the stream of bullets crashed against the glass, sent it shattering in fragments, and bored straight through the scowling countenances, making little sharp-edged pits in them like those a stream of sprinkled water makes when turned upon damp clay, except that where these little pock-marks showed there spread a smear of crimson.
There was something almost comic in the look of pained surprize the faces showed as the storm of bullets swept across them. Almost, it seemed to me, they voiced a protest at an unexpected trick; as though they'd come to witness an amusing spectacle, only to discover that the joke was turned on them, and they had no relish for the role of victim.
Yes, it's Ritter, all right," Pemberton pronounced as we turned the bodies over in the light of an electric torch. "Of course, he was a filthy rotter and all that, but—hang it all, it's tough to know you have a kinsman's blood upon your hands, even if——"
"Parbleu; tu parles, mon ami!—you've said it!" cried de Grandin in delight.
"Why——"
"'Why' be doubled-damned and stewed in Satan's sauce-pan; I tell you it is so!" He swung his arm in an all-comprehensive gesture. "We have at once disposed of everything, my friend. The human villains who would murder you and Madame Pemberton, the working of the ancient curse pronounced so many years ago—all are eliminated!"
He leant above the body of a prostrate Indian, searching through his jacket with careful fingers. "Ah-ha, behold him!" he commanded. "Here is the thing that killed your so unfortunate retainer." He held a length of bamboo stick fitted at the end with something like a tuning-fork to which a rubber bulb was fixed. "Careful!" he warned as I reached out to touch it. "The merest prick of those sharp points is certain death."
Pressing the queer instrument against the wall, he pointed to twin spots of viscid, yellow liquid sticking to the stones. "Cobric acid—concentrated essence of the cobra's venom," he explained. "One drives these points into his victim's body—the sharp steel penetrates through clothing where a snake's fangs might not pierce—and pouf! enough snake-poison goes into the poor bne's veins to cause death in three minutes. Tiens, it is a clever little piece of devilment, n'est-ce-pas?"
"D'ye think we got 'em all?" asked Pemberton.
"Indubitably. Had there been more, they would have been here. Consider: First they set their foul beast on us, believing he will kill some one of us, at least. He does not return, and they are puzzled. Could it be that we disposed of him? They do not know, but they are worried. Anon they hear the strains of Indian music in the house. This are not the way things had been planned by them. There should be no celebration here. They wonder more, and come to see what happens. They observe Madame concluding her so lovely dance; they also see us all unharmed, and are about to use their knives when you forestall them with your pistol."
"But there were two Burmese at the railway station the other day, yet someone threw the knife intended to kill Doctor Trowbridge," objected Pemberton. "That would indicate a third one in reserve——"
De Grandin touched the white man's sprawling body with the tip of his small shoe. "There was, my friend, and this is he," he answered shortly. "Your charming cousin, Monsieur Ritter. It was he who hid beside the tracks and hurled the knife when he beheld the mark of Kali. The Burmans knew friend Trowbridge; had it been one of them who lay in ambush he would not have wasted knife or energy in killing the wrong man, but Ritter had no other guide than the skull chalked on the car. Tenez, he threw the knife that killed the poor young man to death."
"How do you account for the fire that broke out just as Mrs. Pemberton had finished dancing?" I asked.
"There is no scientific explanation for it, at least no explanation known to modern chemistry or physics. We must seek deeper—farther—for its reason. Those Hindoo gurus, they know things. They can cast a rope into the air and make it stand so rigidly that one may climb it. They take a little, tiny seed and place it in the earth, and there, before your doubting eyes, it grows and puts forth leaves and flowers. Me, I have seen them take a piece of ordinary wood—my walking-stick, parbleu!—make passes ​over it, and make it burst in flames. Now, if their ordinary showmen can do things like that, how much more able are their true adepts to bring forth fire at will, or on the happening of specific things? The rescue of the Hindoo girl Sarastai left the funeral pyre without a victim, and so the old priests placed a curse on her and hers, decreeing fire should take its toll of all her husband's family till kinsman had shed kinsman's blood. That was the fire that followed every generation of the Pembertons. This fire burned this house again, and yet again, burned one when he lay in safety in a fireproof room—even set a motorcar afire to kill the late proprietor of the estate.
"Tonight conditions were ideal. The sacred music of the temple sounded from the gramaphone, Madame Avis danced in Hindoo costume; danced an old, old dance, perhaps the very dance Sarastai used to dance. Our thoughts were tuned to India—indeed, there is no doubt the urge which prompted Madame Pemberton to dance a Hindoo dance in Hindoo costume came directly from the thought-waves set in motion by those old priests in the days of long ago. The very stones of this old house are saturated in malignant thought-waves—thoughts of vengeance—and Madame Avis was caught up in them and forced along the pathway toward destruction. All was prepared, conditions were ideal, the victims waited ready for the flames. Only one thing that old priest forgot to foresee."
"Jolly interestin'," murmured Pemberton. "What was it he forgot?"
"That you would ask advice of Jules de Grandin!" my little friend grinned shamelessly. "There it was he missed his trick. I am very clever. I looked the situation over and saw we were confronted by both physical and ghostly menaces. For the men we have the sword, the pistol and the fist. For the ghostly enemy we need a subtler weapon.
"Accordingly, when I go to the village to obtain the locks for doors and windows, I also stop to visit with the cure of the little church. Fortunately, he is Irish, and I do not have to waste a day convincing him. 'Mon pere,' I say, 'we are confronted with the devil of a situation. A crew of monkey-faces who give worship to the wicked ones of India are menacing a Christian family. They will undoubtlessly attempt to burn them up with fire—not ordinary fire, but fire they make by wicked, sinful, heathen incantations. Now, for ordinary fire we use the ordinary water; what should we use to put out fire that comes from hell, or hell's assistants?'
"That old priest smiles at me. He is no fool. 'My son,' he say, 'long, long ago the fathers of the Church discovered that it is hot work to fight the devil with fire. Therefore they invent holy water. How much of it will you be needing for your work?'
"He was a good and hospitable man, that priest. He had no whisky in the house, but he had beer. So we made a lunch of beer and cheese and biscuit, and when we finish, we clean a bottle out and fill him to the neck with eau bénite.
"'Bonjour, mon fils,' the old priest say, 'and when you win your fight with Satan's henchmen, remember that our church could use a new baptismal font.' You will remember that, I trust, Monsieur, when you get your inheritance?"
"By George, I'll build a new church for him, if he wants it!" promised Pemberton.
The locomotive gave a long-drawn, mournful wail as the train drew near the station and the smiling porter hurried through the car collecting luggage. ​"Well, we're home again," I remarked as the train slid to a stop.
"Yes, grâce à Dieu, we have escaped," de Grandin answered piously.
"It did look pretty bad at times," I nodded. "Especially when that fellow at the window poised his knife, and those devilish flames began to flicker——"
"Ah bah," he interrupted scornfully. "Those things? Pouf, they were not to be considered! I speak of something far more hideous we have escaped. That dreadful English cooking, that cuisine of the savage. That roast of mutton, that hell-brew they call coffee, that abominable apple tart!
"Come, let us take the fastest cab and hasten home. There a decent drink awaits us, and tonight in hell's despite I shall complete construction of the perfect bouillabaisse!"