Weird Tales volume 24 number 03 (5 page)

As I picked up the telephone he and Dennis started on a room-by-room inspection of the house.

"Find anything?" I asked as I hung up the 'phone after notifying headquarters.

"Cordieu, I should damn say yes!" de Grandin answered as I joined them in the upstairs living-room. "Look yonder, if you please, my friend."

The room was obviously the intimate apartment of the house. Electric lamps under painted shades were placed beside the big leather-upholstered chairs, ivory-enameled bookshelves lined the walls to a height of four feet or so, upon their

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tops was a litter of gay, unconsidered little trifles—cinnabar cigarette boxes, bits of hammered brass. Old china, blue and red and purple, glowed mellowly in cabinets of mahogany, its colors catching up and accentuating the muted blues and reds of an antique Hamadan carpet. A Paisley shawl was draped scarfwise across the baby grand piano in the corner.

Directly opposite the door a carven crucifix was standing on the bookcase top. It was an exquisite bit of Italian work, the cross of ebony, the corpus of old ivory, and so perfectly executed that, though it was a scant four inches high, one could note the tense, tortured muscles, the straining throat which overfilled with groans of agony, the brow all knotted and bedewed with the cold sweat of torment. Upon the statue's thorn-crowned head, where it made a bright, iridescent halo, was a band of gem-encrusted platinum, a woman's diamond-studded wedding ring.

"Helas, it is love's crucifixion!" whispered Jules de Grandin.

Three months went by, and though we kept the search up unremittingly, no trace of Arabella could be found. Dennis Tantavul installed a full-time, highly trained and recommended nurse in his desolate house, and spent his time haunting police stations and newspaper offices. He aged a decade in the ninety days since Arabella left; his shoulders stooped, his footsteps lagged, and a look of never-ending misery dwelt v/ithin his eyes as he trod his daily Via Dolorosa, a prematurely old and broken man.

"It's the most uncanny thing I ever saw," I said to Jules de Grandin as we walked through Forty-second Street toward the West Shore Ferry. We had gone over to New York for some surgical supplies, and I do not drive my car in the

metropolis. Truck chauffeurs there are far too careless and repair bills for wrecked mudguards far too high. "How a full-grown woman could evaporate that way is something I can't understand," I added as we stepped briskly through the bracing autumn air. "If it had happened twenty years ago there might be some excuse for it, but today, with our radio police-call systems and all the other modern "

"S-s-st," his sibilated admonition cut me short. "That woman there, my friend, observe her, if you please." He nodded toward a female figure twenty feet ahead of us.

I looked, and wondered at his sudden interest in the draggled hussy.

She was dressed in tawdry finery much the worse for wear. Sleazy silken skirt was much too tight, cheap fur jaquette far too short and snug; high heels of her satin slippers shockingly run over, makeup plastered on her cheeks and lips and eyes, and her short black hair fairly bristled with untidiness beneath the rim of her abbreviated hat. Written unmistakably upon her was the nature of her calling, the oldest and least honorable profession known to womanhood.

"Well?" I answered tartly. "What possible interest can you have in a "

"Do not walk so fast," he whispered as his fingers closed upon my arm, "and do not raise your voice. I would that we should follow her, but I do not wish that she should know."

The neighborhood was far from savory, and I felt uncommonly conspicuous as we turned from Forty-second Street into Eleventh Avenue in the wake of the young strumpet, followed her provocatively swaying hips down two malodorous blocks, finally paused as she went in the doorv/ay of a filthy, unkempt "rooming-house,"

WEIRD TALES

With de Grandin in the lead, stepping softly as a pair of cats, we trailed the woman through the dimly lighted, barren hall and up a flight of shadowy, un-carpeted stairs. We climbed two further flights, the last one letting into a sort of little oblong foyer bounded on one end by the stair-well, on the farther extremity by a barred and very dirty window, and on each side by two sets of sagging, paint-blistered doors. On each of these was pinned a card, handwritten with the many flourishes dear to the chirography of the professional card-writer who still does business in the poorer quarters of our great cities. The air was heavy with the odor of cheap whisky, stale bacon and fried onions.

We made a hasty circuit of the hall, studying the cardboard labels. On the farthest door the notice read Miss Sie-glinde.

"Mon Dieu," exclaimed de Grandin, "le mot propre!"

"Eh?" I answered, puzzled.

"Sieglinde, do you not recall her?"

"No-o, I can not say I do. The only Sieglinde I remember is the character in Wagner's Die Walkure who unwittingly became her brother's mistress and "

"Precisement. Let us enter, if you please." Without pausing to knock, he turned the handle of the door and stepped across the threshold of the squalid room.

The woman sat upon the bed, her hat pushed backward from her brow, a cracked and dirty tumbler in one hand, a whisky bottle poised above it. "Get out!" she ordered thickly. "Get out o' here—I

don't want " A gasp cut short her

utterance, and she turned her head away. Then:

"Get fell out o' here, you lousy rummies!" she half screamed. "Who d'ye think you are, breakin' into a lady's room like this? Get out, or "

De Grandin eyed her steadily, and, as her strident order wavered:

"Madame Arabella, we have come to take you home," he told her softly.

"Good Lord, man, you're crazy!" I exclaimed. "Arabella? This "

"Precisely, my good friend; this is Madame Arabella Tantavul, whom we have sought these many months in vain."

Crossing the room in two quick strides he seized the cringing woman by the shoulders and turned her face up to the window. I looked, and felt a sudden swift attack of nausea.

He was right. Thin to emaciation, her face already lined with the deep-bitten scars of dissipation, the woman on the bed was Arabella Tantavul, though the shocking change wrought in her features and the black dye in her hair had disguised her so I never would have recognized her.

"We have come to take you home, ma pauvre," he repeated. "Your husband "

"My husband?" Her reply was half a scream. "Oh, dear God, as if I had a husband "

"And a little one who needs you," the Frenchman interrupted. "You can not leave him so, Madame "

"I can't? Ah, that's where you're mistaken, Doctor. I can never see him again, in this world or the next. Please, please, go away and forget you found me, or I'll have to drown myself—I've tried it twice already, but my courage failed. But if you try to take me back, or tell Dennis that you saw me "

"Tell me, Madame," he broke in, "was not your flight caused by a visitation from the dead?"

H

er faded brown eyes widened. "How did you know?" she asked. "Tiens, one may make surmises," he

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replied. "Will you not tell us just what happened? I think there is a way out of your difficulties."

"There isn't any way," she muttered dully, and her head sank listlessly upon her chest. "He planned his work too well; all that's left for me is death—and damnation afterward."

"But if there were a way—if I could show it to you?"

"Can you repeal the laws of God?"

"I am a very clever person; perhaps I can discover an evasion, if not an absolute repeal. Now, tell me: how and when did Monsieur your late but not lamented uncle, come to you?"

"The night before — before I went away. I woke up about midnight, thinking I heard a cry from Dennie's nursery. I rose to go to him, and when I reached the room where he was sleeping I saw my uncle's face glaring at me through the window. It seemed to be illuminated by a sort of inward, hellish light, for it stood out against the darkness like a jack-o'-lantern, and it smiled an awful smile at me. 'Arabella,' it said, and I could see its thin, dead lips writhe back as though its teeth were burning-hot, 'I've come to tell you that your marriage is a mockery and a lie. The man you married is your brother, and the child you bore is doubly illegitimate. You can't continue living with them, Arabella. That would be an even greater sin than the one you have committed. You must leave them; leave them right away, or'—once more his lips crept back until his teeth were bare—"or I shall come to visit you each night, and when the baby has grown old enough to understand, I'll tell him of his parents' sin. Take your choice, my dear. Leave them and let me go back to my grave in peace, or stay and see me every night, and know that I will tell your son when he is old enough to understand. And if I do it

he'll loathe and hate you for the things you are, and curse the day you bore him.'

" And you'll promise never to come near Dennis or the baby if I go?' I asked.

"He promised, and I staggered back to bed, where I fell fainting.

"Next morning when I wakened I was sure that it had been a dream, but when I looked at Dennis and my own reflection in the glass, I knew it was no dream, but a dreadful visitation from the dead.

"It was then that I went mad. I tried to kill my baby, and when Dennis stopped me I watched my chance to run away, came over to New York and took to this." She looked significantly around the miserably furnished room. "I knew they'd never look for Arabella Tantavul among the sisters of the pavement; I was safer from pursuit right here than if I'd been in Europe or in China."

"But Madame" —de Grandin's voice was vibrant with shocked reproof—"that which you saw was nothing but a dream; a most unpleasant dream, I grant, but still a dream. Look in my eyes, Madame!"

She raised her eyes to his, and I saw his pupils widen, as a cat's do in the dark, saw a line of white outline the cornea, and, responsive to his piercing gaze, beheld her brown eyes set in a fixed stare, first as though in fright, then with a glaze - almost like that of death.

"Attend me, Madame Arabella," he commanded softly. "You are tired — grand Dieu, how tired you are! You have suffered greatly, but you are about to rest. Your memory of that night is gone; so is all memory of all things which have occurred since. You will move and eat and sleep as you are bidden, but of what takes place until I bid you wake you will retain no recollection. Do you hear me, Madame Arabella?"

"I hear," she answered softly, in a small, tired voice.

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"Bien. Lie down, my little poor one. Lie down, rest and dream; dream happy dreams of love. Sleep, rest; dream and forget.

"Will you be good enough to 'phone to Doctor Wyckoff?" he asked me. "We shall place her in his sanitarium, wash this sacre dye out of her hair and nurse her back to health; then, when all is ready, we can bear her home and have her take up life—and love—where she left off. None shall be the wiser. This chapter in her life is closed and sealed for ever.

"Each day I'll call upon her and renew hypnotic treatments that she may simulate the mild but curable mental case which we shall tell the good Wyckoff she is. When finally I release her from hypnosis, her mind will be entirely cleared of that bad dream which nearly wrecked her happiness."

Arabella TANTAVUL lay upon the - sofa in her charming upstairs living-room, an orchid negligee trimmed in white marabou about her slender shoulders, an eiderdown rug tucked around her feet and knees. Her wedding ring was once more on her finger. Pale with a pallor not to be disguised by the most skilfully applied cosmetics, and with deep violet circles underneath her amber eyes, she lay back listlessly, drinking in the cheerful warmth which emanated from the fire of apple-logs that snapped and crackled on the hearth. Two months of rest in Doctor Wyckoff's sanitarium had erased the marks of dissipation from her face; even as the skilled ministrations of beauticians had restored the yellow luster to her pale-gold hair, but the list-lessness which followed her complete breakdown was still upon her like the weakness from a fever.

"I can't remember anything about my illness, Doctor Trowbridge," she told me with a weary little smile, "but vaguely I connect it with some dreadful dream I had. And"—she wrinkled her smooth forehead in an effort at remembrance— "I think I had a rather dreadful dream last night, but "

"Ah-ha?" de Grandin leant abruptly forward in his chair, his little mustache twitching like the whiskers of an irritated tom-cat. "Whatwas it thatyou dreamed?"

"I—don't—know," she answered slowly. "Odd, isn't it, how you can remember that a dream was so unpleasant, but can't recall its details? Somehow, I connect Uncle Warburg with it, but "

"Parbleu, your uncle? Again? Ah bah, he makes me to be so mad, that one!"

"Tt is time we went, my friend," de i Grandin told me as the tall clock in the hall beat out its tenth deliberate stroke; "we have important duties to perform."

"For goodness' sake," I protested, "where are you going at this time of night?"

"Where but to Monsieur Tantavul's?" he answered with a smile that had small humor in it. "I am expectant of a visitor tonight and—we must be ready for him."

When he was in a mood like this I knew that questioning would be a waste of breath; accordingly I drove him to the Tantavuls' in silence, knowing he would have an explanation when he deemed the time had come.

"Is Madame Arabella sleeping?" he asked as Dennis met us in the hall.

"Yes, like a baby," answered the young husband. "I've been sitting by her all evening, and I don't believe she's even turned in bed."

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"And did you keep the window closed, as I requested?"

"Yes, sir; closed and latched."

"Bien. Await us here, mon brave; we shall rejoin you presently."

He led the way to Arabella's bedroom, removed the wrappings from a bulky parcel, and displayed the object thus disclosed with the air of a magician about to do a trick. "You see him?" he demanded proudly. "Is he not a beauty?"