Page:Weird Tales Volume 09 Issue 02 (1927-02).djvu/16
stained stake to the limbo of never-to-be-solved mysteries. But
2
"Good mornin', gentlemen," Detective Sergeant Costello greeted as he followed Nora, my household factotum, into the breakfast room, "it's sorry I am to be disturbin' your meal, but there's a little case puzzlin' th' department that I'd like to talk over with Dr. de Grandin, if you don't mind."
He looked expectantly at the little Frenchman as he finished speaking, his lips parted to launch upon a detailed description of the case.
"Parbleu," de Grandin laughed, "it is fortunate for me that I have completed my breakfast, cher Sergent, for a riddle of crime detection is to me like a red rag to a bullfrog—I must needs snap at it, whether I have been fed or no. Speak on, my friend, I beseech you; I am like Balaam's ass, all ears."
The big Irishman seated himself on the extreme edge of one of my Heppelwhite chairs and gazed deprecatingly at the derby hat he held firmly between his knees. "It's like this," he began. "'Tis one o' them mysterious disappearance cases, gentlemen, an' whilst I'm thinkin' th' young lady knows exactly where she's at an' why she's there, I hate to tell her folks about it.
"All th' high-hat folks ain't like you two gentlemen, askin' your pardon, sors—they mostly seems to think that a harness bull's unyform is sumpin' like a livery—like a shofur's or a footman's or sumpin', an' that a plain-clothes man is just a sort o' inferior servant. They don't give th' police credit for no brains, y'see, an' when one o' their darters gits giddy an' runs off th' reservation, if we tells 'em th' gurrl's run away of her own free will an' accord they say We're a lot o' lazy, good-fer-nothin' bums who are tryin' to dodge our laygitimate jooties be castin' mud on th' young ladies' char-ac-ters, d'ye see? So, when this Miss Esther Norman disappears in broad daylight—leastwise, in th' twilight—o' th' day before her dance, we suspects right away that th' gurrl's gone her own ways into th' best o' intentions, y'see; but we dasn't tell her folks as much, or they'll be hollerin' to th' commissioner fer to git a bran' new set o' detectives down, to headquarters, so they will.
"Now, mind ye, I'm not sayin' th' young lady mightn't o' been kidnaped, y'understand, gentlemen, but I do be sayin' 'tis most unlikely. I've been on th' force, man an’ boy, in unyform and in plain clothes fer th' last twenty-five years, an' th' number of laygitimate kidnapin's o' young women over ten years of age I've seen can be counted on th' little finger o' me left hand, an' I ain't got none there, at all, at all."
He held the member up for our inspection, revealing the fact that the little finger had been amputated close to the knuckle.
De Grandin, elbows on the table, pointed chin cupped in his hands, was puffing furiously at a vile-smelling French cigarette, alternately sucking down great drafts of its acrid smoke and expelling clouds of fumes in double jets from his narrow, aristocratic nostrils.
"What is it you say?" he demanded, removing the cigarette from his lips. "Is it the so lovely Mademoiselle Esther, daughter of that kind Madame Tuscarora Avenue Norman, who is missing?"
"Yes, sor," Costello answered, "'tis th' same young lady's flew the coop, accordin' to my way o' thinkin'."
"Mordieu!" the Frenchman gave the ends of his blond mustache a savage twist; "you intrigue me, my