Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 5 (1926-05).djvu/36

 you can give me a lift in this one, too. Sure, it’s like a bughouse in there." He jerked an indicative thumb over his shoulder toward the Richards residence.

"Eh, what is it you say?" de Grandin demanded, his little blue eyes dancing with sudden excitement. "A mystery? Cordieu, my friend, you interest me!"

"Will you help?" the big plain-clothes man asked with almost pathetic eagerness, half turning in his tracks.

"But most certainly," my companion assented. "A mystery to me is what the love of woman is to weaker men, my friend. Pardieu, how far I should have traveled in the profession of medicine if I had but been able to leave the solving of matters which did not concern me alone! Come, let us go in; we will shake the facts from this mystery of yours as a mother shakes stolen cookies from her enfant's blouse, cher sergent."

, power in Wall Street and nabob in our little sub-metropolitan community, stood on the hearth-rug before his library fire, a living testimonial to the truth of the axiom that death renders all mankind equals. For all his mop of white hair, his authoritative voice and his imposing embonpoint, the great banker was only a bereft and bewildered old man, borne down by his new sorrow and unable to realize that at last he confronted a condition not to be remedied by his signature on a five-figured check.

"Well, Sergeant," he asked, with a pitiful attempt at his usual brusk manner, as he recognized Costello at de Grandin’s elbow, "have you found out anything?"

"No, sir," the policeman confessed, "but here's Dr. de Grandin, from Paris, France, and he can help you out if anyone can. He’s done some wonderful work for us before, and"

"A French detective!" Richards scoffed. "You don't need to get one of those foreigners to help you find a few stolen jewels, do you? Why"

"Monsieur!" de Grandin’s angry protest brought the irate financier's expostulation to an abrupt halt; "you do forget yourself. I am Jules de Grandin, occasionally connected with the Service de Sureté, but more interested in the solution of my cases than in material reward."

"Oh, an amateur, eh?" Richards replied with even greater disgust. "This is a case for real detective work, Costello. I'm surprized that you’d bring a dabbler into my private affairs. By George, I'll telephone a New York agency and take the entire case out of your hands!"

"One moment, Mr. Richards," I interposed, relying on my position as family medical adviser to strengthen my argument. "This is Dr. Jules de Grandin, of the Sorbonne, one of Europe’s foremost criminologists and one of the world’s greatest scientists. The detection of crime is a phase of his work, just as military service was a phase of George Washington's; but you can no more compare him with professional police officers than you can compare Washington with professional soldiers."

Mr. Richards looked from de Grandin to me, then back again. "I'm sorry," he confessed, extending his hand to the little Frenchman, "and I shall be very glad for any assistance you may care to render, sir.

"To be frank"—he motioned us to seats as he began pacing the floor nervously—"Mrs. Richards' death was not quite so natural as Dr. Trowbridge believes. Though it’s perfectly true she had been suffering from heart disease for some time, it was not heart disease alone which caused