….“you’re Professor Jules de Grandin, the author of Accelerated Evolution?”
“The Horror on the Links” originally appeared in Weird Tales, October 1925.
A girl is killed on the links of Harrison, NJ’s finest country club, her body covered in scratches and her head battered to a ruin. De Grandin and Trowbridge examine the body as well as several others, a boy who claims he was also attacked–by a gorilla in a tuxedo, and a young man named Manly who has a bullet wound in his shoulder. De Grandin puts all the pieces together when he connects the events with an escape lunatic, Beneckendorff, who had turned children into ape-like monsters during the War.
“…From Millicent’s window, horrible as a devil out of lowest hell, there came a hairy head set low upon a pair of shoulders at least four feet across. An arm which somehow reminded me of a giant snake slipped past the window casing, grasped the cast-iron downspout at the corner of the house, and drew a thickset, hairy body after it. A leg tipped with a handlike foot was thrown across the sill, and, like a spider from its lair, the monster leaped from the window and hung a moment to the iron pipe, its sable body silhouetted against the white wall of the house…” (“The Horror On the Links” by Seabury Quinn)
Following Manly, De Grandin finds him changed into his ape form and kidnapping Mrs. Comstock’s daughter. De Grandin shoots him with a rifle twice, sending him back to his master. Kalimar/Beneckendorff is savaged by the wounded creature. The mad doctor’s plan had been to get revenge on Mrs. Comstock (his fiancee long ago) by marrying her daughter off to an ape-turned-man. He named him “Manly” as part of his sick joke. De Grandin reports Manly as missing, protecting Millicent Comstock from the terrible knowledge of Kalimar’s designs.
The first of 93 Jules de Grandin stories. Quinn admtited that he never had a real plan for the character: “One evening in the spring of 1925, I was in that state that every writer knows and dreads; a story was due my publisher, and there didn’t seem to be a plot in the world. Accordingly, with nothing particular in mind, I picked up my pen and literally making it up as I went along …” Despite the very Pulpy plot, elements of this story remind me of Ira Levin’s bestseller The Boys From Brazil (1976) in which a Nazi scientist tries to re-create Hitler.
The inspiration for Manly is not hard to find. The idea of turning animals into men comes from H. G. Wells`s The Island of Doctor Moreau and his Beastmen. Quinn even mentions ‘vivisectionists’ in the story which is a definite nod. It is a little clever of Quinn to have the monster an ape turned into a man rather than the other way around because the reader is expecting the opposite, more like “The Creeping Man” of Sherlock Holmes. Like most Pulp writers Quinn has little sympathy for gorillas, making the creature nasty by nature. I have to wonder if his choice of “Manly” is simply an ironic pun or if Quinn was having fun with his friend, Manly Wade Wellman, who will write a couple ape stories of his own. The early dates suggests not.
….“Snake thou art, Raimond de Broussac, snake thou shalt become and snake thou must remain until some good man and true shall cleave thy foul body into as many pieces as the year hath weeks.”
“The Tenants of Brossac” originally appeared in Weird Tales, December 1925.
Trowbridge runs across De Grandin in Paris. The detective is on a case and takes the doctor along. Some rich Americans have rented the chateau at Broussac. The Bixby famiy is in France to keep their daughter Adrienne away from her beau, Ray Keefer, who wants to marry her. Stories about the chateau include several strange deaths in and around the old chapel, victims having been squeezed to death. Adrienne has suffered from exhaustion and depression ever since she came to Broussac. Trowbridge examines her while De Grandin studies the many volumes in the castle’s library.
When Adrienne begins to display circular bruises on her body De Grandin knows he must hurry. De Grandin borrows a bag of flour and sprinkles it on the floor of the chapel. This reveals the next day Adrienne’s bare foot prints as well as those of a large serpent. De Grandin guards against the snake by blocking its path with sharp nail filled boards but these do not work. He leaves and comes back later with the sword of Joan of Arc, borrowed with great insistence from the owner. Armed with this he plans to confront the serpent, but only after he makes sure Adrienne is locked up well. He and Trowbridge find the maid crying. Mrs. Bixby has fired her for following de Grandin’s instructions. The mother has opened the windows and unlocked the doors, allowing the girl to escape. De Grandin and Trowbridge find her in the chapel, naked and in a trance, stroking the snake lovingly.
“…My astounded eyes took this in at first glance, but it was my second look which sent the blood coursing through my arteries like river-water in zero weather. About her slender, virginal torso, ascending in a spiral from hips to shoulders, was the spotted body of a gigantic snake. The monster’s horrid, wedge-shaped head swung and swayed a scant half-inch before her face, and its darting, lambent tongue licked lightly at her parted lips. But it was no ordinary serpent that held her, a laughing prisoner, in its coils. Its body shone with alternate spots of green and gold, almost as if the colors were laid on in luminous paint; its flickering tongue was red and glowing as a flame of fire, and in its head were eyes as large and blue as those of human kind, but set and terrible in their expression as only the eyes of a snake can be…” (“The Tenants of Broussac” by Seabury Quinn)
De Grandin fights and kills the serpent in a great fight scene. Afterward they cover Adrienne up and return her to her bed without waking her, for if she was to discover what she has been up to she would surely go mad. The next day Ray Keefer shows up and the couple elope. De Grandin explains the terrible history of Raimond de Broussac, a terrible lord who once lived in the castle. Burned at the stake, he was cursed by the local abbess who called him a serpent. After being burned, a small green-and-gold serpent was seen in his ashes, and escaped. Over the years a larger and large serpent was found in the area of the temple.
This story is unusual in that it takes place in France. Not many De Grandin stories happen outside of Harrisonville, NJ. This one and the next, “The Isle of Missing Ships”. For some reason Quinn found it easier to keep Trowbridge at home. The result was Harrisonville became only slightly more haunted than Arkham, Mass. What a constant flow of vampires, mad scientists and serial killers for a small town! Joss Whedon would get around this later on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show by having a “hellmouth” under the town of Sunnydale. If such exists, Harrisonville certainly has one too.
“…The natives hereabouts refer to the animal from which it comes as ‘long pig’ – really a disgusting sort of beast while living; but quite satisfactory when killed and properly cooked….”
“The Isle of Missing Ships” originally appeared in Weird Tales, February 1926.
De Grandin and Trowbridge run across each other on a tropical cruise. De Grandin has been hired by Lloyd’s of London to find several missing ships. Entering an area smoky with volcanic ash, their ship is run on a reef and taken by pirates. The two men slip overboard and wander the island in secrecy. They find Papuan cannibals on the beach. They witness a white man and woman being killed and cooked.
After killing two guards, the men climb a mountain and find tubes for sending signal rocks and lights, both used to lure unwitting ships to their destruction. They also find the master of the island, Goonong Besar, and two gunmen.
Taken captive they are brought to Besar’s underwater hideout with fabulous disappearing doors and underwater windows. There Besar reveals his story. He is actually James Abingdon Richardson, the half-caste son of English nobility and a local princess. Abused by his white family, the man turns pirate and takes his revenge on England and other countries. At a meal where ‘long pig’ (human flesh) is served, Besar reveals they have a choice. Become his eunuchs (performing the necessary operation on each other) or be fed to the pet giant octopus. Besar gives the men one day to think it over.
“As though the pistol had been superheated and capable of setting the water in the cave boiling by its touch, the deep, blue-black pool beneath us suddenly woke to life. Ripples – living, groping ripples – appeared on the pool’s smooth face and long, twisting arms, sinuous as snakes, thick as fire-hose, seemed waving just under the surface, flicking into the air now and again and displaying tentacles roughened with great, wart-like protuberances. Something like a monster bubble, transparent-gray like a jelly-fish, yet, oddly, spotted like an unclean reptile, almost as big around as the umbrellas used by teamsters on their wagons in summer-time, and, like an umbrella, ribbed at regular intervals, rose from the darker water, and a pair of monstrous, hideous white eyes, large as dinner plates, with black pupils large as saucers, stared greedily, unwinkingly, at us.” (“The Isle of Missing Ships” by Seabury Quinn)
During that time de Grandin convinces a captive French girl, Miriam, (who dances for her master) to gather the fruit of a certain plant that grows on the island and dump it into the octopus pool. The next day the men refuse and are sent to the octopus which has been poisoned. Taking Besar with them they flee to a boat they saw earlier. Meeting up with Miriam, they are ready to leave, offering Besar the chance to be hung as a pirate. He draws a knife and De Grandin wrestles with him and slits his throat. One last piece of revenge awaits. The boat has a machine gun on the bow, so they go to the beach and gun down all the cannibals camping there. Once home, Trowbridge receives a telegram saying Miriam is a hit at the Folies Bérgères.
Perhaps Quinn’s most excessive outing with horror after horror. Beginning with borrowing from Jules Verne and the missing ships of 20,000 League Under the Sea, we get to the island then witness a woman beaten to death and eaten, others being tricked into eating human flesh, a threat of castration, De Grandin murdering the villain then gunning down an entire beach full of natives. Trowbridge and De Grandin go back to New Jersey and the horrors become more singular. The villain of Goonang Besar shows Quinn’s word play with “goon” being part of his name. He is basically his version of Captain Nemo. Elements of this story strongly suggest an influence on Ian Fleming’s Dr. No (1958) which also features a marvelous island hideaway and a killer squid. The shadow of Sax Rohmer is in evidence.
