Seabury Quinn was now getting a de Grandin story into every or every other issue of Weird Tales. For the Summer of 1927, each issue had a de Grandin and Trowbridge case, though he failed to get any covers.
“Now then, my friend,” …“what have you to say to those reports? Am I not right! Are there not too many — mordieu entirely too many! — suicides in our city?”
“The Curse of Everard Maundy” originally appeared in Weird Tales, July 1927.
A raft of suicides captures de Grandin’s attention and he begins investigating. The trail leads to minister Everard Maundy whose evangelical performances seem to lead to suicide. De Grandin allows Trowbridge to listen to the minister and that night the doctor tries to kill himself to avoid a phantom cat. De Grandin saves him and the two go to see Maundy the next day. The evangelist tells them he is cursed from a séance he had gone to and ridiculed the old black medium. She cursed him. He offers to give up preaching but de Grandin tells him he will rid him of his daemon.
To do this he visits an Irish priest and then sends a recent widower to the Rev’s audience then waits for the man at a spot where suicide seems likely. De Grandin and Trowbridge see him about to shoot himself because a vision of his dead wife calls to him. Trowbridge saves him from his gun while de Grandin throws a small pellet at the dead spirit. It mutates into something old, ugly and withered. The young man is taken home and put to bed.
Walking home afterwards, de Grandin and Trowbridge come across one of the young men who works at the funeral home. He claims an embalmed corpse got up and walked away. De Grandin realizes the corpse is following them and turns to fight it with his sword cane. He strikes as a man would a living opponent and can not stop its axe-wielding attacks. Only after he cuts the ax off at the wrist does he stop it. He takes the body, cuts off the head, drives a stake through it and buries it in a swamp.
After a late supper he explains all to Trowbridge. The enemy was an elemental, one of the evil children of Lilith. The spirit had attached itself to the Reverend after the séance (not necessarily because of the curse). The pellet he had thrown at it was something only a priest could give him. The spirit knew that it had to attack de Grandin soon so it had taken the dead body to do so. By cutting it up and driving a stake through it, de Grandin trapped the spirit in the body forever.
The scene where the woman committing suicide gets caught on a flag pole then wriggles off to kill herself is a nice gruesome touch. The zombie fight is the first good fight scene since “Broussac”.
…“there’s something devilish about this business. Look at his face! He’s turnin’ spotty, a’ ready! Why, you’d think he was dead a couple o’ days, an’ we only just carried him in here a minute ago.”
“Creeping Shadows” originally appeared in Weird Tales, August 1927.
Sgt. Costello and two cops, Callaghan and Schippert, come to de Grandin to help them solve a case that is making them look bad. The two cops saw a man named Craven in his yard but later he is discovered dead, his head missing. The doctors say he has been dead for several days though recently seen. De Grandin, Trowbridge and the three policemen go to Craven’s house to investigate. Schippert falls dead from a thorn that he bumps into. The police go for an ambulance.
While gone de Grandin uncovers a Mayan plate worth a fortune in gold. De Grandin also finds a burnt message that is unreadable except for the name Murphy. De Grandin promises Costello on the following night he will have solved the case.
De Grandin has Trowbridge drive them to the seedy part of town called Rugby Road. In a shack there they find a dirty, evil little fellow named Deacons. De Grandin tells Deacons to go to his basement and get some clayey dirt. Deacons is reluctant but de Grandin seems to know all about him and the men who had gone to Mexico.
With the clay de Grandin makes a bust of Deacons then sets up a table to pull it across a window. Using the bust as a distraction he lures out two killers from the bushes near the house. Costello draws his gun and is going to arrest them when de Grandin jumps out and guns them both down. He shows Costello the darts that would have killed him stuck in the side of the house.
After he explains that Craven, Deacons and Murphy and three others had gone to Mexico to steal archaeological treasures. Their camp was attacked by Indians and three died. The others fled to America with their gold. The Indians had come in pursuit. Deacons thanks de Grandin for saving him. The Frenchman snubs him, calling him the stinky goat used to bait the tiger.
Quinn doesn’t use the word “curare” but in all else he has much of it right. The opening of the first Indiana Jones film uses this same idea fifty years later. Quinn recycles two A. Conan Doyle items, the killer Indian (Sign of Four) and the bust trick (“The Empty House”). On the inspiration side, the idea of city folk being attacked by Mayans reminds me of the opening of the first Doc Savage novel, The Man of Bronze (1933).
The matron had risen from her chair, leaning half-way across the table, and the expression on her countenance was enough to justify the girl’s exclamation. Her face had gone pale — absolutely livid — her lips were drawn back against her teeth like those of a snarling animal, and her eyes seemed to protrude from their sockets as they blazed into the startled girl’s
“The White Lady of the Orphanage” originally appeared in Weird Tales, September 1927.
Richards from “The Dead Hand” grudgingly recommends de Grandin to the superintendent of a Springville orphanage, a Mr. Gervaise, for six children have gone missing. De Grandin demands a reward of $500 for each child found.
De Grandin and Trowbridge go to the orphanage pretending to be checking for diphtheria. They met the staff which includes Miss Martin, a matronly lady all the children love. De Grandin kisses her hands for longer than is customary. In the interviews de Grandin learns from a four year-old named Betsy that there is a rumor of a “white lady” who visits the orphanage on the nights the children disappear.
At lunch de Grandin notices that Miss Martin doesn’t eat meat. She claims to be a vegetarian. De Grandin gets a police dog and parks it outside the children’s wing. The next morning he finds the dog has torn a piece from someone’s night gown. He suspects Gervaise because the man has been very nosy. His night gown is not torn but those belonging to Miss Marten and Miss Bosworth are.
After a chance remark from Trowbridge, de Grandin goes on a hunt for a chemist that sells acid. They find it in a rural shop run by Italians. They return to the orphanage. De Grandin asks where Miss Martin sleeps. She has a cottage of her own. The two detectives and Gervaise sneak over to her house and around back. De Grandin shows his thief skills when he cuts a hole in the window and then the blind.
What he sees sends him through the window. Miss Martin is in her kitchen and she is cooking pieces of children. She also has their teeth in an acid solution to destroy them. Confronted by de Grandin, she drinks the acid and dies. Mr. Gervaise finally clues in what has been going on and faints. After discovering her cannibal kitchen they find Betsy who has disappeared. The girl says Miss Martin promised to send her to Heaven. The next day de Grandin explains he was suspicious of Miss Martin because she had calloused hands that smelled of acid.
Unlike many Quinn stories, the source of inspiration for is one is less obvious. Dickens? Fairy tales? The gruesome bit of de Grandin discovering Miss Martin eating the children was well done in a Grimm’s kind of way. Her death by acid is even more grotesque. As a piece of detection the criminal was far too obvious.
