Trespassing Souls and Other Stories by Seabury Quinn

Book Details

Three tales of the occult detective, Jules de Grandin, in which he faces devils from Malaya, reincarnated Knights Templar, and a practitioner of black magic in the quest for recently deceased women.

The Chapel of Mystic Horror (1928) – The dread rites of the Knights of the Temple bring horror on a peaceful countryside —a tale of Jules de Grandin. An eight chapter novelette.

The Devil-People (1929) – Ghostly and ghastly were the Malay foes against whom the little French phantom-fighter went into action. A six chapter novelette

Trespassing Souls (1929) – A devil tale of Pontou, right hand man of Gilles de Retz in his diabolical villainies —a weird adventure of Jules de Grandin. A four chapter novelette.

Seabury Grandin Quinn (1889–1969) was most famous for his stories of the occult detective Jules de Grandin. He wrote over 90 de Grandin stories from 1925 to 1951, published almost entirely in Weird Tales.

Trespassing Souls and Other Stories contains 6 illustrations.

Files:

1. TrespassingSouls.epub

Excerpt: Trespassing Souls

“MID-AUGUST was on us and Harrisonville sweltered under the merciless combination of heat and humidity as only communities in the North Atlantic States can suffer in such conditions. Jules de Grandin and I rocked listlessly back and forth in our willow chairs, too much exhausted for further conversation, unhappily aware that the clock had struck midnight half an hour before, but knowing bed meant only a continuation of discomfort and unwilling to make even the little effort involved in ascending the stairs and disrobing.

“Morbleu, Friend Trowbridge,” the little Frenchman murmured sleepily, “this day, it is infernal, no less. Were those three old Hebrews transported here, I damn think they would beseech us to take them back to the comforting coolness of Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace! If—”

The muffled drum-roll of my office telephone bell sounded a sleepy interruption to his comment, and I rose wearily to respond to the summons.

“Yes,” I answered as a frightened voice pronounced my name questioning over the wire, “this is Dr. Trowbridge.”

“This is Aubrey Sattalea,” the caller told me. “Can you come over to 1346 Pavonia Avenue right away, please? My wife is very ill—heat prostration, I’m afraid. If she doesn’t get help soon, I fear—”

“All right,” I interrupted, making a note of the address and reaching for my hat, “fill a hot-water bottle and put it at her feet, and if you’ve any whisky that’s fit to drink, give her a little in water and repeat the dose every few minutes. I’ll be right along.”

In the surgery I procured a small flask of brandy, some strychnin and digitalis, two sterile syringes, alcohol and cotton sponges, then shoved a bottle of quinine tincture into the bag as an added precaution.

“Better run along to bed, old chap,” I advised do Grandin as I opened the front door. “I’ve been called to attend a woman with heat prostration, and mayn’t be back till morning. Just my luck to have the car laid up for repairs when there’s no possibility of getting a taxi,” I added gloomily, turning to descend the front steps.

The Frenchman rose languidly and retrieved his wide-brimmed Panama from the porch floor. “Me, I suffer so poignantly, it is of no moment where I am miserable,” he confided. “Permit me to come, too, my friend. I can be equally unhappy walking beside you in the street or working beside you in the sickroom.”

“THE Sattalea cottage was a pretty example of the Colonial bungalow type-modified Dutch architecture with a low porch covered by an extension of the sloping roof and all rooms on the ground floor. Set well back from the double row of plane-trees bordering the avenue’s sidewalks, its level lawn was bisected by a path of sunken flagstones leading to the three low steps of the veranda. Lights allowed behind the French windows letting into a bedroom at the right end of the porch, and the gentle flutter of pongee curtains and the soft whining of an electric fan told us the activities of the household were centered there. Without the formality of knocking we stepped through the open window into the room where Vivian Sattalea lay breathing so lightly her slender bosom scarce seemed to move at all.

She lay upon the bed, uncovered by sheet or blanket, only the fashionably abbreviated green-voile night-robe veiling her lissome body from the air. Her soft, copper-gold hair, worn in a shoulder bob, lay damply about her small head on the pillow, and her delicate, clean-cut features had the smooth, bloodless semi-transparence of a face cunningly molded in wax.

“La pauvre!” de Grandin murmured as I introduced myself to the frightened young man who hovered, hot-water bottle in hand, beside the unconscious woman, “La belle, pauvre enfant! Quick, Friend Trowbridge, her plight is worse than we supposed; haste is imperative!”

As I undid the fastenings of my emergency kit he advanced to the bed, took the girl’s wrist between his fingers and fixed his eyes intently on the dial of the diminutive watch strapped to the under side of her left wrist, “Seventy”—he counted slowly, staring at the little timepiece — “non, sixty-seven—sixty—”

Abruptly he dropped her hand and bent down till his slim, sensitive nostrils were but an inch or so from the girl’s gently parted lips.

“Sacri bleu, Monsieur, may I ask where you obtained the liquor with which you have stimulated your wife!” he demanded, staring with a sort of incredulous horror at Sattalea.

The young husband’s cheeks reddened. “Why—er——er,” he began, but de Grandin cut him short with an impatient gesture.

“No need,” he snapped, rising and regarding us with blazing eyes. “C’est la prohibition, pardieu! When this poor one was overcome by heat, it was Dr. Trowbridge’s order that you give her alcohol to sustain her, is it not so?”

“Yes, but——”

” ‘But’ be overlastingly consigned to the flames of hell! The only stimulant which you could find was of the bootleg kind, is it not true?”

“Yes, sir,” the young man admitted. “Dr. Trowbridge told me to give her whisky in broken doses, if I had it. I didn’t, but I got a quart of gin a couple of weeks ago, and—”

“Name of a thousand small blue devils!” de Grandin half shrieked.

“Stand not there like a paralyzed bullfrog and offer excuses. Hasten to the kitchen and bring mustard and hot water, quickly. In addition to heat prostration, this poor child lies poisoned to the point of death with wooden alcohol. Already her pulse has almost vanished. Quick, my friend; rush, fly; even now it may be too late!”

Our preparations were made with feverish haste, but the little Frenchman’s worst predictions were fulfilled. Even as I bent to administer the mixture of mustard and water which should empty the fainting woman’s system of the deadly wood alcohol, her breast fluttered convulsively, her pale lids drew half-way open, disclosing eyes so far rolled back that neither pupil nor iris was visible, and her blanched, bloodless lips fell flaccidly apart as her chin dropped toward the curve of her throat and the fatuous, insensible expression of the newly dead spread over her pallid countenance like a blight across a stricken flower.

“Hélas, it is finished!” de Grandin rasped in a furious whisper. “Let those who sponsor such laws as those which make poisonous liquor available accept responsibility for this poor one’s death!”

He was still swearing volubly in mingled French and English as we walked down the flagstone pathway from the house, and in the blindness of his fury all but collided with an undersized, stoop-shouldered man who paused speculatively on the sidewalk a moment, then turned in at the entrance to the yard and sauntered toward the cottage.

“Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur,” de Grandin apologized, stepping quickly aside, for the other made no move to avoid collision, “it is that I am greatly overwrought, and failed to—”

“Morbleu, Friend Trowbridge, the ill-mannered canaille has not the grace to acknowledge my amends. It is not to be borne!” He wheeled in his tracks, took an angry step after the other, then stiffened abruptly to a halt and mused irresolute a second, like a bird-dog coming to a “point.” With an imperative, half-furtive gesture he bade me follow, and stepped silently over the grass in the wake of the discourteous stranger.

SILENTLY we ascended the path and crept up the porch steps, tiptoeing across the veranda to the open window letting into the room of death. The Frenchman’s raised finger signaled me to halt just beyond the line of light shining through the midnight darkness, and we paused in breathless silence as a soft, suave voice inside addressed the stricken husband.

“Good evening, sir,” we heard the stranger say, “you seem in trouble. Perhaps I can assist you?”

A heart-wrenching, strangling sob from young Sattalea was the only answer.

“Things are seldom as bad as they seem,” the other pursued, his words, pronounced in a sort of silky monotone, carrying distinctly, despite the fact that he spoke with a slight lisp. “When ignorant quacks have failed, there are always others to whom you can turn, you know.”

Another sob from the prostrated husband was his sole reply.

“For instance, now,” the visitor murmured, almost as though speaking to himself, “two witless charlatans just told you that your love is dead—so she is, if you wish to accept their verdict, but——”

“Monsieur,” de Grandin stepped across the window-sill and fixed his level, unwinking stare on the intruder, “I do not know what game it is you play; but I make no doubt you seek an unfair advantage of this poor young man. It were better for you that you went your way in peace, and that immediately; else—”

“Indeed?” the other surveyed him with a sort of amused contempt. “Don’t you think it’s you who’d best be on his way? You’ve already broken his heart with your ignorant inability to tell the difference between life and death. Must you add insults to injury?”

Excerpt From: Seabury Quinn. “Trespassing Souls and Other Stories.”