Seabury Quinn

“ While Sergeant Costello and I ride out to that house I do much thinking. Hypnotism is thought, and thought is a thing—a thing which does not die. Now, if this dead woman had been in the habit of receiving mental commands from Professor Mysterio for so long, and had been accustomed to obey those commands with all parts of her body as soon as they were given, had she not formed a habit of obedience? Trowbridge, my friend, you are a physician, you have seen men die, even as I have. You know that the suddenly killed man falls in an attitude which was characteristic of him in life, is it not so? ”

“ I find Monsieur Richards' jewelry and his bonds; I find Monsieur Kinnan's cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette. I find much else, including this hand of a dead woman which are not itself dead. Dieu de Dieu! When I go to take it from its case it attack me like a living thing, and Sergeant Costello have to promise he will blow the top from the professor’s head before he order it to be quiet. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Willis Richards, 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. ”

“ Still red in the face, but regaining his self-possession under my ministrations, Willis Richards sat up in his chair. "If you’ll give me my property, I’ll be getting out of this hell-house," he announced gruffly, reaching for the jewels and bonds de Grandin had placed on the desk. ”

“ De Grandin's vanity was as colossal as his ability, and though he was gentle as a woman in ordinary circumstances, like a woman, he was capable of sudden flares of vixenish temper when his regard for human life became no greater than his concern for a troublesome fly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Or, if a man can, by some process unknown to me, make all of him, save his hand, invisible, why, then, his hand, too, must leave finger marks. Hein?
"'Now,' Jules de Grandin asked Jules de Grandin, 'is it not highly probable that one who steal jewels and bonds and the cup of Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette, has stolen before, perchance been apprehended, and fingerprinted?'
"'Parbleu! It is even as you say,' Jules de Grandin answer Jules de Grandin.
"Thereupon I take that hammer from Monsieur Kinnan's house and go with it to New York. I see the Commissioner of Police. ”

“ I ran over to where my wife lay, and—and when I got there she was dead."
"Ah?" murmured de Grandin thoughtfully, inspecting his well-manicured nails with an air of preoccupation.
Richards gave him an annoyed look as he continued: "It was not till this morning that I discovered all my wife’s jewels and about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of unregistered Liberty bonds had disappeared from the wall-safe in her room.
"Of course," he concluded, "I didn’t really see anything in the air when I ran from my room. That’s impossible." ”

“ He—or she—has a hand, but no body; he enter sick ladies’ bedrooms and frightens away their lives, then steal their jewelry; he break honest men’s windows with a hammer, then deprives them of their treasured heirlooms while they heat the milk for their babies. Cordieu, he will bear investigating, this one!"
"You don’t believe me," Kinnan declared, half truculently, half shamefacedly. ”

“ 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 her death. She was scared to death, literally.
"I returned from New York, where I’d been attending a banquet given by my alumni association, about 2 o’clock this morning, I let myself in with my latch key and went upstairs to my room, which adjoined my wife’s, and was beginning to undress when I heard her call out in terror. ”

“ I’ve been offered up to a thousand dollars for it by collectors."
"Morbleu!" De Grandin ground the fire from his cigar in the ash-tray and beat his fingertips together in a nervous tattoo. "This is a remarkable burglar we have here, Messieurs, a most remarkable burglar. ”