“Quick, Penn! The light!” I yelled. “It may drop!”
The light came on, flooding the room and revealing the final stage of one of the most ghastly examples of poetic justice that I ever remember.
Drawn there apparently by uncanny instinct, the crimson scorpion encircled Mortimer’s throat like the green scarf that had once contained it!
From that day onward I preserved a great respect for Sergeant Hodges. With bare fingers only he plucked the writhing horror clear of his prisoner, dropped it to the carpet and obliterated it calmly with his boot!
By a merciful stroke of chance he was not bitten. Grinning in that queer way men do when death has missed them by inches, he caught Joe as he crumpled up.
The head went back as he laid him on the chesterfield, and for the third time that day we saw the chain of vivid crimson marks.
“The aluminium box, Gray,” whispered Pennington in my ear. “On the chest-of-drawers in your bedroom.”
I hurried out, and the significance of those movements in the passage dawned on me. The box of antidotes was gone. In its place, pinned to the chest by a slender knife, I saw the grim sign of the scorpion!
In the Shadows of St. Roch
by Cyrus Chapin
She posed as an humble scrub woman, but she represented a ring of international smugglers who dealt in millions.
Every night I saw the old hag sitting in the window of Mine. Martin’s café, between five and six as I went to my boarding-house for dinner. Sometimes I had an aperitif in the little café, and one night I asked madame who she was.
“She, monsieur?” replied madame, surprised at my interest. “I only know her as the scrub woman of St. Roch.”
“You mean she scrubs along the Rue St. Roch?”
“No — no, monsieur, I mean she is the scrub woman for Monsieur le Cure at the church of St. Roch. She drops in here every night for her vermouth cassis.”
“Wry good,” I answered. “She seems a good-natured sort, and lonesome. I’m going to invite her to have a drink with me. I see her glass is empty.”
I did not tell Mme. Martin my real reasons for buying the old woman a drink. In fact, neither madame nor any one in Paris outside of the attaches of the Préfet of Police, and my own assistants in the secret service game, knew my actual official status as a criminal investigator from America.
I wanted a chance to look at the old woman’s hands and size her up from a criminological standpoint, for even a novice at the game would have known from her face that she belonged to the habitual criminal type, or class of incorrigibles made famous by such anthropologists as Lombroso, Ferri, Bertillon, and Ellis.
I was particularly interested, not idly curious, in this specimen, because of the difficult, and, so far, extremely mysterious case which had brought me to Paris. Why should this ancient crook of the deepest possible dye be masquerading as an innocent scrubber of churches, such as the highly respectable Eglise de St. Roch?
I bowed to the old woman and she grinned and accepted a second drink with evident pleasure. She appeared a little surprised, but not suspicious. She simply took me for one of those very rich Americans who are likely to take a notion to do anything while romping around Paris.
“It is kind of monsieur to notice a poor old woman like me,” she began, sipping her drink. “I am nothing but the scrub woman of St. Roch. There are thousands of gay young girls in Paris for rich men like yourself. In fact I could tell you—”
She stopped, pretended to be distracted by something outside the window, then toyed with her glass. It was very evident she feared to finish whatever she had started to say.
As she slowly twirled the glass in her fingers, I had ample opportunity to observe her misshapen hands, and they were distinctly criminal down to the inordinately spatulate fingers.
Furthermore, she had the prominent cheek bones, receding forehead, heavy jaw and prominent incisors in the widely separated teeth that belonged to her particular type of crook.
To be perfectly candid and fair concerning myself, I must admit I did not then in any way connect this ancient crone with the Franco-American gang of jewel thieves and smugglers I was in France to try to catch and bring to justice.
My thought for the moment was that she was a more than ordinarily tough, old time delinquent who, for the time being, was escaping the efficient and far-reaching eye of the French police, with whom I was constantly exchanging favors.
Perhaps I could do them a good turn, without jeopardizing my own work, the while.
The very day I met the old dame, a young man, Pierre Carnot, was recommended to me by one of our Embassy as a promising young cub who aspired to became a sure enough expert detective.
In my interview with Pierre I was impressed with his evident sincerity and the earnestness of purpose reflected in his snappy, black eyes. He was willing to work for nothing if I would only give him a chance to learn. He wanted particularly to work under me, so he might have a better chance of getting to America later in the same line of work.
In France all there was in view for him was a job as a gendarme. He was a Gascon French boy of twenty, hardy and tough as nails physically, with far more education and wit than the average lad of his age, regardless of country.
Here was a chance for Pierre to learn while helping solve the mystery surrounding the scrub woman of St. Roch, for which work, as a matter of course, I would pay him a small wage and his expenses on the case.
Before the old woman and I left the café, I called her attention to the fact she had started to say something and had not finished.
“Madame,” said I, “you were going to tell me there are thousands of gay girls in Paris for which rich men like me, and that you knew of — perhaps one — who would suit my fancy. Was that it?”
Old and ashen-hued though her features were, a flush of color actually mounted to her shrunken cheeks. But, for the instant she was silent, and as we stood there on the narrow sidewalk of Rue St. Roch, she gnawed at her nails as though greatly embarrassed.
“Some other time, if you will, monsieur,” she replied, her face crackling into a deprecatory grin. “I must first ask — of mademoiselle.”
“Ah! Ha!” I answered, assuming a chuckle as though highly amused as well as intensely interested in the prospect. “I say, my good woman, be sure I am not disappointed. Let us meet again at this same place to-morrow night.”
She nodded and grinned understandingly, and as I placed a few francs in her bony hand she hobbled off down St. Roch toward the church of that name on the corner of Rue St. Honoré.
I had but to cross a short block to my pension at 29 Rue des Pyramides, where, from the fourth étage, the windows looked down upon Rue d’Argenteuil and St. Roch from the large, high ceilinged room filled with ancient but dependable antique furniture, where I slept and also made my headquarters when in Paris.