Review: Horror Story: "Pledged to the Dead" by Seabury Quinn

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Doctor Trowbridge plays the part of Dr. Watson, narrating the adventures of occult expert Dr. Jules de Grandin, formerly of the French Sûreté, rather like a Belgian in exile in Great Britain would later be. De Grandin is in exile in New Jersey. Over the series of some ninety stories and one novel, written between 1925 and 1951, de Grandin (unlike Hercule Poiroit and Sherlock Holmes) fought a host of supernatural bad’uns, including ghosts and werewolves. As Trowbridge and de Grandin are enjoying a quiet evening with coffee and kaiserschmarrn (the text says they’re sipping the latter, but I recall it being bits of pancake. I couldn’t find a secondary meaning for it), Nella Bentley bursts in, forcing her way past the housekeeper. She wants help with her wandering her fiancé, Ned Minton, who’s just come back from New Orleans. Ned has, um, committed an indiscretion. He still loves her. She still loves him. She’s still willing to marry him, only now he says he can’t marry her. Nella is asking for Trowbridge’s help sorting Ned out. Nella corrals him back to Trowbridge’s house for a sit-down. Once Nella is safely out of the room, he tells the guys of the girl he met in the graveyard in New Orleans, and of the girl’s “gran’ tante—” While this story is nice and atmospheric, it is also a humorous. And a bit hokey. The French in it strained my high school French to its limit. Ned is in real danger, but refuses to see it until the last moment. But with de Grandin helping him, is there any doubt of a happen ending? Author Seabury Quinn was a lawyer and a journalist, specializing in mortuary law. His de Grandin stories were among his most popular, but are now regarded as poorly written now. Like his contemporaries, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, he published often in Weird Tales. This story is available from Project Gutenberg: _____ Title: “Pledged to the Dead” Series: Jules de Grandin Author: Seabury Quinn (1889-1969) First published: Weird Tales, October 1937 Source: ISFDB