Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “D’ye think it’ll be safe to have that Mullins girl around the house? She’s been a faithful little thing, standing by me when the other servants ran out, but—”

  “You need not distress yourself, Monsieur. The evil-saturated bricks have been dumped in the river. They are no longer a potential source of harm. Just as the poltergeist could not function without her, she cannot energize a power which is not present.”

  “Where do you suppose that poltergeist force went?” I put in.

  “Tenez, who can say? Where does the flame go when one blows the candle out? He is obliterated, dispersed, swallowed up—comme ça!”

  He raised the brandy snifter to his lips and drained it at a gulp.

  The House Where Time Stood Still

  THE FEBRUARY WIND WAS holding carnival outside, wrenching at the window fastenings, whooping round the corners of the house, roaring bawdy chansons down the chimney flues. But we were comfortable enough, with the study curtains drawn, the lamps aglow and two fresh oak logs upon the andirons taking up the blazing torch their dying predecessors flung them. Pleased with himself until his smugness irritated me, Jules de Grandin smiled down at the toe of his slim patent-leather pump, took a fresh sip of whisky-soda, and returned to the argument.

  “But no, my friend,” he told me, “medicine the art is necessarily at odds with medicine the science. As followers of Æsculapius and practitioners of the healing art we are concerned with individual cases, in alleviating suffering in the patient we attend. We regard him as a person, a complete and all-important entity. Our chief concern for the time being is to bring about his full recovery, or if that is not possible, to spare him pain as far as in our power lies, n’est-ce-pas?”

  “Of course,” I rejoined. “That’s the function of the doctor—”

  “Mais non. Your term is poorly chosen. That is the function of the physician, the healer, the practitioner of medicine as an art. The doctor, the learned savant, the experimenting scientist, has a larger field. He is unconcerned with man the individual, the subspecies aeternitatis. Him he cannot see for bones and cells and tissues where micro-organisms breed and multiply to be a menace to the species as a whole. He deals with large, great bodies like—”

  “Sir Haddingway Ingraham an’ Sergeant Costello, if ye plaze, sors,” interrupted Nora McGinnis from the study entrance.

  “Yes, parbleu, exactly like them!” de Grandin burst out laughing as the two six-footers hesitated at the doorway, unable to come through together, undecided which should take precedence.

  “Regard, observe them, if you please, Friend Trowbridge!” he ordered as he looked at the big visitors. “Quel type, mais quel type; morbleu, c’est incroyable!”

  To say that the big Briton and the even bigger Celt were of a common type seemed little less than fantastic. Ingraham—Sir Haddingway Ingraham Jamison Ingraham, known to all his friends familiarly as Hiji, was as typically an Englishman of the Empire Builder sort as could be found in literature or on the stage. So big that he was almost gigantic, his face was long and narrow, high-cheeked, almost saddle-leather tanned, with little splayed-out lines of sun-wrinkles about the outer corners of his eyes. His hair was iron-gray, center-parted, smooth as only brilliantine and careful brushing could make it, and by contrast his small military mustache was as black as the straight brows that framed his deep-set penetrating hazel eyes. His dinner clothes were cut and draped with such perfection that they might as well have borne the label Saville Row in letters half a foot in height; and in his martial bearing, his age and his complexion, you could read the record of his service to his king and country as if campaign ribbons had adorned his jacket: the Aisne, Neuve Chapelle, the second Marne, and after that the jungle or the veldt of British Africa, or maybe India. He was English as roast beef or Yorkshire pudding, but not the kind of Briton who could be at home in London or the Isles, or anywhere within a thousand miles of Nelson’s monument, save for fleeting visits.

  Costello was a perfect contrast. Fair as the other was dark, he still retained his ruddy countenance and smooth, fresh Irish skin, although his once-red hair was almost white. If Hiji was six feet in height the sergeant topped him by a full two inches; if the Englishman weighed fourteen stone the Celt outweighed him by a good ten pounds; if Ingraham’s lean, brown, well-manicured hand could strike a blow to floor an ox, Costello’s big, smooth-knuckled fist could stun a charging buffalo. His clothes were good material, but lacked elegance of cut and were plainly worn more for protective than for decorative purposes. Smooth-shaved, round-cheeked, he might have been an actor or a politician or, if his collar were reversed, a very worldly, very knowing, very Godly bishop, or a parish priest with long experience of the fallibility of human nature and the infinite compassion of the Lord.

  Thus their dissidence. Amazingly, there was a subtle similarity. Each moved with positively tigerish grace that spoke of controlled power and almost limitless reserves of strength, and in the eyes of each there was that quality of seeing and appraising and recording everything they looked at, and of looking at everything within their range of vision without appearing to take note of anything. As usual, de Grandin was correct.

  Each bore resemblance to the other, each was the perfect type of the born man-hunter, brave, shrewd, resourceful and implacable.

  “But it is good to see you, mes amis!” de Grandin told them as he gave a hand to each and waved them to a seat beside the fire. “On such a night your company is like a breath of spring too long delayed. Me, I am delighted!”

  “Revoltin’ little hypocrite, ain’t he?” Hiji turned to Costello, who nodded gloomy acquiescence.

  “Comment? A hypocrite—I?” Amazement and quick-gathering wrath puckered the small Frenchman’s face as if he tasted something unendurably sour. “How do you say—”

  “Quite,” Hiji cut in heavily. “Hypocrite’s the word, and nothin’ less. Pretendin’ to be glad to see us, and not offerin’ us a drink! On such a night, too. Disgustin’ is the word for it.”

  “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!” wailed de Grandin. “Oh, I am humiliated, I am desolated, I am—”

  “Never mind expressions of embarrassment, you little devil. Pour that whisky; don’t be sparin’ o’ your elbow!”

  In a moment Scotch and soda bubbled in the glasses. Ice tinkled in Costello’s. “None in mine, you blighted little thimblerigger; d’ye want to take up space reserved for whisky?” Hiji forbade when de Grandin would have dropped an ice-cube in his glass.

  Refreshed, we faced each other in that silence of comradery which only men who have shared common perils know.

  “And now, what brings you out on such a night?” de Grandin asked. “Smile and grin and play the innocent as you will, I am not to be imposed upon. I know you for the sybarites you are. Neither of you would thrust his great nose out of doors tonight unless compulsion forced him. Speak, thou great ungainly ones, thou hulking oafs, thou species of a pair of elephants. I wait your babbling confidences, but I do not wait with patience. Not I. My patience is as small as my thirst is great—and may I never see tomorrow’s sunrise if I see it sober!”

  Hiji drained his glass and held it out to be refilled. “It’s about young Southerby,” he answered gloomily. “The poisonous little scorpion’s managed to get himself lost. He’s disappeared; vanished.”

  “Ah? One is desolated at the news.” De Grandin leant back in his chair and grinned at Ingraham and Costello. “I am completely ravaged at intelligence of this one’s disappearance, for since I have abandoned criminal investigation in all its phases, I can look upon the case objectively, and see how seriously it affects you. May I prescribe an anodyne?” he motioned toward the syphon and decanter.

  “Drop it, you little imp o’ Satan!” Ingraham replied gruffly. “This is serious business. Yesterday we had a matter of the greatest importance—and secrecy—to be transmitted to the embassy in Washington. There wasn’t a king’s messenger available, and we did not dare trust the papers to the post; so when
young Southerby—dratted little idiot!—stepped in and told the Chief he’d do his Boy Scout’s good deed by runnin’ the dispatches down to Washington, they took him on. He’s been knocking round the consulate a year and more, gettin’ into everybody’s hair, and the Chief thought it would be a holiday for the staff to get him out from under foot awhile. The little blighter does know how to drive a car, I’ll say that for him; and he’s made the trip to Washington so often that he knows the road as well as he knows Broadway. Twelve hours ought to do the trip and leave him time for meals to spare, but the little hellion seems to have rolled right off the earth. There ain’t a trace o’ hide or hair of him—”

  “But surely, you need not concern yourself with it,” de Grandin interrupted. “This is a matter for the police; the good Costello or the state constabulary, or the Federal agents.”

  “And the newspapers and the wireless, not to mention the cinema,” broke in Hiji with a frown. “Costello’s not here officially. As my friend he’s volunteered to help me out. As a policeman he knows nothin’ of the case. You’ll appreciate my position when I tell you that these papers were so confidential that they’re not supposed to exist at all, and we simply can’t report Southerby’s disappearance to the police, nor let it leak out that he’s missin’ or was carryin’ anything to Washington. All the same, we’ve got to find those precious papers. The Chief made a bad blunder entrustin’ ’em to such a scatterbrain, and if we don’t get ’em back his head is goin’ to fall. Maybe his won’t be the only one—”

  “You are involved, my friend?” De Grandin’s small eyes widened with concern.

  “In a way, yes. I should have knocked the little blighter silly the minute that he volunteered, or at least have told the Chief he wasn’t to be trusted. As it was, I rather urged him to accept the offer.”

  “Then what do we wait for? Let us don our outdoor clothes and go to seek this missing young man. You he may elude, but I am Jules de Grandin; though he hide in the lowest workings of a mine, or scale the sky in a balloon—”

  “Easy on, son,” Hiji thrust a hand out to the little Frenchman. “There’s nothin’ much that we can do tonight.”

  “I’ve already done some gum-shoe wor-rk, sor,” Costello volunteered. “We’ve traced ’im through th’ Holland Tunnels an’ through Newark an’ th’ Amboys and New Brunswick. Th’ trail runs out just th’ other side o’ Cranberry. It wuz four o’clock when he left New York, an’ a storm blew up about five, so he musta slowed down, for it wuz close to eight when he passed Cranberry, headed for Phillydelphia, an’”—he spread his hands—“there th’ trail ends, sor, like as if he’s vanished into thin air, as th’ felly says.”

  De Grandin lit a cigarette and leant back in his chair, drumming soundlessly on the table where his glass stood, narrowing his eyes against the smoke as he stared fixedly at the farther wall.

  “There was mingled rain and snow—sleet—on all the roads last night,” he murmured. “The traffic is not heavy in the early evening, for pleasure cars have reached their destinations and the nightly motorcade of freight trucks does not start till sometime near eleven. He would have had a lonely, slippery, dangerous road to travel, this one. Has inquiry been made for wrecks?”

  “That it has, sor. He couldn’t ’a’ had a blowout widout our knowin’ of it. His car wuz a Renault sports model, about as inconspicuous as a ellyphunt on a Jersey road, an’ that should make it a cinch to locate ’im. That’s what’s drivin’ me nuts, too. If a young felly in a big red car can evaporate—howly Mither, I wonder now, could that have any bearin’—” He broke off suddenly, his blue eyes opened wide, a look almost of shocked amazement on his face.

  “A very pleasant pastime that, my friend,” de Grandin put in acidly as the big detective remained silent. “Will you not confide your cause for wonder to us? We might wish to wonder, also.”

  “Eh? O’ course, sor.” Costello shook his shoulders with a motion reminiscent of a dog emerging from the water. “I wuz just wonderin’—”

  “We gathered as much—”

  “If sumpin’ else that’s happened, recently, could have a bearin’ on this case. Th’ Missin’ Persons Bureau has had lookouts posted several times widin th’ past three months fer persons last seen just th’ other side o’ Cranberry—on th’ Phillydelphia side, that is. O’ course, you know how so many o’ these disappearances is. Mostly they disappear because they wants to. But these wuz not th’ sort o’ cases ye’d think that of. A truck driver wuz th’ first, a fine young felly wid a wife an’ two kids: then a coupla college boys, an’ a young gur-rl from New York named Perinchief. Th’ divil a one of ’em had a reason for vamoosin’, but they all did. Just got in their cars an’ drove along th’ road till they almost reached Cranberry, then—bingo! no one ever heard o’ one of ’em again. It don’t seem natural-like. Th’ state police an’ th’ Middlesex authorities has searched for ’em, but th’ devil a trace has been turned up. Nayther they nor their cars have been seen or heard from. D’ye think that mebbe there is sumpin’ more than coincidence here?”

  “It may not be probable, but it is highly possible,” de Grandin nodded. “As you say, when people disappear, it is often by their own volition, and that several persons should be missed in a short period may quite easily be coincidental. But when several people disappear in a particular locality, that is something else again.

  “Is there not something we can do tonight?” he turned to Ingraham.

  “No,” the Englishman replied, “I don’t believe there is. It’s blacker than the inside of a cow out there, and we can’t afford to attract attention lookin’ for the little blighter with flashlights. Suppose we do a move tomorrow before dawn and see what we can pick up in the neighborhood where Southerby was last reported.”

  DAWN, A RAW, COLD February dawn well nigh as colorless and uninviting as a spoiled oyster, was seeping through the lowering storm clouds as we drove across the bridge at Perth Amboy and headed south toward Cranberry. Hiji and Costello occupied the rear seat; de Grandin rode beside me, chin buried in his greatcoat collar, hands thrust deep in his pockets.

  “See here,” I asked him as an idea struck me, “d’ye suppose this lad has skipped? You heard Hiji say how valuable the papers he was carrying are, and apparently he begged to be allowed to carry them. These youngsters in the consular and diplomatic service usually live beyond their means, and sometimes they do queer things if they’re tempted by a large amount of cash.”

  “I wish I could believe that,” he returned, cowering lower in his seat. “It would have saved me the discomfort of emerging from a warm bed into a chill morning. But I know les anglais, my friend. They are often stupid, generally dull; socially they are insufferable in many cases, but when it comes to loyalty Gibraltar is less firm. Your English gentleman would as soon consider eating breakfast without marmalade as selling out his honor or running from an enemy or doing anything original. Yes.”

  A little light, but no sunshine, had strengthened in the sky when we drew up beside the roadway a half-mile beyond Cranberry. “All right,” Hiji called as he dismounted; “we might as well start here and comb the terrain. We have a fairly good line on our bird up to this point, and—hullo, there’s a prospect!”

  He nodded toward a corduroyed Italian, obviously a laborer, who was trudging slowly up the road walking to the left and facing traffic, as pedestrians who hope to survive have to do on country highways.

  “Com’ esta?” de Grandin called. “You live near here?”

  The young man drew his chin up from his tightly buttoned reefer and flashed a smile at him. “Si, signor,” he returned courteously, and raised a finger to his cap. “I live just there, me.”

  With a mittened hand he waved vaguely toward a patch of bottom land whence rose a cumulus of early-morning smoke.

  “And you work long hours, one surmises?”

  Again the young man smiled. “Si, all day I worka; mornin’, night, all time—”

  “So you walk home
in darkness?”

  A smile and nod confirmed his surmise.

  “Sometimes the motors cause you trouble, make you jump back from the road, hein?”

  “Not moch,” the young Italian grinned. “In mornin’ when I come to work they not yet come. At night when I come back they all ’ave gone away. But sometimes I ’ave to jomp queek. Las’ night I ’ave to jomp away from a beega rad car—”

  “I think we are upon the scent, my friends!” de Grandin whispered. Aloud: “How was that? Could he not see you?”

  The young man shrugged his shoulders. “I theenk ’e craz’,” he answered. “Always I walka dees side a road, so I can see car come, but dees a one ’e come from other side, an’ almost bang me down. Come ver’ fast, too, not look where he go. Down there”—again he waved a vague hand down the road—“’e run into da woods. I theenk ’e get hurt, maybe, bot I not go see. I ver’ tired, me, and want for to get ’ome.”

  De Grandin pursed his lips and rummaged in his pocket for a coin. “You say the young man left the road and ran into the woods? Did you see his car?”

  “Si, signor. Heef I don’ see heem I not be ’ere now. Eet was a beega rad car, lika dose we see in old contry, not small like dose we see ’ere.”

  “And where did this one leave the road?”

  “You see dose talla tree down by de ’ill op dere?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “’E go off road about a honnerd meters farther on.”

  “Thank you, my peerless one,” the Frenchman smiled, as he handed the young man a half-dollar. “You have been most helpful.” To us: “I think that we are on the trail at last.”