Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “But the police,” Sainpolis almost wailed. “They will spread the news broadcast—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” the butler paused discreetly at the entrance, eyes carefully averted from what lay on the floor, “there’s a gentleman from the police here asking for Miss Stephanola. I’ve told him she is indisposed—”

  I had not thought Sainpolis’ face could have been paler than it was already, but at the serving-man’s announcement the blood seemed visibly to drain out of his countenance, leaving it as livid as the features of a long-dead corpse. “The—police?” he choked. “Tell them to go away, tell them anything. They must not know; we cannot see them now—”

  “Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, there you do make the great mistake,” de Grandin interrupted. “A crime has been committed here, the crime of suicide. The police must be notified. Await me, and touch nothing in this room!” Tiptoeing down the corridor he leaned across the marble balustrade and looked down to the lower hall.

  Below us stood a big red-headed man, looking interestedly, but not at all with awe, at the articles of almost priceless vertu with which Sainpolis had adorned his house. As he turned we saw his face, smooth-shaven, florid, curiously calm.

  “Gloire!” de Grandin exclaimed delightedly. “We are in luck, it is the good Costello. Holà, mon vieux!”

  The big detective started at the little Frenchman’s hail, and, “Glory be, Doctor de Grandin, sor, who’d ’a’ thought to find you here?” he answered with an eye-crinkling smile. “It’s on th’ level, then, about th’ lady’s bein’ laid up?”

  “Hélas, mon brave, it is more serious than that,” de Grandin replied. “We were called in haste to tend her, but a greater one than we arrived before us.”

  “Arra, sor, ye mane she’s dead?”

  “Completely.”

  “What wuz it, sor?”

  “It seems to have been suicide by gunshot.”

  The utterly expressionless expression which policemen, undertakers and lawyers can assume at will spread across Costello’s face.

  “Does it, now, indade?” he answered. “That’s that, then. We’d best be lookin’ round a bit before th’ coroner’s men mess everything up wid their chicken-tracks.”

  “You will leave us, if you please, Monsieur,” de Grandin ordered Sainpolis as we re-entered the death chamber. “There are certain observations to be made which might distress you.”

  As the worried little man crept out he bent above the body. The pistol lying on the floor was little larger than a toy, and as nearly as I could determine was of .22 caliber. When de Grandin held it to me after a quick inspection I followed his example and put the muzzle to my nose. Faint, but quite perceptible, the sulfurous reek of burnt gunpowder came to me.

  That the weapon had been held against the girl’s head there was no doubt, for the wound disfiguring the scalp had been torn into a cross-shaped scar by escaping gases plowing up the tissue, and the skin each side of the aperture was tattooed in converging lines like wheel-spokes by dark powder-stains. An area of slightly burned flesh ringed the hole, and a disk of powder-blackening half an inch or so in diameter marred the skin. From the irregularity of the wound it was evident that the bullet had crashed through the temporal bone at the junction of the coronal and squamous sutures, and had been directed upward to the brain.

  “Bien,” de Grandin nodded. “All indicia of self-destruction are apparent. Now, if the fingerprints upon the pistol are the poor young person’s—”

  “Yis, sor,” Costello broke in with what seemed to me unnecessary emphasis, “I’m particu’ly anxious to git a sample o’ her fingerprints. “

  ”Mais, c’est très simple,” answered de Grandin as he lit a wax match, let its oily flame discolor the smooth surface of a hand mirror and, one after another, proceeded to rub lampblack on the dead girl’s well-manicured finger-tips, then transfer impressions to a sheet of paper from a memorandum pad which lay upon the rosewood writing-desk.

  “You are satisfied it was a suicide, mon sergent?” he asked as he completed his task.

  “It seems so, sor,” Costello answered, “but—”

  “Yes—but?” de Grandin prompted.

  “Oh, nothin’, sor. I wuz just wonderin’ how she got hep.”

  “She which?” the Frenchman asked. “This ‘hep’, what is he, if you please?” but before the sergeant could reply, “Ohé, la pauvre!”

  “What’s that, sor?”

  “Observe.” He motioned toward the far side of the room where a prie-dieu stood against the wall, a shelf containing two extinguished candles, a covered crucifix and a rosary fastened to the wall above it. “Cette pauvre,” he repeated. “See, she veiled the cross before she shot herself all dead!” Stepping across the room he bowed formally to the cross and lifted off the tulle scarf which obscured it. “Parbleu, this is a most unusual-looking prayer book,” he added as he bent and picked a slender volume bound in gold-stamped vellum from the velvet cushions of the prayer-bench.

  “Regard him, if you please,” he ordered, holding out the little book for our inspection.

  We saw its covers were secured by a gold clasp held by a tiny padlock.

  “Hey, sor, ye can’t do that widout a search warrant!” Costello warned sharply.

  “No? You amaze me, my friend.” From his hip, where he wore it lashed to his back brace-straps—“pour les circonstances imprévues”—de Grandin drew his double-edged apache knife and calmly forced the book’s lock. It gave way with a snap, revealing not a volume of devotions, but a blank book whose pages were thickly covered with a fine, irregular script.

  “French!” exclaimed Costello in disgust as he glanced at the small writing. “A lotta good that’ll do me.”

  “It may,” de Grandin replied with a grin. “There have been times when I believed I understood that language. Perhaps I can translate it for you.” He thrust the volume in his pocket, and:

  “Ye can’t do that, sor,” protested the detective. “It’s agin th’ law.”

  “So in an unhappier day was bootlegging but I have the recollection no one ever stopped to think about it,” answered the small Frenchman. “Luckily I am under no compulsion to observe the niceties of police etiquette, and undoubtlessly this small book will prove of help to us. Permit me to suggest you look out of the window for a moment, my friend. The view tonight is very fine.”

  Astonishingly, as the big detective turned his back upon him, he dropped upon his knees beside the crumpled little body, joined his hands and bowed his head in silent prayer a moment.

  “Eh bien,” he rose and brushed his trouser knees, “let us be upon our way, my friends. It seems we have accomplished all we can here. We are agreed it was a suicide? Très bon. Let us notify the coroner to that effect.”

  “AND NOW, MY OLD one, tell me what this ’hep’ is,” he demanded of Costello as we gathered round the study fire. “You have the idea how the poor young demoiselle contracted it?”

  Costello grinned. “Sure, sor, it ain’t a thing, it’s sumpin’ that ye feel. Like”—his eyes roved round the room in search of inspiration—“well, sor, ye’re hep when ye’re jerry-like as if a felly tried to snatch yer overcoat in a restaurant, an’ ye realized what it wuz that he wuz up to as he started to do it.”

  The frown of fierce fixed concentration faded from de Grandin’s face. “One comprehends entirely, mon vieux. When one is hep he has become wise, n’est-ce-pas?”

  “Sure, now, sor, ye wouldn’t ’a’ been kiddin’ me?” Costello asked reproachfully.

  “By no means, my incomparable one. But what was it that the so unfortunate young woman had become hep to?”

  Once more Costello looked serious. “I ain’t sayin’ she destroyed herself on this account, but it’s worth considerin’,” he replied, reaching in his pocket and drawing forth a slip of folded paper. “This come by special delivery to Headquarters about ten o’clock, an’ I’d come out to ask th’ pore young gur-rl about it when I finds she’s up an’ shot hers
elf.”

  The paper was a noncommittal sheet of cheap white bond such as can be had at any ten cent store, and the message which it bore was composed of words and letters cut from a newspaper, capitals and lowercase characters oddly assorted:

  if you waNt to DIshcover who made the burglaries in THIS city YOu should looK at stePhanolA SainpOlis fingERprintS

  That was all.

  Costello cleared his throat. “We ain’t exactly advertisin’ it, sor, but these burglaries that’s been committed here th’ past six months has been done mighty slick, an’ we haven’t got to first base wid ’em. It a’most seems as if th’ felly that’s pulled ’em has gone out of his way to leave his fingerprints around. A’most like he signs his jobs, ye might say. Three-four times we’ve made a pinch, an’ it looked as if we had dead wood on ’em, but when we come to matchin’ up th’ fingerprints th’ whole case melted.”

  “You could not identify the culprits’ prints left at the scene of crime?”

  “No, sor, that we couldn’t. There ain’t no record of ’em here or in th’ criminal or non-criminal files in New York an’ Washin’ton.”

  “You have a copy of the miscreant’s prints with you?”

  “Right here, sor.” The sergeant drew a second slip of paper from his wallet and laid it on the table.

  Glass in hand, he and de Grandin compared the copy with the set of prints made of the dead girl’s digits. Even 1, who am no expert, could read the damning likeness as I compared them through the lens. The wanted criminal’s fingerprints and those of Stephanola Sainpolis were identical.

  “Bates hell, sors, don’t it?” asked Costello. “Here’s a young gur-rl, rich and well brought up an’ wid no nade to want fer annything longer thin it takes to ask fer it; yet off she goes an’ takes to burglary. One o’ them fool thrill-hunters, she wuz, I’d say, an’ just to make th’ game more dang’rous she went an’ left her fingerprints all over every job she pulled.”

  He returned the papers to his pocket, and: “Wonder who it wuz that tipped us off, an’ why?” he added thoughtfully. “Belike she had a partner in th’ wur-rk, some uneddycated crook who got mad at her when she wouldn’t come across wid more swag, an’ double-crossed her for revenge.”

  “I think you’re wrong there, Sergeant,” I told him. Ever since I’d seen the treacherous message I’d been wrestling with memory, and recollection came to me just as he finished speaking. “When I was a youngster serving my internship at old Bascomb Hospital I used to see notes sent the clinic by our foreign out-patients. Part of my work was translating them into English for the records and I remember how our English sibilants confused them. You’ll note the sender of this note says ‘dishcover’ for ‘discover.’ Our English ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ and the combinations of our sibilants ‘c,’ ‘z’ and ‘s’ are things few foreigners except the Scandinavians and Dutch ever seem able to grasp unless they’ve had more than ordinary training in English orthography. They’ll use ‘sh’ for the combination of ‘c’ and ‘s,’ or ‘s’ and ‘c’—as in ‘discover’—eight times out of twelve. I believe whoever pasted up this note was foreign born and quite unused to writing English. He may speak it fairly well, but when it comes to writing it he’s virtually illiterate.”

  “Parbleu, my friend, you put the finger squarely on it!” de Grandin exclaimed. “Me, I made those very mistakes which you point out when I was studying English. The girl has slipped from Friend Costello’s net by suicide, but he may be able to arrest the one who betrayed her, thus meting out poetical and criminal justice at the same time. Tomorrow I will translate her diary,” he added to Costello. “It may be we shall find some clue in it.”

  HE WAS IN THE library most of the next day, and when he joined me at dinner there was an oddly sad expression on his face.

  “Find anything in the diary?” I asked.

  “Much; a great deal,” he replied with something like a sigh, “but I must ask your indulgence. Wait until the good Costello joins us, so we need have only one narration of the story.”

  Police routine delayed Costello until after nine o’clock, and several times I thought de Grandin would explode with impatience. Within two minutes after we had gathered in the study he stood before us like a teacher about to address his class, the dead girl’s diary in one hand, a sheaf of notes clutched in the other.

  “My friends,” he began impressively, “we three owe a humble apology to the dead. All of us condemned her as a criminal who chose suicide as an escape from justice last night. It was not so. She was the victim of a villain blacker than the devil’s lowest coal-vault. Attend me. Here is the story which her journal tells:

  “Two years ago, when she was only twenty, she was attending school near Morristown. A fashionable school it was, one where the pupils were continually chaperoned, except when they were most in need of supervision. It seems the girls had found a way of getting out unseen at night and going to the near-by city, almost at will. Eh bien, I think the managers of that school took more trouble to investigate their pupils’ families’ bank accounts than they did to look up their background, for assuredly they had some queer fish there. One of them was a girl whom the diary designates as Amy, and it was she whom the poor young Mademoiselle Sainpolis shared rooms with. Tiens, she shared other things as well, for anon this Amy took her to a roadhouse near the school, and there they met a man called Niccolo—last name unknown.

  “He had a way with women, this one. A handsome dog he must be, and a vain and vicious one.

  “This poor one thought that she was seeing life when she met him; even when she learned he was a criminal she was more thrilled than shocked, and when he dared her to take cocaine she was still more fascinated. Tenez, the path down to Avernus is a smooth one. Within two months she had joined him in a criminal foray, acting as his lookout while he burglarized a house.

  “In her journal she recounts how she suffered with remorse next day, and vowed to have no more to do with him. Within a week she kept another rendezvous, and this time they held up a dining-car.

  “Then fear came to the aid of conscience. The papers told of the blond girl who helped the highwayman, and she was sure she would be recognized if she remained near Morristown. She wrote her uncle, begged to be allowed to come home, and left the school next day.

  “Earnestly she strove to make amends for her misdeeds. Every day she went to church, each night she prayed for hours for forgiveness. It seemed her prayers were answered, for in a short time she met a young man named Strapoli, and their love was almost instantaneous. They were affianced, preparations for their wedding were in progress, then”—he paused and waved his hand as if announcing an arrival—“Niccolo re-entered. She, as she thought, was done with him, but he had not by any means concluded his relationship with her. Oh, no.

  “She was beautiful, she was wealthy, she was much to be desired. He meant to have her. Ha, but he was subtle, that one!

  “He called her on the telephone, and she, poor innocent, went in mortal fear to the appointed place. She offered him whatever he desired if only he would leave her, and he reproached her for her lack of faith, told her he knew they lived in different worlds, and all he wanted was to say goodbye and beg some little keepsake from her. What do you think he asked for a souvenir, hein?”

  Pausing, he looked expectantly from me to Costello; then, as we made no answer: “Her gloves, by damn, he asked her gloves of her! You comprehend?”

  “I recall Sainpolis said she’d lost a pair of gloves six months or so ago, but I don’t see the connection,” I answered. “She knew where they were—”

  “Précisément. That is exactly why she was driven first to desperation, then to madness, finally to self-destruction. The gloves were glacé kid, and almost new, she says so in her diary. She gave them to him gladly, and came home with a great fear gone from her; but in a few days all her dreams of happiness were dissolved. Why did he ask her gloves? I ask you.”

  Vaguely recollection knocked upon the door of my
memory. “Didn’t Portia and Nerissa beg Bassanio’s and Gratiano’s gloves after the trial in The Merchant of Venice in order to plague them later on?” I asked.

  “Tu parles, mon vieux. But what they did in sport this one did in deadly earnest. From the gloves he had matrices of her fingerprints made, and these he had cemented to the fingertips of rubber gloves—”

  “Be gorry, sor, I git it!” Costello almost roared. “That’s why th’ burglar wuz so careless wid his fingerprints—that’s why we couldn’t match ’em up, no matter how we tried—”

  “Exactement. And this Niccolo, this reptile, this snake in human guise, wrote to his victim, telling her each time he projected a burglary and informing her that her fingerprints would be found at the scene of crime.

  “Imagine yourselves that! She scanned the papers every day to learn if any clue had been discovered. Nothing; nowhere; never! All the papers told her that the burglar left his fingerprints, but his identity—”

  “Well, for goodness’ sake, why didn’t she denounce him?” I interjected. “She could have told the police that her fingerprints were forged—”

  He threw me a God-give-me-patience look. “Quite yes, but if he were apprehended her adventures into crime would have come to light, also. Remember that, my friend. Only in his safety lay her own. Also, she was much in love with Monsieur Strapoli, and stood in mortal fear of scandal. She dared not speak, yet if she remained quiet she was still in danger. Misère de Dieu, how she must have suffered!

  “For six months this went on, six months she lived and moved beneath the shadow of this Damocletian sword; for half a year she roasted in a Hell of fear, grilled on the iron of her conscience. Then came the last blow to her shattered morale.

  “Not content with having made a criminal of her, not satisfied with having introduced her to the habit of cocaine, this species of a camel must make a final demand. She must, he told her, dismiss the young Strapoli and accept him as her fiancé. He would have her beauty and her wealth at once and live in idleness upon the fortune which she brought him.