Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “Et puis?” he prompted as her voice broke on a soundless sob.

  “Then I heard from Kabanta. It was a post card—just a common penny post card, unsigned and undated, and it carried just eleven words of message: ‘When you remove the ring you are absolved from your oath.’ He hadn’t signed it, as I said, but I knew instantly it was from him.

  “I tried desperately to get the ring off, wound my fingers with silk, used soap and olive oil, held my hand in ice cold water—no use. It wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t even turn it on my finger. It is as if the metal had grown to my flesh and become part of me. I didn’t dare tell anyone about it, they wouldn’t have believed me, and somehow I didn’t have the courage to go to a jeweler’s and have it filed off, so ...”

  The silence that ensued lasted so long one might have thought the girl had fainted, but the short, irregular, spasmodic swelling of her throat told us she was fighting hard to master her emotion. At last:

  “Two days ago,” she whispered so low we had to bend to catch her words, “I had another note. ‘He shall never call you his,’ was all it said. There was no signature, but I knew only too well who the sender was.

  “Then I told Wade about it, but he just laughed. Oh, if only I had had the courage to postpone our wedding Wade might be alive now. There’s no use fighting against Fate,” her voice rose to a thin thread of hysteria. “I might as well confess myself defeated, go back to Kabanta and take whatever punishment he cares to inflict. I’m hopelessly enmeshed, entrapped—ensnared! I am Siva’s toy and plaything, and Kabanta is the Green God’s representative!” She roused to a sitting posture, then fell back, burying her face in the pillow and shaking with heart-breaking sobs.

  “Kabanta is a species of a cockroach, and Siva but an ape-faced piece of green stone,” de Grandin answered in a hard, sharp voice. “I, Jules de Grandin tell you so, Mademoiselle; anon I shall say the same thing to them, but much more forcefully. Yes, certainly, of course.”

  “THAT DAME’S AS NUTTY as a fruit cake,” Costello confided as we left the Thurmond house. “She goes an’ gits herself involved with one o’ these here fancy Hindu fellies, an’ he goes an’ tells her a pack o’ nonsense, an’ she falls fer it like a ton o’ brick. As if they wuz anny such things as Shivas an’ shahinnies an’ raytors an’ th’ rest o’ it! Begob, I’d sooner belave in—”

  “You and I do not believe, my friend,” de Grandin interrupted seriously, “but there are millions who do, and the power of their believing makes a great force—”

  “Oh, come!” I scoffed. “You never mean to tell us that mere cumulative power of belief can create hobgoblins and bugaboos?”

  “Vraiment,” he nodded soberly. “It is indeed unfortunately so, my friend. Thoughta are things, and sometimes most unpleasant things. Yes, certainly.”

  “Nonsense!” I rejoined sharply. “I’m willing to agree that Melanie could have been imposed on. The world is full of otherwise quite sane people who are willing to believe the moon is made of green cheese if they’re told so impressively enough. I’ll even go so far as to concede she thinks she can’t get the ring off. We’ve all seen the cases of strange inhibitions, people who were convinced they couldn’t go past a certain spot—can’t go off the block in which they live, for instance. She’s probably unconsciously crooked her finger when she tried to pull it off. The very fact she found excuses to put off going to a jeweler’s to have it filed off shows she’s laboring under a delusion. Besides, we all know those Hindu are adepts at hypnotism—”

  “Ah, bah!” he broke in. “You are even more mistaken than usual, Friend Trowbridge. “Have you by any chance read Darkness Out of the East by our good friend John Thunstone?”

  “No,” I confessed, “but—”

  “But be damned and stewed in boiling oil for Satan’s supper. In his book Friend Thunstone points out that the rite of walking barefoot seven times around a living fire and throwing fuel and water on it while sacred mantras are recited is the most solemn manner of pronouncing an irrevocable oath. It is thus the neophyte is oath-bound to the service of the temple where she is to wait upon the gods, it is so when the wife binds herself forever to the service and subjection of her lord and husband. When that poor one performed that ceremony she undertook an oath-bound obligation which every Hindu firmly believes the gods themselves cannot break. She is pledged by fire and water for all time and eternity to the man who put the ring of Siva on her finger. While I talked to her I observed the amulet. It bears the device of a woman held in unbreakable embrace by Four-Faced Siva, and under it is written in Hindustani, ‘As the gods are to mankind so is the one to whom I vow myself to me. I have said it.’

  “As for her having the ring filed off—she was wiser than she knew when she refrained from that.”

  “How d’ye mean?” Costello and I chorused.

  “I saw an instance of it once in Goa, Portuguese India. A wealthy Portuguese planter’s femme de la main gauche had an affaire with a Hindu while her protector was away on business. She was inveigled into taking such a vow as Mademoiselle Thurmond took, and into having such a ring slipped on her finger. When she would have broken with her Hindu lover and returned to her purveyor she too found the ring immovable, and hastened to a jeweler’s to have it filed off. Tiens, the life went out of her as the gold band was sawn asunder.”

  “You mean she dropped dead of a stroke?” I asked.

  “I mean she died, my friend. I was present at the autopsy, and every symptom pointed to snake bite—except the stubborn fact that there had been no snake. We had the testimony of the jeweler and his two assistants; we had the testimony of a woman friend who went with her to the shop. All were agreed there had been no snake near her. She was not bitten; she merely fell down dead as the gold band came off.”

  “O.K., sor; if ye say it, I’ll belave it, even if I know ’t’aint so,” Costello agreed. “What’s next?”

  “I think we should go to the morgue. The autopsy should be complete by this time, and I am interested in the outcome.”

  DR. JASON PARNELL, THE coroner’s physician, fanned himself with a sheaf of death certificates, and mopped his streaming brow with a silk handkerchief. “I’m damned if I can make it out,” he confessed irritably. “I’ve checked and rechecked everything, and the answer’s the same each time. Only it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Qu’est-ce donc?” de Grandin demanded. “How do you say?”

  “That youngster has no more business being dead than you or I. There wasn’t a God’s earthly thing the matter with him from a pathological standpoint. He was perfect. Healthiest specimen I ever worked on. If he’d been shot, stabbed or run down by a motor car I could have understood it; but here he is, as physiologically perfect as an athlete, with positively no signs of trauma of any sort—except that he’s as dead as a herring.”

  “You mean you couldn’t find a symptom—” I began, and he caught me up before I had a chance to finish.

  “Just that, Trowbridge. You said it. Not a single, solitary one. There is no sign of syncope, asphyxia or coma, no trace of any functional or organic weakness. Dammit man, the fellow didn’t die, he just stopped living—and for no apparent reason. What’n hell am I goin’ to tell the jury at the inquest?”

  “Tiens, mon ami, that is your problem, I damn think,” de Grandin answered. “We have one of our own to struggle with. There is that to do which needs immediate doing, and how we are to do it only le bon Dieu knows. Name of a little blue man, but it is the enigma, I tell you.”

  Sergeant Costello looked unhappily from Parnell to de Grandin. “Sure, sors, ’tis th’ screwiest business I’ve ever seen entirely,” he declared. “First th’ pore young felley topples over dead as mutton, then his pore forsaken bride tells us a story as would make th’ hair creep on yer neck, an’ now you tell us that th’ pore lad died o’ nothin’ a-tall. Mother o’ Moses, ’tis Jerry Costello as don’t know if he’s comin’ or goin’ or where from an’ where to. Can I use yer ’phone, Doc?�
� he asked Parnell. “Belike th’ bhoys at Headquarters would like to know what I’m about.”

  We waited while he dialed Headquarters, heard him bark a question, and saw a look of utter unbelief spread on his broad perspiring face as some one at the other end answered. “’T’ain’t so!” he denied. “It couldn’t be.

  “We wuz just up to see her, an’ she’s as limp as a wet wash—”

  “What is it, mon sergent?” de Grandin asked. “Is it that—”

  “Ye can bet yer bottom dollar it is, sor,” the Sergeant cut in almost savagely. “It sure is, or I’m a monkey’s uncle. Miss Thurmond, her we just seen layin’ in th’ bed so weak she couldn’t hold up her head, has taken it on th’ lam.”

  “Diable!” de Grandin shot back. “It cannot be.”

  “That’s what I told ’em at Headquarters, sor, but they insist they know what they’re a-talkin’ about; an’ so does her old man. ’Twas him as put the call in to be on th’ lookout fer her. It seems she lay in a half stupor when we left her, an’ they’d left her alone, thinkin’ she might git a bit o’ rest, when zingo! up she bounces, runs to th’ garage where her car wuz parked, an’ rushes down th’ street like th’ divil wuz on her trail.”

  “Ha!” de Grandin’s hard, dry, barking laugh had nothing whatever to do with amusement. “Ah-ha-ha! I am the greatest stupid-head outside of a maison de fous, mes amis. I might have damn anticipated it! You say she ran as if the devil were behind her? Mais non, it is not so. He was before her. He called her and she answered his summons!”

  “Whatever—” I began, but Costello caught the little Frenchman’s meaning.

  “Then what th’ divil are we waitin’ fer, sor?” he demanded. “We know where he hangs out. Let’s go an’ peel th’ livin’ hide off ’im—”

  “Ma moi, cher sergent, you take the words out of my mouth,” the small Frenchman shot back. “Come, Friend Trowbridge, let us be upon our way.”

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “Where to? Where in the foul name of Satan but to that so vile shop called The Light of Asia, where unless I am more greatly mistaken than I think the dove goes to a rendezvous with the serpent. Quickly. Let us hasten, let us rush; let us fly, mes amis!”

  The rain that had been threatening since early afternoon came down in bucketsful as we crept slowly through East Fifty-Sixth Street. It poured in miniature Niagaras from cornices and rolled-up awnings, the gutters were awash, the sidewalks almost ankle-deep with water.

  “Halte la!” ordered de Grandin, and I edged the car close to the curb. “My friends, we are arrived. Be quiet, if you please, make no move unless I request it, and—” he broke off with a muttered “nom d’un coq!” as a wind-whipped awning sluiced a sudden flood of icy water over him, shook himself like a spaniel emerging from a pond, and laid his hand upon the brass knob of the highly varnished door.

  Amazingly the door swung open at his touch and we stepped into the dim interior of The Light of Asia.

  The place was like a church whose worshipers had gone. The air was redolent of incense, the darkness was relieved by only a dim, ruddy light, and all was silent—no, not quite! At the far end of the long room a voice was singing softly, a woman’s voice raised in a trembling, tear-heavy contralto:

  Since I, O Lord, am nothing unto thee,

  See here thy sword, I make it keen and bright . . .

  “Alons, mes enfants, follow!” whispered Jules de Grandin as he tiptoed toward the rear of the shop.

  Now the tableau came in view, clear-cut as a scene upon a stage. In an elevated niche like an altar place crouched a green stone image slightly larger than man’s-size, the sightless eyes of its four faces staring out in cold, malevolent obliviousness. Below it, cross-legged on a scarlet cushion, his hands folded palm-upward in his lap, was a remarkably handsome young man dressed in an ornate Oriental costume, but these we passed by at a glance, for in the foreground, kneeling with her forehead pressed against the floor, was Melanie Thurmond dressed as she had been when she took her fateful vow and had the ring of Siva put upon her hand. Her hands were raised above her bowed head, and in them rested a long, curved scimitar, the ruddy lamplight gleaming on its jeweled hilt and bright blade with ominous redness.

  “Forgive, forgive!” we heard her sob, and saw her beat her forehead on the floor in utter self-abasement. “Have pity on the worm that creeps upon the dust before thy feet—”

  “Forgiveness shall be thine,” the man responded slowly, “when dead kine crop the grass, when the naked rend their clothes and when a shining radiance becomes a void of blackness.”

  “Have mercy on the insect crawling at thy feet,” the prostrate woman sobbed. “Have pity on the lowly thing—”

  “Have done!” he ordered sharply. “Give me the sword.”

  She roused until she crouched upon her knees before him, raised the scimitar and pressed its blade against her lips and brow in turn, then, head bent low, held it out to him. He took it, balancing it between his hands for a moment, then drew a silk handkerchief from his sleeve and slowly began polishing the blade with it. The woman bent forward again to lay her brow against the floor between her outstretched hands, then straightened till she sat upon her crossed feet and bent her head back till her slender flower-like throat was exposed. “I wait the stroke of mercy, Master and Lord,” she whispered as she closed her eyes. “’Twere better far to die at thy hands than to live cut off from the sunshine of thy favor. . . .”

  There was something wrong with the Green God. I could not tell quite what it was; it might have been a trick of light and shadow, or the whorls of incense spiraling around it, but I could have sworn its arms were moving and its fixed, immobile features changing expression.

  There was something wrong with me, too. A feeling of complete inadequacy seemed to spread through me. My self-esteem seemed oozing out of every pore, my legs felt weak, I had an almost irresistible desire to drop upon my knees before the great green idol.

  “Oom, mani padme hong!” de Grandin cried, his voice a little high and thin with excitement. “Oom, mani padme hong!”

  Why I did it I had no idea, but suddenly I echoed his invocation, at the top of my voice, “Oom, mani padme hong!”

  Costello’s rumbling bass took up the chant, and crying the unfamiliar syllables in chorus we advanced toward the seated man and kneeling woman and the great, green gloating idol. “Oom, mani padme hong!”

  The man half turned and raised his hands in supplication to the image, but even as he did so something seemed to happen in the niche. The great green statue trembled on its base, swayed backward, forward—rocked as if it had been shaken by a sudden blast of wind, then without warning toppled from its embrasure, crushing the man seated at its feet as a dropped tile might crush a beetle.

  For a long moment we stood staring at the havoc, the fallen idol lying athwart the crushed, broken body of the man, the blood that spread in a wide, ever-broadening pool about them, and the girl who wept through lowered lids and beat her little fists against her breast, unmindful of the tragedy.

  “Quickly, my friends,” bade de Grandin. “Go to the dressing room and find her clothes, then join me here.

  “Oom, mani padme hong! The gods are dead, there is no power or potency in them, my little flower,” he told the girl. “Oom, mani padme hong!” he bent and took her right hand in his, seizing the great ring that glowed upon her forefinger and drawing it away. “Oom, mani padme hong! The olden gods are powerless—they have gone back to that far hell from whence they hailed—” The ring came off as if it had been several sizes too large and he lifted her in his arms gently.

  “Make haste, my friends,” he urged. “None saw us enter; none shall see us leave. Tomorrow’s papers will record a mystery, but there will be no mention of this poor one’s name in it. Oh, be quick, I do beseech you!”

  “NOW,” I DEMANDED AS I refilled the glasses, “are you going to explain, or must the Sergeant and I choke it out of you?”

  The lit
tle laughter wrinkles at the outer corners of his eyes deepened momentarily. “Non, mes amis,” he replied, “violence will not be required, I assure you. First of all, I assume you would be interested to know how it was we overcame that green monstrosity and his attendant by your chant?”

  “Nothin’ less, sor,” Costello answered. “Bedad, I hadn’t anny idea what it meant, or why we sang it, but I’m here to say it sounded good to me—I got a kick out o’ repeating it wid ye, but why it wuz, I dunno.”

  “You know the history of Gautama Buddha, one assumes?”

  “I niver heard o’ him before, sor.”

  “Quel dommage! However”—he paused to take a long sip from his glass, then—“here are the facts: Siddhartha Gautama Buddha was born in India some five hundred years before the opening of our era. He grew up in a land priest-ridden and god-ridden. There was no hope—no pride of ancestry nor anticipation of immortality—for the great mass of the people, who were forever fixed in miserable existence by the rule of caste and the divine commands of gods whom we should call devils. Buddha saw the wickedness of this, and after years of meditation preached a new and hopeful gospel. He first denied the power of the gods by whose authority the priests held sway, and later denied their very existence. His followers increased by thousands and by tens of thousands; they washed the cursed caste marks from their foreheads, proclaimed themselves emancipated, denied the priests’ authority and the existence of the gods by whom they had been terrorized and downtrodden for generations. Guatama Buddha, their leader, they hailed and honored with this chant: ‘Oom, mani padme hong!—Hail, thou Gem of the Lotus!’ From the Gulf of Bengal to the Himalayas the thunder of their greeting to their master rolled like a mighty river of emancipation, and the power of it emptied the rock temples of the olden deities, left the priests without offerings on which to fatten. Sometimes it even overthrew the very evil gods themselves. I mean that literally. There are recorded instances where bands of Buddhists entering into heathen temples have by the very repetition of ‘Oom, Mani padme hong!’ caused rock-hewn effigies of those evil forces men called Vishnu and Siva to topple from their altars. Yes, it is so.