Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “Now,” his little round blue eyes twinkled and he laughed reassuringly, “I have answered your questions. Will not you be so kind as to answer ours?”

  Some of the fear went out of her eyes and she managed to contrive a little smile. People usually smiled back at de Grandin. “I guess I’ve been seeing too many horror films,” she confessed. “I saw the operating table and the bandages and instruments, and smelled the medicines, then when I realized I was dressed in this my first thought was that I’d been kidnaped and—”

  De Grandin’s shout of laughter drowned her half-ashamed confession. “Mordieu, you thought that you were in the house of Monsieur Dracula J. Frankenstein, and that the evil, mad surgeons were about to make a guinea-pig or white rabbit of you, n’est-ce-pas, Mademoiselle? I assure you that fear is quite groundless. Dr. Trowbridge is an eminently respectable practitioner, and while I have been accused of many things, human vivisection is not one of them.

  “Some three-quarters of an hour ago Dr. Trowbridge and I stood at Colfax and Dorondo Streets, waiting for an omnibus. We observed you coming toward us, running like Atalanta racing from the suitors, and obviously very much afraid. When you reached us you cried out for us to run also, then swooned in Dr. Trowbridge’s arms. It was then we saw that you had been injured. Alors, we did the proper thing. We bundled you into a taxi and brought you here for treatment. You know why we removed your dress, and why you wear my own so smart creation.

  “That puts you in possession of the facts, Mademoiselle. It is for you to tell us what transpired before we met. You may speak freely, for we are physicians, and anything you say will be held in strict confidence. Also, if we can, we shall be glad to help you.”

  She gave him a small grateful smile. “I think you’ve done a lot to help me already, sir. I am Edina Laurace and I live with my aunt, Mrs. Dorothy Van Artsdalen at 1840 Pennington Parkway. This afternoon I called on some friends living in Clinton Avenue, and walked through Crescent Terrace to Dorondo Street to take a number four bus. I was almost through the Terrace when—” she stopped, and we could see the flutter of a little blue vein at the base of her throat as her heart action quickened—“when I heard someone running.”

  “Parbleu, another runner?” murmured Jules de Grandin. Aloud he ordered: “Proceed, if you please, Mademoiselle.”

  “Naturally, I looked around. It was getting dark, and I was all alone—”

  “One understands. And then what was it that you saw?”

  “A man was running toward me. Not exactly toward me, but in the same direction I was going. He was a poor-looking man; that is, his clothes were out of press and seemed too loose for him, and his shoes scuffed on the pavement as he ran—you know how a bum’s shoes sound—as if they were about two sizes too large? He seemed almost out of breath and scared of something, for every few steps he’d glance back across his shoulder. Then I saw what he was running from, and started to run, too. It was—” her hands went up to her eyes, as if to shut some frightful vision out, and she trembled as if a sudden draft of cold air had blown on her—“it was a mummy!”

  “A what?” I demanded.

  “Comment?” Jules de Grandin almost barked.

  “All right,” she answered as a faint flush stained her pale cheeks, “tell me I’m crazy. I still say it was a mummy; one of those things you see in museums, you know. It was tall, almost six feet, and bone-thin. As far as I could make out it was about the color of a tan shoe and seemed to be entirely unclothed. It ran in a peculiar sort of way, not like a man, but sort o’ jerkily, like a marionette moved by unseen wires; but it ran fast. The man behind me ran with all his might, but it kept gaining on him without seeming to exert itself at all.”

  Her recitation seemed to recall her terror, for her breathing quickened as she spoke and she paused to swallow every few words. “At first I thought the mummy had a cane in its hand, but as it came neater I saw it was a stick about two—maybe three—feet long, tipped with a long, flat spearhead made of gold, or perhaps copper.

  “You know how it is when you’re frightened that way. You run for all you’re worth, yet somehow you have to keep looking back. That’s the way I was. I’d run a little way, then feel I had to look back. Maybe I couldn’t quite convince myself it was a mummy. It was, all right, and it was gaining steadily on the man behind me.

  “Just as I reached Dorondo Street I heard an awful cry. Not exactly a scream, and not quite a shout, but a sort of combination of the two, like ‘ow-o-o-oh!’ and I looked back just in time to see the mummy slash the man with its spear. It didn’t stab him. It chopped him with the edge of its weapon. That’s when he yelled.” She paused a moment and let her breath out in a long, quivering sigh. “He didn’t fall; not right away. He sort o’ staggered, stumbling over his own feet, or tripping over something that wasn’t there, then reeled forward a few steps, with his arms spread out as if he reached for something to break his fall. Then he went down upon his face and lay there on the sidewalk perfectly still, with his arms and legs spread out like an X.”

  “And then?” de Grandin prompted softly as she paused again.

  “Then the thing stood over him and began sticking him with its spear. It didn’t move fast nor seem in any hurry; it just stood over him and stuck the spear into him again and again, like—like a woman testing a cake with a broomstraw, if that means anything to you.”

  De Grandin nodded grimly. “It does, indeed, Mademoiselle. And then?”

  “Then I did start to run, and presently I saw it coming after me. I kept looking back, like I told you, and for a while I didn’t see it; then all at once there it was, moving jerkily, and sort o’ weaving back and forth across the sidewalk, almost as if it weren’t quite sure which way I’d gone. That gave me an idea. I ran until I came to a dark spot in the road, the point between two street lamps where the light was faintest, and rushed across the street, running on tiptoes. Then I ran quietly as I could down the far side of the road, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. For a time I thought I’d shaken it, for when it came to where I’d crossed the street it seemed to pause and look about. Then it seemed to realize what I’d done and came across to my side. Three times I crossed the street, and each time I gained a few yards on it; but I was getting out of breath and knew I couldn’t keep the race up much longer.

  “Then I had another idea. From the way the creature ran it seemed to me it must be blind, or almost so, and followed me by sound more than sight. So next time I crossed the street instead of running I hid behind a big tree. Sure enough, when the thing came over it seemed at fault, and stood there, less than ten feet from me, turning round and round, pointing its spear first one way, then another, like a blind man feeling with his cane for some familiar object.

  “It might have missed me altogether if I could have stayed stock-still, but when I got a close-up look at it—it was so terrible I couldn’t keep a gasp of terror back. That did it. In an instant it was after me again, and I was dodging, round and round the tree.

  “You can’t imagine how horrible it was. The thing was blind, all right. Once I got a good look at its face—its lips were like tanned leather and I could see the jagged line of its teeth where the dried-up mouth had come a little open, and both its eyes were tightly shut. But blind or not it could hear me, and it was like a dreadful game of blind man’s buff, I dodging back to keep the tree between us, then crouching for a sprint to the next tree and doubling and turning around that, and all the time that dreadful thing following, sometimes thrusting at me with its spear, sometimes chopping at me with it, but never hurrying. If it had rushed or sprung or jumped at me it wouldn’t have seemed half so terrifying. But it didn’t. It just kept after me, seeming to know that sooner or later it would find me.

  “I’d managed to get back my breath while we were dodging back and forth around the trees, and finally I made another break for freedom. That gave me a short respite, for when I started running this time I kept on the parking, and my feet made no noise o
n the short grass, but before I’d run a hundred feet I trod on a dried, curled-up leaf. It didn’t make much noise, just the faintest crackling, but that was enough to betray me, and in another second the mummy was after me. D’ye remember that awful story in Grimms’ Fairy Tales where the prince is captured by a giant, and manages to blind him, but finds that the charmed ring upon his finger forces him to keep calling, ‘Here am I,’ each time he eludes his pursuer? That’s the way it was with me. The thing that followed me was blind, but any slightest sound was all it needed for direction, and no matter how still I tried to be, I couldn’t help making some small noise to betray my position.

  “Twice more I halted to play blind man’s buff with it around the streetside trees, and the last time it slashed me with its spear. I felt the cut like a switch on my shoulder, it didn’t hurt so much as smart, but in a moment I could feel the blood run down my back and knew that I’d been wounded. Then I lost my head completely and rushed straight down the sidewalk, running for my life. That would have been the end of me had it not been for the cat.”

  “The cat, Mademoiselle?” de Grandin asked.

  “Yes, sir. It—the mummy—was about a hundred and fifty feet behind me, and gaining every step, when a big black cat came across the sidewalk. I don’t know where it came from, but I hope that it has cream for dinner and two nice, fat mice for dessert every day for the rest of its life. You know how cats act sometimes when they see something coming at them—how they sort o’ crouch down and stay still, as if they hope whatever it is that threatens ’em won’t see ’em if they don’t move? That’s the way this cat did—at first. But when the mummy was almost on it, it jumped up and arched its back, puffed out its tail and made every hair along its spine stand straight up. Then it let out a miaul almost loud enough to wake the dead.

  “That stopped the mummy in its tracks. You know how deceptive a caterwaul can be—how it rises and falls like a banshee’s howl, and seems to come from half a dozen places at once? I think that’s what must have happened. The mummy was attuned to catch the slightest sound vibration, like a delicate radio instrument, but it couldn’t seem to locate the exact place whence the cat’s miaul came.

  “I glanced back once, and if it hadn’t been so horrible it would have seemed ludicrously funny, that murderous blind mummy standing there, swaying back and forth as if the unseen strings that moved it had suddenly come loose, turning its leathery, unseeing face this way and that, and that big black tomcat standing stiff-legged in its path, its back arched up, its tail fluffed out, and its eyes blazing like two little spots of green fire. They might have stayed that way for two minutes, maybe more. I didn’t stop to watch, but kept on running for dear life. The last I saw of them the puss was circling round the mummy, walking slowly and stiff-kneed, the way cats do before they close for a fight, never taking its eyes off the thing, and growling those deep belly-growls that angry cats give. I think the mummy slashed at it with its spear, but I can’t be sure of that. I know the cat did not give a scream as it almost certainly would have if it had been struck. Then I saw you and Dr. Trowbridge standing by the bus stop, and”—she spread her slim hands in a gesture of finality—“here we are.”

  “We are, indeed,” de Grandin conceded with a smile, “but we cannot remain so. It grows late and Tante Dorothée will worry. Come, we will take you to her and tomorrow you may come to have your wound dressed, or if you prefer you may go to your own family physician.” He took his chin between his thumb and forefinger and looked thoughtfully at her. I fear your dress is not yet quite dry, Mademoiselle, and from my own experience I know blood-wet garments are most uncomfortable. We shall ride in Dr. Trowbridge’s moteur—do you greatly mind retaining the garment I devised for you, wearing one of my topcoats above it? No one would notice—”

  “Why, of course, sir,” the girl smiled up into his eyes. “This is really quite a scrumptious dress; I’m sorry I said horrid things about it.”

  “Tiens, the compliment is much appreciated, Mademoiselle, even though it is a bit late,” he returned with a bow. “Now, if we are all ready. . . .” He stood aside to let her precede us to the hall.

  “Perhaps it would be best if you did not tell Tante Dorothée all your adventure,” he advised as I drew up before the modest but attractive little house where she lived with her aunt. “She might not understand—”

  “You mean she’d never believe me!” the girl broke in with what was more than the suggestion of a giggle. “I don’t think I’d believe a person who told me such a story.” Her air of gaiety dropped from her and her laughing eyes became serious. “I know it really couldn’t have happened,” she admitted. “Mummies just don’t run around the streets killing people like that—but all the same, it’s so!”

  “Tu, parles, ma petite,” de Grandin chuckled. “When you have grown as old as I, which will not be for many years, you’ll know as I do that most of the impossible things are quite true. Yes, I say it.”

  “YOU MEAN YOU ACTUALLY believe that cock and bull yarn she told us,” I demanded as we drove home.

  “But certainly.”

  “But it’s so utterly fantastic. Mummies, as she herself admitted, don’t run about the streets and kill people—”

  “Mummies ordinarily do not run about the streets at all,” he corrected. “Nevertheless, I believe her.”

  “Humph. Next thing, I suppose, you’ll be calling Costello in on the case.”

  “If I am not much more mistaken than I think the good Costello will not need my summons,” he returned as we reached my driveway. “Is not that he at our front door?”

  “Hola, mon lieutenant,” he called as he leaped from the car. “What fortunate breeze has wafted you hither?”

  “Good evenin’ gentlemen,” Detective-Lieutenant Jeremiah Costello answered as he stepped back from the door. “’Tis luck I’m in, fer Mrs. McGinnis wuz just afther tellin’ me as how ye’d driv away, wid yer dinner practic’ly on th’ table, an’ hadn’t said a word about when ye’d come back.”

  “But now that we are so well met, you will have dinner with us?” asked the Frenchman.

  “Thank ye kindly, sor. I’ve had me supper, an’ I’m on duty—”

  “Ah bah,” de Grandin interrupted, “I fear you are deteriorating. Since when have you not been competent to eat two dinners, then smack your lips and look about for more? But even if you have no appetite, you will at least lend us your company and share a cup of coffee, a liqueur and a cigar?”

  “Why, yes, sor, I’ll be glad o’ that,” Costello returned. “An’ would ye be afther listenin’ to me tale o’ woe th’ while?”

  “Assuredly, mon vieux. Your shop-talk is invariably interesting.”

  “Well, sors,” Costello told us as he drained his demi-tasse and took a sip from the glass of old whiskey de Grandin had poured for him, “it’s like this way: I wuz about to lave the office an’ call it a day, fer this bein’ a lootenant ain’t as easy as it wuz when I wuz sergent, d’ye understand, an’ I’d been hard at it since eight o’clock this mornin’, when all to onct me tellyphone starts ringin’ like a buzz-saw cuttin’ through a nail, an’ Dogherty o’ th’ hommyside squad’s on th’ other end. He an’ Schmelz, as fine a lad as never ate a bite o’ bacon wid his breakfast eggs an’ fasted all day on Yom Kippur, had been called to take a look into th’ killin’ o’ Louis Westbrook, also known as Looie th’ Louse. He wuz a harmless sort o’ bum, th’ Louse, never doin’ much agin th’ law except occasionally gettin’ drunk an’ maybe just a mite disorderly, an’ actin’ as a stooly fer th’ boys sometimes—”

  “A stooly?” echoed de Grandin. “And what is that, if you please?”

  “Sure, sor, ye know. A stool pigeon.”

  “Ah, yes, one comprehends. A dénonciateur, we use them in the Sûreté, also.”

  “Yes, sor. Just so. Well, as I wuz sayin’, Looie’d been found dead as a mackerel in Crescent Terrace, an’—”

  “Morbleu, do you say it? In Crescent Terrace?” />
  “That same, sor. An’, like I says—”

  “One moment, if you please. He was dead by a wound inflicted from the rear, possibly in the head, but more likely in the neck, and on his body were numerous deep punctured wounds—”

  “Howly Mither! He wuz all o’ that, sor. How’d ye guess it?”

  “I did not guess, my friend. I knew. Proceed with your description of the homicide.”

  “Well, sor, like ye said, Looie had been cut down from th’ rear, swiped acrost th’ neck wid a sword or sumpin’ like that. His spinal column wuz hacked through just about here—” he turned his head and held his finger to his neck above the second cervical vertebra. “I’ve seen men kilt just so when I was in th’ Fillypines. They’re willin’ workers wid th’ bolo, those Fillypino johnnies, as many a bloody Jap can certify. An’ also like ye said, sor, he wuz punctured full o’ deep, wide wounds all up his back an’ down his legs. Like a big, wide-bladed knife or sumpin’ had been pushed into him.

  “Ever see th’ victim o’ one o’ them Comorra torture-killin’s—th’ Sfregio or Death o’ th’ Seventy Cuts, as they calls it? Well, th’ way this pore Joe had been mangled reminded me o’ them, on’y—”

  “A moment, if you please,” de Grandin interrupted. “This Joseph of whom you speak? We were discussing the unhappy demise of Monsieur Louis the Louse; now you introduce a new victim—”

  “Arrah, Dr. de Grandin, sor, be aisy,” Costello cut in, halfway between annoyance and laughter, “when I say Joe I mean Looie—”

  “Ha? It is that they are identical?”

  “Yes, sor. Ye might say so.”

  De Grandin glanced at me with quizzically raised brows then lifted narrow shoulders in the sort of shrug a Frenchman gives when he wants to indicate complete dissociation with the matter. “Say on, my friend,” he ordered in a weary voice. “Tell us more of this Monsieur Joseph-Louis and his so tragic dissolution.”