Now the rite was ended. The priest raised high the chalice with its hallowed contents and turned his back upon the living altar with a scream of cachinnating laughter. “Lucifer, Lord of the World and Prince Supreme of all the Powers of the Air, I hold thy adversary in my hands!” he cried. “To Thee the Victory, Mighty Master, Puissant God of Hell—behold I sacrifice to Thee the Nazarene! His blood be on our heads and on our children’s—”
“Eh bien, Monsieur, I know not of your offspring, but blood assuredly shall be on your head, and that right quickly!” said Jules de Grandin, appearing suddenly in the darkness at the altar-side. A stab of lurid flame, a sharp report, and Konstantin fell forward on his face, a growing smear of blood-stain on his forehead.
A second shot roared answer to the first, and the crouching man in deacon’s robes threw up both hands wildly, as though to hold himself by empty air, then leaned slowly to the left, slid down the altar steps and lay upon the floor, a blotch of moveless shadow in the candlelight.
Inspector Renouard appeared from the altar’s farther side, his smoking service revolver in his hand, a smile of satisfaction on his face. “Tiens, my aim is true as yours, mon Jules,” he announced matter-of-factly. “Shall I give the woman one as well?”
“By no means, no,” de Grandin answered quickly. “Give her rather the charity of covering for her all-charming nudity, my friend. Quick, spread the robe over her.”
Renouard obeyed, and as he dropped the desecrated alb on the still body I saw a look of wonder come into his face. “She is unconscious,” he breathed. “She faints, my Jules; will you revive her?”
“All in good time,” the other answered. “First let us look at this.” He stirred the prostrate Konstantin with the toe of his boot.
How it happened I could not understand, for de Grandin’s bullet had surely pierced his frontal bone, inflicting an instantly-fatal wound, but the prone man stirred weakly and whimpered like a child in pain.
“Have mercy!” he implored. “I suffer. Give me a second shot to end my misery. Quick, for pity’s sake; I am in agony!”
De Grandin smiled unpleasantly. “So the lieutenant of the firing-party thought,” he answered. “So the corporal who administered le coup de grâce believed, my friend. Them you could fool; you can not make a monkey out of Jules de Grandin. No; by no means. Lie here and die, my excellent adorer of the Devil, but do not take too long in doing it, for we fire the building within the quarter-hour, and if you have not finished dying by that time, tiens”—he raised his shoulders in a shrug—“the fault is yours, not ours. No.”
“Hi, there, Doctor de Grandin, sor; don’t be after settin’ fire to this bloody devils’ roost wid me an Doctor Trowbridge cooped up in here!” Costello roared.
“Morbleu,” the little Frenchman laughed as he unlocked our prison, “upon occasion I have roasted both of you, my friends, but luckily I did not do it actually tonight. Come, let us hasten. We have work to do.”
Within the suite which Konstantin had occupied in the deserted house we found sufficient blankets to wrap Sonia against the outside cold, and having thus prepared her for the homeward trip, we set fire to the ancient house in a dozen different spots and hastened toward my waiting car.
Red, mounting flames illuminated our homeward way, but we made no halt to watch our handiwork, for Sonia was moaning in delirium, and her hands and face were hot and dry as though she suffered from typhoid.
“To bed with her,” de Grandin ordered when we reached my house. “We shall administer hyoscine and later give her strychinia and brandy; meanwhile we must inform her husband that the missing one is found and safe. Yes; he will be pleased to hear us say so, I damn think.”
8. The Tangled Skein Unraveled
JULES DE GRANDIN, SMELLING most agreeably of Giboulées de Mas toilet water and dusting-powder, extremely dapper-looking in his dinner clothes and matching black-pearl stud and cuff-links, decanted a fluid ounce or so of Napoleon brandy from the silver-mounted pinch bottle standing handily upon the tabouret beside his easy-chair, passed the wide-mouthed goblet beneath his nose, sniffing the ruby liquor’s aroma with obvious approval, then sipped a thimbleful with evident appreciation.
“Attend me,” he commanded, fixing small bright eyes in turn on Donald Tanis and his wife, Detective Sergeant Costello, Renouard and me. “When dear Madame Sonia told us of her strange adventures with this Konstantin, I was amazed, no less. It is not given every woman to live through such excitement and retain her faculties, much less to sail at last into the harbor of a happy love, as she has done. Her father’s fate also intrigued me. I’d heard of his strange suicide and how he did denounce the Bolshevik spy, so I was well prepared to join with Monsieur Tanis and tell her that she was mistaken when she declared the man who kidnapped her was Konstantin. I knew the details of his apprehension and his trial; also I knew he fell before the firing-squad.
“Ah, but Jules de Grandin has the open mind. To things which others call impossible he gives consideration. So when I heard the tale of Konstantin’s execution at Vincennes, and heard how he had been at pains to learn if they would give him the mercy-shot, and when I further heard how he did not die at once, although eight rifle-balls had pierced his breast; I thought, and thought right deeply. Here were the facts—” he checked them off upon his outspread fingers:
“Konstantin was Russian; Konstantin had been shot by eight skilled riflemen—four rifles in the firing-squad of twelve were charged with blanks—he had not died at once, so a mercy-shot was given, and this seemed to kill him to death. So far, so ordinary. But ah, there were extraordinary factors in the case, as well. Oui-da. Of course. Before he suffered execution Konstantin had said some things which showed he might have hope of returning once again to wreak grave mischief on those he hated. Also, Madame Sonia had deposed it had been he who kidnapped her. She was unlikely to have been mistaken. Women do not make mistakes in matters of that kind. No. Assuredly not. Also, we must remember, Konstantin was Russian. That is of great importance.
“Russia is a mixture, a potpourri of mutual conflicting elements. Neither European nor Asiatic, neither wholly civilized nor savage, modern on the surface, she is unchanging as the changeless East in which her taproots lie. Always she has harbored evil things which were incalculably old when the first deep stones of Egypt’s mighty pyramids were laid.
“Now, together with the werewolf and the vampire, the warlock and the witch, the Russian knows another demon-thing called callicantzaros, who is a being neither wholly man nor devil, but an odd and horrifying mixture of the two. Some call them foster-children of the Devil, stepsons of Satan; some say they are the progeny of evil, sin-soaked women and the incubi who are their paramours. They are imbued with semi-immortality, also; for though they may be killed like other men, they must be slain with a single fatal blow; a second stroke, although it would at once kill ordinary humankind, restores their lives—and their power for wickedness.
“So much for the means of killing a callicantzaros—and the means to be avoided. To continue:
“Every so often, preferably once each year about the twenty-fifth of February, the olden feast of St. Walburga, or at the celebration of St. Peter’s Chains on August 1, he must perform the sacrilege known as the Black Mass or Mass to Lucifer, and hold thereby Satanic favor and renew his immortality.
“Now this Black Mass must be performed with certain rules and ceremonies, and these must be adhered to to the letter. The altar is the body of an unclothed woman, and she must lend herself with willingness to the dreadful part she plays. If she be tricked or made to play the part by force, the rite is null and void. Moreover, she must be without a taint or spot of wickedness, a virtuous woman, pure in heart—to find a one like that for such a service is no small task, you will agree.
“When we consider this we see why Konstantin desired Madame Sonia for wife. She was a Russian like himself, and Russian women are servient to their men. Also, by beatings and mistreatment he soon could break wh
at little independence she possessed, and force her to his will. Thus he would be assured of the ‘altar’ for his Devil’s Mass.
“But when he had procured the ‘altar’ the work was but begun. The one who celebrated this unclean rite must do so fully vested as a priest, and he must wear the sacred garments which have been duly consecrated. Furthermore he must use the consecrated elements at the service, and also the sacred vessels.
“If the Host can be stolen from a Latin church or the presanctified elements from an altar of the Greek communion, it is necessary only that the ritual be fulfilled, the benediction said, and then defilement of the elements be made in insult of the powers of Heaven and to the satisfaction of the Evil One. But if the Eucharist is unobtainable, then it is necessary to have a duly ordained priest, one who is qualified to cause the mystery of transubstantiation to take place, to say the office. If this form be resorted to, there is a further awful rite to be performed. A little baby, most usually a boy, who has not been baptized, but whose baby lips are too young and pure for speech and whose soft feet have never made a step, must be taken, and as the celebrant pronounces ‘Hoc est enim corpus meum,’ he cuts the helpless infant’s throat and drains the gushing lifeblood into the chalice, thus mingling it with the transmuted wine.
“It was with knowledge of these facts that I heard Father Pophosepholos report his loss, and when he said the elements were stolen I did rejoice most greatly, for then I knew no helpless little one would have to die upon the altar of the Devil’s Mass.
“And so, with Madame Sonia gone, with the elements and vestments stolen from St. Basil’s Church and with my dark suspicions of this Konstantin’s true character, I damn knew what was planned, but how to find this server of the Devil, this stepson of Satan, in time to stop the sacrilege? Ah, that was the question! Assuredly.
“And then came Sun Ah Poy. A bad man he had been, a very damn-bad man, as Friend Renouard can testify; but China is an old, old land and her sons are steeped in ancient lore. For generations more than we can count they’ve known the demon Ch’ing Shih and his ghostly brethren, who approximate the vampires of the West, and greatly do they fear him. They hate and loathe him, too, and there lay our salvation; for wicked as he was, Doctor Sun would have no dealings with this cursed Konstantin, but came to warn us and to tell us where he might be found, although his coming cost his life.
“And so we went and saw and were in time to stop the last obscenity of all—the defilement of the consecrated Eucharist in honor of the Devil. Yes. Of course.”
“But, Doctor de Grandin, I was the altar at that mass,” Sonia Tanis wailed, “and I did offer myself for the Devil’s service! Is there hope for such as I? Will Heaven ever pardon me? For even though I loathed the thing I did, I did it, and”—she faced us with defiant, blazing eyes—“I’d do it again for—”
“Précisément, Madame,” de Grandin interrupted. “‘For—’ That ‘for’ is your salvation; because you did the thing you did for love of him you married to save him from assassination. ‘Love conquers all,’ the Latin poet tells us. So in this case. Between your sin—if sin it were to act the part you did to save your husband’s life—and its reward, we place the shield of your abundant love. Be assured, chère Madame, you have no need to fear, for kindly Heaven understands, and understanding is forgiveness.”
“But,” the girl persisted, her long, white fingers knit together in an agony of terror, her eyes wide-set with fear, “Donald would never have consented to my buying his safety at such a price, he—”
“Madame,” the little Frenchman fairly thundered, “I am Jules de Grandin. I do not make mistakes. When I say something, it is so. I have assured you of your pardon; will you dispute with me?”
“Oh, Sonia,” the husband soothed, “it’s finished, now, there is no more—”
“Hélas, the man speaks truth, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin wailed. “It is finished—there is no more! How true, my friend; how sadly true.
“The bottle, it is empty!”
The Devil’s Bride
1. “Alice. Where Are You?”
FIVE OF US SAT on the twin divans flanking the fireplace where the eucalyptus logs burned brightly on their polished-brass andirons, throwing kaleidoscopic patterns of highlights and shadows on the ivory-enameled woodwork and the rug-strewn floor of the “Ancestors’ Room” at Twelvetrees.
Old David Hume, who dug Twelvetrees’ foundations three centuries ago, had planned that room as shrine and temple to his lar familiaris, and to it each succeeding generation of the house had added some memento of itself. The wide bay window at the east was fashioned from the carved poop of a Spanish galleon captured by a buccaneering member of the family and brought home to the quiet Jersey village where he rested while he planned new forays on the Antilles. The tiles about the fireplace, which told the story of the fall of man in blue-and-white Dutch delft, were a record of successful trading by another long dead Hume who flourished in the days when Nieuw Amsterdam claimed all the land between the Hudson and the Delaware, and held it from the Swedes till Britain with her lust for empire took it for herself and from it shaped the none too loyal colony of New Jersey. The carpets on the floor, the books and bric-à-brac on the shelves, each object of vertu within the glass-doored cabinets, had something to relate of Hume adventures on sea or land whether as pirates, patriots, traders or explorers, sworn enemies of law or duly constituted bailiffs of authority.
Adventure ran like ichor in the Hume veins, from David, founder of the family, who came none knew whence with his strange, dark bride and settled on the rising ground beside the Jersey meadows, to Ronald, last male of the line, who went down to flames and glory when his plane was cut out from its squadron and fell blazing like a meteor to the shell-scarred earth at Neuve Chapelle. His croix de guerre, posthumously awarded, lay in the cabinet beside the sword the Continental Congress had presented to his great-great-grandsire in lieu of long arrearage of salary.
Across the fire from us, between her mother and her fiancé, sat Alice, final remnant of the line, her half-humorous, half-troubled glance straying to each of us in turn as she finished speaking. She was a slender wisp of girlhood, with a mass of chestnut hair with deep, shadow-laden waves which clustered in curling tendrils at the nape of her neck, a pale, clear complexion, the ivory tones of which were enhanced by the crimson of her wide sensitive mouth and the long, silken lashes and purple depths of the slightly slanting eyes which gave her face a piquant, oriental flavor.
“You say the message is repeated constantly, Mademoiselle?” asked Jules de Grandin, my diminutive French friend, as he cast a fleeting look of unqualified approval at the slim satin slipper and silk-sheathed leg the girl displayed as she sat with one foot doubled under her.
“Yes, it’s most provoking when you’re trying to get some inkling of the future, especially at such a time as this, to have the silly thing keep saying—”
“Alice, dear,” Mrs. Hume remonstrated, “I wish you wouldn’t trifle with such silly nonsense, particularly now, when—” She broke off with what would unquestionably have been a sniff in anyone less certainly patrician than Arabella Hume, and glanced reprovingly at her daughter.
De Grandin tweaked the needle-pointed tips of his little blond mustache and grinned the gamin grin which endeared him to dowager and debutante alike. “It is mysterious, as you have said, Mademoiselle,” he agreed, “but are you sure you did not guide the board—”
“Of course I am,” the girl broke in. “Just wait: I’ll show you.” Placing her coffee cup upon the Indian mahogany tabouret, she leaped petulantly from the couch and hurried from the room, returning in a moment with a ouija board and table.
“Now watch,” she ordered, putting the contrivance on the couch beside her. “John, you and Doctor Trowbridge and Doctor de Grandin put your hands on the table, and I’ll put mine between them, so you can feel the slightest tightening of my muscles. That way you’ll be sure I’m not guiding the thing, even unintentionally.
Ready?”
Feeling decidedly sheepish, I rose and joined them, resting my finger tips on the little three legged table. Young Davisson’s hand was next mine, de Grandin’s next to his, and between all rested Alice’s slender, cream-white fingers. Mrs. Hume viewed the spectacle with silent disapproval.
For a moment we bowed above the ouija board, waiting tensely for some motion of the table. Gradually a feeling of numbness crept through my hands and wrists as I held them in the strained and unfamiliar pose. Then, with a sharp and jerky start the table moved, first right, then left, then in an ever-widening circle till it swung sharply toward the upper left-hand corner of the board, pausing momentarily at the A, then traveling swiftly to the L, thence with constant acceleration back to I. Quickly the message was spelled out; a pause, and then once more the three-word sentence was repeated:
ALICE COME HOME
“There!” the girl exclaimed, a catch, half fright, half annoyance, in her voice. “It spelled those very words three times today. I couldn’t get it to say anything else!”
“Rot. All silly nonsense,” John Davisson declared, lifting his hands from the table and gazing almost resentfully at his charming fiancée. “You may believe you didn’t move the thing, dear, but you must have, for—”
“Doctor de Grandin, Doctor Trowbridge,” the girl appealed, “you held my hands just now. You’d have known if I’d made even the slightest move to guide the table, wouldn’t you?” We nodded silent agreement, and she hurried on:
“That’s just what’s puzzling me. Why should a girl who’s going to be married tomorrow be telling herself, subconsciously or otherwise, to ‘come home’? If the board had spelt ‘Go home,’ perhaps it would have made sense, for we’re going to our own place when we come back from our wedding trip; but why the constant repetition of ‘Come home,’ I’d like to know. Do you suppose—”
The Dark Angel Page 17