“My sister lay half-way between life and death for weeks. Finally she was well enough to ask for her son, and they told her he had gone off with his grandfather. She was almost wild with fear of what the old man might do to the child, but still too weak to travel, and the nervous strain she labored under set her back still further. It was nearly midsummer when she finally went to town.
“She went right to the house and demanded that he give her back her child—told him she’d never asked him for a cent and never would, and every penny that he’d paid out for the little boy would be refunded to him.
“He’d learned his lesson from me, but my sister was a mere woman, weak from a recent illness; no need to guard his tongue while he talked with her. And so he called her every vile name imaginable and that her hope of heaven was gone, for she was living with a parent’s curse upon her. Finally he told her that her child was dead and buried in a pauper’s grave. He knew that was a lie, but he couldn’t forego the joy of hurting her by it.
“She came to me, half crazed with grief, and I did what I could to soothe her. I told her that the old man lied, and knew he lied, and that little Arthur had been buried in Graceland, with a tombstone set above his grave. Then, of course, she wanted to go see the place.”
Tears were falling from the young man’s eyes as he concluded: “I never shall forget that afternoon, the last time that I ever saw my little sister living. It was nearly dark when we reached the grave, and she had to kneel to make out the inscription on the stone. Then she went down like a mother bending by a crib, and whispered to the grass above her baby’s face. ‘Good-night little son; good-night and happy dreams, I’ll see you early in the morning.’ Then realization seemed to come to her. ‘Oh, God,’ she cried, ‘there won’t be any morning! Oh, my baby; my little baby boy! They took you from me and killed you, little son—they and their God!’
“And then beside her baby’s grave she rose and held her hands up to the sky and cursed the father who begot her and who had done this thing to her; she cursed his church and his religion, cursed his God and all His works, and swore allegiance to the Devil! I’m not a religious man, gentleman. I had too big an overdose of it when I was a child, and I’ve never been in church since I left my father’s house; but that wild defiance of hers and her oath of fealty to everything we’d been taught to hate and fear fairly gave me the creeps.
“I never saw her from that night to this. I gave her a hundred dollars, and she took the evening train to Boston, where I understand she got mixed up with all sorts of radical movements. The last I heard of her before I saw her picture in the paper yesterday was when she wrote me from New York saying she’d met a Russian gentleman who was preaching a new religion; one she could subscribe to and accept. I didn’t quite understand what it was all about, but I gathered it was some sort of New Thought cult, or something of the kind. Anyway, ‘Do What Thou Wilt. This Shall Be the Whole of the Law,’ was its gospel, as she wrote it to me.”
De Grandin leaned forward, his little round blue eyes alight with interest and excitement. “Have you, by any chance, a picture of your little nephew, Monsieur!” he asked.
“Why, yes, I think so,” young Kimble answered. “Here’s a snapshot I took of him and Abigail out at the farm the winter before her illness. He was about eight or nine months old then.” From an inner pocket he drew a leather wallet and from it took a worn and faded photograph.
“Morbleu, I damn knew it; of course, that is the explanation!” de Grandin cried as he looked at the picture. “Await me, my friends, I shall return at once!” he shouted, leaping from his seat and rushing from the room.
In a moment he was back, another picture in his hand. “Compare,” he ordered sharply; “put them together, and tell me what it is you see.”
Mystified but eager, Renouard, Costello and young Kimble leaned over my shoulder as I laid the photographs side by side upon the coffee table. The picture to the right was the one Kimble furnished us. It showed a woman, younger than the one we knew, and with the light of happiness upon her face, but indisputably the beautiful veiled lady whose tragic death had followed her visit to us. In her arms nestled a pretty, dimpled little boy with dark curling hair clustering in tendrils round his baby ears, and eyes which fairly shone with life and merriment.
The picture to the left was one de Grandin had obtained from the Baptist Home of the little Eastman boy who vanished. Though slightly younger, his resemblance to the other child was startling. Line for line and feature for feature, each was almost the perfect duplicate of the other.
De Grandin tweaked his mustache as he returned the snapshot to young Kimble. “Thank you, Monsieur,” he said. “Your story has affected us profoundly. Tomorrow, if you will make formal claim to your sister’s body, no obstacle to its release will be offered by the coroner, I promise you.” Behind the visitor’s back he made violent motions to Costello, indicative to our wish to be alone.
The Irishman was quick to take the hint, and in a few minutes had departed with young Mr. Kimble. Half an hour later he rejoined us, a frown of deep perplexity upon his brow.
“I’ll bite, Doctor de Grandin, sor,” he confessed. “What’s it all about?”
12. The Trail of the Serpent
“BUT IT IS OBVIOUS,” the little Frenchman answered. “Do not you see it, Renouard, Trowbridge?” he turned his bright bird-like gaze on us.
“I’m afraid not,” I replied. “Just what connection there is between the children’s resemblance and—”
“Ah, bah!” he interrupted. “It is elementary. Consider, if you please. This poor Mademoiselle Abigail, she was hopelessly involved with the Satanists, is it not so?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “From what her brother told us, there’s not much doubt that the sect with which she was connected is the same one Renouard told us about, but—”
“But be roasted on the grates of hell! Can you think no farther back than the hinder side of your own neck, great stupid one? What did she say when she came rushing to this house at dead of night and begged us for protection? Think, remember, if you can.”
“Why, she was raving incoherently; it’s rather hard to say that anything she told us was important, but—”
“Dites—more of your sacré buts! Attend me: She came to us immediately after the small Baptist one had been abducted, and she did declare: ‘He was the image of my dear little—’ Her statement split upon that word, but in the light of what we now know, the rest is obvious. The little Eastman child resembled her dead baby; she could not bear to see him slaughtered, and cried out in horror at the act. When they persisted in this fiendishness she threatened them with us—with me, to be exact—and ran away to tell us how they might be found. They shot at her and wounded her, but she won through to us, and though she raved in wild delirium, she told enough to put us on the trail. But certainly. Did she not say, ‘Watch for the chalk-signs of the Devil—follow the pointed trident? But yes.”
He turned to Sergeant Costello and demanded: “And have your men been vigilant, mon vieux? Do they keep watch for childish scrawls on house or fence or sidewalk, as I bade?”
Costello eyed him wonderingly. “Sure, they are,” he answered. “Th’ whole force has its orders to look out for ’em though th’ saints know that ye’re after wantin’ wid ’em when ye find ’em.”
“Very good,” de Grandin nodded. “Attend me, I have known such things before. You, too, Renouard. Only a word was needed to put me on the trail. That word was furnished by the poor young woman whom they crucified.
“In Europe, when the Satanists would gather for their wicked rites they send some secret message to their members, but never do they tell the place of the meeting. No, the message might be intercepted and the police come. What then?
“Upon the walls of houses, on sidewalks, or on fences they draw a crude design of Satan, a foolish childish thing which will escape notice as scrawling of naughty little boys, but each of these drawings differs from the others, for whereas on
e will have the Devil’s pitchfork pointing one way, another will point in a different direction. The variation will not be noticed by one who does not know the significance of the scrawls, but to those who know for what they look the pointing tridents are plain as markers on a motor highway. One need but follow the direction of the pointing tridents from picture to picture in order to be finally led right to the door of Satan’s temple. Yes; of course. It is so.”
“Indubitably,” Renouard accorded, with a vehement nod.
“But what’s th’ little Eastman boy to do wid it?” Costello asked.
“Everything, parbleu,” de Grandin and Renouard replied in sober chorus.
“It was undoubtlessly for the Black Mass—the Mass of Saint Secaire—the little one was stolen. Satan is the singe de Dieu—the impudent imitator of God and in his service is performed a vile parody of the celebration of the mass. The celebrant is, when possible, an unfrocked priest, but if such a one can not be found to do the office, any follower of the Devil may serve.
“In the latter case a wafer already consecrated must be stolen from the monstrance of the church or impiously borne from communion in the mouth of a mock-communicant. Then, robed as a priest, the buffoon who officiates ascends the Devil’s altar and mouths the words prescribed in the missal, but reverses all the ritual gestures, kneeling backward to the altar, signing himself with the cross upside down and with his left hand reciting such prayers as he pleases backward. At the end he holds aloft the sacred Host, but instead of veneration the wretched congregation shrieks out insults, and the elements are then thrown to the ground and trampled underfoot.
“Ha, but if a renegade priest can be persuaded to officiate, there is the foulest blasphemy of all, for he still has the words of power and the right to consecrate the elements, and so he says the mass from start to finish. For greater blasphemy the altar is the naked body of a woman, and when the rubric compels the celebrant to kiss the sanctuary, his lips are pressed against the human faircloth. The holy bread is consecrated, likewise the wine, but with the wine there is mingled the lifeblood of a little unbaptized baby boy. The celebrant, the deacon and subdeacon partake of this unholy drink, then share it with the congregation, and also they accept the wafer, but instead of swallowing it in reverence they spit it forth with grimaces of disgust and every foul insult.
“You apprehend? The Mass of Saint Secaire was duly celebrated on the night poor Mademoiselle Abigail came knocking at our door, and the little Eastman boy had been the victim. You noticed that she wore no clothing, save her outdoor wraps? Was that mere eccentricity? No, parbleu, it was evidence no less. Evidence that she quit the nest of devils as she was and came forthwith to us with information which should lead to their undoing. She had undoubtlessly served as altar cloth that night, my friends, and did not tarry for an instant when she fled—not even long enough to clothe herself. The little victim of that night so much resembled her dead babe that the frozen heart within her was softened all at once, and she became once more a woman with a woman’s tender pity, instead of the cold instrument of evil which her pious devil of a father had made her. Certainly. The strayed sheep had come back into the fold.”
He tore the end from a blue packet of French cigarettes, set one of the vile-smelling things in his eight-inch amber holder, and thoughtfully ignited it “Renouard, mon vieux,” he said, “I have thought deeply on what you told us. I was reluctant at the first to credit what the evidence disclosed, but now I am convinced. When the small Eastman boy was stolen I could not fit the rough joints of the puzzle to each other. Consider—” He spread his fingers fanwise and checked the items off on them:
“Mademoiselle Alice disappears, and I find evidence that bulala-gwai was used. ‘What are the meaning of this?’ I ask me. ‘This snuff-of-sleep, he is much used by savage Africans, but why should he be here? It are a puzzle.’
“Next we find proof that Mademoiselle Alice is the lineal descendant—presumably the last one—of that Devil’s priest of olden days whose daughter married David Hume. We also see that a spy of the Yezidees has proved her identity to his own satisfaction before she is abducted. The puzzle is more mystifying.
“Then we do find poor, Madame Hume all dead. The outward evidence says ‘suicide,’ but I find the hidden proof of murder. Murder by the roomal of the Thags of India. Que diable? The Thags are worshippers of Kali, the Black Goddess, who is a sort of female devil, a disreputable half-sister of the Evil One, and in her honor they commit all sorts of murders. But what, I ask to know, are they doing here? Already we have Yezidees of Kurdistan, witch-doctors from Central Africa, now Thags from India injected in this single case. Mon Dieu; I suffer mal de tête from thinking, but nowhere can I find one grain of logic in it. Non, not anywhere, cordieu!
“Anon the little Eastman baby disappears. He is a Baptist; therefore, unbaptized. Time was, I know, when such as he were wanted for the mass of wickedness, but how can he be wanted by the Yezidees? They have no dealings with the Mass of Saint Secaire, the aping of a Christian rite is not a part of their dark ceremonies; yet here we have bulala-gwai again, and bulala-gwai was also used when the Yezidees—presumably—stole Mademoiselle Alice from before our very eyes.
“‘Have the Yezidees, whose cult is rooted in obscure antiquity, and dates back far beyond the Christian Era, combined the rites of medieval Satanists?’ I ask. It are not likely, yet what is one to think?
“Then comes this poor young woman and in her delirium lets fall some words which, in the light of what we know tonight, most definitely connect the stolen baby—the baby stolen even as Mademoiselle Alice was—with the sacrifice of the Mass of Saint Secaire.
“Now I think of you and what you tell us. How you have found unfortunate young women, all branded on the breast like Mademoiselle Abigail, all of them once members of the sect of Satanists, each chapter of which unclean cult is led or inspired by one from Russia. And you tell us of this League of Godlessness which is a poisonous fungus spreading through the world from that cellar of unclean abominations we call Russia.
“‘Pains of a most dyspeptic bullfrog.’ I inform me, ‘I see a little, so small light!’ And by that light I read the answer to my riddle. It is this: As business men may take a dozen old and bankrupt enterprises possessed of nothing but old and well-known names, and weld them into one big and modern corporation which functions under a new management, so have these foes of all religion seized on the little, so weak remnants of diabolism and welded them together in a formidable whole. In Africa, you say, the cannibal Leopard Men are on the rampage. The emissaries of Moscow are working with them—have they not brought back the secret of bulala-gwai to aid them in their work? In Kurdistan the Yezidees, an obscure sect, scarce able to maintain itself because it is ringed round by Moslems, is suddenly revived, shows new activity. Russia, which prays the world for charity to feed its starving people, can always find capital to stimulate its machinations in other lands. The Arabian gendarmerie find European pilgrims en route to Mount Lalesh, the stronghold of the Yezidees; such things were never known before, but—
“‘Ha, another link in this so odious chain!’ I tell me. ‘In Europe and in America the cult of Satanism, almost dead as witchcraft, is suddenly revived in all its awful detail. That it is growing rapidly is proved by the number of renegade clergymen of all faiths, a number never paralleled before in such short time. From all sides comes evidence of its activities; from London, Paris and Berlin we hear of violated churches; little children—always boys—are stolen in increasing numbers and are not held to ransom; they merely disappear. The connection is most obvious. Now we have proof that this vile cult is active in America—right here in Harrisonville, parbleu.”
“My friends, upon the crumbling ruins of the ancient Yezidee religion and the time-obliterated relics of witchcraft and demonism of the Middle Ages, this Union of the Godless are rearing a monstrous structure designed to crush out all religion with its weight. The trail of the serpent lies across the earth; alr
eady his folds are tightening round the world. We must annihilate him, or he will surely strangle us. Yes. Certainly.”
“But Alice—” I began. “What connection has she with all this—”
“Much—all—everything!” he cut in sharply. “Do you not recall what the secret agents of France have said, that in the East there is talk of a white prophetess who shall raise the Devil’s standard and lead his followers on to victory against the Crescent and the Cross? That prophetess is Alice Hume! Consolidated with the demonology of the West, the Devil-Worship of the East will take new force. She has been sought—she has been found, cordieu!—and anon she will be taken to some place appointed for her marriage to the Devil; then, with the fanaticism of the Yezidees and the fervor of the atheistic converts as a motivating force, with the promise of the Devil’s own begotten son to come eventually as a result of this marriage, with the gold of Soviet Russia and the contributions of wealthy ones who revel in the freedom to do wickedness this new religion gives, they will advance in open warfare. The time to act is now. If we can rescue Mademoiselle Alice and exterminate the leaders of this movement, we may succeed in stemming the tide of hell’s rebellion. Failing that”—he spread his hands and raised his shoulders in a shrug of resignation.
“All right,” I countered, “how do we go about it? Alice has been gone two weeks—ten days to be exact—and we haven’t the slightest clue to her location. She may be here in Harrisonville, she may have gone to Kurdistan, for all we know. Why aren’t we looking for her?”
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