“The thing responsible for the deaths which have terrorized the town is out tonight, my friends,” the little Frenchman warned. “We ourselves have seen it but a moment since, and—”
“Then you stay here and see it by yourself, old chap!” the young man bade, as he disengaged himself from the clinging arms of his companion, shot his self-starter and set his car in motion.
Three other amorous couples took to flight as we gave warning, and de Grandin was close upon hysteria when the darting shaft of luminance from his flashlight at last picked out the dark-blue body of young Wilcox’s modish roadster. As we crept softly forward we heard a woman’s voice, rich, deep contralto, husky with emotion:
“My darling, more to me than this world and the next, it must—it has to be—good-bye. There is no way I can avoid it, no other way, my dear. It’s fate—the will of God—whatever we may choose to call it, dear; but it has to be. If it were anyone else, it might be different, but you know him; you know how much he hates the world and how much such things mean to him. And if it were only that he wanted me to do it, I might defy him—though I never did before. Love might make me brave enough to do it—but it’s more than that. I’m vowed and dedicated, dear; long, long ago I took an oath upon my naked knees to do this thing, and I can not—I dare not break it. Oh, my dearest one, why—why—did I have to meet you before they had me safely in the sisterhood? I might have been happy, for you can’t miss the sunshine if you’ve always been blind, but now—” She paused, and in a faint glow of the dashboard light we saw her take his face between her hands, draw his head to her and kiss him on the lips.
“Monsieur—Mademoiselle—” the Frenchman started, but never finished speaking.
Out of the blackness of surrounding night, its body but a bare shade lighter than the gloom, dreadful, fleshless head and horrid eyes agleam, emerged the phantom-thing we’d seen a half-hour earlier in our bedroom. The night wind whistled with a kind of hellish glee between the sable pinions of the thing’s extended wings, and the gleam of phosphorescence in its hollow, orbless eye-holes was like the staring of a basilisk. I stood immobile, rooted in my tracks, and watched destruction bearing down upon the hapless lovers.
Not so de Grandin. “Sa-ha, Monsieur l’Assistant du Diable, it seems we meet again—unhappily for you!” he announced in a deadly, quiet voice, and as he spoke the detonation of his pistol split the quiet night as summer thunder rends a lowering rain-cloud. Crash—crash! the pistol roared again; the phantom-thing paused, irresolute as though a will of hidden steel had suddenly been reared in its path, and as it halted momentarily, the Frenchman fired again, coolly, deliberately, taking careful aim before he squeezed the trigger of his heavy weapon.
A sort of crackling, like the scuttering of dry, dead leaves along the autumn roads, sounded as the fearsome thing bent slowly back, tottered uncertainly a moment, then fell to earth with a sharp, metallic rattle and lay there motionless, its wide, black wings outspread, its scale-clad arms outflung, its legs grotesquely twisted under it.
“Tiens. I did not shoot too soon, it seems,” de Grandin told young Wilcox cheerfully as he neared the roadster and smiled upon the startled lovers. “Had I delayed a second longer I damn think that the papers would have told the story of another murder in the morning.”
I walked up to the supine monster, a sort of grisly terror tugging at my nerves, even though my reason reassured me it was dead.
The eyeholes in the skull-like face still glared malevolently, but a closer look convinced me that nothing more uncanny than luminous paint was responsible for their sullen gleam.
Half timidly, half curiously, I bent and touched the thing. The face was but a mask of some plaster-like substance, and this was cracked and broken just above the eyes, and through the fissure where de Grandin’s ball had gone there came a little stream of blood, dyeing the gray-white surface of the plaster mask a sickening rusty-red. About the body and the limbs was drawn a tightly-fitting suit of tough, black knitted fabric, similar to the costume of an acrobat, and to the cloth was sewn row after row of overlapping metal scales. One foot was clothed in what looked like a heavy stocking of the same material as the suit, while to the other was affixed two plinths of solid rubber—evidently the halves of a split rubber heel. Here was the explanation of the cloven footprint we had seen impressed upon the earth by Bostwick’s house.
Still grasped within the thing’s right hand there lay the handle of the oddest-looking hammer I had ever seen—heavy as a blacksmith’s sledge, but fashioned like an anvil, one end a sharp and pointed cone, the other flat, but fitted with a sort of die shaped like the hoof of a gigantic goat. “That’s it!” I murmured, as if I would convince myself. “That’s what was used to stamp the Devil’s mark upon the victims’ faces. First smash the skull with the pointed end, and then reverse the weapon and stamp the victim with the Devil’s brand!”
Again I bent to touch the ghastly head, and at my touch the mask rolled sidewise, then, shattered as it had been by de Grandin’s bullet, split in two parts, laying bare the face beneath.
“De—de Grandin!” I croaked hoarsely, “it—it’s—”
“Of course it is,” he supplied as my lips refused to frame the name. “I have known for some time it was the reverend gentleman—who else could it have been?”
He turned his shoulder toward me and called across it: “Leave him as he lies, my friend; he will make interesting material for the coroner.”
“But—but don’t you even want to look?” I expostulated, horrified by his indifference.
“For why?” he answered. “I saw him when he tried to batter out my brains. That look was quite enough, my friend; let the others gaze on him and marvel; let us return to Monsieur Wilcox’s house with these ones; there is something I would say to them anon.”
8
DE GRANDIN CALLED O’TOOLE and told him briefly what had happened, then having notified him where the body lay, hung up the telephone and turned a level stare upon young Wilcox and the girl.
“My friends,” he told them sternly “you are two fools—two mutton-headed, senseless fools. How dare you trifle with the love the good God gives you? Would you despise His priceless gift? Ah bah, I had thought better of you!”
“But, Doctor de Grandin,” Janet Payne’s reply was like a wail, “I can’t do otherwise; I’m vowed and dedicated to a life of penance and renunciation. He made me take an oath, and—”
“A-ah?” the Frenchman’s voice cut through her explanation. “He made you, hein? Very good; tell us of it, if you will be so kind.”
“I was a little girl when he first took me,” she answered, her voice growing calmer as she spoke. “My parents and I were traveling in Ecuador when we came down with fever. We were miles from any city and medical help could not be had. Mr. Folloilott came along while we were lying at the point of death in a native’s hut, and nursed us tenderly. He risked his death from fever every moment he was with us, but showed no sign of fear. Mother died the day he came, and Father realized he had not long to live; so when the kind clergyman offered to take me as his ward, he gladly consented and signed a document Mr. Folloilott prepared. Then he died.
“It was a long, long time before I was strong enough to travel, but finally my strength came back, and we got through to the coast. Mr. Folloilott had the paper Father signed validated at the consul’s office, then brought me back to this country. I never knew if I had any relatives or not. I know my guardian never looked for them.
“For a long time, till I was nearly twelve years old, he never let me leave the house alone. I never had a playmate, and Mr. Folloilott acted as my tutor. I spoke French and Spanish fluently and could read the hardest Greek and Latin texts at sight before I was eleven, and had gone through calculus when I was twelve. The Book of Common Prayer and the Hymnal were my text-books, and I could repeat every hymn from New Every Morning Is the Love to There is a Blessed Home Beyond this Land of Woe by heart.”
“Mon Dieu!” exc
laimed de Grandin pityingly.
“When I had reached thirteen he sent me to a sisters’ school,” the girl continued. “I boarded there and didn’t leave during vacation; so I was much more advanced than any of the other pupils, and when I was fifteen they sent me home—back to Mr. Folloilott, I mean.
“Of course, coming back to the lonely rectory with no company but my guardian was hard after school, and I was homesick for the convent. He noticed it, and one day asked me if I shouldn’t like to go back to Carlinville to stay. I told him that I would, and—”
She paused a moment and a thoughtful pucker gathered between her brows, as though an idea had struck her for the first time. “Why”—she exclaimed—“why, it was no better than a trick, and—”
“Eh bien, we do digress, Mademoiselle,” the Frenchman interrupted with a smile. “The evidence first, if you please, the verdict afterward. You told the reverend gentleman you should like to return to the good sisters, and—”
“And then he took me to the church,” she answered, “and led me to the chancel, where he made me stop and turn my stockings down so that I knelt on my bare knees, while he held a Bible out to me, and made me put my hands on it and swear that I would dedicate myself to holy poverty, chastity and obedience, and as soon as I had reached eighteen, would go to Carlinville and enter as a postulant, progressing to the novitiate and finally making my profession as a nun.
“It was shortly after that Mr. Folloilott received the call to Norfolk Downs and I met George, and—” her voice trailed off, and once again sobs choked her words.
De Grandin tweaked the ends of his mustache and smiled a trifle grimly. “I wish I had not shot him dead so quickly,” he muttered to himself; then, to the girl:
“A promise such as that is no promise at all, Mademoiselle. As you yourself have said, it was a trick, and a most despicable one, at that. Now listen to my testimony, Mademoiselle:
“When Monsieur Wilcox called me to this place to look into these so strange murders, I was most greatly puzzled. The evidence of Chief O’Toole all pointed to some superphysical agency at work, and as I’d had much practise as a phantom-fighter, it was for me to say what tactics I should use, for what may rout a ghostly enemy is often useless when opposed to human foes, while what will kill a human being dead is useless as a pointed finger when directed at a spirit. You apprehend? Very good.
“So when I learned that Monsieur your guardian with the funny name I can not say had laid the onus of these killings on a piece of broken sculpture, I was most greatly interested. Stranger things had happened in the past; things quite as strange will doubtless happen in the future. The theory that the Devil was unloosed seemed tenable but for one little single thing: Everyone this Devil killed was some one of an evil life. ‘This is the very devil of a Devil, Jules de Grandin,’ I tell me. ‘Most times the Evil One attacks the good; this time the Evil One has singled out the evil for attack. It does not hang together; it has the smell of fish upon it. Oui-da, but of course.’
“Accordingly, I made the careful study of your guardian. He is a very pious man; that much one sees while both his eyes are closed. Ha, but piety and goodness are not of necessity the same. By no means. Gilles de Retz, the greatest monster ever clothed in flesh, he was a pious man, but far from being good. Cotton Mather, who hanged poor, inoffensive women on the gallows tree, he was a pious man; so was Torquemada, who fouled the pure air of heaven with the burnings of the luckless Jews in Spain. They all were pious—too pious to be truly good, parbleu!
“The evening when I met your guardian at dinner, I studied him some more. I hear Monsieur Wilcox tell the young rabbi that the debt upon his temple is extended. How does Monsieur your guardian take that statement? It makes him ill, by blue! Furthermore, he has upon his face the look of one who finds too late that he had made a great and terrible mistake. The loan would have been called had not the money-lender died. Now, for the first time, the clergyman finds the hated Jews have profited by the Shylock’s death—and he looks as if he were about to die! ‘Jules de Grandin, this are strange,’ I tell me. ‘You must keep the eye on this one, Jules de Grandin.’ And, ‘Jules de Grandin, I shall do so,’ I reply to me.
“Meanwhile he has been at great pains to tell us all once more that these killings are the work of righteous Heaven. Is it more superstition—or something else—which makes him tell me this? One wonders.
“When he had gone I learn that he has been a hunter and a mountain-climber, that he has shot a condor down in flight. ‘Ah-ha,’ I say to me, ‘what doss this mean, if anything?’
“The police chief has shown to me a feather clipped by his bullet from the dreadful being which commits these murders. I have looked at it and recognized it. Although it has been metallized by a process of electro-plating, I have recognized it instantly. It is the feather of a condor. U’m-m. Once more one wonders, Mademoiselle.
“And while we sit and talk before the fire, there come the tidings of another killing. Monsieur Bostwick has been slain.
“We go at once and find him in his chair, dead like a mutton, and very peaceful in his pose; yet all his goods and chattels have been smashed to bits. The blow which killed him had done so instantly, and there is blood to mark the spot where he fell—yet he sits in his chair. I look around and come to a conclusion. The smashing of the furniture is but a piece of window-dressing to cover up the manner of the killing.
“But who can enter in a house where all the windows, save a single one upon the second floor, are latched, strike down a man, then vanish in thin air? I ask to know. Moreover, what was it that was seen to look into a window ten feet from the ground? I can not answer, but the next day I find that which helps me toward conclusions.
“There is blood upon the ground by Monsieur Bostwick’s house; a little, tiny drop, it is, but I take it that it fell from off the murderer’s weapon. There are also footprints—most extraordinary footprints—in the soft earth by the house. ‘The murderer have stood here,’ I inform me.
“‘Quite so,’ I agree with me, ‘but where was he before he stood there?’
“So up upon the roof I go, and there I find a strand of horsehair. I think: Monsieur your guardian is a skilled mountain-climber; he had been to South America. In that land the vaqueros, or herdsmen, use lariats of plaited horsehair in their work; they find them lighter and stronger than hemp. That I remember. I remember something else: A skilled mountaineer might have lassoed the chimney of that house, have drawn himself up to the roof, then lowered himself to the open window of the second-story room. He might have struck down Monsieur Bostwick from the window, then smashed the furniture to make it seem a struggle had been had. That done, he might have closed the window after him, lowered himself to the ground by his lariat, and made off while no one was the wiser. To disengage the lasso from the chimney would have been an easy task, I know, for I have seen it done when jutting rocks, instead of chimneys, held the mountain-climbers’ ropes.
“As he slid down his rope he looked into the window of the hall, and when his evil mask was seen, they said it was the Devil. Yes, it were entirely possible.
“Now, while I stood upon the roof seeking that little strand of horsehair upon which hung my theory, who passed but your good guardian? He sees me there, and realizes I am hot upon the explanation of the crime. Anon he comes to Monsieur Wilcox’s house—perhaps to talk with me and find out what I know—and I exert myself to be most disagreeable. I wish to sting him into overt action.
“Parbleu, I have not long to wait! This very night he comes into my room and would have served me as he did the others, but I am not beneath his hammer when it falls, and good Friend Trowbridge knocks the wind from him with a carafe.
“And then, too late, I learn that you and Monsieur Georges have the assignation. All well I know how that one will attack you if he finds you. To such a one the greatest insult is the thwarting of his will. And so I rush to warn you. The rest you know.”
“The man was mad!” I excl
aimed.
“Of course,” replied the Frenchman “He was fanatically ascetic, and you can not make the long nose at Dame Nature with impunity, my friend. As your Monsieur John Hay has said:
… he who Nature scorns and mocks
By Nature is mocked and scorned.
“He brought his madness on himself, and—”
“But that sulfurous, blinding fire we saw—O’Toole saw it, too. What was that?”
“Have you never attended a banquet, my friend?” he asked with a grin.
“A banquet—whatever are you talking about?”
“About a banquet, parbleu—and about the photographs they take of such festivities. Do you not recall the magnesium flares the photographers set off to take their indoor pictures?”
“You—you mean it was only flashlight powder?” I stammered.
“Only that, my friend; nothing more fantastic, I assure you. Blazing in the dark, it blinded those who saw it; they smelled the acrid, pungent smoke, and imagination did the rest. Voilà; we have the ‘fires of hell’ of which the good O’Toole did tell us.”
Young Wilcox turned to Janet. “You see, dear,” he urged, “that promise was extracted from you by a trick. It can’t be binding, and I love you so much—”
De Grandin interrupted. “There is another vow that you must take, my child,” he told the girl solemnly.
“A—a vow?” she faltered. “Why, I thought—I was beginning to think—”
“Then think of this: Can you repeat: ‘I Janet, take thee, Georges, to my wedded husband?”
A blush suffused her face, but: “I’ll take that vow, if George still wants me,” she replied.
“Wants you? Par la barbe d’un cochon vert, of a surety he wants you!” the Frenchman almost shouted. “And me, pardieu, I greatly want a drink of brandy!”
The Dark Angel Page 43