The Dark Angel

by Seabury Quinn

  “Parbleu, I build a house, I go to take a ride on horseback, I attend a dinner at the Foreign Office, what else?” he answered with elaborate sarcasm, continuing to exert alternating pressures on the prone girl’s costal region.

  A low moan and a gasp told us that the patient was responding to his treatment, and he leaped up nimbly, raised her to a sitting posture with her back against the wall, then bent down smiling.

  “You are here, outside the theater, Mademoiselle,” he told her, anticipating the question with which nine fainting patients out of ten announce return to consciousness. “Will you tell us, if you please, exactly what occurred to you before you swooned?”

  The girl raised both hands to her neck, caressing her throat gently with her finger tips. “I—I scarcely know what happened,” she replied. “I had to get home early, so I went out before the finale, and was dressed and ready when the curtain was rung down. Just as I left the theater something seemed to—to fall on me; it seemed as though a great, soft hand had closed around my throat and two big fingers pressed beneath my ears. Then I fainted, and—”

  “Précisément, Mademoiselle, and can you tell us if you cried for help?”

  “Why, no; you see, it took me so by surprise that I just sort of gasped and—”

  “Thank you, that explains it,” he broke in. “I wondered how you had survived; now I understand. When you gasped in sudden terror you filled your lungs with air. Thereafter, right away, immediately, you fainted, and the muscles of your neck were utterly relaxed. Squeeze as he would, he could not quite succeed in strangling you, for your flaccid flesh offered no resistance to the pressure of his roomal, and the air you had inspired was enough to aerate your blood and support life until we came upon you. But it was a near thing, cordieu—one little minute longer, and you would have been—pouf!” He put his gathered thumb and fingers to his lips, and wafted a kiss upward toward the summer sky.

  “But I don’t understand—”

  “Nor need you, Mademoiselle. You were set upon, you were almost done to death; but by the mercy of a kindly heaven and the prompt advent of Jules de Grandin, you were saved. May we not have the pleasure of securing a conveyance for you?”

  He bowed to her with courtly Continental grace, assisting her to rise.

  “And may one ask your name?” he added as we reached the avenue and I held up my stick to hail a cruising taxicab.

  She turned a long, appraising look on us, taking careful stock of my bald pate fringed with whitening hair, my professional beard and conservatively cut dinner clothes, then, with brightening eyes, took in de Grandin’s English-tailored suit, his trimly waxed wheat-blond mustache and sleek blond hair. With a smile which answered that which the little Frenchman turned toward her she answered, “Certainly, I’m billed as Mam’selle Toni on the program, but my real name’s Helen Fisk.”

  “NOW, WHAT?” I ASKED as the taxi drove away.

  “First of all to see Monsieur le Directeur; perhaps to pull his nose; at any rate to talk to him like an uncle freshly come from Holland,” he returned, leading the way back to the theater.

  Monsieur Serge Orloff, managing director of Issatakko’s Ballet Russe whose real name must have been quite different from the one he bore in public, sat in sweaty and uncomfortable loneliness in the little cubicle which served him for an office. “Ah, gentlemen,” he greeted as we entered, “I’m sure I’m very much obliged to you for what you did this evening. I suppose there’ll be some charge for your—ah—professional assistance?” He drew a Russia leather wallet from the inside pocket of his evening coat and fingered it suggestively.

  “Monsieur,” de Grandin told him bluntly, “I think you are a liar.”

  “Wha—what?” the other stammered. “What’s that?”

  “Precisely, exactly; quite so,” the Frenchman answered. “That note of which you spoke when first we met. It was no note of promise, and you know it very well; you also know we know it. It was a threat—a warning of some kind, and you must let us see it. Right away, at once.”

  “But my dear sir—”

  “To blazing hell with your dear sirs—the note, Monsieur.” He thrust his hand out truculently.

  Orloff looked at him consideringly a moment, then with a racial shrug opened his wallet and gave the Frenchman a slip of folded paper.

  “U’m?” de Grandin scanned the missive rapidly while I looked across his shoulder:

  Manager, Issatakko Ballet:

  Impious man, be warned that your spectacle, La Mort d’un Yogin, is an insult to the gods it parodies. If you would save the sacrilegious women who take part in it, and yourself, from the vengeance of the Great Destroyer, you will discontinue it at once. Death, sure and inescapable, shall be the lot of all who further this vile insult to divinity. Be warned in time and do not further brave the vengeance of the gods of India.

  (Signed) THE SLAVES OF SIVA.

  “What does it mean, ‘the Great Destroyer’?” I asked.

  “Siva,” he replied, almost petulantly. “He is the third person of the Hindoo triad. Brahma, the Creator, is the first, Vishnu, the Preserver, second, and Siva, the Destroyer, the last and greatest of them all.” Then, to the manager:

  “This thing, when did you get it, if you please, Monsieur?”

  “About a month ago, sir. We opened in Bridgeport, Connecticut, you know; and this note was slipped under my office door the morning following the first try-out performance.”

  “U’m? And has any effort been made to enforce the threat—before tonight?”

  “Tonight? You don’t mean Niki was a victim of—”

  “Niki and Toni, too, Monsieur. The first was killed outright by a very clever piece of villainy; the second would have died by the strangling-handkerchief—the roomal of the thags—had I not smelt the fish and hastened to her aid, before I surely knew that she had been attacked.”

  “Oh, this is terrible!” Orloff fairly wailed. “I dare not let this news leak out. Oh, what shall I do?”

  “First, Monsieur, you would be advised to secure police protection for your troupe. Have them—and yourself as well, well guarded while entering, leaving or within the theater—”

  “But I can’t do that. That would involve publicity, and—”

  “Very well,” the Frenchman bowed with frigid politeness. “Do as you please, Monsieur. I leave to hold a session at the city mortuary and”—there was no humor in the smile he turned upon the manager—“unless you act on my advice, I greatly fear that I shall see you there ere long.”

  “COLORED MEN? WHY, YES, sir: there’s been one of ’em buying tickets to every performance since we opened,” the ticket-seller, who boasted the proud title of assistant treasurer of the Issatakko Ballet, told de Grandin as we stopped before his wicket in the lobby. “Funny thing, too; one of ’em, not always the same feller, stops here every afternoon and buys four tickets for the evening show. I don’t know who he gets ’em for, but he’s here each afternoon, as regular as clockwork. Always gets the best seats in the house, too.”

  Nodding courteous acknowledgment of the information, de Grandin sought the ticket-taker. It appeared, from what the latter had to say, that “four dinges come every evenin’, an’ one of ’em always runs out sort o’ early, with th’ other three leavin’ when the show lets out.”

  “Eh bien, my friend,” de Grandin told me as we set out for the city morgue, “it would seem there is a definite connection between the advent of those dark-skinned gentlemen, the note of warning which so disturbed Monsieur Orloff, and the death of that unfortunate young woman in her dressing-room tonight. N’est-ce-pas?”

  CORONER MARTIN GREETED US cordially as we entered his funeral home, which also housed the city’s autopsy room. “No, there’s been no post-mortem yet,” he answered de Grandin’s anxious question. “Fact is, Doctor Parnell, the coroner’s physician, is out of town on six weeks’ vacation, and as he has no official substitute, I—”

  “Ah, parbleu, our problem then is solved!�
�� the Frenchman broke in delightedly. “Appoint me in his place, Monsieur, and I shall perform the autopsy at once, immediately. Yes; of course.”

  The coroner regarded him thoughtfully. They were firm friends, the tall, gray-haired mortician and the dapper little Frenchman, and each held the other’s professional attainments in high regard. “By George, I’ll do it!” Mr. Martin agreed. “It’s a bit irregular, for I suppose you’re not strictly ‘a physician and surgeon regularly resident in the county,’ but I think my authority permits me to make such interim appointments as I choose. Have you any theory of the death?”

  “Decidedly, Monsieur. This so unfortunate young woman was murdered.”

  “Murdered? Why, there’s no trace of violence, or—”

  “That is where you do mistake; observe, if you please.” Crossing the brightly lighted, white-tiled room, de Grandin moved the sheet shrouding the still form upon the operating-table and pointed to the inner corner of the left eye. “You see?” he asked.

  Bending forward, we descried the tiniest spot of black. It might have been a bead of mascara displaced from her elaborately made-up lashes; perhaps an accumulation of dust.

  “Blood,” de Grandin told us solemnly. “I noticed it when first I viewed the body, and I said to me, ‘Jules de Grandin, why is it that this poor one bleeds from the eye? Has she fallen, sustained a fracture of the skull, with consequent concussion of the brain?’

  “‘It are not likely,’ I reply to me, ‘for had she done so she would have bled also from the nose; perhaps the ear, as well.’

  “Then I remember of a body which I once examined in France. A very cunning murder had been done that time, but physicians of the Ministry of Justice discovered him. Yes, of course. This is how it had been done:

  “Above the eye there is a little cul-de-sac, a pouch, roofed off by the so thin bone of the supraorbital plate, upon which rests the brain. A long, thin instrument of steel, like, by example, the pins with which the pretty ladies used to fasten on their hats, could be thrust in there, curved above the eye, and easily pierce the thin bone of the supraorbital plate. Voilà, the instrument punctures the frontal lobe, a hemorrhage results and a synthetic apoplexy takes place. Death follows. You see? Mais, c’est très simple.

  “And, my friends”—he turned his level, unwinking cat-stare on each of us in turn—“the murderer in that other case was an Asiatic—a Hindoo. The technique in that case was like that in the case before us; I damn suspect the nationality of the murderers is similar, too. Come, let us see if Jules de Grandin is mistaken.”

  With the uncanny speed and certainty which characterized all his surgery he set to work with bistoury and saw and chisel, laid the scalp and lifted off the skull-vault. “Observe him, gentlemen,” he ordered, pointing with his knife-blade to the dissected frontal lobe. “Here is the blood-clot which caused death, and here”—he directed our attention to the neatly sawed skull—“you will observe the small hole in the roof of the orbit, the hole by which the instrument of death penetrated the brain. Is it not all plain?”

  I had to look a second time before I could discern the hole, but at length I saw it. There was no doubt of it, the roof of the supraorbital plate had been pierced, and death had followed the resultant brain-hemorrhage.

  “Good heavens, this is fiendish!” exclaimed the coroner.

  “Perfectly,” agreed de Grandin placidly.

  “And you suspect the murderer?”

  “I am certain that he is one of four whom I did see tonight, but which one I can not surely say. Moreover, hélas, knowing and proving are two very different things. Our next task is to match our knowledge with our evidence, and—”

  The buzzer of the operating-room telephone broke through his words, and with a murmured apology Mr. Martin crossed the room and took up the receiver.

  “What, at the Hotel Winfield?” he demanded sharply. “Yes, I have it—O-r-l-o-f-f. Right. Send Jack and Tommy over with the ambulance.”

  “What is it, Monsieur Martin?” de Grandin asked, and as the coroner turned from the ’phone I felt my pulses beating faster.

  “Oh,” answered Mr. Martin wearily, “it’s another case for us. Mr. Orloff, the manager of the Issatakko Ballet, has just been found dead in his room at the Hotel Winfield.”

  “Nom d’un nom d’un nom d’un nom! So soon?” cried Jules de Grandin. I warned the silly, avaricious fool of his danger, but he valued gold above life and would not have police protection, and—

  “Quick, Monsieur,” he besought Martin, “bid them hold the ambulance. Friend Trowbridge and I must accompany them; we must see that body—observe the way it lies and all surrounding circumstances—before it has been moved.”

  Stripping off rubber gloves and apron he thrust his arms into his dinner jacket, seized me by the elbow and fairly dragged me up the stairs to the garage where the ambulance was waiting, engine purring.

  “You’re sure one of those men we saw in the theater tonight killed that girl?” I asked as we dashed through the midnight street, our howling siren sounding strident warning.

  “But certainly,” he answered. “We have the similarity of technique in the stabbing through the eye, we have the threatening note to Monsieur Orloff, we have the circumstance of attempted garroting of Mademoiselle Hélène, last of all—this.” From an envelope he produced a strand of crisp, black hair. “I found it bedded under the fingernail of the dead girl when I examined her remains in the theater,” he explained. “She put up some resistance, but her assailant was too powerful.”

  “But this is curly hair,” I objected. “Those men all had perfectly straight hair, and—”

  “On their heads, yes,” he conceded. “But this is hair from a beard, my friend. What then? The fourth man, the one who left the theater before the others, wore a beard. That it was he who attempted to garrote Mademoiselle Hélène in the alley I am certain; that he also killed poor Mademoiselle Niki in her dressing-roorn I am convinced, but—”

  “How can you prove it?”

  “Ha, there is the pinch of the too-tight shoe!” he agreed ruefully. “Tout la même, if it can be proved, Jules de Grandin is the man to do it. He is one devilish clever fellow, that de Grandin.”

  SPRAWLED SUPINELY ACROSS HIS bed, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, mouth slightly agape, tongue protruding, lay the little, fat manager of the Issatakko Ballet. It needed no second glance to tell that he was dead, and it required only a second look to tell the manner of his dying; for round his throat, just above the line of his stiffly starched dress collar, was a livid, anemic depression no wider than a lead pencil, but so deep it almost pierced the skin. Habituated to viewing both the processes and results of violent death, de Grandin crossed the room with a rapid stride, took the dead man’s head between his palms and slowly raised it. It was as though the head were joined to the body by a cord rather than a column of bone and muscle; for there was no resistance to the little Frenchman’s slender hands as the dead chin nodded upward.

  “Parbleu, again?” de Grandin muttered.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It is the strangler’s mark, my friend,” he answered, fingering the dead man’s broken neck with delicately probing fingers. “Nothing but a thag’s garrote leaves a mark like this and breaks the neck in this manner. One trained in the murder-school of Kalika has done this thing, and—ah? A-a-ah? Que diable?”

  Bending forward suddenly he raised the manager’s clenched hand. Protruding from between the first and second finger was a wisp of black, curling hair.

  “Parbleu, he sheds his hair as an old hen drops feathers at the moulting-season, that one,” the Frenchman muttered grimly. “And, sang du diable, I shall drag him to his death by those selfsame hairs, or may I eat fried turnips for my Christmas dinner!”

  “Whatever are you vaporing about?” I demanded.

  “This, mordieu!” he answered sharply. “Even as the poor young Mademoiselle Niki, this unfortunate man grappled unavailingly with his assailant.
In his case, as in hers, the murderer leant close to do his work, and in each instance his victim grasped him by the beard, yet could not hold him. But they managed to pluck away a hair and hold it in their hands as death came to them. The inference is clear, unmistakable. The same man did both murders.”

  “Well?”

  “By damn it, no! It is not well at all, my friend. It is quite entirely otherwise. Attend me: This sacré killer, this strangler, this stabber-in-the eye, he is emboldened by success. He thinks because he has been able to do these things that he can continue on his road of wickedness. ‘These crimes I make are unexplained,’ he says to him. ‘These Western fools are frightened, but they know not what it is they fear. Voilà, I continue in the future as in the past, killing when and where I please, and no one shall suspect me or call me to account.’

  “Say you so, Monsieur l’Assassin? Be happy while you may; Jules de Grandin has his nose upon your trail!”

  “BUT NO, MONSIEUR, NOT by no means; there it is you make the grand mistake!” de Grandin assured Mr. Masakowski, the new manager of the Issatakko Ballet, next morning. “Your decision to abandon this enterprise will prove financially disastrous; it will stamp you as a weakling; it will also greatly inconvenience me.”

  Masakowski, a lean, hawk-nosed man with the earmarks of Southeastern Europe written large upon him, regarded the little Frenchman with a look in which fear and cupidity were almost evenly blended. “I’d like to carry on the show,” he admitted. “The house is a sell-out and we’re turning ’em away for the next three nights, but—well, you know what happened last night. Orloff’s dead; murdered, I’ve heard it said, and Niki died mighty strangely in her dressing-room, too. Now Julia and Riccarda are reported absent. I called their house when they were half an hour late, and the landlady said they didn’t even come home last night. Something darn funny about that.” He broke off, drumming on the cigarette-burned edge of his desk with long, nervous fingers.

  De Grandin tweaked the needle-ends of his tiny, blond mustache. “You tell me two young ladies of the chorus are missing?” he asked.