The man’s head rocked insanely from side to side, as though his neck had been a flaccid cord, and: “Magna Mater …” he began again with a whimpering persistence.
“Monsieur! Stop it. I command it, and I am Jules de Grandin!” Sharply the little Frenchman’s command rang out; then, as the other goggled at him and began his muttered prayer anew, de Grandin raised his small gloved hand and dealt him a stinging blow across the face. “Parbleu, I will be obeyed, me!” he snorted wrathfully. “Save your conjurations for another time, Monsieur; at present we would talk with you.”
Brutal as his treatment was, it was efficacious. The blow acted like a douche of cold water on a swooning person, and Wickwire seemed for the first time to realize we were present.
“These gentlemen are Doctors Trowbridge and de Grandin,” his daughter introduced. “I met them when I ran for help last night, and they took me with them. Now, they are here to help you—”
Wickwire stopped her with uplifted hand. “I fear there’s no help for me—or you, my child,” he interrupted sadly. “They have the Sacred Meteorite, and it is only a matter of time till they find the Word of Power, then—”
“Nom d’un coq, Monsieur, let us have things logically and in decent order, if you please,” de Grandin broke in sharply. “This sacred meteorite, this word of powerfulness, this so mysterious ‘they’ who have the one and are about to have the other, in Satan’s name, who and what are they? Tell us from the start of the beginning. We are intrigued, we are interested; parbleu, we are consumed with the curiosity of a dying cat!”
Professor Wickwire smiled at him, the weary smile a tired adult might give a curious child. “I fear you wouldn’t understand,” he answered softly.
“By blue, you do insult my credulity, Monsieur!” the Frenchman rejoined hotly. “Tell us your tale, all—every little so small bit of it—and let us be the judges of what we shall believe. Me, I am an occultist of no small ability, and this so strange adventure of last night assuredly has the flavor of the superphysical. Yes, certainly.”
Wickwire brightened at the other’s words. “An occultist?” he echoed. “Then perhaps you can assist me. Listen carefully, if you please, and ask me anything which you may not understand:
“Ten years ago, while assembling data for my book on witchcraft in the ancient world, I became convinced of the reality of sorcery. If you know anything at all of mediæval witchcraft, you realize that Diana was the patroness of the witches, even in that comparatively late day, Burchard, Bishop of Worms, writing of sorcery, heresy and witchcraft in Germany in the year 1000 says: ‘Certain wretched women, seduced by the sorcery of demons, affirm that during the night they ride with Diana, goddess of the heathens, and a host of other women, and that they traverse immense spaces.’
“Now, Diana, whom most moderns look upon as a clean-limbed goddess of chastity, was only one name for the great Female Principle among the pantheon of ancient days. Artemis, or Diana, is typified by the moon, but there is also Hecate, goddess of the black and fearful night, queen of magic, sorcery and witchcraft, deity of goblins and the underworld and guardian of crossroads; she was another attribute of the same night-goddess whom we know best today as Diana.
“But back of all the goddesses of night, whether they be styled Diana, Artemis, Hecate, Rhea, Astarte or Ishtar, is the Great Mother—Magna Mater. The origin of her cult is so ancient that recorded history does not even touch it, and even oral tradition tells of it only by indirection. Her worship is so old that the Anatolian meteorite brought to Rome in 204 B.C. compares to it as Christian Science or New Thought compare in age with Buddhism.
“Piece by piece I traced back the chain of evidence of her worship and finally became convinced that it was not in Anatolia at all that her mother-shrine was located, but in some obscure spot, so many centuries forgotten as to be no longer named, near the site of the ancient city of Uruck. An obscure Roman legionary mentions the temple where the goddess he refers to by the Syro-Phœnician name of Astarte was worshipped by a select coterie of adepts, both men and women, to whom she gave dominion over earth and sea and sky—power to raise tempests or to quiet them, to cause earthquakes, to cause fertility or sterility in men and beasts, or cause the illness or death of an enemy. They were also said to have the power of levitation, or flying through the air for great distances, or even to be seen in several places at the same time. This, you see, is about the sum total of all the powers claimed for witches and wizards in mediæval times. In fine, this obscure goddess of our nameless centurion is the earliest ascertainable manifestation of the female divinity who governed witchcraft in the ancient world, and whose place has been usurped by the Devil in Christian theology.
“But this was only the beginning: The Roman chronicler stated definitely that her idol was a ‘stone from heaven, wrapped in an envelope of earth,’ and that no man durst break the tegument of the celestial stone for fear of rousing Astarte’s wrath; yet to him who had the courage to do so would be given the Verbum Magnum, or Word of Power—an incantation whereby all majesty, might, power and dominion of all things visible and invisible would be put into his hands, so that he who knew the word would be, literally, Emperor of the Universe.
“As I said before, I became convinced of the reality of witchcraft, both ancient and modern, and the deeper I delved into the records of the past the more convinced I was that the greatest claims made by latter-day witches were mere childish nonsense compared to the mighty powers actually possessed by the wizards of olden times. I spent my health and bankrupted myself seeking that nameless temple of Astarte—but at last I found it. I found the very stone of which the Roman wrote and brought it back to America—here.”
Wickwire paused, breathing in labored gasps, and his pale eyes shone with the quenchless ardor of the enthusiast as he looked triumphantly from one of us to the other.
“Bien, Monsieur, this stone of the old one is brought here; what then?” de Grandin asked as the professor showed no sign of proceeding further with his narrative.
“Eh? Oh, yes.” Once more Wickwire lapsed into semisomnolence. “Yes, I brought it back, and was preparing to unwrap it, studying my way carefully, of course, in order to avoid being blasted by the goddess’ infernal powers when I broke the envelope, but—but they came last night and stole it.”
“Bon sang d’un bon poisson, must we drag information from you bit by little bit, Monsieur?” blazed the exasperated Jules de Grandin. “Who was it pilfered your unmentionable stone?”
“Kraus and Steinert stole it,” Wickwire answered tonelessly. “They are German illuminati, Hanoverians whose researches paralleled mine in almost every particular, and who discovered the approximate location of the mystic meteorite shortly after I did. Fortunately for me their data were not so complete as mine, and they lost some time trying to locate the ancient temple. I had dug up the stone and was on my way home when they finally found the place.
“Can you imagine what it would mean to any mortal man to be suddenly translated into godhood, to sway the destinies of nations—of all mankind—as a wind sways a wheatfield? If you can, you can imagine what those two adepts in black magic felt when they arrived and found the key to power gone and on its way to America in the possession of a rival. They sent astral messengers after me, first offering partnership, then, when I laughed at them, making all manner of threats. Several times they attempted my life, but my magic was stronger than theirs, and each time I beat their spirit-messengers off.
“Lately, though, their emissaries have been getting stronger. I began to realize this when I found myself weaker and weaker after each encounter. Whether they have found new sources of strength, or whether it is because two of them work against me I do not know, but I began to realize we were becoming more evenly matched and it was only a matter of time before they would master me. Yet there was much to be done before I dared remove the envelope from that stone; to attempt it unprepared would be fool-hardy. Such forces as would be unleashed by the cracking
of that wrapping are beyond the scope of human imagining, and every precaution had go be taken. Any dunce can blow himself up handling gunpowder carelessly; only the skilled artillerist can harness the explosive and make it drive a projectile to a given target.
“While I was perfecting my spiritual defenses I took all physical precautions, also, barring my windows and so securing my doors that if my enemies gave up the battle of magic in disgust and fell back upon physical force, I should be more than a match for them. Then, because I thought myself secure, for a little time at least, I overlooked one of the most elementary forms of sorcery, and last night they entered my house as though there had been no barriers and took away the magic stone. With that in their possession I shall be no match for them; they will work their will on me, then overwhelm the world with the forces of their wizardry. If only—”
“Excuse me, Professor,” I broke in, for, wild as his story was, I had become interested despite myself; “what was the sorcery these men resorted to in order to force entrance? Your daughter told us something of a blazing hand, but—”
“It was a hand of glory,” he returned, regarding me with something of the look a teacher might bestow upon a backward schoolboy, “one of the oldest, simplest bits of magic known to adepts. A hand—preferably the sinister—is cut from the body of an executed murderer, and five locks of hair are clipped from his head. The hand is smoked over a fire of juniper wood until it becomes dry and mummified; after this the hair is twisted into wicks which are affixed to the finger tips. If the proper invocations are recited while the hand and wicks are being prepared and the words of power pronounced when the wicks are lighted, no lock can withstand the light cast by the blazing glory hand, and—”
“Ha, I remember him,” de Grandin interrupted delightedly. “Your so droll Abbé Barham tells of him in his exquisitely humorous poem:
Now open lock to the dead man’s knock,
Fly bolt and bar and band;
Nor move nor swerve joint, muscle or nerve,
At the spell of the dead man’s hand.
Sleep all who sleep, wake all who wake,
But be as the dead for the dead man’s sake.
Wickwire nodded grimly. “There’s a lot of truth in those doggerel rimes,” he answered. “We laugh at the fairy-story of Bluebeard today, but it was no joke in fifteenth century France when Bluebeard was alive and making black magic.”
“Tu parles, mon vieux,” agreed de Grandin, “and—”
“Excuse me, but you’ve spoken several times of removing the envelope from this stone, Professor,” I broke in again. “Do you mean that literally, or—”
“Literally,” Wickwire responded. “In Babylonia and Assyria, you know, all ‘documents’ were clay tablets on which the cuneiform characters were cut while they were still moist and soft, and which were afterward baked in a kiln. Tablets of special importance, after having been once written upon and baked, were covered with a thin coating of clay upon which an identical inscription was impressed, and the tablets were once more baked. If the outer writing were then defaced by accident or altered by design, the removal of the outer coating would at once show the true text. Such a clay coating has been wrapped about the mystic meteorite of the Great Mother-Goddess, but even in the days of the Roman historian most of the inscription had been obliterated by time. When I found it I could distinguish only one or two characters, such as the double triangle, signifying the moon, and the eight-pointed asterisks meaning the lord of lords and god of gods, or lady of ladies and goddess of goddesses. These, I may add, were not in the Assyrian cuneiforms of 700 B.C. or even the archaic characters dating back to 2500, but the early, primitive cuneiform, which was certainly not used later than 4500 B.C., probably several centuries earlier.”
“And how did you propose removing the clay integument without hurt to yourself, Monsieur?” de Grandin asked.
Wickwire smiled, and there was something devilish, callous, in his expression as be did so. “Will you be good enough to examine my daughter’s rings?” he asked.
Obedient to his nodded command, the girl stretched forth her thin, frail hands, displaying the purple settings of the circlets which adorned the third finger of each. The stones were smoothly polished, though not very bright, and each was deeply incised with this inscription:
“It’s the ancient symbol of the Mother-Goddess,” Wickwire explained, “and signifies ‘Royal Lady of the Night, Ruler of the Lights of Heaven, Mother of Gods, Men and Demons.’ Diane would have racked the envelope for me, for only the hands of a virgin adorned with rings of amethyst bearing the Mother-Goddess’ signet can wield the hammer which can break that clay—and the maid must do the act without fear or hesitation; otherwise she will be powerless.”
“U’m?” de Grandin twisted fiercely at his little blond mustache. “And what becomes of this ring-decorated virgin, Monsieur?”
Again that smile of fiendish indifference transformed Wickwire’s weak face into a mask of horror. “She would die,” he answered calmly. “That, of course, is certain, but”—some lingering light of parental sanity broke through the look of wild fanaticism—“unless she were utterly consumed by the tremendous forces liberated when the envelope was cracked, I should have power to restore her to life, for all power, might, dominion and majesty in the world would have been mine; death should bow before me, and life should exist only by my sanction. I—”
“You are a scoundrel and a villain and a most unpleasant species of a malodorous camel,” cut in Jules de Grandin.
“Mademoiselle, you will kindly pack a portmanteau and come with us. We shall esteem it a privilege to protect you till danger from those sales bêtes who invaded your house last night is past.”
Without a word, or even a glance at the man who would have sacrificed her to his ambition, Diane Wickwire left the room, and we heard the clack-clack of her bedroom mules as she ascended to her chamber to procure a change of clothing.
Professor Wickwire turned a puzzled look from de Grandin to me, then back to the Frenchman. That we could not understand and sympathize with his ambition and condone his willingness to sacrifice his daughter’s life never seemed to enter his mad brain. “But me—what’s to become of me?” he whimpered.
“Eh bien, one wonders,” answered Jules de Grandin. “As far as I am concerned, Monsieur, you may go to the Devil, nor need you delay your departure in anywise out of consideration for my feelings.”
“MAD,” I DIAGNOSED. “MAD as hatters, both of ’em. The man’s a potential homicidal maniac; only heaven knows how long it will be before we have to put the girl under restraint.”
De Grandin looked cautiously about; then, satisfied that Diane Wickwire was still in the chamber to which she had been conducted by Nora McGinnis, my efficient household factotum, he replied: “You think that story of the glory hand was madness, hein?”
“Of course it was,” I answered. “What else could it be?”
“Le bon Dieu knows, not I,” he countered; “but I would that you read this item in today’s Journal before consigning her to the madhouse.” Picking up a copy of the morning paper he indicated a boxed item in the center of the first page:
Police are seeking the ghouls who broke into James Gibson’s funeral parlor, 1037 Ludlow St., early last night and stole the left hand from the body of José Sanchez, which was lying in the place awaiting burial today. Sanchez had been executed Monday night at Trenton for the murder of Robert Knight, caretaker in the closed Steptens iron foundry, last summer, and relatives had commissioned Gibson to bring the body to Harrisonville for interment.
Gibson was absent on a call in the suburbs last night, and as his assistant, William Lowndes, was confined to bed at home by unexpected illness, had left the funeral parlor unattended, having arranged to have any telephone calls switched to his residence in Winthrop St. On his return he found a rear door of his establishment had been jimmied and the left hand of the executed murderer severed at the wrist.
Strangely en
ough, the burglars had also shorn a considerable amount of hair from the corpse’s head. A careful search of the premises failed to disclose anything else had been taken, and a quantity of money lying in the unlocked safe was untouched.
“Well!” I exclaimed, utterly nonplussed; but:
“Non,” he denied shortly. “It is not at all well, my friend, it is most exceedingly otherwise. It is fiendish, it is diabolical: it is devilish. There are determined miscreants against whom we have set ourselves, and I damn think that we shall lose some sleep ere all is done. Yes.”
4. The Sending
HOWEVER FORMIDABLE PROFESSOR WICKWIRE’S rivals might have been, they gave no evidence of ferocity that I could see. Diane settled down comfortably in our midst, fitting perfectly into the quiet routine of the household, giving no trouble and making herself so generally agreeable that I was heartily glad of her presence. There is something comforting about the pastel shades of filmy dresses and white arms and shoulders gleaming softly in the candle-light at dinner. The melody of a well-modulated feminine voice, punctuated now and again with little rippling notes of quiet laughter, is more than vaguely pleasant to the bachelor ear, and as the time of our companionship lengthened I often found myself wondering if I should have had a daughter such as this to sit at table or before the fire with me if fate had willed it otherwise and my sole romance had ended elsewhere than an ivy-covered grave with low white headstone in St. Stephen’s churchyard. One night I said as much to Jules de Grandin, and the pressure of his hand on mine was good to feel.
“Bien, my friend,” he whispered, “who are we to judge the ways of heaven? The grass grows green above the lips you used to kiss—me, I do not know if she I loved is in the world or gone away. I only know that never may I stand beside her grave and look at it, for in that cloistered cemetery no man may come, and—eh, what is that? Un chaton?” Outside the window of the drawing-room, scarce heard above the shrieking of the boisterous April wind, there sounded a plaintive mew, as though some feline Wanderer begged entrance and a place before our fire.
The Dark Angel Page 68