“A young caballero waits to see the captain,” the man explained apologetically. “His hacienda was burglarized last night. Much livestock was driven off; the family plate was stolen. He is sure it was La Murciélaga, and has come to make complaint.”
“Un milagro—a miracle!” the Commandant cried exultantly. “Two in one day, amigos. First come you with information of this cursed bat society, then comes a man with courage to denounce them for their thievery.
“Bring him in, muy pronto!” he commanded.
The man the orderly showed in was scarcely more than a lad, dark, slender, almost womanish in build, his sole claim to masculinity seeming to be based upon a tiny black mustache and a little tuft of beard immediately below his mouth, so small and black that it reminded me of a beetle perched between his chin and lip. He wore the old-time Mexican costume, short jacket and loose-bottomed trousers of black velveteen, a scarlet cummerbund about his waist, exceedingly high-heeled boots, a bright silk handkerchief about his head. In one hand he bore a felt sombrero, the brim of which seemed only the necessary groundwork to support row on row of glittering silver braid.
At sight of us he paused abashed, but when the Commandant presented us, his teeth shone in a glittering smile. “We are well met, Señores y Señorita,” he declared; “you are come to seek these Children of the Bat, I am come to ask the commandante’s aid. Last night they picked my house as clean as ever vultures plucked a carcass, and my craven peons refused to lift a hand to stop them. They said that it was death to offer opposition to La Murciélaga, but me, I am brave. I will not be intimidated. No, I have come to the police for aid.”
“What makes you think it was La Murciélaga, sir?” the Commandant inquired. “These people of the bat are criminals, yes; but there are other robbers, too. Might not it be that—”
“Señor Commandante,” broke in the other in a low, half-frightened voice, “would other robbers dare to leave this at my house?” Opening his small gloved hand he dropped a folded bat-wing on the desk.
“Bring a file of soldiers quickly,” he besought. “We can reach my house by sundown, and begin pursuit tomorrow morning. Señorita Meigs can lead us to the secret stronghold in the jungle, and we can take them by surprise.”
PREPARATIONS WERE COMPLETED QUICKLY. Two squads of cavalry with two machine-guns were quickly mustered at the barracks, and with young Señor Epilar to guide us, we set out for the scene of La Murciélaga’s latest depredation. The sun dropped down behind the jungle wall as we arrived at the old hacienda.
The soldiers were bivouacked in the patio, and escorted by our host, we made our way to a wide, long drawing-room lighted by wax candles in tall wrought-iron standards and sparsely furnished with chairs and tables of massive oak.
“I bid you welcome to my humble home, my friends,” said Señor Epilar with charming Spanish courtesy. “If you will indulge me a few moments I will have refreshment—”
“What’s that?” the Commandant broke in as a sharp, shrill cry, followed by the detonation of a carbine shot, came from the patio.
“Perhaps one of my people plucked up courage to fire at a coyote,” answered Epilar. “They showed little enough desire to shoot last night—”
“No, that was an army rifle,” the Commandant insisted. “If you will excuse me—”
“And if I do not choose to do so?” calmly asked our host.
“Très mil diablos—if you do not choose—”
“Precisamente, Señor Commandante,” answered Epilar. “I should like to claim my forfeit.”
De Grandin’s small blue eyes were sparkling in the candlelight. “Dieu de Dieu de Dieu de Dieu!” he murmured. “I was certain; I was sure; I could not be mistaken!”
The Commandant regarded Señor Epilar in round-eyed wonder. “Your forfeit?” he demanded. “In the devil’s name—”
“Not quite the devil, though something like it,” cut in Epilar with a soft laugh. “La Murciélaga, Commandante mio. As I came into your office you declared that you would give your head if you could but lay your eyes upon the Bat-Woman. Look, my friend, your wish is granted.”
With one hand he tore off the tiny black mustache and goatee which adorned his face; with the other he unwound the gaudy handkerchief which bound his head, and a wealth of raven hair came tumbling down about his face and rippled round his shoulders. Stripped of its masculine adornments I recognized that lovely, cold, impassive face as belonging to the woman who had stood upon the stairs the night that Caldes and the dancer met their deaths.
“Dios!” the Commandant exclaimed, reaching for the pistol at his belt; but:
“I would not try to do it,” warned the woman. “Look about you.”
At every window of the room masked men were stationed, each with a deadly blow-gun poised and ready at his lips.
“Your soldiers are far happier, I know,” the woman announced softly. “All of them, I’m sure, had been to mass this morning. Now they are conversing with the holy saints. “As for you”—she threw us the dry flick of a Mona Lisa smile—“if you will be kind enough to come, I shall take pleasure in entertaining you at my jungle headquarters.” For a moment her sardonic gaze fixed on Nancy Meigs; then: “Your fair companion will be glad to furnish some amusement, I am sure,” she added softly.
WE RODE ALL NIGHT. Strapped tightly to the saddles of our mules, hands bound behind us and with tapojos, or mule-blinds, drawn across our faces, we plodded through the jungle, claws of acacia and mesquite slapping and scratching against us, the chafing of our rawhide bonds becoming more intolerable each mile.
It was full daylight when they took our hoodwinks off. We had reached an open space several hundred feet in breadth, tiled with squared stones and facing on the ruins of a topless Mayan pyramid which towered ninety or a hundred feet against the thick-set wall of jungle. On each side of us ranked a file of bat-masked men, each with a blow-gun in his hand. Of La Murciélaga we could see nothing.
“Holá, mes enfants, we have come through nobly thus far, n’est-ce-pas?” de Grandin called as he twisted in his saddle to throw a cheerful grin in our direction. “If—par Dieu et le Diable!” he broke off as his small blue eyes went wide with horror and commiseration. Turning, I followed the direction of his glance and felt a sickening sensation at my stomach.
Behind us, bound upon a mule, sat Nancy Meigs. They had stripped her shirt and bandeau off, leaving her stark naked to the belt, and obviously they had failed to tie a tapojo across her face, for from brow to waist she was a mass of crisscrossed slashes where the cruelly clawed thorn branches of the jungle had gashed and sheared her tender skin as she rode bound and helpless through the bush. Little streaks of blood-stain, some fresh, some dry and clotted, marked a pattern on her body and her khaki jodhpurs were bespattered with the dark discolorations. She slumped forward in her saddle, half unconscious, but sufficiently awake to feel the pain of her raw wounds, and we saw her bite her lips as she strove to keep from screaming with the torment which the buzzing jungle flies, her lacerations and the cruelly knotted rawhide bonds inflicted.
“Be all th’ saints, ’tis meself as would like nothin’ better than to git me hands on that she-devil!” swore Costello as he saw the claw-marks on the girl’s white torso. “Bedad, I’d—
“Andela—forward!” came a sharp command beside us, and masked men seized the bridles of our mules and led them toward the pyramid.
Our prison was a large square room lighted by small slits pierced in the solid masonry and furnished with a wooden grating at its doorway. Here we stretched our limbs and strove to rub the circulation back into our hands and feet.
“Soy un bobo—what a fool I am!” the Commandant groaned as he rubbed his swollen wrists. “I should have known that no one in the neighborhood would have the courage to come to me with complaints against these Bat-Men. I should have taken warning—”
“Softly, mon ami,” de Grandin comforted. “You acted in the only way you could. It was your duty to embrace the chance to wipe this ga
ng of bandits out. Me, I should probably have done the same, if—”
A rattling at the wooden grating interrupted him. “La Murciélaga deigns to see you. Come!” a masked man told us.
For a moment I had hopes that we might overpower our guard, but the hope was short-lived; for a file of blowgun bearers waited in the corridor outside our cell, and with this watchful company we made our way along the passage till we came to a low doorway leading to a large apartment lighted by a score of silver lamps swinging from the painted ceiling.
The ancient walls were lined with frescoes, figures of strange dancing women posed in every posture of abandon, some wearing red, some clad in green, a few in somber black, but most entirely nude, flaunting their nakedness in a riot of contorted limbs and swaying bodies. There was a vigor to the art of the old Mayan painters who had limned these frescoes on the walls. Despite their crudity of execution there was an air of realness in the murals which made it seem that they might suddenly be waked to life and circle round the room in the frenzy of an orgiastic dance.
At the far end of the room a table of dark wood was laid with cotton napery and a wonderful old silver service which must at one time have graced the banquet hall of some old grandee in the days of Spanish dominance. Four chairs were drawn up to the board facing the end where a couch of carven wood heaped high with silken cushions stood beneath the fitful luminance cast by a hanging silver lamp.
“This must have been the priestess’ hall,” the Commandant informed us in a whisper. “This temple is supposed to have contained a college of priests and priestesses, something like a convent and monastery.”
“Parbleu, if that is so, I think those old ones did not mortify the flesh to any great extent,” the Frenchman answered with a grin. “But while we wait in this old mausoleum of the ancient ones, where is our charming hostess?”
As though his words had been a cue, a staff of bells chimed musically outside the door, and the guard of bat-men ranged about the walls sank to their knees.
The chime grew higher, shriller, sweeter, and a double file of women dressed in filmy cotton robes, each with a bat-mask on her face, came through the low-arched entrance, paused a moment, then, as though obeying an inaudible command, dropped prostrate to the floor, head to head, hand clasping hand, so that they made a living carpet on the pavement.
Framed in the arching entrance, La Murciélaga stood like some lovely life-sized portrait. A robe of finely woven cotton, dyed brilliant red with cochineal and almost sheer as veiling, flowed from a jeweled belt clasped below her bosoms to the insteps of her narrow, high-arched feet. On throat and arms, on her thumbs and little-fingers, flashed great emeralds, any one of which was worth a princely ransom. Long golden pendants throbbing with the flash of blood-bright rubies reached from the tiny lobes of little ears almost to naked, cream-white shoulders. Each move she made was musical, for bands of pure gold were clasped in tiers about her wrists and on her slender ankles, and clashed tunefully together with each step she took. Upon the great and little-toe of each slim foot there gleamed a giant emerald so that as her feet advanced beneath the swirling hem of her red robe it seemed that green-eyed serpents darted forth their heads.
“Madre de Dios!” I heard the Commandant exclaim, and his voice seemed choked with sobs. “Que hermosa—how beautiful!”
“So is the tiger or the cobra,” murmured Jules de Grandin as La Murciélaga trod upon the prostrate women as unconcernedly as though they had been figures woven in a carpet.
She greeted us with a bright smile. “Good morning, gentlemen. I hope you did not suffer too much inconvenience from your ride last night?”
None of us made reply, but she seemed in nowise fazed. “Breakfast is prepared,” she announced, sinking down upon the heaped-up cushions of the couch and motioning us to the chairs which stood about the table. “I regret I cannot offer you such food as you are used to, but I do my poor best.”
Oranges and cherimoya, grapes, sweet limes, guavas and plates of flat, crisp native bread composed the meal, with coffee, chocolate and lemonade for beverages. Finally came long, thick cigars of rich lowland-grown tobacco and a sweet, strong wine which tasted like angelica.
THE WOMAN LEANT BACK on her cushioned divan and regarded us through half-closed eyes as she let a little streamlet of gray smoke flow from her lips. “The question, gentlemen, is, ‘What are we to do with you?’” she stated in a voice which held that throaty, velvety quality of the southern races. “I cannot very well afford to let you go; I have no wish to keep you here against your will. Would you care to join our ranks? I can find work for you.”
“And if we should refuse, Madame?” de Grandin asked.
Her shrug lifted the creamy shoulders till they touched the jeweled ear-pendants and set their gems to flashing in the lamplight. “There is always el crucifijo,” she replied, turning black-fringed, curious eyes upon him. “It would be interesting to see four bodies hanging up at once. You, my friend, would doubtless scream in charming tenor, el Commandante would shriek baritone, I think, while I do not doubt that the old bearded one and the big Irishman would be the bassos of the concert. It should make an interesting quartet. I have more than half a mind to hear it.”
A frigid grimace, the mere parody of a smile, congealed upon the Commandant’s pale lips. “You make a gruesome jest, Señora,” he asserted feebly.
“Cabrón!” she shot the deadly insult at him as a snake might spew its poison. “La Murciélaga never jests!” Her face had gone skull-white, with narrowed, venomous eyes, the chin and mouth thrust forward and the lips pressed taut against the teeth.
“Down,” she ordered, “down on your faces, all of you! Lick my feet like the dogs you are, and pray for mercy! Down, I say, for as surely as I reign supreme here I’ll crucify the one who hesitates!”
De Grandin looked at Costello, and his Gallic blue eyes met prompt answer in the black-fringed eyes of Irish blue of the detective. With one accord they turned to me, and instinctively I nodded.
The little Frenchman rose, heels clicked together, and faced the termagant she-fiend with a glance as cold and polished as a leveled bayonet. “Madame,” he announced in a metallic voice, “we are men, we four. To men there are things worse than death.”
“Bueno, my little one,” she answered; “then I shall hear your quartet after all. I had hoped that you would choose to play the hero.” Turning to her guards she ordered sharply: “Take them away.”
“No, no; not me, Señora!” the Commandant implored, falling on his knees before her. “Do not crucify me, I beseech you!”
Across his shoulder he cried frenziedly: “Save yourselves, amigos. Beg mercy. What good is honor to a corpse? I saw a man whom they had crucified—they flung his body in the city square at night. It was terrible. His wounds gaped horribly and the middle fingers had been torn away where his hands had ripped loose from the spikes!”
“You would have mercy, little puppy?” asked the woman softly, regarding him with a slow, mocking smile.
“Yes, yes, Señora! Of your pity spare me—”
“Then, since you are a cringing dog, deport yourself becomingly.” With the condescension of a queen who graciously extends her hand for salutation, she stretched out a slim, ring-jeweled foot.
It was shocking to behold him stultify his manhood. “Misericordia muy Señora graciosa—have mercy, gracious lady!” he whimpered, and I turned away my head with a shudder of repulsion as he put his hand beneath her instep, raised the gemmed foot to his mouth, and, thrusting forth his tongue, began to lick it as a famished dog might lap at food.
“Cordieu,” de Grandin murmured as the guards closed round us and began to crowd us from the room, “she may murder us to death, but I damn think she can do no worse to us than she has done to him!”
“Thrue fer ye, Doctor de Grandin, sor,” Costello rumbled. “You an’ me wuz soldiers an’ Doctor Trowbridge is a gintleman. Thank God we ain’t more scared o’ dyin’ than o’ dishonorin’ ourselves!
”
THE SQUARE BEFORE THE pyramid blazed bright with torchlight. On three sides, ranked elbow to elbow, stood the “Children of the Bat” looking through the peep-holes of their masks with frenzied, hot-eyed gloating. Before the temple steps there crouched a line of drummers who beat out a steady, mind-destroying rhythm. We stood, legs hobbled, between our guards, looking toward the temple stairs, and I noticed with a shudder that at intervals of some eight feet four paving-blocks had been removed, and beside each gaping opening was a little pile of earth. The crosspits had been dug.
“Courage, mes enfants,” de Grandin whispered. “If all goes well—”
Costello’s lips were moving almost soundlessly. His eyes were fixed in fascinated awe upon the cross-holes in the pavement; the expression on his face showed more of wonder than of fear. “To hang upon a cross,” I heard him whisper, “I am not worthy, Lord!”
“Morbleu, she comes, my friends!” the little Frenchman warned.
Tiny tom-toms, scarcely larger than a tea-cup, beat out a low, continuous roar beneath the thumbs and knuckles of the double line of bat-masked women filing from a doorway in the temple. Behind them came an awe-inspiring figure. Skin-tight, a sheath of finely woven jet-black silk, sheer and gleaming as the finest stocking, cased her supple form from throat to ankles, its close-looped meshes serving rather to accentuate than hide the gracious curves of her long, slim limbs. Moccasins of cloth of gold were on her feet, her head was covered with a hood which bore the pointed snout and tufted ears of a great vampire bat. In the eyeholes we could see the red reflection of the torchlight. Joined to her body from arm-pits to hips were folds of black-silk tissue, and these, in turn, were fastened to her tightly fitting sleeves, so that when she spread her arms it seemed that great black wings stretched from her. Her hands were bare, and we could see the blood-red lacquer gleaming on her nails as she curved her fingers forward like predatory talons.
“La Murciélaga! La Murciélaga!” rose a mighty shout of homage from the crowd of bat-masked men and women. It was not so much a cry of greeting as of stark insanity—of strange disease and maniacal excitement. It spouted up, cleaving the heavy, torchlit air like a terrible geyser of sound.
A Rival from the Grave Page 46