It might have been a trick of overwrought nerves or an optical illusion produced by the electric lights, but I still believe I saw the dead, long-buried body writhe in its casket and a look of terrible, unutterable hate disfigure the waxen features.
He stepped back, nodding to the attendants, and the casket slid noiselessly into the retort. A whirring sounded as the pressure pump was started, and in a moment came the subdued roar of oil-flames shooting from the burners.
He raised his narrow shoulders in a shrug. “C’est une affaire finie.”
IT WAS SOMEWHAT AFTER midnight when we made our way once more to Shadow Lawn Cemetery. Unerringly as though going to an appointment, de Grandin led the way to the Heatherton family mausoleum, let himself through the massive bronze gates with a key he had procured somewhere, and ordered me to stand guard outside.
Lighted by the flash of his electric torch he entered the tomb, a long cloth-covered parcel clasped under his arm. A moment later I heard the clink of metal on metal the sound of some heavy object being drawn across the floor; then, as I grew half hysterical at the long continued silence, there came the short, half-stifled sound of a gasping cry, the sort of cry a patient in the dental chair gives when a tooth is extracted without anaesthetic.
Another period of silence, broken by the rasp of heavy objects being moved, and the Frenchman emerged from the tomb, tears streaming down his face. “Peace,” he announced chokingly. “I brought her peace, Friend Trowbridge, but oh! how pitiful it was to hear her moan, and still more pitiful to see the lovely, live-seeming body shudder in the embrace of relentless death. It is not hard to see the living die, my old one, but the dead! Mordieu, my soul will be in torment every time I think of what I had to do tonight for mercy’s sake!”
JULES DE GRANDIN CHOSE a cigar from the humidor and set it glowing with the precision that distinguished his every movement. “I grant you the events of the last three days have been decidedly queer,” he agreed as he sent a cloud of fragrant smoke ceilingward. “But what would you? All that lies outside our everyday experience is queer. To one who has not studied biology the sight of an amoeba beneath the microscope is queer; the Eskimos undoubtlessly thought Monsieur Byrd’s airplane queer; we think the sights which we have seen these nights queer. It is our luck—and all mankind’s—that they are.
“To begin: Just as there exist today certain protozoa which are probably identical with the earliest forms of life on earth, so there are still, though constantly diminishing in numbers, certain holdovers of ancient evil. Time was when earth swarmed with them—devils and devilkins, imps, satyrs and demons, elementals, werewolves and vampires. All once were numerous; all, perhaps, exist in considerable numbers to this day, though we know them not, and most of us never so much as hear of them. It is with the vampire that we had to deal this time. You know him, no?
“Strictly, he is an earthbound soul, a spirit which because of manifold sins and wickedness is bound to the world wherein it once worked evil and cannot take itself to its proper place. He is in India in considerable numbers, also in Russia, Hungary, Romania and throughout the Balkans—wherever civilization is very old and decadent, there he seems to find a favorable soil. Sometimes he steals the body of one already dead; sometimes he remains in the body which he had in life, and then he is most terrible of all, for he needs nourishment for that body, but not such nourishment as you or I take. No, he subsists on the life force of the living, imbibed through their blood, for the blood is the life. He must suck the breath from those who live, or he cannot breathe; he must drink their blood, or he dies of starvation. And here is where the danger rises: a suicide, one who dies under a curse, or one who has been inoculated with the vampire virus by having his blood sucked by a vampire, becomes a vampire after death. Innocent of all wrong he may be, often is, yet he is doomed to tread the earth by night, preying ceaselessly upon the living, ever recruiting the grisly ranks of his tribe. You apprehend?
“Consider this case: This sacré Palenzeke, because of his murder and suicide, perhaps partly because of his Slavic ancestry, maybe also because of his many other sins, became a vampire when he killed himself to death. Madame Heatherton’s informant was correct, he had destroyed himself; but his evil body and more evil soul remained in partnership, ten thousand times a greater menace to mankind than when they had been partners in their natural life.
“Enjoying the supernatural power of his life-in-death, he rose from the swamplands, waylaid Mademoiselle Alice, assaulted her chauffeur, then dragged her off into the bog to work his evil will on her, gratifying at once his bestial lust, his vampire’s thirst for blood and his revenge for her rejection of his wooing. When he had killed her, he had made her such a thing as he was. More, he had gained dominion over her. She was his toy, his plaything, his automaton, without will or volition of her own. What he commanded she must do, however much she hated doing it. You will recall, perhaps, how she told the young Rochester that she must go out with the villain, although she hated him? Also, how she bade him enter the apartment where she and her beloved lay in love’s embrace, although his entrance meant her lover’s undoing?
“Now, if the vampire added all the powers of living men to his dead powers we should have no defense, but fortunately he is subject to unbreakable laws. He can not independently cross the thread of a running stream, he must be carried; he can not enter any house or dwelling until invited by someone therein; he can fly through the air, enter at keyholes and window-chinks, or through the crack of the door, but he can move about only at night—between sunset and cock-crow. From sunrise to dark he is only a corpse, helpless as any other, and must lie corpse-dead in his tomb. At such times he can easily be slain, but only in certain ways. First, if his heart be pierced by a stake of ash and—his head severed from his body, he is dead in good earnest, and can no more rise to plague us. Second, if he can be completely burned to ashes he is no more, for fire cleanses all things.
“Now, with this information, fit together the puzzle that so mystifies you: the other night at the Café Bacchanale I liked the looks of that one not at all. He had the face of a dead man and the look of a born villain, as well as the eye of a fish. Of his companion I thoroughly approved, though she, too, had an other-worldly look. Wondering about them, I watched them from my eye’s tail, and when I observed that they ate nothing I thought it not only strange, but menacing. Normal people do not do such things; abnormal people usually are dangerous.
“When Palenzeke left the young woman, after indicating she might flirt with the young Rochester, I liked the look of things a little less. My first thought was that it might be a game of decoy and robbery—how do you call him?—the game of the badger? Accordingly, I thought it best to follow them to see what we should see. Eh bien, my friend, we saw a plenty, n’est-ce-pas?
“You will recall young Rochester’s experience in the cemetery. As he related it to us I saw at once what manner of foeman we must grapple with, though at that time I did not know how innocent Mademoiselle Alice was. Our information from Madame Heatherton confirmed my worst fears. What we beheld at Rochester’s apartment that night proved all I had imagined, and more.
“But me, I had not been idle meantime. Oh, no. I had seen the good Father Apostolakos and told him what I had learned. He understood at once, and made immediate arrangements to have Palenzeke’s foul body exhumed and taken to the crematory for incineration. He also lent me a sacred ikon, the blessèd image of a saint whose potency to repel demons had more than once been proved. Perhaps you noticed how Mademoiselle Alice shrank from me when I approached her with the relic in my pocket? And how the restless soul of Palenzeke flinched from it as flesh recoils from white-hot iron?
“Very well. Rochester loved this woman already dead. He himself was moribund. Why not let him taste of love with the shade of the woman who returned his passion for the few days he had yet to live? When he died, as die he must, I was prepared to treat his poor clay so that, though he were already half a vampire from the
vampire’s kisses on his throat, he could yet do no harm. You know I have done so. The cleansing fire has rendered Palenzeke impotent. Also, I had pledged myself to do as much for the poor, lovely, sinned-against Alice when her brief aftermath of earthly happiness should have expired. You heard me promise her, and I have kept my word.
“I could not bear to hurt her needlessly, so when I went to her with stake and knife tonight I took also a syringe loaded with five grains of morphine and gave her an injection before I began my work. I do not think she suffered greatly. Her moan of dissolution and the portion of her poor body as the stake pierced through her heart, they were but reflex acts, not signs of conscious misery.”
“But look here,” I objected, “if Alice were a vampire, as you say, and able to float about after dark, how comes it that she lay in her casket when you went there tonight?”
“Oh, my friend,” tears welled up in his eyes, “she waited for me.
“We had a definite engagement; the poor one lay in her casket, awaiting the knife and stake which should set her free from bondage. She—she smiled at me and pressed my hand when I had dragged her from the tomb!”
He wiped his eyes and poured an ounce or so of cognac into a bud-shaped inhaler. “To you, young Rochester, and to your lovely lady,” he said as he raised the glass in salute. “Though there be neither marrying nor giving in marriage where you are, may your restless souls find peace and rest eternally—together.”
The fragile goblet shattered as he tossed it, emptied, into the fireplace.
The Black Master
1
JULES DE GRANDIN POURED a thimbleful of Boulogne cognac into a wide-mouthed glass and passed the goblet back and forth beneath his nose with a waving motion, inhaling the rich, fruity fumes from the amber fluid. “Eh bien, young Monsieur,” he informed our visitor as he drained the liqueur with a slow, appreciative swallow and set the empty glass on the tabouret with a scarcely suppressed smack of his lips, “this is of interest. Pirate treasure, you do say? Parbleu—c’est presque irresistible. Tell us more, if you please.”
Eric Balderson looked from the little Frenchman to me with a half-diffident, deprecating smile. “There really isn’t much to tell,” he confessed, “and I’m not at all sure I’m not the victim of a pipe-dream, after all. You knew Father pretty well, didn’t you, Dr. Trowbridge?” he turned appealingly to me.
“Yes,” I answered, “he and I were at Amherst together. He was an extremely levelheaded sort of chap, too, not at all given to daydreaming, and—”
“That’s what I’m pinning my faith on,” Eric broke in. “Coming from anyone but Dad the story would be too utterly fantastic to—”
“Mordieu, yes, Monsieur,” de Grandin interrupted testily, “we do concede your so excellent père was the ultimate word in discretion and sound judgment, but will you, for the love of kindly heaven, have the goodness to tell us all and let us judge for ourselves the value of the communication of which you speak?”
Eric regarded him with the slow grin he inherited from his father, then continued, quite unruffled, “Dad wasn’t exactly what you’d call credulous, but he seemed to put considerable stock in the story, judging from his diary. Here it is.” From the inside pocket of his dinner-coat he produced a small book bound in red leather and handed it to me. “Read the passages I’ve marked, will you please, Doctor,” he asked. “I’m afraid I’d fill up if I tried to read Dad’s writing aloud. He—he hasn’t been gone very long, you know.”
Adjusting my pince-nez, I hitched a bit nearer the library lamp and looked over the age-yellowed sheets covered with the fine, angular script of my old classmate:
8 Nov. 1898—Old Robinson is going fast. When I called to see him at the Seaman’s Snug Harbor this morning I found him considerably weaker than he had been yesterday, though still in full possession of his faculties. There’s nothing specifically wrong with the old fellow, save as any worn-out bit of machinery in time gets ready for the scrap-heap. He will probably go out sometime during the night, quite likely in his sleep, a victim of having lived too long.
“Doctor,” he said to me when I went into his room this morning, “ye’ve been mighty good to me, a poor, worn-out old hulk with never a cent to repay all yer kindness; but I’ve that here which will make yer everlastin’ fortune, providin’ ye’re brave enough to tackle it.”
“That’s very kind of you, John,” I answered, but the old fellow was deadly serious.
“’Tis no laughin’ matter, Doctor,” he returned as he saw me smile. “’Tis th’ truth an’ nothin’ else I’m tellin’ ye—I’d ’a’ had a go at it meself if it warn’t that seafarin’ men don’t hold with disturbin’ th’ bones o’ th’ dead. But you, bein’ a landsman, an’ a doctor to boot, would most likely succeed where others have failed. I had it from my gran’ther, sir, an’ he was an old man an’ I but a lad when he gave it me, so ye can see ’tis no new thing I’m passin’ on. Where he got it I don’t know, but he guarded it like his eyes an’ would never talk about it, not even to me after he’d give it to me.”
With that he asked me to go to his ditty-box and take out a packet done up in oiled silk, which he insisted I take as partial compensation for all I’d done for him.
I tried to tell him the home paid my fee regularly, and that he was beholden to me for nothing, but he would not have it; so, to quiet the old man, I took the plan for my “everlastin’ fortune” before I left.
9 Nov. 1898—Old John died last night, as I’d predicted, and probably went with the satisfied feeling that he had made a potential millionaire of the struggling country practitioner who tended him in his last illness. I must look into the mysterious packet by which he set such store. Probably it’s a chart for locating some long-sunk pirate ship or unburying the loot of Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, or some other old sea-robber. Sailormen a generation ago were full of such yarns, and recounted them so often they actually came to believe them.
10 Nov. ’98—I was right in my surmise concerning old John’s legacy, though it’s rather different from the usual run of buried-treasure maps. Some day, when I’ve nothing else to do, I may go down to the old church in Harrisonville and actually have a try at the thing. It would be odd if poor Eric Balderson, struggling country practitioner, became a wealthy man overnight. What would I do first? Would a sealskin dolman for Astrid or a new side-bar buggy for me be the first purchase I’d make? I wonder.
“H’m,” I remarked as I put down the book. “And this old seaman’s legacy, as your father called it—”
“Is here,” Eric interrupted, handing me a square of ancient, crackling vellum on which a message of some kind had been laboriously scratched. The edges of the parchment were badly frayed, as though with much handling, though the indentures might have been the result of hasty tearing in the olden days. At any rate, it was a tattered and thoroughly decrepit sheet from which I read:
in ye name of ye most Holie Trinitie
I, Richard Thompson, being a right synfull manne and near unto mine ende do give greeting and warning to whoso shall rede herefrom. Ye booty which my master whose name no manne did rightly know, but who was surnamed by some ye Black Master and by somme Blackface ye Merciless, lyes hydden in divers places, but ye creame thereof is laid away in ye churchyard of St. Davides hard by Harrisons village. There, by daye and by nite do ye dedde stand guard over it for ye Master sealed its hydinge place both with cement and with a curse which he fondlie sware should be on them & on their children who violated ye sepulchre without his sanction. Yet if any there be who dare defye ye curse (as I should not) of hym who had neither pitie ne mercie ne lovingkindness at all, let hm go unto ye burrieing ground at dedde of nite at ye season of dies natalis invicti & obey ye direction. Further hint I dast not gyvve, for fear of him who lurks beyant ye portales of lyffe to hold to account such of hys servants as preceded him not in dethe. And of your charity, ye who rede this, I do charge and conjure ye that ye make goode and pieous use of ye Master hys treasure and that ye
expend such part of ye same as may be fyttinge for masses for ye good estate of Richard Thompson, a synnfull man dieing in terror of his many iniquities & of ye tongueless one who waites himme across ye borderline
When ye star shines from ye tree
Be it as a sign to ye.
Draw ye fourteen cubit line
To ye entrance unto lyfe
Whence across ye graveyard sod
See spotte cursed by man & God.
“It looks like a lot of childish nonsense to me,” I remarked with an impatient shrug as I tossed the parchment to de Grandin. “Those old fellows who had keys to buried treasure were everlastingly taking such care to obscure their meaning in a lot of senseless balderdash that no one can tell when they’re serious and when they’re perpetrating a hoax. If—”
“Cordieu,” the little Frenchman whispered softly, examining the sheet of frayed vellum with wide eyes, holding it up to the lamplight, then crackling it softly between his fingers. “Is it possible? But yes, it must be—Jules de Grandin could not be mistaken.”
“Whatever are you maundering about?” I interrupted impatiently. “The way you’re looking at that parchment anyone would think—”
“Whatever anyone would think, he would be far from the truth,” de Grandin cut in, regarding us with the fixed, unwinking stare which meant deadly seriousness. “If this plat be a mauvaise plaisanterie—how do you call it? the practical joke?—it is a very grim one indeed, for the parchment on which it is engraved is human skin.”
“What?” cried Eric and I in chorus.
“Nothing less,” de Grandin responded. “Me, I have seen such parchments in the Paris musée; I have handled them, I have touched them. I could not be mistaken. Such things were done in the olden days, my friends. I think, perhaps, we should do well to investigate this business. Men do not set down confessions of a sinful life and implore the possible finders of treasure to buy masses for their souls on human hide when they would indulge in pleasantries. No, it is not so.”
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 14