by Otto Penzler
The thing was utterly fantastic. Vivian listened in amazed fascination. She could hardly bring herself to believe that she had heard correctly. So sure had she been that the man’s interest in her rose from the fact that he was attracted to her that the thought there might be another, more sinister motive behind the drugging and kidnaping had not occurred to her.
Her green eyes narrowed a trifle—only that, but there was the impression of a steel spring tightening. Then she said quietly:
“Why must I die?”
“Because,” he answered, “tomorrow night is the night of the Voodoo Moon—the night when the Papaloi and the Mamaloi present Ogoun Badagri, the Bloody One, with the Goat Without Horns.”
“The Goat Without Horns?” Vivian repeated, uncomprehendingly. “What is that?”
“You,” the man said tersely. “Tomorrow at midnight, when the Voodoo Moon is fullest, you will be offered as a sacrifice to Ogoun Badagri, the snake god.”
For a moment the Lady from Hell stared at him, a chill feeling clutching at her breast. Then an alert look came into her eyes, a look that she quickly veiled. She was listening intently.
“You’re not actually in earnest?” she asked quietly. Every nerve was strained to catch that sound again—the drone of an airplane engine that had come faintly to her ears. It was louder now. “You are trying to frighten me, to trap me into something. You will find that I am not easily frightened or trapped.”
The sound of the plane was louder now. She shot a furtive glance at Benedetti. Could aid be on the way? Could Benedetti’s plans have gone wrong, and a search be underway for them?
“I am very much in earnest,” the man opposite her said. “You see, that is the secret of my successful defiance of the sugar trust, the secret of why my laborers never leave me, the secret of why I can manufacture sugar at a cost that the sugar trust cannot possibly equal and still make a profit. Once a year I present the Papaloi and the Mamaloi, the high priest and priestess of Voodoo, with a human sacrifice—a white man or woman—and in turn these two guardians of the great snake see to it that my laborers do not leave, and are kept content with the lowest pay scale in the island of Haiti.”
He broke off and smiled.
“You may relax, Mrs. Legrand,” he said. “That plane that you hear will not land here. It is the marine mail plane that passes over the island every night between eleven thirty and twelve o’clock.”
Vivian looked at him blankly. “Plane?” she said vaguely. “Oh, yes, that is a plane, isn’t it? Quite honestly, I had not noticed the sound before you spoke.”
It was so well done that it fooled him. She picked up the slender silver fruit knife that lay on the table in front of her, twisting it so that it shone in her fingers, a pale, metallic splinter of light. She regarded him with eyes that had turned mysteriously dark, and leaned forward a little. Her voice, when she spoke, was very soft, and it held a quality of poignancy.
“You seem to live alone here,” she said, and her eyes regarded him warmly. “Don’t you ever become—lonely?”
There was a world of promise and invitation in the soft tone, in the alluring lips.
He looked at her and tightened his lips.
“That is useless,” he said. “You are beautiful, one of the most beautiful women that I have ever seen, but a dozen such women as you could not make up to me for the loss of my plantation. No, my dear, your charm is useless.”
“But you wouldn’t dare,” she said. “A woman cannot simply disappear from a steamer without inquiries being made. This is not the Haiti of twenty years ago. The Americans are in control—they are the police …”
Benedetti shook his head. “Do not raise false hopes. You sent the purser of the steamer a note saying that you had unexpectedly found friends in Cap St. Feral and were breaking your voyage here. The same man who brought the note took yours and your companion’s baggage off the ship. By now he has probably forgotten your existence.
“There is nothing to connect you with me, and if inquiries should be made it will simply be assumed that you either left the island or were murdered by a wandering Caco. And as for an Haitian, who might know something of your disappearance, aside from the fact that the secrets of Voodoo are something that are never discussed, there is an island saying: ‘Z affaires negres, pas z’z affaires blancs.‘ And you will find that the affairs of the Negroes are not the affairs of the whites. And then,” his voice was bland as he made the significant statement, “there is rarely any proof—left—when the great green snake god has completed his sacrifice.”
“And my companion—Dr. Wylie—what have you done with him?” Vivian queried steadily. A bright spark glowed in her narrowed green eyes for a moment. It died slowly.
“He is safe, quite safe,” Benedetti assured her, “for the time being. He also will be a sacrifice to Ogoun Badagri.”
He said it with simple, sincere ruthlessness; undisguised, but neither vindictive nor cruel.
“You are quite sure of yourself,” Vivian said softly, and had Wylie been there he would have recognized the meaning of that tone; the threat of that greenish glow at the back of her eyes. He had seen that cold light in her eyes before. But Benedetti, even had he glimpsed it, would not have known that it was like the warning rattle of a snake before it strikes.
Now, with a swift movement she flung the silver fruit knife she held at the gleaming shirt front of the man opposite her. Her aim was deadly, for few people could throw a knife with the skill and precision of the Lady from Hell.
But Benedetti had caught the glitter of the candlelight on the metal a split second before she launched the knife. His agile mind perceived her intention and he flung himself to one side just in time. The knife thudded into the high back of the chair in which he had been sitting and rested there, quivering.
“You are a fool,” the man commented curtly. Striding to the French windows he flung them wide, letting moonlight stream into the room. The sound of the drums came in louder, a barbaric rhythm beating in strange tempo with the pulse in her wrist.
“Look at that,” he said, flinging out an arm.
At the edge of the veranda, which ran along the front of the house, lounged a white cotton-clad Haitian, a three-foot cane knife clasped in his fist. Further along, at the edge of the beach, another man leaned against the bole of a coconut tree, and the glitter of the moonlight on steel betrayed the fact that he also was armed with a cane knife.
“Even if you had killed me,” he said quietly, “you would have been no better off. You could not escape from the island. There are no boats here. Even the launch on which you arrived has been sent away and will not return until after the ceremony. And if you had attempted to swim, the sea swarms with sharks.”
It was after midnight when Vivian went upstairs to her room again. Benedetti escorted her to the door.
“I am locking you in,” he told her. “It is really quite useless to do so. You could not escape. There is absolutely no possibility of success. But it is a precaution I always take with my annual— visitors.”
Then he drew from his pocket the diamond ring that Vivian had, earlier in the evening, given to the little black maid.
“You will find,” he said with a smile, “that it is useless to attempt to bribe my servants. The fear of the Voodoo in them is greater than the greed for money.”
With a slight bow he closed the door, leaving her staring at the blank panels with a sinking feeling in her heart. She was a prisoner in a prison without walls, and yet the sea that girdled the land was a barrier as effective as stone ramparts and iron bars. Instead of one jailer she had dozens—perhaps hundreds—for she realized that every laborer on the island was a potential guard, alert to halt any attempt to escape. She did not attempt to deceive herself by thinking that every native of the place did not know of her presence and the fate for which she was destined.
She wondered what prompted the old woman—Benedetti’s servant—to take her life in hand and warn her, back there in
Cap St. Feral? The woman had, of course, realized Benedetti’s purpose in bringing her here, since it had been she who had prepared the drugged rose stems. It was not for a long time, and then only by accident, that Vivian was to discover that in a Haitian the desire for revenge can transcend even the fear of Voodoo, and that it was to avenge what she considered a wrong that the old woman had warned her.
Vivian turned her thoughts back to her position. She believed she knew where Wylie was being held. On her way down to the dining room a little earlier she had encountered one of the black maids with a tray; had noted the door through which the girl had passed. That, she reasoned, must be the room in which Wylie was held prisoner, unless there were other prisoners in the house of whom she knew nothing.
She smiled a trifle grimly at the thought of being locked in her room. If Benedetti only knew of how little importance a lock—particularly an old-fashioned one such as this—was to her. Opening her suitcase she took out a hand mirror with a long handle. Unscrewing the handle, she removed from the hollow interior a long slender rod of thin steel. This she forced slowly into the thin opening between door and jamb. The rod scraped on metal. She worked it up and down, slowly pressing inward. Bit by bit the sloping tongue of the lock was forced back into its sheath, until the blade slipped through. A twist of the door handle and Vivian was peering out into the corridor.
Darkness hung before her eyes. It was as if a curtain of some impenetrable texture hung before her. She knew nothing of the floor plan of the big, rambling house, but she knew that the room she had seen the girl entering was the last on her side of the corridor, and accordingly she made her way cautiously in that direction, feeling her way, finger-tips trailing the wall, listening intently every step or so for some sound that might warn her of the presence of another person.
Her hand trailing along the wall touched a door—the fifth one she had passed. This was the door she sought. Gently she tried the knob. It was locked. A few minutes’ work with the thin steel rod and the door swung inward with only the faintest of sounds. But even that was sufficient to betray her presence to Wylie’s alert ears.
“Who is it?” he queried.
“Shhh,” she whispered warningly, and, closing the door, crossed swiftly toward the chair where he sat beside the window.
In low, tense whispers she told him of her conversation with Benedetti and of the fate that was in store for both of them.
“We’ve got to get away tonight,” she finished. “It’s our only chance. There must be some way—perhaps we can make a raft. At least we can try.”
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST VICTIM
With Wylie by her side she made her way to the door; peered cautiously outside. By diligent practice the Lady from Hell had long ago acquired the chatoyant eye—the cat’s—good for prowling about and seeing things in the dark, but here in the corridor the blackness was intense, with a tangible quality that was numbing to the senses. The utter opacity was tactile, half fluid, like fog. She crept down the hallway with feline assurance, passing her fingers delicately over objects that came into her path with a touch light enough to stroke a butterfly’s wing. The house was a sea of silence, and on its waves the slightest noise made long and screeching journeys.
To Vivian’s hearing, sandpapered by suspense, the slight give of the polished boards of the staircase beneath their slow steps produced a terrific noise. By making each step a thing of infinite slowness, they crept forward safely. Each downward step was a desperate and long-drawn-out achievement, involving an exactly calculated expenditure of muscular energy, an unceasing, muscular alertness.
Once, as they reached the bottom of the stairs, there came from the dining room in which they stood the rattle of a clock preparing to ring out a quarter hour. It struck Vivian’s tense nerves as a thing of abominable violence—like countless, swift hammer strokes on the innumerable frayed ends of her nerves. She had the sensation of being driven into the woodwork of the floor upon which she stood, of being crushed under an immense and lightning-like pressure.
After what seemed an eternity they reached the further side of the dining room. Under her careful manipulation the latch of the door slipped slowly back. The door moved silently, slowly. A brilliant line of moonlight appeared. Vivian caught her breath sharply.
Standing there in the open ground in front of the veranda stood a Haitian, alert, watchful, armed with a machete.
There was no escape that way. Weaponless, they were helpless before the menace of that shining three-foot length of steel, even if they could cross the moonlit space that lay between the veranda and the man without being detected.
“The back of the house,” Vivian whispered to Wylie, her voice barely perceptible.
She knew that the door to the kitchen was beside the staircase they had descended. That much she had observed during her interview with Benedetti earlier in the evening. By locating the staircase first in the blackness, she found the door she sought and opened it. A passageway opened before them, dimly illuminated by a shaft of silver that poured through a half opened door at its further end.
Silently they made their way down the passage and cautiously peered through the partly opened door. Another disappointment.
It was a small room, one wall covered with shelves, boxes and bags stacked high on the other side with a single window, half way up the wall, through which moonlight poured. A storeroom of some sort.
Vivian reached out and caught Wylie’s arm, drew him silently into the little room and closed the door.
“There may be weapons here,” she said. But she was mistaken. The nearest approach was a broken kitchen knife used, probably, to slash open the burlap bags which stood against the wall.
It was a poor substitute for a weapon, but Vivian took it thankfully. And then she gave a gasp. Her hand, exploring a shelf, had come in contact with something clammy and sticky that clung and would not be shaken off. Her first thought was that it was some monstrous tropical insect. It seemed alive, it clung so persistently, despite her efforts to shake it loose.
Then, as Wylie snapped his cigarette lighter into flame, the tiny glow illuminated an oblong of sticky fly paper fastened to her hand. There was a pile of the sheets upon the shelf. Despite the tenseness of the situation she almost laughed at the uncanny feeling the thing had given her there in the darkness.
In the dim flame of Wylie’s lighter they searched again for anything that might prove of assistance to them in their predicament. Bags of flour. Bags of potatoes. Kegs of pig tails and pig snouts in brine—evidently food for the laborers. A half-emptied case of bacale—dried codfish, a staple article of diet in the West Indies—and a can of phosphorescent paint. Also row after row of canned food. But nothing that might be of assistance to them.
Climbing upon a box Vivian peered through the window, then turned back to Wylie, excitement in her voice.
“We can get out this way,” she whispered. “There is the limb of a tree almost against the window and shrubbery around the tree.”
“Anybody in sight?” Wylie queried.
“No one,” Vivian said, and pried the latch of the window with her broken knife blade. It came open with a tearing shriek that sounded like thunder in the silence. Disregarding the noise Vivian slipped through the window and swung on to the limb of the tree. Wylie followed her, and in a moment they stood on the ground in the midst of dense shrubbery.
“We will have to keep in the shadow,” she said as they crept silently through the bushes, only an occasional rustling leaf marking their passage. “The moment we step in the moonlight we’ll be seen, if anyone is watching.”
Even there in the bushes the brilliant moonlight illuminated the ground about them. A faint drumming ebbed to them through the brilliance, faintly touching the dark membrane of the night as they emerged on what seemed to be a well-defined path leading toward the beach.
A sudden opening in the trail, a burst of moonlight, and they stood on a strip of white sand with breakers cre
aming softly in front of them.
“There,” Vivian said, still keeping her voice low. “See that pile of driftwood. We’ll make a raft of that. Drag it to the water’s edge while I cut vines to lash it together.”
Feverishly they worked, Wylie dragging the heavy logs into position, lashing them firmly together with the vines that Vivian cut from the jungle’s edge, until at last a crazy-looking affair bobbed up and down in the ripple at the edge of the beach. Makeshift, clumsy, but it would float and it was an avenue of escape, the only avenue that had presented itself.
Vivian returned from a final trip to the jungle, dragging behind her three bamboo poles.
“We can use two of these to shove the thing with, until we get into deep water,” she said. “The other we can lash upright as a mast and use my dress as a sail.”
At that instant, from the path behind them, came the sound of voices. Vivian flashed a frantic glance at the jungle rearing up behind them, and then leaped on board the raft. Wylie followed. It dipped and swayed, but held their weight. The voices came nearer. Desperately Vivian braced her pole against the sandy bottom and shoved. Wylie followed suit. Sluggishly the clumsy craft moved away from the shore—five feet—ten feet—and than half a dozen men poured through the opening in the jungle and raced across the sand, splashed through the shallow water and surrounded the little craft, gleaming machetes raised threateningly.
Vivian did not see Benedetti when they returned to the house with their captors that night, nor was he visible when she awoke the next morning after a night spent in futile speculation and planning, and descended to the dining room.
A black girl served them breakfast. Golden sunlight poured through the wide French windows, beyond which they could see the beach and the green cove. Nowhere was there evidence of the fate that hung over them. But both knew, and the fact of that knowledge was evident in their eyes, in their short jerky words, that Death’s wings were already casting their shadows across them.