E. Hoffmann Price's Pierre d'Artois: Occult Detective & Associates

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Satan’s Footprints

  Guidebook tourists to Southern France concentrate on Biarritz; but those who love unspoiled antiquity prefer Bayonne, that gray-walled city that basks in the warmth of the Pyrenees and guards the road to Spain. The moat that girdles the citadel is dry, and the drawbridges are no longer serviceable; but at sunrise, when the Lachepaillet Wall and the cathedral spires seem floating on banks of low-lying river mists from the Nive and the Adour, Bayonne is a hasheesh dream rather than a city.

  France and Spain, England and Navarre, have contended for possession of that fortress, and before them, the Moors occupied that old city which was once the encampment of Roman legions; but it is only at night that one remembers the crypts and passages that undermine the citadel, and senses that soil which for centuries has drunk the blood of defender and invader alike is still thirsty.

  Bayonne is an old gray sphinx, somnolently smiling through the veils of her mystery.

  Two men emerged from the Lachepaillet Gate as the cathedral clock struck eleven. They were bareheaded, and in full evening dress. Davis Barrett, the younger, was tall, bronzed, and rugged as the massive masonry of the walls. The elder was grizzled, with fine, stern features and bristling, close cropped hair that gleamed white in the moonlight. It was no promenade to continue a private discussion that would have been disturbed by the laughter and music and tingling glasses in José Guevara Millamediana’s luxurious apartment; they walked with expectant, searching alertness; and the elder was perturbed, as though he feared to find what they sought.

  “Why,” demanded Barrett, “do you think you’ll find Louise here, of all places?”

  “Her apartment, just a block from Don José’s, must have been her destination, but she’s not there. And since she left without her cloak, she must have intended to return in a few minutes. As it is—”

  D’Artois shrugged, regarded his friend. Barrett glanced up toward the parapet along which ran rue Lachepaillet.

  “She could have slipped,” he admitted.

  “Precisely, my friend,” replied Pierre d’Artois. “With a bit too much of Don José’s wine—a moment of dizziness, a misstep in the mist—there’s no guard rail up there.”

  Barrett agreed. It was logical; yet he sensed that his companion had withheld more than he had expressed. He shivered in anticipation of the end of what had started as a casual courtesy to allay the misgivings of Yvonne Marigny concerning the unduly prolonged absence of her sister, Louise.

  They rounded the swelling curve of the bastion that marks the turn of the wall toward the Gate of Spain. Barrett’s heart and breath for a moment stopped as he abruptly halted, frozen by the horror that confronted them.

  The gray sphinx had lifted her veil, and revealed not her seduction, but her terror and darkness.

  A woman lay on the sandy bottom of the dry moat. Fright had so hideously transfigured her face that it was her scarlet gown and blue-black hair and silver lamé slippers rather than the olive tinted features which Barrett recognized. He saw how Louise Marigny had died, and tried to convince himself that it was illusion, and the fantasy of a moon-haunted night.

  “Pierre—look at her throat! Look at—”

  His voice cracked, and for a moment failed. Louise Marigny’s throat had been terribly mangled, as by a beast of prey. Barrett resolutely denied the thoughts that followed his first impression.

  D’Artois, his seamed features pale and drawn, nodded.

  “My friend, look again. You have seen but half of it.”

  Barrett wondered what further horror there could be; but his gray eyes followed the old man’s commanding gesture and saw the footprints of that which had roamed by moonlight.

  Man, beast, or devil, its feet were webbed; yet for all the resemblance of the tracks to those of some monstrous aquatic fowl of aeons past, there was that which suggested a hybrid combining the feet of an anthropoid with those of a web-footed bird, or bird-like reptile.

  “And the prints end after a few paces,” muttered d’Artois.

  “It might have jumped to the bank,” countered Barrett, making a final effort to lend a touch of sanity to the outrageous implications of the suddenly ending trail.

  D’Artois shook his head.

  “Impossible. Facing the way its tracks indicate, it would have had to clear the moat by leaping crabwise. It must have flown away.”

  “Good Lord! A bird with feet that large! Or a winged reptile—couldn’t possibly be!” Barrett was thinking of the pterodactyl, that flying, reptilian slayer which has been extinct for uncounted thousands of years.

  D’Artois for a moment studied the uncanny trail.

  “Something worse than any honest reptile,” he muttered somberly. Then, to Barrett: “Let’s notify the Sûreté. At once.”

  Barrett was glad to leave that sinister spot; but as d’Artois turned: “Pierre, one of us should watch here until the police arrive.”

  “There is no time to waste in courtesies to the dead,” he countered. “And I may need your assistance. Allons!”

  And presently, passing the Lachepaillet Gate, they ascended the slope, skirted the parapet, then turned down rue Tour de Sault, near whose end was the 13th Century ruin which d’Artois had restored and modernized, making of it a town house wherein he was not only comfortable, but content in being in the heart of the old city he loved so well.

  D’Artois led the way to his study on the second floor, stepped to the telephone, and called the Prefect of Police. The machine gun sputter of d’Artois’ French was too much for Barrett, but he caught a phrase from time to time, and the incredulous horror of the Prefect’s voice as it filtered faintly from the receiver.

  “He will make plaster casts of the footprints; he will measure the stride; he will look for bits of hair, thread, lint,” d’Artois enumerated as he replaced the instrument. Then, with an expansive gesture, “but he will find nothing!”

  Barrett set down the decanter of Vieux Armagnac, whose level he had appreciably pulled down while listening to d’Artois’ remarks. The fiery liquor burned out the chills that had raced up and down his spine.

  “You haven’t much respect for the Prefect,” he said with something approaching a smile. D’Artois’ extensive studies in criminology and psychology at times made him critical of the Sûreté.

  “This is something which transcends scientific crime detection,” the old man countered. “It is not a case of an assassin disguising his feet with something which will leave an outlandish footprint. Yet that is what Monsieur le Préfet will attempt to prove, and he will fail.

  “But I will approach from another angle.”

  As he spoke, d’Artois, with swift gesture, swept his desk clear of its accumulated debris. Then he laid out a sheet of paper and with a compass drew a circle which he divided into twelve equal sectors. That done, he took from a bookcase a thin volume whose pages were divided into columns. It was an ephemeris.

  “Mon ami,” explained d’Artois in response to Barrett’s exclamation, “astronomical tables are not exclusively used for navigation. An ephemeris, you recollect, is also used by astrologers.”

  “I am inquiring into the planetary aspects. In the meantime, do you swill the rest of my brandy. Your stomach doubtless needs settling.”

  Barrett selected a cigar from d’Artois’ humidor; then, his curiosity overcoming him, he peered over the old man’s shoulder, watching him enter astrological symbols in the twelve sectors of the circle. The cigar had accumulated less than an inch of ash when d’Artois thrust back his chair.

  “I see more than murder and mutilation,” he declared. “I see a sinister configuration that cries out of an old and malignant magic. Neptune, in the Eighth House, indicates death by strange spiritual causes. And look at the position of Saturn, the lord of those who follow subterranean pursuits; Uranus, the sovereign of thaumaturgists and black magicians; and ove
r all is the evil aspect of the moon, the mother of sorcery.”

  “Still and all, Pierre,” interjected Barrett, perplexed by the astrological jargon, “you’ve only repeated what we already know. We saw it was uncanny and horrible. Anyway, this astrology business—”

  “Has been degraded by charlatans, I grant,” snapped d’Artois. “But it is none the less a true science, and only limited by the intelligence of the investigator.

  “I am looking into the background of this monstrous crime. And the first move is to seek underground, a black magician working in some of the hidden vaults beneath the city. Check up on all those known or suspected of having occult connections. Thus we have already eliminated all common criminals, n’est-ce pas?”

  Barrett, impressed by his friend’s solemnity, conceded the point, outrageous as it was to hear a sane, hard-bitten old soldier and scholar to speak of black magic as an actual menace; but d’Artois’ ensuing assertion left Barrett too astonished even to protest.

  “And the first of these devil mongers and dabblers in the occult that I will investigate is our charming host of the evening, Don José. He is the head of a clique that has gathered in Bayonne. On the surface, they seem to be harmless cranks who babble of telepathy, mysticism, and the like; but tonight’s tragedy confirms my contention that modern Bayonne is living up to its ancient reputation for being a nest of malignant occultists and necromancers!”

  “Good God, Pierre!” Barrett finally stammered. “Why—that’s utterly impossible—”

  “So was the gruesome tragedy in the moat,” retorted d’Artois, his blue eyes cold and glittering as sword points by moonlight. “And wait till I tell you the rest: Yvonne and Louise are twins. If there is one iota of truth in astrology, Yvonne will succumb, or at the best, narrowly escape the doom that overtook her sister.

  “Their horoscopes, while, of course, not identical, would be so similar that both would be susceptible to the occult evil that is stalking tonight. The stars have warned us. You watch the living while I set out to trip up the monster responsible for that ghastly crime. Hurry—before it’s too late!”

  Barrett’s last remnant of skepticism melted before his friend’s unwavering conviction. He followed d’Artois to the street, and through the river mists that billowed from the Nive and marched up rue Tour de Sault like a phantom army.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Beast From the Crypt

  D’Artois’ car was parked near Don José’s house.

  “I will not only need it tonight,” explained d’Artois as they hurried along rue Lachepaillet, “but we must also get Mademoiselle Yvonne—get her away from that party. That Spaniard—”

  “But I don’t see how he could be connected with it,” contended Barrett. “He was there, all the time, among his guests. Yvonne just stepped out for a moment for a breath of air, or—”

  “Imbécile!” snorted d’Artois. “That’s just the point: Don José being always in sight of his guests gives him a perfect but deceptive alibi.”

  “But that doesn’t prove—”

  “Of course it proves nothing. But if you’d read that fellow’s book on Tibetan magic, and heard the rumors of his doings near the roof of the world, you would think twice, pardieu!

  “Alone, I am handicapped. But fortunately there is in Bayonne an occultist who can help me. A profound scholar whose researches can perhaps save the day: Sidi Abdurrahman, an Oriental mystic and Chêla, a disciple of an occult Adept.”

  Barrett shuddered as they passed the bastion of the Lachepaillet wall and heard the detectives, already on the case, and the crisp, incisive voice of the Prefect who had appeared to take charge in person. And then, presently, they heard music, and laughter, the mirth of Don José’s guests. Barrett nerved himself to ascend the stairs and enter the glow of lights and the mocking presence of gaiety.

  Yvonne, they learned, had left Don José’s house only a few minutes after d’Artois and Barrett had gone in search of Louise.

  “Por Dios, Señor,” said the courtly Spaniard, “she fancied her sister was ill and went home to join her. I trust that you will present my compliments and regrets to the lovely Louise. I am indeed sorry that she had to leave so early. Is it possible that she may return for her wrap?”

  Don José was mocking them; and Barrett, remembering d’Artois’ dreadful surmises, sought to deny the thought that Yvonne, like her sister, had gone out into the mist and the moonlight to meet a horrible death; nor was he reassured by the fierce glitter in d’Artois’ eyes and the twitch of his waxed moustache as he paused a moment before replying, “I will take her wrap, and leave it on my way past their apartment.”

  D’Artois and the Spaniard regarded each other as though they had crossed swords instead of glances; and during the exchange Barrett sensed a sudden tension, a current of deadly animosity, like a dagger biting through a shroud of silk. He saw Don José’s cheeks for an instant lose their olive tint; and the dark eyes, troubled by the frosty, unwavering stare of d’Artois, seemed eager to shift.

  “Sacré salaud!” hissed d’Artois, “you know she will never need her wrap. I am busy this evening—and you know why. But I will meet you, with sword or pistol. Soon.”

  Don José recoiled before the insult and the vague accusation. Then he shrugged, smiled blandly, twisted his black moustache.

  “Señor, I have not the least idea why you insult me, or what you are implying. Neither am I interested. But if you live long enough, and your courage is equal to the occasion, I will be happy to meet you with any weapons you may prefer.”

  The stilted, formal speech would have seemed absurd to Barrett had he not sensed the deadly, blazing hatred that flashed for an instant from Don José’s eyes.

  “Mordieu, cordieu, pardieu!” retorted d’Artois, advancing a pace. “If anything happens to Mademoiselle Yvonne, I will not meet you with weapons—I will dismember you by hand.”

  They exchanged bows with punctilious formality; and then d’Artois turned and led the way to the Mercedes.

  “I am more than ever convinced that in some way he’s responsible. He, or one of his devil mongering clique,” declared d’Artois as he took the wheel.

  “But how could he? It’s utterly incredible—”

  “Science scoffs at sorcery, glibly explains its manifestations as hysterical hypnosis,” countered d’Artois. “But that does not make it any the less magic. Remember what you saw in the moat and how the horoscope confirmed our first impressions. Certainly I am at loss, but Sidi Abdurrahman’s years of study will solve the riddle.”

  “Maybe,” conceded Barrett, “you’re right. Oddly enough, your remarks didn’t puzzle him as they should have.”

  “By no means strange,” retorted d’Artois as they drew up before the apartment of the two sisters. “He knew that I knew.”

  A sturdy, white-haired Basque maid admitted them. Yvonne Marigny received them in the living room. Her olive skin was deadly pale, and her dark eyes burned with an unnatural light.

  “Yes. The Sûreté notified me, just a few minutes after I arrived,” she said with a calmness that was more devastating than any outburst of grief. “I had a premonition of evil when Louise slipped out for a breath of air. And when I sent you to look for her—mon Dieu! It was too late.”

  “But why did you leave before we returned?”

  Yvonne shook her head.

  “I don’t know. Just an irresistible urge to get away. To go home. Like the instinct that urges an animal to creep off to its den and die.”

  She shuddered, made a perplexed, despairing gesture.

  “So…you were almost driven from there,” said d’Artois, speaking very slowly, and glancing meaningfully at Barrett. Then his eyes flashed toward the windows and their closely spaced wrought-iron bars. He nodded approvingly; and Barrett caught the unspoken thought.

  “Mon vieux, do you stay here with Madem
oiselle Yvonne. I am going to get Sidi Abdurrahman. He lives out beyond the Mousserole Wall, not far off the river road.” Then, as Barrett accompanied him to the door, he continued in a whisper, “The same strange, unreasoning compulsion that sent Louise to her death may send Yvonne wandering by moonlight. Don’t let her out of the house. Hold her. Tie her, if necessary!”

  The door clicked closed behind d’Artois; and a moment later they heard the soft whirr of gears.

  The proximity of tragedy depressed Barrett. He resolutely directed his eyes away from the barred window, and the moon drenched mists beyond, and sought to banish the memory of what he had seen in the moat; but a strange fascination forced him to gaze into the ghastly glamour of the night. Barrett shivered, rose from his chair, intending to draw the shades to screen that ill-omened view. Yvonne nodded, sensing his motive, and smiled wanly through the tears that glistened in her dark eyes.

  “Monsieur Barrett,” said Yvonne, “this is all so terribly unreal…it is like an awful nightmare. It seems as though all the evil that has ever existed is concentrating about us.”

  Thus she described the feeling that Barrett had vainly sought to dispel. He had assured himself that it was but natural for Yvonne, grief-stricken and horrified as she was, to infect him with her own emotions; and yet, that reassurance by no means convinced him.

  He noted that the lights were dimming. He frowned perplexedly, and resumed his seat, instead of drawing the shade.

  “Bum voltage regulation,” he insisted; but Barrett’s intuition told him that the trouble was not electrical. Then he saw that wisps of mist were swirling and drifting in through the window.

  Yvonne stared into the coals of the grate, whose ardent glow had suddenly cooled. The girl herself had become lethargic, as though her spirit had left her. For a moment Barrett felt utterly alone. It was as though Yvonne were a lovely simulacrum and not a woman who shrank shuddering into the depths of her spacious chair.

  Gray vapors swirled and surged through the room. A chilling breeze urged the mist whorl into sweeping spirals; mists that came neither from the Nive nor the Adour, nor any earthly river. Barrett thought again of d’Artois’ solemn declaration, “Saturn, the lord of subterranean places, Neptune, who governs strange spiritual enemies, and malignant Uranus, rule this night.”