The Devil's Rosary

by Seabury Quinn

  Jules de Grandin studied the end of his cigarette with slow, thoughtful care. At last, “It is fantastic,” he murmured, “but I damn fear it is so, nonetheless.

  “Very good, Monsieur,” he turned again to Abbott, “you will oblige us by acting as though nothing had occurred at your house. I especially desire that do not let Madame suspect you have discovered her attempts to drug you. Anon, I think, we shall unravel this sorry tangle for you, but it may take time.”

  3

  NORA MCGINNIS, MY GENIAL household factotum, laid a sheaf of letters beside my plate when de Grandin and I repaired to the breakfast room half an hour later.

  “Hullo,” I remarked, “here’s one for Kit Norton. Wonder how anyone knew he’s stopping here?”

  “I mentioned it to the nurse before we left his house last night,” de Grandin replied. “Open the letter, if you please. Monsieur Norton sleeps late this morning, I made sure he should. Meantime, the note may contain something which will prove helpful to us.”

  I slit the envelope and read:

  Kit:

  They tell me Frank divorced me because of you and Isabel divorced you on my account. They say we’ve been married two years and the baby’s ours. I can’t understand it all; and I shan’t try. I’m taking the baby with me. It’s best.

  Yours,

  BETTY.

  “Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What can this mean?”

  “Mean?” de Grandin was on his feet, his little eyes blazing like those of a suddenly incensed cat. “Mean? Mort d’un rat, it means murder; no less, my friend. Come, quick, when was that letter mailed?”

  “It’s postmarked 12:40,” I returned. “Must have been dropped about midnight last night.”

  “Hélas—too late!” he cried. “Come, prove that my fears are all too well grounded, Friend Trowbridge!”

  Grasping my hand he fairly dragged me to the study, where he motioned me to take up the telephone. Next instant he rushed to the consulting-room extension and called Main 926.

  “Allo?” he cried when the connection was put through.

  “City Mortuary,” was the curt return. “Who’s speaking?”

  “You have there the bodies of a young woman and an infant girl—Madame Norton and her child?” de Grandin affirmed, rather than asked.

  “Gawd A’mighty, how’d you know? Who is this?” came the startled reply.

  “Have the goodness to answer, if you please,” the Frenchman insisted.

  “Yeah, we’ve got ’em. Th’ police boat fished ’em outa th’ river less’n half an hour ago. Who th’ hell is this?”

  “One who can prove she destroyed herself while of unsound mind,” de Grandin returned as he hung up the receiver.

  “You see?” he asked as he re-entered the study.

  “No. I’m hanged if I do!” I shot back. All I understood was that Betty Norton had drowned herself and her baby.

  “We shall avenge her; have no fear on that score, mon vieux,” de Grandin promised in a low, accentless voice. “The swine responsible for this shall die, and die most unpleasantly, or may Jules de Grandin never again taste roast gosling and burgundy. I swear it!”

  4

  JULES DE GRANDIN TOSSED aside the copy of l’Illustration he had been perusing since dinner and glanced at the diminutive watch strapped to his wrist. “It is time we were going, my friend,” he informed me. “Be sure to dress warmly; the March wind is sharp as a scolding woman’s tongue tonight.”

  “Going?” I echoed. “Where—”

  “To Monsieur Abbot’s, of course,” he returned. “I determined it this morning.”

  “You what?” I demanded. “Well, of all the brass-bound nerve—” I began, but Kit Norton interrupted me.

  “May I come, too, sir?” he asked.

  “Assuredly,” the Frenchman nodded. “I think you may find interest in that which we shall undoubtlessly see tonight, young Monsieur.”

  Grumbling, but curious, I hustled into a corduroy hunting-outfit, high laced boots and a leather windbreaker. Similarly arrayed, de Grandin and Norton joined me in the hall, and, at the Frenchman’s suggestion, we hailed a taxicab and rode to within a block of Abbot’s house, then walked the remainder of our journey.

  It was cold work, waiting in the shadow of the hedge skirting Homer’s front lawn, and I was in momentary dread of being seen by a passing policeman and arrested as a suspicious character, but our vigil was at last cut short by de Grandin’s soft exclamation. “Attendez-vous, mes amis, you recognize her?”

  I peered through the wall of wind-shaken hedge in time to see a svelte figure, muffled from chin to heels in fur, glide swiftly down the steps and pause irresolutely at the curb. “Yes,” I nodded, “it’s Marjorie Abbot, but—”

  “Très bon, it is enough,” de Grandin cut in, turning to flash the light of his pocket electric torch toward the corner where our taxi loitered.

  The vehicle drove slowly toward us, passed by and down at the curb where Marjorie stood. “Cab, lady?” hailed the chauffeur. The girl nodded, and a moment later we saw the red eye of the vehicle’s tail light blink mockingly at us as it rounded the corner.

  “Well,” I exclaimed, “of all the treacherous tricks! That scoundrel deliberately passed us by after you’d signaled him, and—”

  “And did precisely as he was instructed,” de Grandin supplied with a chuckle. “Trowbridge, my friend, you are a peerless pill-dispenser, but you are sadly lacking in subtlety. Consider: Do we wish to advertise our presence to Madame Marjorie? Decidedly not. What then? If our cab remained in plain sight, Madame Marjorie could not well fail to see it, and would unquestionably think it queer if it did not apply for her patronage. Had she been forced to seek another vehicle, she would have been on her guard, and looked constantly behind to see if she were followed. In such conditions, we should have had Satan’s own time to mark her destination without being discovered. As it is, our so excellent driver conveys her where she desires to go, returns for us, and makes the trip over again. Voilà, c’est très simple, n’est-ce-pas?”

  “Umph,” I admitted grudgingly. “What’s next?”

  “To warn Monsieur Abbot of our advent,” he returned. “He awaits us; I have told him to be prepared.”

  We crossed the yard and rang Abbot’s bell, but no response came to our summons. Despairing of making the bell heard, de Grandin hammered on the door; still no answer.

  “Eh bien, can he have fallen asleep in good earnest?” the Frenchman fumed. “Let us go in to him.”

  The door was unlatched and we had no difficulty entering, but though we called repeatedly, no answer came to our hails. At length: “Upstairs, my friends,” the Frenchman ordered. “Our plans seem to have miscarried, but I will not have it so.”

  Wrapped to the chin in blankets, but fully clothed save for shoes and jacket, Homer Abbot lay in his bed, his head tilted grotesquely to one side, his heavy respirations proclaiming the deepness of his slumber.

  “Wake, my friend, rouse up, we are come!” de Grandin cried, seizing the sleeper’s shoulder and giving it a vigorous shake.

  Young Abbot’s head rolled flaccidly from side to side, but no sign of consciousness did he give.

  Once more de Grandin shook him, then, “By damn, you will wake, though I kill you in the process!” he declared, shoving the sleeper so fiercely that he tumbled from the bed, his limbs sprawling uncouthly, like the arms and legs of a rag-doll from which the sawdust had been drained.

  “Grand Dieu, observe!” the little Frenchman ordered pointing dramatically to a tiny spot of red upon the upper part of Homer’s shirt sleeve.

  “Hypo!” I commented as I saw the telltale stain.

  “Bien oui, drugs given by mouth failing, she had made use of injections,” de Grandin agreed excitedly, “Quick, Friend Trowbridge, time is priceless; to the nearest pharmacy for strychnine and a syringe, if you please. We shall rouse him to accompany us despite all their planning!”

  I hurried on my errand till my br
eath came pantingly, returned with the stimulant in less time than I should have thought possible, and prepared an injection. The powerful medicine acted swiftly, and Homer’s lids fluttered upward almost before I could withdraw the needle.

  “How now, my friend, were you caught napping?” de Grandin asked.

  “Looks that way,” the other answered. “I turned in as you suggested, and pretended to be sound asleep, but she must have suspected something. Shortly after I went to bed she came in, bent over me and called softly. I didn’t answer, of course, but my lids must have quivered, the way they usually do when someone looks intently at you, for she bent still closer and kissed me. Just as her lip touched mine I felt a sting in my arm, and before I could let out a yell, I was dead to the world.”

  “Exactly, precisely, quite so,” the Frenchman agreed. “Now, let us depart. Our taxicab has returned.”

  “Sure, I can go there again,” the chauffeur answered de Grandin’s excited query. “Th’ place is out th’ Andover Road about five miles—deserted as hell on Sunday afternoon, too; you couldn’t miss it, once you’ve been there.”

  “Très bien; allez-vous-en!”

  “Huh?”

  “Let us go, let us hasten, let us fly, my excellent one, my prince of chauffeurs; time presses and there is five dollars extra for you if you make speed.”

  “Buddy, just you set back an’ hold onto your hair,” the driver cautioned. “Watch me earn that five-spot!”

  He did. At a wholly unlawful speed we raced along the wide, smooth turnpike, passing an occasional inter-urban bus and one or two bootleggers’ cars, cityward bound with their loads of conviviality, but encountering no other traffic.

  THE HOUSE WAS RATHER small, of frame construction, and badly in need of repainting. Surrounding it was a rickety paling fence, and a yard of considerable extent, densely overgrown with lilac trees, dwarf cedars and a few straggling rhododendrons. Apparently no light burned inside, but de Grandin motioned us forward while he stayed to pay the chauffeur.

  “Discretion is essential, my friends,” he cautioned as he joined us. “Let us proceed with caution.” Thereupon we dropped behind each shadowing bush and advanced by a series of short, quick dashes, like infantrymen at skirmish practice.

  Slowly we circled the house, at length descried a single feeble ray of light flickering from beneath a drawn blind and tight-barred shutters. The Frenchman glued his eye to the chink whence the light emanated, then drew back with a shrug of impatience. “I can see nothing,” he admitted dejectedly.

  We looked at each other in helpless discomfiture, but in a moment the little man was grinning delightedly, “Messieurs Norton—Abbot,” he demanded in a whisper, “can you emulate a cat?—two cats—several cats?”

  “A cat?” the youngsters chorused in amazement.

  “But certainly. A pussy-cat, a kitty,” de Grandin agreed. “Can you caterwaul and meaul like a duet of tom-cats enjoying a quarrel?”

  “Certainly,” Abbot returned, “but—”

  “There are no buts, my friend. Do you and Monsieur Norton repair to yonder lilac bush, and thereupon set up such a din as might make a dead man leave his coffin in search of peace elsewhere. Continue your concert a full two minutes, then fling a stone into a distant thicket, to simulate the crashing of departing felines through the undergrowth. Remain utterly quiet for minutes more, then join me as soundlessly as may be. You understand? Very well; be off!”

  Grinning broadly, Abbot and Norton departed to a screen of lilac bushes, and in a moment there rose such a racket of howls, caterwauls and vicious hisses as might have convinced anyone that two lusty tom-cats had staged a finish-fight on the lawn.

  I rocked with laughter at the exhibition, but my mirth was swallowed in admiration of de Grandin’s strategy as I watched him. From under his leather jacket he drew a long, curve-bladed Senegalese knife and fell to cutting the shutter-slats away. As he worked he thrust a stick of chewing-gum between his teeth and began masticating furiously. The razor-sharp steel sheared through the rotten, worm-eaten wood almost as if it had been cheese, and in a moment an opening six inches wide by two high had been made. Cutting a slat from the other shutter barring the window, he laid the wooden cleats on the frosty lawn, then slipped the great pigeon’s blood ruby from his finger and pressed it against the window-pane.

  The stone cut through the glass almost as easily as the knife had hacked the wood, and in a moment a small circular opening was chopped from the pane. Just before the circle was complete, the Frenchman took the gum from his mouth, flattened it against the glass and thrust his finger-tip into it. Then, cutting the remainder of the circle with the ruby, he nonchalantly lifted out a disk of glass without a single betraying tinkle having sounded.

  Shutters and window having been drilled through, he proceeded to make a small incision in the linen window blind with the tip of his knife, thereby making it possible for us to see and hear all which went on inside the lighted room.

  A final burst of feline profanity and a crashing in the bushes by the fence apprised the world that one of the struggling cats had quit the field of honor hotly pursued by his victorious rival, and in another moment Abbot and Norton joined us.

  With upraised finger de Grandin enjoined silence, then waved us forward to the observation-slits he had cut.

  WE VIEWED THE SCENE within as though looking through the peephole of a camera obscura. An old-fashioned cannon stove, heaped almost to overflowing with glowing coal, stood in the center of the room, and from the ceiling swung an oil lamp by one of those complicated pulley arrangements once common to every rural dining-room. In a rather tattered easy-chair lounged a tall, spare man of indeterminate age, a long cord-belted dressing-gown of paisley weave covering his dinner clothes. His skin sallow with a sallowness that was more than mere pallor, there was a distinctly yellowish cast to it, like new country butter; close-cropped hair of raven blackness crowned his head as closely as a skull-cap, growing well down over his broad, low brow and seeming to lend an intensity to the burning, searching eyes which glowed like twin pools of black ink in the immobile yellow mask of his face. Slim black brows spanned his forehead and met, forming a sharp downward angle above the bridge of his thin, narrow-nostriled nose. There was neither amusement nor hate nor any other sign of emotion on his mask-like face, only intense, implacable concentration, as he bent his changeless stare on the woman standing rigid as though frozen against the wall opposite him.

  “—take them off—all!” he was saying in a low, sibilant voice as we pressed our eyes to the peep-hole. Evidently we arrived in the midst of a conversation, or rather, a monolog, for the woman was mute as she was motionless.

  “Marjorie!” Homer Abbot exclaimed softly as he recognized his wife rigid against the wall. Then:

  “That’s the man who tried to flirt with her at the supper club the—”

  “And that’s the man Isabel and I saw at the theater the other night—I mean before I lost my memory,” Kit Norton cut in. “We were coming from the theater and I jostled him when he deliberately got in my way to peer into Isabel’s face. He looked at me as though he’d have liked to murder me, but all he did was raise his hand and flash a big, bright ring before my eyes. It dazzled me for a moment, and when I reached out to grab him by the collar, he was gone. He must have—”

  “Silence!” de Grandin’s sharp whisper cut short his recital. The yellow-faced man was speaking again.

  “At once!” he commanded in the same level, toneless voice, and I noticed that his thin lips scarcely moved as he spoke.

  The woman by the wall trembled as though with a sudden chill, but her hands rose flutteringly to her throat, undid the clasp of her long fur cloak and threw it back from her shoulders. “All!” the man repeated tonelessly, inexorably.

  Quickly, mechanically, she unloosed the fastenings of her costume. In a moment she was done and stood facing him, still and straight as a statue carved in ivory, arrayed only in the beauty with which generations of
New Jersey forebears had endowed her.

  “You are slightly rebellious,” the seated man remarked. “We must cure that. Wake!”

  Marjorie Abbot started as though a cup of chilled water had been dashed in her face, saw her crumpled garments on the floor at her feet, and made a wild, ineffectual clutch at the topmost wisp of silk on the pile of clothing.

  “Still!” The girl straightened like a puppet stretched upright by a spring, but a tortured cry burst from her, even as she stiffened into immobility.

  It was a pitiful, bleating cry which wrung my heart. Once, when I was a little boy, I spent a season on an uncle’s farm and was given a lamb for pet. All summer I loved and pampered the little, woolly thing till it became tame and friendly as a house-dog. At autumn came slaughtering-time, and with the unsentimental practicality of country folk they gave my pet to the itinerant butcher who came to do the killing. Never shall I forget the startled, reproachful cry of that lamb as, his confidence and gentle friendliness betrayed, he felt the gleaming knife cross his throat. It was such a cry of helpless terror and despair Marjorie Abbot gave. But it was not repeated.

  “Quiet!” commanded the yellow-faced man. “Be motionless, be speechless, but retain full consciousness. At my unspoken command you have left your silly husband and come to me; you have exposed your body to my eyes when I ordered it, though your strongest instincts forbade it. Here after you obey my slightest thought; you have neither volition nor will of your own when I command otherwise. You will know what you do, and realize that you act against your desires, but you will be powerless to explain by word or act. You will apparently willfully and wantonly drag your husband’s name and your own through scandal after scandal; you will use your charm to allure; but never will you make return for what you receive; you will be pitiless, heartless, passionless, a woman taking all, giving nothing, living only to create misery and heartbreak for all with whom you come in contact. You understand?”