The Devil's Rosary

by Seabury Quinn

  “Howly St. Bridget! Will ye be gittin’ on wid it?” Costello almost roared. “We’ll admit fer th’ sake o’ argyment that ye done yer duties and done ’em noble, but what we’re afther tryin’ to find out, if ye’d please be so kind as to tell us, is when ye first found out Mrs. Pancoast had been kilt, and how ye found it out.”

  The woman’s eyes snapped angrily. “I was coming to that,” she answered tartly. “I’d come down to the basement to wash the supper things from Mrs. Pancoast’s tray, when I heard a ringing at the lower front door—the tradesmen’s door, you know. I went to answer it, for Cook had gone, and—oh, Mary, Mother! It was terrible!

  “She lay there, gentlemen, head-foremost down the three steps that leads to the gate under the porch stairs, and blood was running all over the steps. I almost fainted, but luckily I remembered to call the coroner to come and take it—her, I mean—away. Oh, I’ll never, never be able to go up those service steps again!”

  “Ten thousand small and annoying active little blue devils!” de Grandin swore. “Do you tell me they took her away—removed the body before we had a chance to view it?”

  “Yes, sir; of course. I knew the proper thing to do was not to touch it—her, I mean—until the coroner had come, so I ’phoned him right away and—”

  “Oh, ye did, did ye?” Costello broke in. “I don’t suppose ye ever heard that th’ city pays policemen to catch those that commits murther? Ye called th’ coroner and had him spoil what little clues we might o’ found, an’—”

  The goaded woman turned on him in fury. “The city may pay police to catch murderers,” she blazed, “but if it does it’s wasting its money on the likes o’ you! Do you know who killed Mr. Carlin? No! Do you know who killed Mr. Harold? No! Will you find out who murdered poor, innocent Mrs. Pancoast? Don’t make me laugh! You couldn’t catch cold on a rainy day, let alone catch a sneaking murderer like the one which did these killings! You and your talk o’ spoiled clues!” She tossed her head disdainfully. “Was I to leave the poor lady’s remains laying by her own front door while you looked round for fingerprints and the like o’ that? Not for all the police in Harrisonville would I—”

  “Tiens, my friends, this is interesting, but not instructive. There is little to be gained from calling hard names, and time presses. Had you first notified the police, Mademoiselle, you would have rendered apprehension of the miscreants more certain, but as it is we must make the best of what we have to work with. No amount of weeping will restore spilled milk.”

  To Costello he added: “Let us inspect Madame Pancoast’s boudoir. Perhaps we shall find something.”

  A BRIGHT FIRE BURNED BEHIND the brass fender in the cheerful apartment Maria Pancoast had quit to go to her death an hour earlier; pictures, mostly family portraits, adorned the walls, the windows were gay with bright-figured chintz. A glance at the mahogany table revealed nothing. The gayly painted wastebasket contained only a few stray wisps of crumpled notepaper; the Colonial escritoire which stood between the windows was kept with spinsterish neatness; nothing like a hastily opened note or visiting-card showed on its fresh green blotter.

  “Voilà, my friends, I think I have it!” de Grandin cried, peering into the bed of glowing coke as he crouched on hands and knees before the fireplace. “It is burned, but—careful, very careful, my friend, a strong breath may destroy it!” He motioned Costello back, took up the brazen fire-tongs and, gently as a chemist might handle an explosive mixture, lifted a tiny curl of crackling gray-black ash from the blue flames. “Prie Dieu she wrote in ink!” he muttered as he bore his find to the table and laid it tenderly upon the sheet of clean white paper Costello spread before him.

  The parchment shades were stripped from the lamps and at Costello’s order Jane, the maid, ran to the dining-room to fetch stronger electric bulbs. Meanwhile de Grandin reached into his waistcoat pocket and took out a pair of delicate steel tweezers and a collapsible-framed jeweler’s loop which he inserted in his right eye.

  Carefully, almost without breathing, lest the gentle current of air from lips or nostrils destroy the carbonized cardboard, he turned the blackened relic underneath the lens of his glass.

  “M—i—s—s— A—l—l,” he spelled out slowly, then fell to studying the cone of blackened paper intently again. “No use, my friends, the printing is effaced by the fire beyond that part,” he told us. “Now for the message on the card. If she used ink all is well, for the metallic pigment in it will have withstood the heat. If she wrote in pencil—we are luckless, I fear. Let us see.”

  For several minutes he turned the little cone of ash beneath the lights, then with a shrug of impatience laid it on the paper, and holding one end in a gentle, steady grip with the tweezers, dipped his fingers in a tumbler and let fall a drop of water on the charred pasteboard. The burned paper trembled like a living thing in torture as the liquid touched it, and a tiny crackling rose from it. But after a moment the moisture seemed to spread through the burned fiber, rendering it less brittle. Twice more he repeated the experiment, each time increasing the pressure of his tweezers. At length he succeeded in prying the cone of heat-contorted paper partly open.

  “Ah?” he exclaimed exultantly. “It was prepared beforehand. See, she did use ink—thanks be to God!”

  Again be studied the charred pasteboard and spelled out slowly: “lp—ho—ban—so—”

  “Name of a name; it is plain as any flagpole!” he cried. “In vain is the evidence of crime burned, my friends. We have them, we know the bait by which they lured poor Madame Pancoast to her death! You see?” He turned bright eyes on Costello and me in turn.

  “Not I,” I answered.

  “Nor I,” the Irishman confessed.

  “Mordieu, must I then teach school to you great stupid-heads?” he asked. “Consider:

  “A young woman comes to see poor Madame Pancoast, scarcely four hours after she has laid away all that remained to her of son and husband. Would Madame be likely to see a stranger in such circumstances? Mademoiselle Jane, the maid, thought not, and she was undoubtlessly right. But Madame Pancoast saw this visitor. For why? Because of something written on a card. Now, what could move a woman with a shattered heart to see an unknown visitor—more, to go away with her, seemingly in a fever of impatience? The answer leaps to the eye. Certainly. It is this: Fill in the missing letters of these words, and though they make but fragments of a sentence, they speak to us in trumpet-tones. Four parts of words we have, the first of which is ‘lp.’ Add two letters to it, and we have ‘help.’ N’est-ce-pas? But certainly. Perform the same office for the other three and we have this portion of the message: ‘help—who—husband—son.’ What more is needed? Tonight came one who promised—in writing, grâce à Dieu—to help the stricken wife and mother bring to justice the slayer of her husband and her son! Is it to be wondered that she went with her? Pardieu, though she had known for certainty that the path led to the death she met tonight, she would have gone. Yes.

  “Madame Pancoast”—he wheeled and faced a portrait of the murdered woman which hung upon the wall and brought his hand up in salute—“your sacrifice shall not be in vain. Although they know it not, these vile miscreants who lured you to your death have paved the way for Jules de Grandin to seek them out. I swear it!”

  To us he ordered peremptorily: “Come, let us go!”

  “Where?” Costello and I demanded in chorus.

  “To Monsieur Dalky’s, of course. I think that he can do us a favor. I know we can do him one, if it be not already too late. Allez-vous-en!”

  4. The Warning

  “NO SIR, MR. DALKY’S not in,” the butler answered de Grandin’s impatient inquiry. “He went out about fifteen or twenty minutes ago, and—

  “Really, I couldn’t say, sir,” the man’s manner was eloquent of outraged dignity as de Grandin demanded his employer’s destination. “Mr. Dalky was not accustomed to tell me where he intended—”

  “Dix mille mousquites, what do we care of his customs?�
�� the Frenchman cut in. “This is of importance. We must know whither he went at once, right away—”

  ”I really couldn’t say, sir,” the butler returned imperturbably, and swung the door to.

  “Listen here, young felly,” Costello inserted the broad toe of his boot in the rapidly diminishing space between door and jamb and brought his broad shoulder against the panels, “d’ye see this?” He turned back the lapel of his jacket, displaying his badge. “Ye’ll tell us where Dalky went, an’ tell it quick, or else—”

  Statement of the alternative was unnecessary. “I’ll ask Mrs. Dalky, sir,” the man began, but:

  “Ye’ll not,” Costello denied. “Ye’ll take us to her, an’ we’ll do our own askin’, savvy?” The butler led us to the room where Mrs. Dalky sat beneath a reading-lamp conning the current issue of The New Yorker.

  “A thousand pardons, Madame,” de Grandin apologized, “but we come in greatest haste to consult Monsieur your husband. It is in relation to the so strange deaths of Monsieur Pancoast and—”

  ”Mr. Pancoast!” Mrs. Dalky dropped her magazine and her air of slight hauteur at once. “Why, that’s what Herbert went to see about.”

  “Ten thousand crazy monkeys!” de Grandin swore beneath his breath, then, aloud: “When? Where, if you please? It is important!”

  “We were sitting here reading,” the lady replied, “when the telephone rang. Some one wanted to speak with Mr. Dalky privately, concerning the murder of Mr. Pancoast and his son. It seemed, from what I overheard, that this person had stumbled on the information accidentally and wanted to consult my husband about one or two phases of the case before they went to the police. Mr. Dalky wanted him to come here, but he said they must act at once if they were to catch the murderers, so he would meet my husband at Tunlaw and Emerson Streets in twenty minutes, then they could go directly to police headquarters, and—”

  “Your pardon, Madame, we must go!” de Grandin almost shouted, and seizing Costello with one hand and me with the other, he fairly dragged us from the room.

  “Rush, hasten, fly, my friend!” he bade me. “We have perhaps five little minutes of grace. Let us make the most of it. To those Tunlaw and Emerson Streets, with all celerity, if you please!”

  The gleaming, baleful eyes of a city ambulance’s red-lensed headlights bore down upon us from the opposite direction as we raced to the designated corner, and the r-r-r-rang! of its gong warned traffic from the road. A crowd had already begun to congregate at the curb, staring with hang-jawed wonder at something on the sidewalk.

  “Jeez, Sergeant,” exclaimed the patrolman who stood guard above the still figure lying on the concrete, “I never seen nothing like it. Talk about puttin’ ’em on th’ spot! Lookit this!” He put back the improvised shroud covering Dalky’s features, and I went sick at the sight. The left side of the man’s head, from brow to hair-line, was scooped away, like an apple bitten into, and from the awful, gaping wound flowed mingled blood and brain. “No need for you here, Doc,” the officer added to the ambulance surgeon as the vehicle clanged to a halt and the white-jacketed intern elbowed his way through the crowd. “What this pore sucker needs is th’ morgue wagon.”

  “How’d it happen?” Costello asked.

  “Well, sir, it was all so sudden I can’t rightly tell you,” the patrolman answered. “I seen this here bird standin’ on th’ corner, kind o’ lookin’ round an’ pullin’ out his watch every once in a while, like he had a heavy date with some one, when all of a sudden a car comes rushin’ round th’ corner, goin’ like th’ hammers o’ hell, an’ before I knew it, it’s swung up that way through Emerson Street, and this pore feller’s layin’ on th’ sidewalk with half his face missin’.” He passed a hand meditatively across his hard-shaven chin. “It musta been th’ car hit ’im,” he added, “though I can’t see how it could ’a’ cut him up that way, but I’d ’a’ swore I seen sumpin sort o’ jump out o’ th’ winder at him as th’ automobile dashed past, just th’ same. I suppose I’m all wet, but—”

  “By no means, mon vieux,” de Grandin interrupted. “What was it you saw flash from the passing car, if you please?”

  “That’s hard to say, sir,” the officer responded. “I can say what it looked like, though.”

  “Très bien. Say on; we are all attention.”

  “Well, sit, don’t think I’m a nut; but it looked like a sad-iron hitched onto a length o’ clothesline. I’d ’a’ swore some one inside th’ car flung th’ iron out th’ winder, mashed th’ pore chap in th’ face with it, an’ yanked it back—all in one motion, like. Course, it couldn’t ’a’ been, but—”

  “What kind o’ car wuz it?” demanded Costello.

  “Looked like a taxi, sir. One o’ them new, shiny black ones with a band o’ red an’ gold checkers runnin’ round the tonneau, you know. It had more speed than any taxi I ever saw, an’ it got clear away before I got a good look at it, for I was all taken up with this pore man, but—”

  “All right, turn in your report when th’ coroner’s car comes for him,” Costello ordered. “Annything y’ed like to ask, Doctor de Grandin?”

  “I think not,” the Frenchman answered. “But, if you please, I should like to have you put a guard in Mrs. Dalky’s house. In no circumstances is anyone not known to the servants to be allowed to see her, and no telephone calls whatever are to be put through to her. You will do this?”

  “H’m, I’ll try, sor. If th’ lady objects, o’ course, there’s nothin’ we can do, for she’s not accused o’ crime, an’ we can’t isolate her that way agin her will; but I’ll see what we can do.

  “This burns me up,” he added dismally. “Here this felly, whoever he is, goes an’ pulls another murther off, right while we’re lookin’ at ’im, ye might say. It’s monkeys he’s makin’ out o’ us, nothin’ less!”

  “By no means,” de Grandin denied. “True, he has accomplished his will, but for the purpose of his final apprehension, it is best that he seems to have the game entirely his own way. Our seeming inability to cope with him will make him bold, and boldness is akin to foolishness in a criminal. Consider: We were at fault concerning Monsieur Pancoast’s murder; the murder of his son likewise gave us naught to go upon; almost while we watched he lured poor Madame Pancoast from her house and slew her, and as far as he can know, we know no more about the bait he used in her case than we knew of the other killings. Now comes Monsieur Dalky. The game seems all too easy; he thinks that he can kill at will and pass among us unsuspected and unmolested. Assuredly he will try the trick again, and when he does,—parbleu, the strongest pitcher comes to grief if it be taken to the well too often! Yes.”

  “What made ye think that Dalky’d be th’ next to go?” Costello asked as we drove slowly through the quiet street to notify the widow.

  “A little by-play which I chanced to notice at the funeral this afternoon,” de Grandin answered. “It happened that I raised my head while the good clergyman was broadcasting endlessly, and as I did so I perceived a hand reach through the open window and drop a wad of paper at Monsieur Dalky’s feet. He did not seem to notice it at first, and when he did he thrust it unread into his waistcoat pocket.

  “There I was negligent, I grant you. I should have followed him and asked to see the contents of the note—for a note of some kind it was undoubtlessly. Why else should it have been dropped before him while he was at the funeral of his one-time partner? But I did not follow my intention. Although the incident intrigued me, I had more pressing business to attend to in searching out Monsieur Pancoast’s antecedents that we might find some motive for his murder. It was not till I had interviewed Madame Hussé at the Bellefield Home that I learned of the former partnership between Pancoast and Dalky, and even then I did not greatly apprehend the danger to the latter; for though he was associated with the murdered man, he, at least, had never traveled to the East. But when the vengeful one slew Madame Pancoast, who was most surely innocent of any wrong, my fears for Monsieur Dalky were roused,
and so we hastened to his house—too late, hélas.”

  We drove in silence a few moments, then: “What we have seen tonight confirms my suspicions almost certainly,” he stated.

  “Umph!” grunted Costello.

  “Precisely, exactly, quite so. The chenay throwing-knife, do you know him?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “Very good. I do. On more than one occasion I had dodged him, and he requires artful dodging, I assure you. Yes. Couteau de table du diable—the devil’s table knife—he has been called, and rightly so. Something like the bolo of your Filipinos it is, but with a curved blade, a blade not curved like a saber, but bent lengthwise, the point toward the hilt, so that the steel describes an arc. Sharpened on both edges like a razor—five inches across its widest part, weighted at the handle, it is the weapon of the devil—or of Dakaits, who are the foul fiend’s half-brothers. They fling it with lightning speed and such force that it will sheer through iron—or one’s skull. Then with a thin, tough cord of gut they pull it back again. Yes, it is true. Very well. Such a blade, Friend Trowbridge, hurled at a man’s back would cut his spine and also cleave his lower skull. You apprehend me?”

  “You mean it was a knife like that—”

  “Précisément. No less. I did not at first identify it by the wound it made on the poor Pancoasts, but when I saw the so unfortunate Monsieur Dalky’s cloven face, my memory bridged the gulf of years and bore me back to Burma—and the throwing-knives. With Pancoast’s history in our minds, with these knife wounds to bear it out, the conclusion is obvious. The Oriental mind is flexible, but it is also conservative. Having started on a course of action, it will carry it through without the slightest deviation. I think we shall soon lay this miscreant by the heels, my friends.”

  “How?” Costello asked.

  “Attend me carefully, and you shall see. Jules de Grandin has sworn an oath to poor, dead Madame Pancoast, and Jules de Grandin is no oath-breaker. By no means. No.”