Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “But if a ghost pursued the Shervers family, working out an ancient blood feud, he would be discriminating. He would not kill the poor young mortuarian because he was unfortunate enough to bear a close resemblance to the Shervers. Human beings make such errors in the flesh, they do not make them when they are translated into spirit form. Furthermore, a ghost would not employ the simple way of poison. They have other ways of doing violence, those ones. Accordingly, I was obliged to seek a human agency in this.

  “The young Monsieur Oldham had gasped out something of a man—or thing—which waited for him at the window just before he had his fatal seizure. Well then, we were to seek for one who lurked at windows. Your uncles died in bed or sitting in the house. A murderer could enter at the window and administer the poison to them while they slept. Your father died upon the highway, presumably of a heart failure. But he was in a closed coupé. Had someone asked a ride of him and been taken in his car, conditions would have been ideal for that one to have gassed him as they rode. Your grandsire died in bed, but he was old and weak. A burglar might have entered through the window, released the deadly gas upon him, then left all quietly. The gas of nitrobenzol is highly volatile. In half an hour there would remain no telltale odor to arouse suspicion. Only an autopsy would disclose the true nature of his death, and the mistaken diagnosis of heart failure precluded the necessity of a post-mortem.

  “There seemed a ritual in these killings. One of the oldest Eastern curses is: ‘May you see your children and your children’s children blotted out, and live to die alone in bleak despair, without the hope of progeny.’ Such a course, it seemed, these killings took. Sons and grandsons perished, called to death from perfect health, while your grandsire lingered on. You alone were spared, perhaps because the killer thought he had dispatched you when he killed young Monsieur Oldham.

  “This we could not have. We must act with speed if you were to be saved. The killer might go home, believing his work done, then months or years afterward find he was mistaken, and come back to complete the extirpation of your family. We had to force his hand immediately. Therefore I asked you to display yourself in public, but to have a care of open doors and windows.

  “Our strategy succeeded. The miscreant who sought your life became aware of his mistake; he would come back, I knew; but how or where he’d strike I did not know. Accordingly, I made the preparation for his coming. I visited your house this afternoon and saw the way a man would take if he desired to hasten from a ground-floor window to the alley, whence he could make his get-away unseen. Then in his way I placed a steel trap, trusting he would step into it as he ran. I desired you should be seen through the window, but I did not wish to have you open it. But you disobeyed my orders, and almost forfeited your life in doing so. Into your face he blew the poison fumes; then off he ran pell-mell and —stepped in Jules de Grandin’s trap.

  “The fact that Doctor Trowbridge was at hand to give first aid enabled you to live where others died. Had we known the nature of his illness we could have saved the poor young Monsieur Oldham, too, but”—he raised his shoulders in a shrug—“ignorance has cost more lives than one.

  “Now I had thought the poisoner was armed with some sort of a tank in which he kept his gas in concentrated form; therefore I followed him with caution until I saw him stumble in the trap and saw his hands were empty. Then I almost made the fatal error. I advanced on him; he roused upon his hands and blew his breath on me. Parbleu, I thought that instant was my last! But we were in the open air, and he struck too quickly, before I had come near enough. I revived, and Doctor Trowbridge came and suffered as I had.

  “‘Jules de Grandin, what sort of man is it who breathes out sudden death?’ I asked myself.

  “‘Think, Jules de Grandin, you great stupid-head,’ I reply to me, ‘are he not an Indian, a Hindoo, and in India do they not have persons who are bred from infancy to ply the trade of poisoner?’

  “‘It is exactly as you say, my clever Jules de Grandin,’ I reply. ‘Some of these poisoners are so venomous the mere touch of their hand will kill an ordinary man; others can blow poison breath, exactly like the fabled dragons of the olden days—’”

  “You mean to say that man could kill a person merely by breathing on him?” I interrupted. “I’ve heard about those Indian poisoners, but I’d always thought the stories old wives’ tales.”

  “The beldame’s talc is often just a garbled version of a scientific truth,” he answered. “Consider, if you please:

  “You know how quickly human bodies set up tolerance to medicine. The man who suffers pain and takes an opiate today will take a dose three times as large next year, a dose which would be fatal to an ordinary man, yet which will hardly register upon a system which has been habituated to the drug. The pretty ladies who take arsenic for the sake of their complexions become habituated to the poison till they can take an ounce or more a day, yet not be inconvenienced by it. It is like that with these ones, only more so. Habituated to the deadliest of poisons from their early infancy, these naughty men can ingest doses large enough to kill a dozen ordinary persons, yet feel no evil consequences.

  “How did this one work? It was as simple—and as subtle—as a juggler’s trick. Nitrobenzol, known commercially as oil of mirbane or artificial oil of almonds, is highly deadly. Fifteen drops compose a lethal dose, and its fumes are almost deadly as its substance. Upon inhaling them one becomes unconscious quickly—remember the young mortuarian—and death comes in a few minutes. The victim’s face is cyanotic, having a blue tinge, as though heart failure were responsible. That is because the poison works by making it impossible for blood to take up oxygen. One cannot greatly blame the doctors who were misled. External symptoms all said ‘heart disease,’ and there was no reason why foul play should be suspected.

  “Very well. Before going on a foray this one drank a quantity of nitrobenzol. It is highly volatile, and his stomach’s warmth rendered it still more so. He approached a victim all unarmed. Could anyone suspect him? Non. Ah, but when he came within a breathing-distance, by a sudden torsion of the muscles of his thorax and abdomen, he induced an artificial eructation—the poison gas was belched forth from his mouth, his victim fell and—voilà tout!”

  “I see,” I exclaimed, “that’s why you beat him so unmercifully! You wanted him to discharge all the poison gas his stomach contained.... I’m very glad, de Grandin; I’d thought that you were merely taking vengeance on him—”

  He flashed his quick, infectious grin at me. “You are very good and very kind—too much so, sometimes, good Friend Trowbridge—but there are times when I have serious reason to believe you are not as well equipped with brains as you might be. Of course, I beat the miscreant. Was it his life against ours? While he still retained the power to spew the poison gases out we dared not go near him, nor could the police take him, for he needed but to breathe to free himself. I am not a cruel man, but I am logical. I do the needful when the need for doing it arises. Yes.”

  “But this poison—” began Shervers.

  “Poison assumes many guises,” interrupted Jules de Grandin. “At present, if you please, I should like some from that lovely bottle standing at your elbow.” He drained his highball glass and held it out to be replenished.

  Black Moon

  THE AUGUST SUN HAD reigned all day as mercilessly as a tsar whose ukase is a sword and whose sword is sudden death. Now in the evening cool we were dining in the garden, and dinner was unusually good, even for such a virtuoso of cuisine as Nora McGinnis. Tiny clams chilled almost crisp and served with champagne brut were followed by green turtle soup and pale dry sherry, then roast young guinea-hen and ginger ice with white Burgundy. Now the spicy sweetness of Chartreuse and the bitterness of Java coffee put a period to a meal which might have brought a flush of envy to Lucullus’ face. “Tiens, my friend, I am in a pious mood, me,” announced Jules de Grandin, his little round blue eyes bright in the candlelight. “But certainly, of course—”

  “
Are you repenting of past sins, or sins to be committed?” I replied.

  He grinned at me. “Observe,” he ordered. “In Tarragona, where the good Carthusian brethren work so hard to make this precious stuff, they say that drinking one small glass of it is equal to attending three low masses. Parbleu, I make amends for laxness in devotions—” He poised the cruet of green liqueur to decant a second drink, but the wisp-wisp of swift feet on close-cropped grass broke in upon his solemn rite.

  “If yez plaze, sors, there’s a gintleman to see yez,” announced Nora.

  Nora resents callers after office hours. More than once she has turned my patients off with sharp-tongued rebuke when they rang the door-bell around dinnertime, but now her eyes were shining with suppressed elation, and she seemed to labor with some weighty secret as she bore the message of the interruption to our after-dinner confab.

  “A visitor—grand Dieu des porcs!—are we to be eternally annoyed by them?” de Grandin answered tartly. “Bid him depart, ma chère, tell him we are indisposed, that we died this afternoon and now await the coming of the undertaker—”

  “And if she did he’d not believe a word of it; he’s too familiar with your shameless lies, you little blighter!” a deep voice challenged as a big form vaulted from the side porch and came striding toward us through the deepening twilight.

  “Comment? Mais non! It cannot be, and yet it is, by blue!” de Grandin cried. “Hiji, mon brave, mon cher camarade, mon beau copain—is it truly thou, or has some spirit put your form upon him?” In a moment he had grasped the big intruder by the shoulders, drawn him to him in a bear-hug and stood on tiptoe to impress a kiss on both his cheeks.

  “Give over, you small devil, d’ye want the neighbors talkin’?” exclaimed the new arrival, thrusting back the little Frenchman, but retaining a tight hold upon his shoulders. “Trowbridge, old top, how are you?” With his free hand he grasped mine and almost paralyzed it in a vise-tight grip.

  “Ingraham!” I gasped, amazed. “My boy, I’m glad to see you!”

  “Glad enough to offer me a whisky-soda?” he asked as he drew a chair up to the table.

  Nora had the bottle and siphon at his side almost before he could finish speaking, and as he poured about four ounces of the liquor in his glass and diluted it with rather less than that much soda I observed him carefully. Sir Haddingway Ingraham Jamison Ingraham, known to all his intimates as Hiji, late of the Sierra Leone Frontier Police, member of the British Army Intelligence, detective extraordinary and adventurer-at-large, was taller by almost two feet than Jules de Grandin, and lean with the leanness of the practiced athlete. Although his small mustache was black, his hair was iron-gray, and his long, thin, high-cheeked face was burned almost the hue of old mahogany. With de Grandin and Costello and Inspector Renouard of the French Cambodian gendarmerie he had smashed a bold conspiracy to spread devil worship throughout Asia, and more than once we’d talked of him and mourned his absence when we’d found ourselves in places where a man with a strong arm and ability to shoot straight would have come in handy. Now, dropped from the summer evening sky, apparently, he sat beside us, drinking whisky-soda as composedly as though we’d seen each other at the breakfast table.

  “What is it brings you here, my friend?” de Grandin asked. “Is it that you offer us a chance to go with you on some adventure? One hopes so most devoutly. Life grows stale and tiresome in New Jersey—”

  The big Englishman grinned at him. “Still on the go, eh, Frenchy? Too bad I have to let you down, but I’m a married man these days, with a wife and kids and everything that goes with it. Also, I’m no longer in the Army. I’m a member of his Majesty’s Consular Service, quiet and respectable as a retired parson.”

  The Frenchman’s eager little face went long, and Hiji grinned at him almost maliciously as he reached into his dinner coat and drew a sheaf of papers from his pocket. “Glance these over,” he commanded as he spread the documents upon the tablecloth. “Just a little routine stuff about commercial matters.” He raised his glass and took a long sip, gazing at de Grandin over the tall tumbler’s rim.

  With a grimace of distaste the Frenchman spread the papers out before him. They seemed to be newspaper clippings pasted on stiff sheets of foolscap and numbered in rotation. What possible interest Jules de Grandin could have in production and consumption, imports and exports, I could not conceive, but I saw his narrow brows draw down in concentration as he read, and when he looked up there was a lightning-glint in his small, deep-set blue eyes. “Me, I am greatly interested in this species of commercialism,” he declared. “Is it that you invite us to assist in your investigations?”

  “Just what I dropped in for,” answered Hiji. “Can you come?”

  The little Frenchman spread his hands in a wide gesture. “Can the pussycat devour liver, or the duck perform aquatic feats?” he asked. “When do we depart?”

  “What’s it all about?” I cut in. “I never knew you cared two pins for commerce, de Grandin, yet—”

  “Observe them, if you please,” he broke in as he thrust the papers toward me. “They do not make sense, I agree, but they promise something interesting, I damn think.”

  As far as I could see, the cuttings were without relation to each other. The first, dated a year back, bore the head:

  STUDENTS’ PRANK SEEN IN POLICE FIND

  PARTS OF BODIES FOUND IN BAY BELIEVED

  DISSECTING-ROOM RELICS—MURDER MYSTERY BLOWS UP

  The item related the finding of a gunny-sack in the Chesapeake not far from Reedville, Virginia, which when opened proved to contain several human arm and leg bones from which the flesh had been almost completely cut away. Local police had at first believed them evidence of murder, but when physicians declared the grisly relics were from several bodies the theory that medical students had tossed the sack into the bay near Norfolk was accepted as the most likely explanation.

  Less than an inch in length, and without relation to the first, the second cutting bore the head: “FARM AND DOMESTIC HELP SCARCE,” and related that domestic and field helpers were at a premium in Westmoreland, Richmond and Northumberland Counties, though there had been no great migration to the North.

  “CAMP MEETINGS LOSE APPEAL” the third clipping was headlined, and told of the almost total failure of attendance at recent camp and bush meetings among the colored population of the Norfolk section, something without precedent in the memory of the oldest inhabitants.

  Entirely unrelated to the first three items, as far as I could see, was the clipping from a New York Negro daily telling of the gory murder of the proprietor of a Harlem café. The body had been found almost denuded of clothing, scored and slashed as if a savage beast had clawed it. Robbery had not been the motive, for the dead man’s well-filled wallet was intact, and a diamond scarf-pin was still in his tie. He had no enemies, as far as the authorities could learn. Indeed, he had been very popular, especially with the Southern Negroes of the district.

  The final story dealt with the unexplained murder of a Captain Ronald Sterling, apparently a gentleman of some importance in Westmoreland County. He had, according to the clipping, been found dead on his front lawn, his face, neck and breast so horribly mutilated that identification was possible only by his clothes. While every circumstance pointed to death being due to some ferocious beast, a careful check-up of the death scene disclosed no animal tracks, though numerous human footprints were discovered on the sandy driveway. No one had been approached, for the police had been unable to formulate a tenable theory in the case.

  “H’m, perhaps there’s some connection in these stories, but I can’t find it if there is,” I said as I passed back the papers.

  Ingraham produced a small black pipe and a tin of Three Nuns and began tamping the tobacco in the briar as he looked quizzically at us. “There doesn’t seem to be any common denominator, I’ll admit,” he answered, “but I think there is. So do my bosses. You see, there have been quite a number of Jamaican and Barbadian Negroes coming
to this country lately, and some of your G-gentlemen seem to think they’re mixed up in this business. His Majesty’s Government thinks otherwise; I’ve been deputed to prove we’re right.”

  “But what is ‘this business,’ as you call it?” I demanded. “I don’t see any possible connection between medical students’ pranks and failing attendance at camp meetings with murders in Virginia and Harlem—”

  “No”—Hiji took a few quick puffs to get his pipe alight—“I don’t suppose you do, but there are data not shown in the clippings. For instance, those bones washed up by the Chesapeake were charred by fire. Exposure to the water rendered positive opinion difficult, but the little flesh remaining on them appeared to have been acted on by heat. Bluntly, they’d been cooked.

  “Second, there have been a number of strange Negroes seen in that section of Virginia and southeastern Maryland. They’re West Indians, not from Jamaica or Barbados, but from Martinique and Haiti, men and women speaking English with a strong French patois accent. That’s where we come in. Your people don’t seem able to distinguish between our Negroes and those from the non-British islands.

  “Now, as to connection between these murders: Jim Collins, the proprietor of that Harlem hot spot, wasn’t a West Indian. He went north from Virginia something like a year ago, and he went from Captain Sterling’s place. It’s known that he corresponded with Sterling after coming north, and a letter was received from him two days before Sterling’s death.”

  “D’ye know what it said?”