Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “What time are office hours today, mon vieux?” he asked, lighting a vile-smelling French cigarette.

  “No office hours this morning,” I answered. “I’ve a patient to look in on at Mercy Hospital and two more at the Consolidated. After that I’m free till five this afternoon.”

  “Bien,” he nodded, “and you will kindly chauffeur me around the town, as in the good old days?”

  “Be glad to. Where shall we go first?”

  “U’m,” he considered a moment. “To the police headquarters, if you will be so kind. I would have a word with Monsieur I’Inférieur Commissaire. Ah bah, a fool he must be, that one!”

  WENDELL WINTERBOTHAM, FIRST ASSISTANT police commissioner, sat behind his glass-topped wide desk decorated with twin fountain pens, a telephone, brass-bound desk blotter and an amber glass bud-vase in which stood a single crimson rose and smirked at Jules de Grandin with the deprecating, irritating smile of a man who was not born yesterday. “And you seriously expect me to put credence in this absurd story, Dr. de Grandin?” he asked.

  “I seriously do, Monsieur le Commissaire. I do not say, or even think, it was a stone man who committed this murder, but I do believe the young policeman thinks it was, and the marble splinter which he shot from it—and which I hear he showed to you in support of his story—gives some weight to his belief. It may well be the miscreant wore some fantastic sort of disguise—”

  “Bosh! Who’d go around in such a get-up to commit a murder? It just doesn’t make sense—”

  “Assuredly, M’sieur. Nor does it make sense that he beat his victim almost to a pulp when one blow would have killed her. When Sergeant Bertram disinterred the bodies of the dead from Paris cemeteries and bashed them with a grave-digger’s spade, that made no sense, either; when Jack the Ripper killed his victims in the London slums and mutilated their corpses, that made no sense to normal men, but—” he gestured the ending with a wave of his hand—“there are strange things buried in the secret mausoleums of the mind, Monsieur le Commissaire. Lust for power, lust for cruelty, lust for murder—savage urges to deface and rend and tear and slay our fellow being, they are all there. And while we keep them under lock and key they are still there, lying like the vampires to arise and walk from their coffins when the opportunity arises. But certainly. This murderer, this killer, he may be eminently respectable by day, an honored lawyer or doctor, perhaps a businessman or even clergyman. That is when he plays the rôle of Dr. Jekyll. But when the ghost of Mr. Hyde comes forth to prowl, what power of deepest hell may not be loosed?”

  “H’m.” The commissioner grew thoughtful. He was not a stupid man, only opinionated and “practical.” Before becoming assistant commissioner he had been director of a mail order house, and prided himself on having brought hard-headed business efficiency to public service. “You think we may be dealing with a homicidal maniac?”

  De Grandin raised his narrow shoulders in the sort of shrug that no one but a Frenchman can achieve. “Comme qui dirait? The ear-marks of the killing point to it. If, as we may assume, this is a second Sergeant Bertram we deal with—he was a mellow-mannered, lovable young man when not gripped by his mania—it may well be that he puts on the disguise of a statue when he goes upon his killing quests. It may be that he has devised a sort of armor that will defy bullets—”

  “A crazy man?” scoffed Winterbotham.

  “As you say, M’sieur, a crazy man. But a crazy man who is brilliant and talented in normal times and uses his great talents to assist him in the crimes he commits when his second, evil personality is uppermost. It could be so, n’est-ce-pas?”

  “Why, yes, I suppose so. Wait a minute—” Winterbotham pressed a button underneath his desk, and, to the clerk who answered the summons, “Bring me the files in the Jukes, Mahoney and Ebbert cases, please.”

  He ruffled through the papers, then: “I hadn’t thought of it, Doctor,” he confessed, “but what you say puts a new light on this case. Here’s Sally Jukes, a woman of no lawful occupation, arrested several times for vagrancy and half a dozen times for soliciting. She was killed in Deal Street shortly after midnight three weeks ago. Her—”

  “One moment, if you please, Monsieur le Commissaire,” de Grandin interrupted. “The other two, the Mahoney and Ebbert women, what were their occupations, if you know?”

  The commissioner gave a slight start. “No known—or, rather, too well known means of support—”

  De Grandin nodded. “There was no question, then, I take it, concerning their morals, which, hélas, were all on the wrong side of the question mark?”

  “That’s right, Doctor. All three were—”

  “Exactement. And how, if you please, did la Jukes meet her end?”

  “The coroner’s report shows death was due to dislocation of the spinal column between the second and third cervical vertebrae. There was also a fracture of the right occiput, and the frontal bone, both shoulders—”

  “Précisément, M’sieur. And were not the two other women similarly broken?”

  “Ye-es,” the commissioner thumbed through the records of the other cases. “You’re right, Doctor. The coroner’s physician’s findings in all three cases are almost identical. We don’t know that all three were killed by the same person, of course, but the technique of the murders—”

  “Was the calling card of the assassin, by blue! Did not I say it?”

  Winterbotham’s somber eyes showed traces of amusement. “What do you want me to do, Doctor? Accept young Flannigan’s report? Give out to the newspapers that an animated statue’s running amok, that the police can’t catch it, that their bullets can’t hurt it, and that no man’s life is safe?”

  “By no means, M’sieur. Tell the press you have a clue, a dozen of them, if you wish, and that you’re satisfied the killings have no connection with each other and were perpetrated by different persons. That will pique the murderer’s vanity, and will also lull him into feeling safe. Make no mistake, he reads the papers, this one. He gloats in secret at the thought that he has foiled the police, that he can murder with impunity. Yes, certainly. Bien. Let him gloat. Soon comes our turn. Meantime, I pray you, do not be too hard on the young Flannigan. He is an honest boy, else he would not stick to his story so stubbornly.”

  “All right, Doctor. I think your advice is sound, and I’ll not press charges against Flannigan. May we count on your cooperation?”

  “A hundred and forty-five percent, M’sieur!”

  We shook hands all around at parting, and for a moment I was fearful that de Grandin would implant a kiss on Winterbotham’s cheeks for promising to restore Dennis Flannigan to duty.

  “Non, merci,” he denied when I suggested that I drive him on his other errands. “I shall do very nicely afoot, my friend. I have important missions to perform, and you are due at the hospitals. Go call upon your patients, but bid Madame Nora to wait dinner for me. Unless I am more mistaken than I think, I shall have the appetite of the ostrich when I return.”

  HE WAS HOME IN time to mix the cocktails, and as I sipped the pale gold fluid from the beaded glass I realized with a pang that not since he had left for France when war broke out had I tasted a perfect Martini. These were pluperfect, with the vermouth cutting the flavor of the gin just enough to leave the dryness intact, the Angostura blending faultlessly with both. “Was it a successful day” I asked as I helped myself to a second portion from the frost-encrusted shaker.

  “Eminently, my friend,” he assured me. “I have found that which I sought; now I desire to hear that—”

  “Dinner is served, if ye plaze, sor,” announced Nora from the doorway, and de Grandin who would no more think of keeping dinner waiting than of whistling in church was silent till the soup was served. Then, as Nora put the plate of steaming mulligatawny before him, “Tell me, Friend Trowbridge, do you know the Spring of Temperance?”

  “The Spring—” I countered, wondering if he were being facetious, then as recollection dawned, “you mean the fountai
n in Dunellan Park? Why, yes, I’ve seen it, but I don’t believe I ever really noticed it. Why do you ask?”

  He spread a dab of butter on his hot roll and give me a quick, level glance. “Me, I saw her today. I examined her most carefully, and—”

  “You mean—” the look in his eyes gave me the clue, but it seemed so utterly fantastic—“there were bullet marks on it”

  “Four,” he replied sententiously. “The young Flannigan did not lie to us, or to the commissaire de police. But no. Also, I matched the little marble splinter which he left with me into a little, so small notch knocked from the arm of the standing male figure.”

  Nora set the joint before me, a rolled beef-roast, brown and crisp on the outside with glaced potatoes turned in its juice, and for a moment there was silence as I carved, then, when she’d left us to ourselves once more: “You will recall the group of statuary, perhaps? A child and young woman bend above the basin of the fountain, back of them, and leaning toward the spring, is a male figure, nude as are the other two, and slightly less than full life-size.”

  “Yes, I remember now. It caused considerable scandal when it was unveiled. Some of our ladies’ organizations thought its undraped figures might corrupt youth. That’s why they put it in Dunellan Park instead of—”

  “One comprehends,” he cut in. “The female mind, especially in America, is something which no one can understand—or perhaps which one understands entirely too well if he is versed in psychology. But it is of the statues that I speak, not of their aesthetic qualities. I searched the city with the comb of the fine teeth, and was all but despairing when at last I came upon that group. ‘Jules de Grandin,’ I then said to me, ‘it is here your quest ends, either in success or failure.’ ‘You are entirely correct, as usual, Jules de Grandin,’ I reply to me, and forthwith I examined every square inch of those sacré statues’ marble hide.

  “And what did I discover? Morbleu, upon the back of the male standing figure I found three small, shallow, flattened pits with gray discolorations which indubitably were the marks of soft-nosed leaden bullets. But certainly. And on the triceps of the figure’s left arm was a little nitch, also discolored as from a lead missile, and into it I set the marble splinter left with me by the young Flannigan. Parbleu, it fitted perfectly, like the slipper on the little, dainty foot of Cendrillon. Yes. Certainly. Of course.”

  “You’re certain they were bullet marks? Children, especially boys, are everlastingly committing acts of vandalism—”

  “Ah bah! You ask me if I know the tell-tale mark of the bullet on stone? Me, Jules de Grandin, the soldier? My friend, I know him as I know the lines of my own hand. Have I not seen him on the walls where military executions have been carried out? Of course. I tell you, good Friend Trowbridge, there is no doubt about it. Fantastic and incredible as it may seem, it was that statue which repelled the bullets of young Flannigan, that very marble image that killed Lucy Ebbert, and by almost inescapable inference Sally Jukes and Mae Mahoney also.”

  “Well,” I forced a smile that did not go much below the surface, for despite the absurdity of his statement his deadly earnest manner made me feel uncomfortable, “if that’s the case we’re in a bad fix. As Winterbotham said this morning, a marble statue is running amok and the police are powerless against it. If a marble image can come to life and go on a rampage, what is to prevent those bronze colossi in Military Park from taking the warpath?”

  “Jules de Grandin,” he returned smiling. He did not make the statement boastfully, but simply, as an existing fact. “I shall take measures to insure their tranquility, my friend.”

  “What measures?”

  He drew his shoulders upward in a shrug of complete eloquence. “How should I know? The time is not yet ripe, my friend. When it has come, pardieu, Jules de Grandin will be there also!”

  “You certainly think highly of yourself,” I admitted, “but it seems to me you’ve taken on a job that’s worthy of your best this time. If bullets won’t stop this stone murderer, the only thing left to do is smash it with a sledge hammer, and you’d find yourself involved with the police if you tried that. I doubt if even your persuasiveness could convince the Park Department that one of their prize groups of statuary has developed homicidal tendencies. Besides, if one statue has come alive to commit murder, what’s to stop the rest? You can’t tear down or break up every piece of sculpture in the city. Why, counting the monuments in the cemeteries, there must be at least—”

  “You are informing me?” he broke in with a slightly worried frown. “No, my friend, as you say, we cannot embark on a course of wholesale image-smashing. Besides, this business of the monkey, if I interpret it correctly, is more a symptom than a disease. One does not treat a case of ache, by example, by local applications, one treats the gastro-intestinal disturbance which is the etiological factor. So it must be in this case. We must reach the underlying cause of all this nonsense, and remove it—or him.”

  I nodded and, irrelevantly, it seemed to me, he asked abruptly: “This Monsieur Joseph Stoneman, who was he, if you please? A plaque set in the fountain’s base informs the beholder that he bestowed it on the city as a memorial to his son who was, one takes it, killed in the war.”

  “No, he wasn’t killed in battle,” I rejoined. “He met his death in a speakeasy brawl. Joe Stoneman was a manufacturer of carbonated beverages and made a fortune out of them. His Jingerade and Kolatonik were famous at one time, but since repeal of prohibition they’ve lost popularity.”

  “Ah? The public ceased insulting its collective stomach with his nostrums when once more it had a chance to drink light wines and beer?”

  “Not quite. Stoneman was almost fanatically opposed to alcohol in every and any form. He was one of our foremost dry crusaders, and almost succeeded in getting a bill through the legislature prohibiting the use of alcohol as a solvent in medicines. It took the combined efforts of the Medical Society and Pharmacists’ Association to defeat it. He was credited with donating almost fantastic sums to finance the dry cause, too.”

  “One sees completely. It was an excellent advertisement for his own non-intoxicating beverages.”

  “No one believed that. He seemed so utterly sincere, but when repeal became operative one of the first things he did was to set up a huge brewery and advertise his beer almost as extensively as he had his soft drinks. His advertising campaign announced that as long as people were to be allowed to drink intoxicants anyway he felt it his duty to make a good beer which they would drink in preference to hard liquor. Nobody believed him. His former associates in the dry cause turned against him as a traitor and saloon proprietors and tavern keepers, remembering how he’d led the prosecutions for infraction of the prohibition laws refused to handle his beer, so both his soft drink and beer businesses fell flat and he sold his brewery and factories and retired.”

  He frowned thoughtfully. “One sees. And what of his son’s death? You said it occurred in a speakeasy? Strange the son of such a father should die so.”

  I nodded. “It was something of a scandal. The youngster was a harum-scarum sort of lad, and while his father sought to dry up liquor at the source, he worked industriously to cut down the supply from the consumer’s angle. One evening there was a brawl in a speakeasy, and when the police came they found young Stoneman lying in the street outside the place with his head staved in and his neck broken—”

  “Morbleu, can such things be?” he almost shouted.

  “Eh?” I jerked back. “What d’ye mean?”

  “His injuries, my friend. He had his head staved in; he had his neck broken—so did the three women killed by the statue. Do not you see some connection?”

  “I don’t quite see what you’re driving at,” I confessed.

  The smile he flashed at me was infectious as a yawn. “I am not sure that I do, either,” he admitted. “It is a puzzle picture that we work on, my friend. As yet we have but a few pieces, and the pattern is obscure, but presently we shall have more, and
then we shall see order emerging from this apparent chaos. Meantime, why distress ourselves unduly? Shall not we go to the study for coffee?”

  HE CAME BUSTLING IN next afternoon and thrust a copy of the journal into my hand. “We must surely go to this, my friend,” he informed me, indicating an item on the third page with the tip of a well manicured finger. “It will be of the interest.”

  The paragraph announced that Dr. Bradley-Stoker of the Universities of Edinburgh and Dublin would lecture on the secret writings of Cornelius Agrippa that night at Sawyer Hall.

  “I don’t think I’d be interested,” I told him. “Why don’t you go alone? I’ve had a rather trying day and—what’s the matter with you?” He was grinning like a small boy who observes a portly gentleman in a high hat coming toward him on a snowy day.

  “Me, I promise you will not be bored,” he assured me. “It may be possible the learned doctor will not show up for his lecture, but I am certain that another will.”

  “Who?”

  “Wait and see, my friend. If all goes as I think that all will go I shall explain to you completely. I have been busy as a hive of bees today. I have made investigation of the death of young Monsieur Stoneman, and some of the things I found out give me furiously to think. The speakeasy where he was done to death was in Tunnell Street, that most unsavory thoroughfare where Sally Jukes came to her end, and near which both the Ebbert and Mahoney women were murdered. Moreover, all three of them had been among those present when he was killed. There was another there also, one Nellie Cook, and this afternoon I saw and talked with her.”

  “Yes?” I asked, puzzled. “And what is the connection—”

  “She is, according to the popular phrase, down on her luck at present, having been but recently released from jail. Once she was a singer, a night club entertainer, and specifically a chanteuse in the Hard-Boiled Owl, the speakeasy where the young Stoneman met his finish. Tiens, he was the devil of a fellow, that young man. He thought that he could best professional gamblers at their own craft, and on the night that he was killed had been engaged in a crap game with three young gangsters, boy friends of the girls, who had, in every probability, inveigled him into playing. Tenez, a blind man could foresee the outcome. He lost and lost again, then finally decided he had been cheated and made demand for his money, threatening to expose the dive and have his father prosecute it and all its inmates.