Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “How’s that?”

  “I cannot say, at least not now, mon vieux. I did but think aloud, and not to any great effect, I fear.”

  IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN a week later, perhaps ten days, when Camilla Castevens called on me. She was a tall young woman with copper hair and steady blue eyes, past the first flush of her youth—some thirty-two or -three—but with the added attractiveness that early maturity gives to a woman. In the light of the consulting-room lamp her face looked sad, her cheeks seemed hollow, and her red lips dipped in a pathetic downward curve. “I’m frightened, Dr. Trowbridge,” she confessed.

  I found it hard not to be sarcastic. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her why she did not take her fears to Dr. Coiquitt, but better sense prevailed, and instead I looked at her inquiringly. Like the priest, the doctor has to be long-suffering and patient.

  “I—I’m terribly afraid,” she went on as I said nothing to help her. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Few of us do, my dear.”

  “But I shall have to if”—she paused a long, agonized moment, then with a burst of something like hysteria—“if Richard is to get well. He says I must!”

  “He? Who?”

  “Dr. Coiquitt, sir. Don’t you know, haven’t you noticed? He was treating Mrs. Delarue for an incurable ailment. She got well—yes, well, when all the other doctors said she hadn’t a chance!—but her son Donald who was her idol died just as he was about to receive his commission in the Air Corps when his plane crashed in his final practice flight. Oh, I know you’ll say it was coincidence; that his plane would have cracked up just the same if his mother had died instead of getting well. But it didn’t. She got well and he died. Then there was Bernice Stevens. Nobody thought she had an earthly chance, and she herself prayed daily for death to release her from her dreadful suffering; but he took her case and cured her—and Bert Stevens died within ten months. Of cancer, too. Perhaps that was coincidence, also. How many coincidences do we have to have to make a certainty, Doctor?

  “I’ll tell you—” She leaned forward, and in the light of my desk lamp her eyes seemed hard and expressionless as blue gems inlaid in an ivory face. “I have proof! The man’s a wizard; just as much a wizard as those dreadful men they hanged and burned in mediæval days. He is—he is!” Her voice rose almost to a shriek, and as I smiled incredulously, “Listen:

  “You know that Richard Bream and I have been in love for years. We went in grade school together, and to high school, and afterwards to college. We’d planned to be married just after commencement, but the depression came along just then, and Richard couldn’t get a start in his law practice. They took his furniture for debt, and evicted him from his office, and he couldn’t get even a clerkship anywhere; finally he was forced to take a place as a soda dispenser in a drug store—Richard Bream, Esquire, bachelor and master of laws, Phi Beta Kappa and Sigmu Nu Tau, a soda-jerker at ten dollars a week, and glad to get that much! I had twelve dollars weekly from my work as a stenographer, but two people can’t live on twenty-two dollars a week, and besides, I had mother to look after. Then finally Rick secured a place as law clerk with Addleman and Sinclair, and just as we were planning to get married his father died, and he had his mother to support. It was just one thing after another, Doctor. Every time we thought our period of waiting was over something came up to destroy our hopes. I’ve heard the Indians sometimes tormenting their prisoners by tying them to stakes and lighting fires around them, then, when the torture had become unbearable, offering the poor wretches bowls of cool water, only to dash them from their lips as they were about to drink. That’s the way it’s been with Rick and me for nearly twelve years, Doctor. We’ve starved and thirsted for each other, and time and again it seemed our period of waiting had come to a close when”—she raised her hands in a gesture of futility—“something else happened to postpone our marriage. At last the war came, and Rick got his commission. There seemed nothing that could halt us now, and then—this unsuspected heart ailment appeared; Rick was discharged from the Army on a medical certificate and went to Dr. Dahlgren and half a dozen other specialists. All told him the same thing. He might live one year, maybe two—he might drop dead any minute.

  “I wanted to get married right away. I’m making fifty dollars a week now, and that would keep us. I could love and cherish him for whatever time remained to us, and—oh, Doctor, I love him so!” She broke down utterly and bowed her head upon her clasped hands, crying almost silently with body-shaking sobs. At last: “I was desperate, Dr. Trowbridge. I’d heard about the wonderful cures Dr. Coiquitt had made, and went to see him.” A shudder, more of horror than of fear, it seemed to me, ran through her. “I tell you, the man is a wizard, sir.

  “His office is more like a necromancer’s den than a physician’s place. No daylight penetrates it; everything about the place is black—black floors, black walls, black ceiling; black furniture upholstered in black silk brocade. The only light in the place is from a black-shaded lamp on the desk where he sits and waits like a—like a great spider, sir! He wasn’t kind and sympathetic as a doctor ought to be; he wasn’t glad to see me; he didn’t even seem surprised that I had come. It was as if he knew I’d have to come to him, and had been waiting with the patience of a great cat sitting at a rat-hole.

  “When I told him about Rick’s case he seemed scarcely interested; but when I’d finished talking he said in that heavy foreign accent of his: ‘These matters have to be adjusted, Miss Castevens. I can cure your lover, but the risk to you is great. Do you love him more than you love life?’

  “Of course I vowed I did, that I would gladly die if Rick could live, and he smiled at me—I think that Satan must smile like that when a new damned soul is brought to him.

  “‘For every one who leaves the world another comes into it,’ he told me. ‘For every one who cheats Death, Death must have another victim. I have pondered long upon this matter; I have learned the wisdom of the ancients and of people you Americans in your ignorance call savage. I know whereof I speak. I do not prescribe for the ailing. I give my medicine—and thought—to the well, and they, by sympathy, affect the suffering. If you will agree to do just as I say I can cure your lover, but it may be that your life will be the forfeit demanded for his. You must understand this clearly; I would not have you embark on the case unknowingly.’

  “Well, it sounded utterly absurd, but I was desperate, so I agreed. He went into a back room and I heard him clinking glass on glass, then presently he came out with a syringe which he thrust into my arm and drew blood from it. Then he disappeared again for a short time, and finally came back with a tall glass in which some black liquor steamed and boiled. ‘Drink this,’ he ordered, and as you drink it pronounce after me, “Of my own free will and accord I agree to give myself in his stead, whatever may betide.” I took the glass into both hands and drained it at a gulp as I pronounced the words he told me, and instead of being boiling hot the liquid seemed as cold as ice—so cold it seemed to send a chill through every vein and artery in my body, to make my toes and fingers almost ache with sudden chill, and freeze my heart and lungs until I breathed with difficulty.

  “Before I left he gave me another bottle filled with black liquor and told me, ‘Take this three times a day, once before each meal and once before you say your prayers at night. You do pray, don’t you?

  “‘Yes, sir,’ I answered. ‘Every night and morning.’

  “‘So much the better. Take an extra dose of this before your morning prayer, then, and I shall call on Mr. Bream in the morning, make a careful note of his condition and report to you. In three days he should begin to improve. In two months he should be completely recovered.’ That was all, and I left that queer, black-walled den of his feeling foolish as if I’d been to consult a fortune-teller.

  “But the next day when I called the hospital to inquire after Richard they told me he was showing marked improvement and his improvement has been constant ever since.”

  “That’s w
onderful,” I commented, and she caught me up abruptly, sarcastically:

  “Yes, isn’t it? It’s wonderful, too, that as Richard gained in strength I’ve lost weight steadily, and for the past two weeks have suffered agonizing pain in my right breast and arm, and have these dreadful smothering fits when it seems that a pillow has been clamped across my nose and mouth. I tell you, Doctor Trowbridge, I am dying; dying surely as if I had been sentenced to death by a court. Rick’s getting well, and, of course, I want that; but I’m afraid, sir, terribly afraid. Besides, if I die, what shall we have gained? Rick will have life, but not me, and I—I shall have nothing at all!” Her voice rose to a wail of pure despair.

  “Camilla!” I admonished sharply. “Such things don’t happen. They can’t—”

  “By blue, my friend, I think they do and can,” de Grandin’s sharp denial came as he stepped into the consulting room. “You must excuse me, Mademoiselle,” he bowed to Camilla, “but I could not help hearing something of the things you said to Doctor Trowbridge as I came in. You need have no fear your confidence will be violated. I too, am a physician, and whatever I have heard is under the protection of my oath of confidence. However,” he lifted brows and shoulders in the faint suggestion of a shrug, “if you will consent that I try, I think perhaps that I can help you, for I am Jules de Grandin, and a very clever person, I assure you.”

  Reminded by his announcement that the amenities had not been observed. I introduced them formally, and he dropped into a seat facing her. “Now, if you please,” he ordered, “tell me all that you have told Friend Trowbridge, and leave out nothing. In cases such as this there are no little things; all is of the importance, and I would know all that I may be of assistance to you. Begin at the beginning, Mademoiselle, if you please.”

  She rehearsed the story she had told me, and he nodded emphatic agreement as she finished. “I do not know how he does it, Mademoiselle,” he admitted as she brought her recital to a close, “but I am as convinced as you that there is something unholy about this business. What it is remains for us to find out. Meantime, if you will oblige us by submitting to a physical examination”—he rose and nodded toward the examination room—“we should like to assure ourselves of your condition; perhaps to prescribe treatment.”

  There was no doubt in either of our minds when we had finished our inspection. There was a widespread area of dullness round her heart, the pulmonary second sound was sharply accented, and a murmur was discernible in the second interspace to the left of the sternum at the level of the third rib, so harsh as to be audible over the entire pericardium. Camilla Castevens was undoubtedly a victim of myocarditis, and in an advanced, almost hopeless stage.

  “I shall not hold the truth from you, Mademoiselle,” de Grandin told her gravely when she returned to the consultation room. “You are a very ill person, and in utmost danger. These”—he scribbled a prescription for some three-grain amyl nitrite capsules—“will ease the pain when it comes on. Crush one in your handkerchief and inhale the fumes freely. For the rest,” his slender fingers tapped a fuguelike rhythm on the edge of the desk, “we shall have to seek the cause of your illness, and it is not in you, I assure you. Do not hesitate to call on us if you feel the need of our assistance.”

  “And I should dismiss Dr. Coiquitt?”

  “Not at all; by no means. Desist from taking his nostrums, if you have not already done so, but permit him to attend your fiancé by all means—”

  “But look here,” I protested, “if your theory is correct he’s already done Camilla immeasurable harm. If we permit him to stay in the case—”

  “We shall know where he is and what he’s up to, parbleu,” de Grandin returned.

  “He will be within the orbit of our observation. When the hunter stalks the tiger, he tethers a goat to a stake in a clearing, and waits in concealment till the striped one makes his appearance. Then, when the moment is propitious, he fires, and there is one more handsome rug to decorate a floor. So it is in this case. Mademoiselle and Monsieur her fiancé are the bait which we leave for this debased species of a charlatan. Do keep up your courage, Mademoiselle,” he cast a smile of reassurance at Camilla, “and we shall do the rest. Be brave; we shall not fail you.”

  “THE PAIR OF YOU are crazy as a brace of loons,” I fumed when she had taken her departure. “I can understand Camilla. It’s the power of suggestion working on her. There’s a book about that sort of thing in the library, written by a man named Manly Wade Wellman. He’s made a study of the matter and decided that if belief in illness is induced in someone who firmly believes what is told him, he will become ill—even die—of the disease he has been told he has. It may be that Camilla had a tendency toward a weak heart. Now, if Coiquitt induced her to believe she would develop myocarditis, and administered some evil-tasting drug to be taken regularly and so keep her attention fixed on the suggestion, it might easily be that her constant worry and the fear of impending sickness and death have combined to make that latent heart-weakness active. But as for your believing such rubbish—”

  “Ah, bah, my friend,” he patted back a yawn, “you bore me. Always you must rationalize a thing you do not understand, taking the long route around the barn of Monsieur Robin Hood in order to arrive at a false conclusion.

  “It was the power of suggestion, you say? Let us for the sake of argument admit that suggestion could induce such an organic condition as that we found in Mademoiselle Camille. Très bien. So much for her. But was it also suggestion that caused Madame Stevens to recover from advanced carcinoma—and her husband to develop it and die almost as she regained health? Was it the power of suggestion that pulled the young man’s plane out of the sky and dashed him to his death against the earth? Coincidence, you say. Perhaps in one case, and possibly in two, but in the three of which we know, and in the many which we damn suspect coincidence has ceased to take a great part. Parbleu, to say otherwise would be to pull the long arm of coincidence clear out of joint! Non, my friend. There is something more sinister in this business-of-the-monkey we are dealing with. Just what it is I do not know, but I shall make it my affair to secure the necessary information, you may be assured.”

  “How’ll you go about it?” I demanded, nettled by his air of assurance.

  He spread his hands and raised his shoulders. “How should I know? The case requires thought, and thought requires food. There is an excellent dinner awaiting us. Let us give it our attention and dismiss this never-quite-sufficiently-to-be-anathematized Coiquitt person from our thoughts a little while.”

  HE WAS RATHER LATE to dinner the next evening, and Nora McGinnis was calling on high heaven to witness that the coq au vin blanc she had prepared especially for him would be entirely ruined when he bustled in with that peculiar smile that told he was much pleased with himself on his face.

  “Me, I have done research at the city hall this afternoon,” he told me. “At the bureau of statistiques vitales I delved into the records. This Coiquitt person is the very devil of a fellow. A hundred cases he has had since he began the malpractice of medicine in the city, and I find he has prolonged a hundred lives for a greater or less time, but at the cost of an equal number. He is not righteous, my friend. He has no business to do such things. He annoys me excessively, par les cornes d’un crapaud!”

  Despite myself I could not forbear a grin. “What are you going to do about it?” I asked.

  He tweaked the waxed ends of his small mustache alternately, teasing them to needle-sharpness. “I do not quite know,” he confessed. “At times I think perhaps it would be best if I went—mon Dieu, is it that we are attacked?”

  The front doorbell had given a quick, anguished peal, almost as if it wailed in pain, and as the shrilling of the gong ceased someone beat upon the panels with a frenzied knock.

  I hurried to answer the summons, and Camilla Castevens almost fell into my arms. “Oh, Dr. Trowbridge,” she gasped as I steadied her, “he’s found out that I came to you! I don’t know how he did it, b
ut he called me on the ’phone a little while ago and told me that my time is up. Rick will get well—he seemed positively gloating when he told me that—but I must die tonight—” Her voice trailed off in a gasp and if I had not held her she would have slumped to the floor in a swoon.

  I carried her into the study and stretched her on the sofa while de Grandin bathed her temples with cologne and held a glass of brandy to her lips when she revived a little.

  She was pitiable in her terror. Her lower lip began to quiver and she caught it savagely between her teeth to steady it. Her fingers twisted and untwisted themselves, and at the base of her throat we could see the pulsing of an artery as her tortured heart jumped like a frightened rabbit with each beat. “Be calm, ma pauvre,” de Grandin ordered gently. “You will do yourself an injury if you give way. Now, tell us just what happened. You say he threatened you?”

  “No, sir. I wouldn’t call it a threat so much as a statement—like a judge pronouncing sentence. He told me I should never see another sunrise—”

  “Nom d’un bouc vert! Did he, indeed? And who in Satan’s stinking name is he to pass judgment of life and death upon his fellow creatures, and especially on the patients of Jules de Grandin and Samuel Trowbridge, both reputable physicians? Do you rest quietly beside the fire, Mademoiselle. If you should have a fit of oppression use the amyl nitrite capsules we gave you. If you desire it, a little brandy cannot do you harm. Meanwhile—come, Friend Trowbridge,” he turned to me imperatively, “we have important duties to perform.”

  “Duties? Where?”

  “At Dr. Coiquitt’s, in the street of the funny name, pardieu! We shall talk with that one, and in no uncertain words—”

  “We can’t go barging in on a man like that—”

  “Can we not, indeed? Observe Jules de Grandin, if you please, my friend, and you shall see the finest instance of barging ever barged, or I am one infernal, not-to-be-believed liar. Come, alons; allez-vous-en!”