Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “And who shall do this thing to them and ye? An offspring of the Hebrews. Yea, from the race of him I loved and for whose sake I trod my vows of cold sterility into the desert sand, from that race that ye despise and hate shall come a child and unto Him shall be all glory. He shall put down your gods beneath His feet and spoil them of all respect; they shall become but shadow-gods of a forgotten past.

  “My name ye’ve stricken from the roll of priestesses of the All-Mother; no writing shall be graven on my tomb or coffin, and I shall be forgotten for all time by men and gods. So reads your dreadful judgment.

  “Ye hoary-headed fools, I hurl the lie into your teeth! Upon a day in the far future men from a strange land shall delve into the tomb where ye have laid me and take forth my body from it, nor shall your spite and hatred stop them till they’ve looked upon my face and seen my broken bones and heard the story of my love for the Hebrew who for my sake abjured his God and became a shaven-headed servant of the great All-Mother. I swear that I shall tell the story of my love and death, and in another age and land strange men shall hear my name and weep for me—but your names they shall never know.

  “Ye think to cast me to oblivion? I tell ye I shall triumph in the end, and it is ye who shall be utterly forgotten, nameless as the sands the wind pursues across the desert.

  “Pile now your stones of doom upon my heart and still its fevered beating. To death I go, but not from out the memory of men as ye shall. I have spoken.”

  The girl’s voice ended on a weary little sob, and de Grandin’s shout of spiteful laughter slashed the silence as a sword might slash through flesh.

  “And hast thou heard, thou animal-faced fools?” he asked. “Who prophesied the truth, and who was caught in the web of his own conceit, old monkey-faces? Take now your pale and breathless shades back to that shadow-land from whence they came. Ye tried your evil best to keep her from revealing her story, and ye have failed. Go—go quickly to oblivion. In nomine Dei, I bid ye begone now and henceforth!”

  He took a step toward the half-circle of masked forms, and they gave ground before him. Another step, and they fell back another pace. They were wavering now, becoming less substantial, more shadowy; as he raised his hands and took a third step toward them they seemed merely nebulous gray vapor swirling and eddying in the light draft from the open fireplace where the logs blazed, and—suddenly they were gone.

  “Fini—triomphe—achevé—parfait!” de Grandin drew a silk handkerchief from his cuff and wiped his brow. “Ye were strong and hateful, Messieurs les Revenants, but Jules de Grandin he is strong, too, and when it comes to hating—morbleu, who knows his power better than you?”

  “WHAT WAS THAT STUFF you sprinkled on the floor of Taylor’s recreation room before we began tonight, and why did it hold back those dreadful shadowy forms while Vella spoke?” I asked him as we drove homeward.

  He broke off the tune he hummed with a laugh. “It was pigeons’ blood, my friend. I got it from the marchand de volaille this afternoon. As to why it held them back, morbleu, I am as much at sea as you. It is one of those things we know without understanding.

  “You know, by example, that in all ancient religions the priest was wont to purify the altars with the blood of the sacrifices—of the goats, lambs, doves or bullocks offered to the god?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that.”

  “And for why? Not that the blood is cleansing. Mais non. Blood is simply liquid tissue, and very messy stuff indeed. Why, then? Because, my friend”—he tapped me solemnly upon the knee—“the blood contained some secret, potent power to hold the god in check. He could not pass beyond a circle traced in it. That kept him in his place and kept him in control as one might say. He could not swoop down on the congregation past that barrier of sacrificial blood, as long as that stood between him and them they were safe from his wrath or spite or his capricious wish to do them hurt and injury. Yes. Of course. Very good. The priests of Isis wet her altars with the blood of doves. I secured a similar substance and with it traced a pentacle about us; the votaries of Isis, like their mistress, could not pass by that barrier; within it we were safe. And then, pardieu, when Mademoiselle Vella had delivered Nefra-Kemmah’s message to us—shown those olden ones their cruel and wicked judgment had been set at naught—then, morbleu, they were completely undone. They had not strength nor spirit to oppose me when I ordered them to begone. Parbleu, I literally laughed them out of existence!” He drummed gloved fingers on the silver knob of his short military cane:

  Sacré de nom,

  Ron, ron, ron.

  La vie est brêve,

  La nuit est longue—

  he hummed. “Make haste, Friend Trowbridge.”

  “Why, what’s the hurry?”

  “It is dry work, this battling with those olden dusty ones, and just before we left for Monsieur Taylor’s I saw a man put a bottle of champagne in the frigidaire.”

  “A man put champagne in our frigidaire?” I echoed. “Who—”

  “C’est moi—I am the man, my friend, and mort d’un rat mort, how I do thirst!”

  Kurban

  THE CLOCK ON MY desk registered 6:45, the patient had been dismissed, from the house came appetizing odors and the rattle of a cocktail shaker briskly agitated. Dinner would be ready in a few minutes and—the chiming of the office bell came like a warning of impending disappointment as the late caller obeyed the “Ring and Enter” engraved on the brass plate decorating the door. Devoutly I hoped that the pièce de resistance would not be steak. A roast is little the worse for an extra half hour in a low oven, but a steak. . . .

  “Trowbridge!” Dunscomb Doniphan strode into the consulting room. “Thank goodness I caught you in. I’m almost frantic, old man.”

  “Sit down,” I invited, noting the deep grooves etched by worry wrinkles in his brow, the long lines like parentheses that scored his cheeks, and the tired look in his eyes. Here was fatigue as plainly to be read as sky-writing on a still day, another case of the “nervous prosperity” that had swept the country like a plague as war orders piled up and price became a matter of decreasing importance. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “Austine!” he flung the name at me as if it were a missile.

  “Austine?” I echoed. “What—”

  “Trowbridge, mon vieux, the ducklings roasting for our dinner are utterly incinéree, and the Martinis I have made with loving care—ah!” as he noticed Doniphan the little Frenchman paused abashed, “a thousand pardons, Monsieur, I did not know that Dr. Trowbridge entertained a patient—”

  “This is Dr. de Grandin, Doniphan,” I introduced. “Dr. de Grandin, Dunscomb Doniphan. We were in college together.” The small Frenchman shook hands cordially and turned to leave, but:

  “I’ve heard of you, Dr. de Grandin,” Doniphan interposed. “I understand you’re an expert in psychiatry.”

  “There are no experts in psychiatry,” de Grandin denied with a smile. “Some of us may have penetrated a little deeper into the fog than others, but all of us are groping in that no-man’s land where theory plays a game of blind man’s buff with fact. However,” he dropped into a chair, all thoughts of desiccated ducklings, and lukewarm Martinis gone from his mind, “if there is anything that I can do I shall be very happy. What is the problem vexing you?”

  “Problem is right,” responded Doniphan grimly. “It’s my daughter Austine. If she were ten years younger I’d turn her over my knee and reason with her with a slipper; if she were five years younger I’d cut her spending money off and lock her in her room. But she’s free, white and twenty-five, with what some people might consider a fortune inherited from her grandmother, so there’s not a damn thing I can do with her.”

  “Tiens, Monsieur, this is no problem for a psychiatrist. I damn think most fathers of daughters suffer from the same complaint. Jules de Grandin is not equal to this task, neither is the good Trowbridge. What you need is a Solomon, and even he, if I recall my Scripture correctly, confessed the ways of a m
aid—”

  “You know a crazy person when you see one, don’t you?”

  “U’m?” de Grandin took his narrow chin between a thoughtful thumb and forefinger. “I cannot say with certainty, Monsieur. We are all a little what you call crazy; some of we are just a little more so than the rest. What is the particular aberration from which your daughter suffers?”

  The half-worried, half-puzzled look on Doniphan’s face gave way to an expression of anger. “New Thought,” he shot back. “Or Theosophy, or Yoga or Hinduism; maybe Bahaism? I don’t know what they call it. All I know is that it’s a lot of damn nonsense and has made an imbecile of what was once a fairly intelligent young woman.” The smoldering anger in his eyes gave way to blazing rage. “Listen, you two:

  “Ten months ago this Swami Ramapali came to brighten our ignorance with the light of his countenance. Where he came from, only God knows. He might have come from India or Indiana, but wherever he hails from, he’s got what the women, young and old, eat up. Started out by giving little talks at afternoon gatherings, driveling about being In Tune With the Infinite and the Nothingness of Matter, and all that sort of rot. First thing we knew he’d progressed to holding regular meetings, then to forming a congregation with a temple of its own; three months ago he bought the Judson farm out by Passaic and founded a colony. Good Lord!” he snorted in disgust.

  “And this colony of which you speak, Monsieur. It is—”

  “I don’t know what it is. Nobody does. Austine had been going to this faker’s meetings regularly, and contributing plenty to them, judging by the entries we found in her check books since she left home. When he set up housekeeping at the Judson place she was one of the first to join him. I haven’t laid eyes on her since. Neither has her mother. We’ve been out there half a dozen times, but she won’t see us. Sends out word she’s in her Silence, or some such damnfool message.”

  De Grandin’s slender brows went up the fraction of an inch. “You suspect it to be a place where—how do you say hein?—untrammeled love is practiced?”

  “I don’t know what to think or suspect. I don’t know anything about it, neither does anyone else. As nearly as we can find out, there are some thirty or forty people living here, mostly young women, though there’s a sprinkling of old spinsters and a few widows. All of ’em are wealthy and all of them have cut themselves off from their families as completely as Austine has broken with us. I’ve been to the police. They can’t, or won’t, do anything. Say there’s no crime charged, and all that sort of legalistic rot. Now, what I want you to do is”—he leveled a stiff forefinger at de Grandin and me in turn—“find some way of getting into that booby-hatch, sizing up the situation, and then, if you can find a shred of evidence appear before a lunacy commission and have Austine committed. I really think she’s clear off her rocker over this business, but if we can get her out and away from the Swami’s influence she’ll come out of it. Then—it ought to be as easy to have her declared sane as it was to have her adjudged incompetent, oughtn’t it?”

  “It is deplorable,” de Grandin murmured.

  “Ain’t it,” Doniphan agreed inelegantly. “To think that a well-brought-up young woman—”

  “Should have such a bigoted, narrow-minded parent, parbleu!” interrupted the small Frenchman fiercely. “This cult to which Mademoiselle your daughter has attached herself may be all that you suspect, and more, but at any rate it satisfies her. She finds it to her liking. And you, Monsieur, because it does not meet with your approval, would perpetrate this dreadful thing, have your own daughter branded alienée—a mad women—to he forever suspected of insanity, to have her children suspect of a strain of madness in their blood. Pardieu, it is entirely too much, this! Me, I will have none of it. Good day, Monsieur!” He rose, bowed coldly, and left the room.

  “Well, Trowbridge, that’s that,” Doniphan murmured. “What do you say?”

  “I say go slow,” I temporized. “Austine may have gone off the deep end, but she’ll come round in time. Just wait and see what happens.”

  “That your last word?”

  “I’m afraid so. I couldn’t lend myself to any such scheme as you propose—”

  “All right. You’re not the only doctor in town. I’ll find one who’ll be willing to listen to reason for a thousand-dollar fee.”

  “BY THE WAY, DE Grandin,” I remarked casually at dinner some nights later, “that Swami that Doniphan was so burned up about is making a talk at Mrs. Tenbroeck’s this evening. Would you care to have a look at him? I must confess I’m somewhat curious after all I’ve heard.”

  He looked up from his apple tart with one of his direct cat-stares. “I think I should, my friend. He may be a jongleur, quite possibly a criminal, but I should like to see this fellow who has, as Monsieur Doniphan expressed it, what the ladies devour. Yes, by all means, let us go.”

  THE SWAMI RAMAPALI WAS just finishing his discourse as de Grandin and I found seats in the Tenbroeck drawing room. He was a young man slightly under middle height, dark complected, but obviously not a member of the colored races. Dark hair, lustrous and inclined to curl, was smoothly parted in the middle and hung in long ringlets each side of his face, brushing the velvet collar of his dinner coat. His shirt of fine white linen was decorated with a double row of box pleats edged with fine lace, and against its immaculate whiteness there showed studs of onyx set with small star sapphires. Knotted negligently beneath his wide collar was a flowing black silk tie of the sort affected by art students of the ’90’s. His eyes were very large, prune-black, and held a drowsy, sensuous expression.

  “All, all is only seeming,” he concluded in a voice that was almost a purr. “All seeming is a fantasy, a nothingness, a part of Brahm’s dream. We are but shadow-shapes in the Dream of the Infinite; what we call matter is delusion. Thought only is eternal, and that which we call thought is but the echo of an echo in the Dream of the Creator.”

  “Grand dieu des porcs, he talks the double-talk, this one!” de Grandin whispered. “What is this maundering of the nothingness of something and echoes of echoes—”

  “S-s-st!” I hissed him into silence, for the Swami had stepped forward from his place beside the grand piano and the lights which had been lowered while he spoke were turned on. The vaguely unfavorable impression the Swami had made on me when I first saw him was heightened by the full light of the chandelier. As our hostess presented us and his somber, brooding eyes fell on me with a look of almost calculating appraisal, I had a momentary feeling of revulsion as unreasonable and inexplicable, but as tangible, as a warm-blooded creature’s instinctive reaction to a snake.

  He spoke no word of recognition as de Grandin and I bowed. Serene, statue-still, he received our murmured expressions of pleasure at the meeting with an air of aloofness that was almost contemptuous. Only for a fleeting instant did his expression change. Something, perhaps the gleam of mockery in the little Frenchman’s gaze, hardened his large eyes for an instant, and I had a feeling that it would behoove my friend not to turn his back on the Swami if a dagger were handy.

  In the dining room the long sideboard was laden with silver dishes of nuts, dried figs, dates and raisins. De Grandin sampled the contents of the first compote and turned away with a wry face. “Name of a name,” he swore softly, “such vileness should be prohibited by law!”

  “Isn’t it simply wonderful?” a lady with more than ample bosom and a succession of assistant chins gushed in my ear. “It’s in honor of the Swami, you know. His religion forbids eating anything that has been cooked or killed. Only the kind fruits of the kind earth are spread for a repast when he is present. I’m thinking seriously of taking up the diet. Poor dear Estrella Santho took it up, you know, and it did wonders—simply wonders—for her.”

  De Grandin fixed his set, unwinking cat-stare on her. “And this poor dear lady, where is she now, if you please?”

  Our vis-à-vis seemed slightly taken aback, but rallied in a moment with a sad sweet smile. “She has passed on�
��her faith was stronger than ours. Where we linger hesitating on the brink, afraid to take the plunge she made the great decision and became a neophyte in the Swami’s colony, the Gateway to Peace. She had completed the initial steps and was almost ready to become one of the hieroi when she was absorbed into the Infinite, she has passed her final incarnation and dwells forever in the ineffable light emanated by the Divine All—”

  “In fine, Madame, one gathers she is defunct, deceased; dead?”

  “In the language of the untaught—yes,” the lady admitted. “It was so tragic, too. You see, the dwellers on the Threshold of Peace wear Eastern costume—no hampering Western clothes to take their minds from contemplation—and she was bitten by a snake—”

  “A snake, Madame? You interest me. What sort of snake was it, if you know?”

  “Really, sir,” the lady had apparently become tired of his catechism, “I haven’t the faintest idea. What sort of snakes usually bite people in this latitude?”

  “That is precisely what one asks to know,” he answered, but he spoke to the departing dowager’s broad back.

  “Ah-h’m?” he murmured as he drew a gold pencil from his pocket and scribbled a memorandum in his notebook. “This we shall look into, I damn think.”

  “What?” I demanded, but our hostess’ announcement from the farther room prevented further conversation:

  “The Swami has consented to perform a miracle for us. He will demonstrate the power of mind over seeming matter.”

  “Qu’est-ce-qui?” de Grandin’s tightly waxed wheat-blond mustache was all a-quiver, like the whiskers of an alert tom-cat. “Come, Friend Trowbridge, this is something we must not forbear to witness, not by any means.”