Black Moon

by Seabury Quinn

  “Then I captured him.”

  “Qu’est-ce donc?” de Grandin demanded. “How do you say, Madame?”

  She smiled at him and two deep dimples showed in her cheeks, a merrily incongruous combination with her exotic eyes. “There’d been every kind of merrymaking in the palace for three days, and I was almost tired to death. I’d slipped away from my attendants and gone down to the garden to sit by the lotus pool when I saw someone coming toward me in the moonlight. He wore the red tunic and gold-and-red turban of an officer in Karowlee’s Guard, and was very beautiful. He carried a light cane with which he switched the heads off of the flowers bordering the path. Flowers always seemed like living, sentient things to me, not merely vegetables, and I couldn’t bear to see him behead them. ‘Stop that!’ I ordered sharply, and he halted as if he had walked into a brick wall.”

  “Why not?” demanded Ram Chitra Das. “There I was, attendin’ to my guardin’, when a houri out o’ the False Prophet’s Paradise tells me to stop it. High caste Hindu women, like Muslimmi, observe purdah, you know—veil themselves before strange men. This girl wore no veil, but plainly she was neither a nautchni nor a palace servant. ‘Who are you?’ I asked and she told me, ‘Your future queen who orders you to cease destroyin’ her flowers.’

  “That started it. The next night I was there, and the next night after that. So was she, and we had other things to talk about than flowers. I was windin’ up my tour of duty, about ready to sneak back to headquarters, and when I left Nairini went with me.

  “One understands,” de Grandin grinned delightedly with a Frenchman’s innate appreciation of romance. “And then?”

  Ram Chitra Das grinned back. “Since then it’s been a game o’ tag. Karowlee’s a revengeful old devil, and I rather think we made him lose face by elopin’. Two or three times his agents almost got us. Once I found a cobra in my bath in Calcutta where no cobra had a right to be; scorpions have appeared mysteriously in my boots, I nearly stopped a bullet one night when Nairini and I were ridin’ outside Bombay. When they transferred me to duty in London, smellin’ out sedition among Indian sailors in the neighborhood of East India Dock Road, I thought we’d shaken off pursuit, but one night—we were livin’ in St. James’ Park where you’d no more look for a Hindu than for a rich man in heaven—what should turn up in our bed but a krait, a little cousin to the cobra, less than a tenth his size and more than twenty times as deadly. Then we knew the heat was on again, as you say in America.”

  De Grandin nodded. “And you associate this brand upon the dead ones’ foreheads with Karowlee Sahib?”

  “Definitely. He’s known as The Afghan from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas. Furthermore, elopements from his household ain’t as rare as might be expected. His women are so numerous that he can’t give ’em much attention. They get bored, and in India as in Ireland or Idaho there are always Boy Scouts ready to do their good deed by entertainin’ bored wives. Sometimes these johnnies get serious and marry the gals—at least they run off with ’em.

  “Usually Karowlee Sahib calls the turn on ’em before they get far. A year ago his agents killed a young Parsee who’d offered his protection to one of his runaway women, and disfigured the girl so that she committed suicide. That was in the outskirts of Benares, but instances of his revenge have been reported in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. We know from personal experience he can reach across the ocean. I think it altogether likely the man who dropped dead before your car and the woman you found dead in the house were victims of his vengeance.

  De Grandin stroked his little wheat-blond mustache gently, then gave its ends a sudden savage tug. “Would you come with us to inspect these defunct ones?” he asked. “It may be you might recognize them.”

  “Be glad to, old chap. I doubt I’ll know ’em, but we might find out something, and I’ve more than a mere academic interest in this case. My dear,” he turned to Nairini, “I think you’d better come along. With Karowlee’s playmates on the loose I’d feel much safer if I had you in sight—”

  “Why not pack a bag and stop at my house?” I suggested. “You’ll be nearer to your base of operations there, and in no greater danger—”

  “Thank you, Dr. Trowbridge,” he accepted. “If Karowlee’s agents are in Harrisonville we’ll force their hand by movin’ in on ’em. Might as well have a showdown now as later.”

  “AND DID YOU FIND out anything helpful?” de Grandin asked Ram Chitra Das that evening after dinner as Nairini, looking if possible more beautiful than ever in a white dinner dress embroidered at the hem with golden lotuses, poured coffee for us in the drawing room.

  “Quite,” answered the Indian. “I skipped down to the morgue as you suggested and had a look at the corpora delicti. I didn’t recognize the woman, but the man was William Archer Thurmond, much better known to the Criminal Investigation Department as ‘The Snapper,’ from his playful little habit of snapping up any unconsidered trifle left lying about. I got in touch with a friend at New Delhi by radio telephone, and he tells me ‘The Snapper’ was last heard of in Bahadupore. That seems to match up. Evidently he was fascinated by the lady’s charms, and quite as evidently she was one of Karowlee’s women. They probably eloped, and if I know ‘The Snapper’ she took something more than herself from the palace when she kept the rendezvous. Probably a quart or two of pearls or diamonds. So Karowlee wrote two more names down in his black books, and it seems his agents scored a double first this time.”

  “I agree,” Jules de Grandin nodded. “For our part Friend Costello and I ransacked the neighborhood of the strange deaths, ringing every doorbell in the street, and found out that a Hindu gentleman named Basanta Roy took a room not far from the house where the dead woman was found.”

  “Humph,” grunted Ram Chitra Das, “Basanta Roy, eh? There are about three hundred and twenty million people in India, accordin’ to latest reports, and not less than five million of ’em are named Basanta Roy. Might as well be John Smith in London or Sam Cohen in New York, as far as identification goes.”

  “Nevertheless,” de Grandin persisted, “this Monsieur Roy took lodgings in Thornapple Street. He was by all accounts a very old gentleman who wore a long white beard and kept much to himself, going out only after dark. He spoke English very well, but with an accent. Last night he came back to his room a little before midnight, paid two weeks’ rent in lieu of notice, and decamped with bag and baggage.”

  “Aye?” Ram Chitra Das replied. “That may mean one of several things. Either he’s satisfied with his job and gone back to India, or he’s shifted operations from New Jersey to New York, hopin’ to catch us off guard—eh? Oh, yes, dear, quite!”

  Nairini had slipped the cap from her lipstick and leaned across the coffee table as if to rearrange the cups, in reality to scrawl on the mahogany with the cosmetic pencil:

  CAREFUL—ONE LISTENS AT THE WINDOW

  “As I was sayin’,” Ram Chitra Das recommenced, but de Grandin interrupted. “Why do we not have some music, my friends? We have all night to talk about the case, let us defer our discussion till later. Will not you play for us, Madame? Your music? But of course, I shall be delighted to fetch it.”

  He hurried from the room and Nairini crossed to the piano, seated herself before the instrument and began to play softly, a slow, haunting tune pitched in a minor key, the heart-broken lament of an Afridi lover. The notes sank till they were no more than a soft murmur under her fingers. She bent forward toward the keyboard as if listening, waiting for something violent and dramatic.

  “Trowbridge, Costello, Ram Chitra Das—à moi!” the little Frenchman’s hail came from the garden. “I have him, me!”

  We rushed through the French windows, vaulted down into the garden from the veranda and saw what seemed a vague, amorphous shadow draw suddenly in two parts, and heard de Grandin’s jubilant announcement, “C’est fini, mes amis. He was a slippery eel, this one, but Jules de Grandin knows the fisherman’s tricks. Yes, certainly.”

  From the
midst of my Paul Scarlets he dragged something which upon inspection proved to be a small, gray-bearded man in a bad state of disrepair. Scratches from rose-thorns criss-crossed his face, his neat white-linen suit was soiled with black earth from the rose bed, the beautiful pale-green turban which had covered his shaved head had been jerked off to form a fetter for his hands.

  “Go forward, thou!” the Frenchman ordered as he gave his captive a shove. “By blue, the one who tries to drive a knife in Jules de Grandin’s ribs must get up before sunrise!”

  “Well, as I live and breathe, if it’s not Ajeit Swami!” exclaimed Ram Chitra Das as he inspected our prisoner. “Salaam, most reverend Guru. We must apologize for your reception, but as this gentleman has said, it is not thought good taste to try to stab a person in America.” He gave a quick look at the knife de Grandin had dropped on the surgery table, and, “He didn’t scratch you with this thing, did he?” he asked anxiously.

  “Scratch me—me, Jules de Grandin?” snapped back the small Frenchman. “Mordieu, if you and I were not such friends I should be made to be insulted! Have I not said that he who would stab me—”

  “Yes, yes; of course. Quite so. I’m glad he didn’t nick you, though. I’ve seen these toad-prickers in action up Darjeeling way. Look.” Taking up the short, curve-bladed dagger he grasped its handle in a quick grip, and from the tip of the steel shot a needle-fine jet of almost colorless liquid which hardened into a jellylike substance almost as soon as it struck the porcelain top of the examination table. “Ingenious little tool, eh, what?” he asked. “That’s krait venom, my friend, if anyone should happen to ask you. One touch of it and you’re a dead pigeon.”

  “Name of a small blue man, now I am angry!” exclaimed Jules de Grandin. “He has no sportsmanship, that one.”

  “I’ll say he hasn’t,” agreed Ram Chitra Das. “The famous American formula of never giving a sucker an even break was developed by gentlemen of his profession several generations before Gautama Buddha came to spread the Light in Asia.”

  Abruptly he dropped his bantering manner. “The question is, what’s to be done with him?”

  “Why not let me run him in, sor?” volunteered Costello. “We can hold him on a charge of assault wid a dangerous weapon, an’ suspicion o’ murther—”

  “No go,” Ram Chitra Das shook his head. “It’s true he tried to stab Dr. de Grandin, but it’s also true Dr. de Grandin attacked him. As for the murder charge, no judge in the country would listen to it. The coroner’s physician can’t assign a cause of death. How’d we ever manage to connect him with those killin’s in Thornapple Street?”

  “Then ye’re sure they wuz killin’s, not natural deaths?” Costello responded.

  “Sure?” The Indian grinned at him, then turned to the prisoner. “You polished off ‘The Snapper’ and his girl friend in great shape, didn’t you, Swami?”

  The old man smiled at him almost benignly. “The power of the eye, Nana Sahib—”

  “No names!” cut in the other sharply. “I’m just Ram Chitra Das, if you please.”

  “So be it,” acquiesced the old man. “I cast the power of the eye on them and they died.”

  “H’m.”

  “Que diable?” demanded de Grandin. “Is it that he claims to have the Evil Eye?”

  “Something like that,” answered the Indian. Then, to me. “Have you some safe place we can stow him temporarily, Dr. Trowbridge?”

  I thought a moment, then, “The garage?” I hazarded. “The car’s out front, and we could shut him up there for a while.”

  “How about the windows?”

  “There’s only one, and I had bars put on that during the tire shortage when burglaries became so numerous.”

  “Good enough. Would you mind staying with Nairini—just in case—while we put this bird in his cage? Be with you in a moment.”

  “BUT THAT CAN’T BE, sor,” I heard Costello remonstrate as they returned from securing the prisoner in the garage. “It’s agin the order o’ nature!”

  “Non, mon Lieutenant, it are entirely possible, I do assure you,” Jules de Grandin answered. “Ask good Friend Trowbridge if you doubt us.”

  “Could it be, sor?” dutifully complied Costello. “They’re afther tellin’ me a man can hypnotize hisself to death.”

  “What?” I demanded incredulously. “Hypnotize—”

  “Perfectly, my old one,” broke in de Grandin. “It are entirely possible. Ram Chitra Das affirms it, and while I think it unlikely, I think it could be so.”

  I turned from one of them to the other in confusion. “What in heaven’s name is all this about?”

  “Just this, sir,” answered Ram Chitra Das, “this Swami Ajeit Singh is one of Raja Karowlee’s chief wonder-workers. He’s a skilled fakir, an adept at every brand o’ magic known in India, and, of course, an expert hypnotist. He probably never heard of Baird or Mesmer, and never studied even elementary psychology, but when it comes to practical ability as a hypnotist I doubt if any of your best professionals could hold a candle to him.

  “I take it you’ve seen experiments in hypnotism performed in the psychological laboratory or on the stage?”

  I nodded, wondering what was coming next.

  “Very well, sir. You’ve seen the operator make the subject become rigid, so that if his head is placed on one chair and his feet on another weights can be piled on his stomach to a degree he could not possibly support in consciousness?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen that.”

  “Have you seen an operator make the blood go from one arm and run into the other till the skin threatens to burst?”

  “Yes.”

  “And blood come through the skin as if a wound had been inflicted?”

  “Yes,” I nodded.

  “And have not you seen the operator tell the subject to decrease his pulse-beat?” interjected Jules de Grandin. “Have not you seen pulsation at the hypnotist’s command sink from eighty beats a minute to sixty, fifty, or even forty?”

  “Ye-es,” I agreed doubtfully. “I seem to recall such a demonstration in Baltimore some years ago, but—”

  “No buts, if you will be so kind. I ask you as a man of science, Friend Trowbridge, if it is possible to tell the human heart—which as we know is an involuntary muscle and takes no orders from the conscious mind—to beat more slowly, is it not possible to tell it to cease beating altogether?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Do not evade the logic of the question, if you please, my friend. You have admitted seeing pulsation slowed down, even though the action of the heart is altogether involuntary. If it can be slowed down by hypnotic suggestion, why can not it be stopped entirely?”

  I saw the logical conclusion of his premises, but was not ready to capitulate. “How could the operator, by which I suppose you mean Ajeit Swami, gain control of his subjects?” I demanded. “We all agree that acquiescence is the prime factor in successful hypnotism. The subject must be willing—”

  “Non, dix mille fois, non!” he disagreed. “Consent is not at all necessary. All that is required is a lack of opposition. That is why we use the lights, the mirrors, the upraised forefinger—anything to fix the subject’s attention and divert him from a state of rebellion, from thinking ‘I will not be hypnotized.’

  “Consider, if you please: This Ajeit Singh Swami is a skilled hypnotist, as are all of his kind. He has a reputation as a wonder-worker throughout Northern India. Is it not so? Of course. Very well, then. The more his reputation grows the greater is his power. People fear him. They believe that he can do much more than he can in reality. They feel—by blue, they know—that it is useless to resist what they call his magic and we call his hypnotic power.

  “Très bon. Where are we now? We are in the house in Thornapple Street occupied by Monsieur Snapper and his little pretty lady friend of unknown name. We see them sitting in that big, so lovely hall, in pleasant conversation. Perhaps they smoke the hookah together, it had more than one mouth-piece. Perha
ps they drink the after dinner coffee. Perhaps they just make the love. She seemed to me the sort of person to whom it would not be difficult to whisper sweet nothings. Ha, they have fled across the ocean to America; they have buried themselves in a semi-slum. They fancy themselves immune from pursuit. They feel secure. Yes. And then, all suddenly, comes the Swami Ajeit Singh, the emissary of Karowlee Sahib, and tells them he is there to work his master’s vengeance on them. Are they startled? Parbleu, they are what you call petrified. They know him, they fear him; they are powerless to resist him as the poor silly rabbit that sees the serpent slithering toward him. Morbleu, their chicken—non, their goose—is cooked! Yes, certainly; of course.

  “The woman falls into a trance at once when Swami Ajeit bids her sleep. He bids her heart beat more slowly, miss a beat, cease beating altogether. Yes. So it is. Monsieur Snapper, being English and a little stronger in the will, does not succumb so quickly. He resists a so little moment, hears the Swami bid the woman die, sees her expire, and he feels the uselessness of struggling; yet he does struggle—a little. When the Swami puts the brand of The Afghan on his forehead it rouses him, he still has the vitality to rise and try to flee.

  “But he runs poorly, weakly. We saw him run across the sidewalk, and thought that he was drunk because he staggered so. Hélas, it was not so. He ran to sure and certain death, that one. With each step that he ran his mind repeated, ‘Die—die—die!’ When he had reached the curb he was no better than a running corpse. We saw him fall into the street. We did not know it, but we saw him die. The command to his heart to stop had followed him from the house to the street, it was impossible for him to outrun it as it would be for a horse to outrun his tail. Yes, it are indubitably so. It are not strange the good Parnell could find no cause of death. Those so unfortunate ones did not die; they merely ceased to live.”