“Ants! Formic acid! Doherty, you’ve given me a lead. It needs disentangling, but it looks promising. And I won’t forget you if it works out.”
“You don’t mean ants had anything to do with this affair?” asked the bewildered sergeant.
“No. Not at all. Not ants. But the smell, the blistering effect. I’m still groping in the dark, Doherty, but you’ve shown me a glimmer. Now go back and take care of Power and the others.”
Manning was gone, his eyes gleaming. Doherty regarded the closed door confusedly.
“I’d like to know what I tipped him off to,” he muttered to himself. “But he’s beyond me. And why did he call me Horatio when my name’s Patrick Aloysius?”
Manning got off on the top floor. The penthouse had its own automatic elevator for the last flight. But this was where Pelota had his studio, where he painted the flattering portraits of the society women. Pelota whose death seemed due to the same mysterious cause, if Henley’s theory was right—twin punctures, driven straight in through the thicker parts of torsos. And the smell of ants.
A woman opened the studio door narrowly, was disposed to close it in an unfamiliar face, but Manning set his foot across the threshold, flashed a small golden badge.
“Police,” he said. “Let me in.” Then, as the woman’s stolid face remained antagonistic, he repeated his words in Italian.
She widened the door, resentfully.
“The maestro is dead,” she said in her own tongue. “They have taken him away. I know nothing. I was not here last night. I clean the studio. I cook also two meals. That is all.”
“Perhaps,” said Manning. “Have no fear.”
The great studio had a high ceiling, a big north window. Its entrance door was close to the one that opened on the terrace. There was no communication from the studio, possibly because of special building changes for the artist’s working convenience. But it would have been simple for Pelota to go to the terrace at any hour. Why he had chosen to do so, before dawn, in pyjamas and robe, was still an enigma. Painters did eccentric things, of course, Manning considered.
But the two deaths had been almost simultaneous, the mode of killing, awaiting the report of Henley’s autopsies, appeared similar, though the after effects had been so different. It seemed impossible that they were not allied.
Manning got startling confirmation of this idea as he gazed about the studio. Its furnishings were exotic, of many periods and nations, but all blended with an artist’s faculty to a superb and striking whole. There were deep couches, rich hangings, marvelous rugs and drapes, ancient armor and weapons, hanging lamps that had once adorned mosques, a magnificently carved fireplace. At one end there was a platform, the sitters’ throne. There were two or three big easels, each with a canvas clamped to them.
On one of these the portrait was unfinished. The head and shoulders, Manning fancied, had been completed, but the gown was only rubbed in. The lines of the preliminary drawing showed through here. The paint was entirely dry.
It was the picture of Evelyn Kyrrel Power. It had been painted with fine freedom of color and technique. It was unlike Pelota’s usual portraits, smoothly brushed, subtly flattering.
It was unlike the pictures of the woman that Manning had noted from time to time in the rotogravure supplements and social publications. This face was haunting with a mysterious something that was not sadness but suggested an inner brooding. The mouth drooped slightly, the exquisitely shaped nostrils were a little flared and the eyes looked at the observer, through him, with a gaze of mystic expectancy, as if the beautiful woman saw some enthralling vision, awaited a revelation. Yet it was not a saintly look.
And, as if the artist guessed—or knew—Pelota had put into the shadows of the background something that looked like a shape, vague but impressive. By some trick of masterly painting, the effect seemed to come and go.
“When did this lady last sit for her picture?” Manning asked the woman.
“Two weeks ago.”
“You know she is dead? Did they see each other often, sometimes when there was no painting?”
The woman flashed scornful eyes.
“Yes. I know that she is dead. I know also that my maestro is dead, but not because of her. She did not like that picture and she said so. I do not blame her, because it is too like her. It shows her soul. Not a good woman, signore, but not bad, that way. As for my maestro, what did he care for any of these dolls he painted? He took their money so that, some day, he could be free to paint what pictures he wished, and care not if they were bought. Some day the world would go to them and make reverence. He meant to give them some day to the nations who would understand. But now, they will never be painted. This, the first, will never be finished.”
With a certain dignity she pulled back a curtain that had screened a shallow recess in the wall. A canvas was shown that was twice the height of Manning.
The woman’s protests had not left him assured. He knew the fidelity of her type and doubtless she had looked upon Pelota as little short of a god. Pelota’s presence had been constantly sought for, and he had not shown himself averse to the company of fair women who might be also frail. The man was human. He was also a genius, which might well mean a dual nature.
But, as he looked at the great canvas, unfinished but glorious already, Manning was not so sure either of his own ideas. This incomplete achievement might furnish a reason for Pelota’s being on the terrace.
The painting was that of a majestic city, mounting to the stars that were paling with a hint of dawn. Mists trailed the sky in forms that suggested vast shapes, even as the background of the portrait had, but these were greater, grander. Mist trailed about the tall buildings, wreathing the spires, the turrets and pinnacles. Here and there a light gleamed in a window, symbol of humanity. It did not need a title to proclaim its meaning. Here was aspiration, inspiration. Man’s ambition and achievement, reaching to the stars, to the dawn of newer, nobler eras.
It was a great work. The paint was wet. No great wonder that Pelota, urged by his creative soul, should go to the terrace to wait for the coming of the dawn, to watch the conquest of the night, the twining of the vapors about the tall buildings.
“It is a great work,” said Manning.
The proud fire died out of the woman’s eyes, drowned by a gush of tears.
“He was my milk-child,” she said. “I nursed him when his mother could not, back there in Tuscany. My life was in his. Why should he have to die? It was not the hand of the good God struck him down. It was the deed of a devil.”
“Why should she have had to die?” Manning shot at her. The woman might know something after all.
“She? Why should she die?” Her voice was scornful. “I do not know. But, if she was not a wicked woman, she was not a wise one. I have heard things, though I do not know much of the tongue of this cold country. She set aside her husband. She was like many others, all fools, with wealth and idleness to get rid of.”
“Just what do you mean by that?” asked Manning.
“I mean nothing, nothing, signore. I am only an ignorant old peasant who has talked too much. But, because you have been kind, because you have spoken wisely of his work and because there is talk that my maestro and this woman died after the same fashion, so that, if you find out the murderer of one, you may find out who killed the other, I will tell you this. And I pray to all the Holy Saints, to the Blessed Virgin and her Son, that you find him,” she added passionately. “Even as I swear by them that there was nothing guilty between my maestro and her. I speak now—and say no more. No. I go to my grief.”
“You have not told me yet,” prompted Manning.
She looked at him with her manner almost distraught.
“Go and see the brown man, Zerah,” she said.
VI
There was nothing more to be got out of her, Manning knew. It was not mere stubbornness, it was pride. She would talk no more about her dead maestro.
Manning looked at the door
of the private, automatic elevator that led to Zerah’s penthouse. There was a speaking tube by the operating button. It was probably controlled from above. That would not stop him from gaining admittance, but he had changed his mind about visiting Zerah immediately. He wanted something more tangible than a little image of Parvati and the fact that the dead woman had been one of the cult, perhaps a disciple.
Zerah would be very, very far from a fool, especially if he was a scoundrel, one of those who deliberately came to America to prey upon the emotions of rich women looking for new thrills, tired of contract, of backgammon, of night clubs and plays, tired of everything that was not new and promising, even if dangerous.
And it was dangerous material Zerah brought to them. For the little statuette Manning had found suggested he was a follower of Siva, and Siva’s attributes were many. He was the Destroyer of the Triad, representing the principle of destruction, though destruction in Hindu thought meant restoration. He was god of the arts, especially of dancing. God of a thousand titles.
And Parvati, whom the image had represented, also had many names and many phases. And under her various names she was portrayed as dripping with blood, adorned with skulls, encircled with snakes, worshiped with obscene and bloody rites, with human sacrifice. She was the goddess who presides over life and death, supreme power in the universe, at whose name all India trembled.
Who could tell what Zerah taught his disciples, how he led them on, got them into his power?
He took no fees, Doherty had said. The little brass statue could not speak. And one woman’s lips were sealed in horrible death.
Manning wanted another look at the terrace from which the Thing had disappeared. Power was in his own room. Doherty said he was lying down quietly. Manning went outside to the terrace.
There had been certain holes in the flower bed which had appeared natural enough, holes such as might well be made by metal stakes or wires set in the soil to uphold plants. There were some of these stakes still set beside late blossoming dahlias. And there were four holes, equidistant, marking the corners of a curiously exact square, outside the window to the dead woman’s bedchamber, the window that had been open.
They seemed obvious and innocent enough, but Manning carefully measured the distance between them. Then he looked over the parapet, at the sheer wall below. The building was modern. The setbacks were not regularly spaced. They had been designed to conform with the architect’s conception of a modernistic exterior. Only the favored and more expensive suites owned a terrace garden.
Manning gazed upward. The wall again was sheer, up to the high pitched, tiled roof of the penthouse, broken only by window casements, flush with the surface of the wall.
It seemed beyond belief that any creature, monster or human, could scale those heights, unless it flew.
Manning had a talk with the maid about the garden. The cook had failed to put in an appearance.
He found out that Power and his wife had formerly slept in the room now used solely by Power. His wife had moved to what had been the guest chamber, a room charming enough, facing the east, getting the early morning sun. But not many women of Evelyn Kyrrel Power’s position liked early sunshine. They were apt to sleep until noon.
He saw the superintendent and, through him, the man in charge of the terrace gardens, a highly intelligent Japanese who told him what he wanted.
Now Manning had two more things to do before he called on Zerah. He imagined that the mystic would not hold any class to-day, nor until the funeral of one of his pupils, or disciples, was over. Moreover, he would not be looking for any connection with the story. He was not out for notoriety of that sort. It would ruin him with the social set. Zerah was not going to be easy to see. He might, later, be hard to find. But Manning was not worrying about that.
He wanted to find out what insurance company had issued the two premiums of two hundred thousand dollars each. The fact that Power, hard up, desperate, would profit to the extent of a fifth of a million by his wife’s death, about which he told such a fantastic tale, was an important factor. And the papers would make the most of it.
Manning wanted the information first. Power might refuse to give it. Manning believed that Power, now that he had relaxed, would not do any more talking until he saw his lawyer. He would be foolish if he did. The attorney certainly would not talk about the policies.
But the information would not be too hard to get. Manning called up his own down town offices, where he was titled as Consulting Attorney, and set his staff to work, under his capable secretary.
The second thing was to see Henley. He called first and then drove in his own car to the mortuary where Henley was waiting for him. It was a grim place, smelling of disinfectants, a place where the relics of dead men were dissected, probed into, where the sanctity of the human body gave place to the research of science.
Henley saw Manning in the little office off the autopsy chamber. He was still clad in the grim habiliments of his profession, when in action. He took off the mask through which he had been working and which made him look like some sinister member of the Inquisition, pulled off a pair of rubber gloves, washed his hands and lit a cigar before he sat heavily, wearily, in the chair behind his desk.
“How about it?” asked Manning.
Henley shook his head.
“I’m not quite through, but there’s nothing definite as to what killed them. Same in both cases, I believe. I can guess how they were killed. Pretty definite about that, up to a point. They both died of strangulation and coincident syncope. There was a poison injected into them that instantly coagulated the blood stream, paralyzed the main ganglia, clogged the brain. If it’s any consolation to the bereaved,” he added, somewhat cynically, “I don’t believe either of them knew what happened. I don’t believe they would have had time to make more than one gasp after they were punctured.
“There might have been some moments of anticipatory horror, if we believe that wild yarn Power told me, or tried to tell.”
“He told me all of it,” said Manning, filling and lighting his pipe. “I’m not so skeptical about it as you seem to be, Henley. He was fairly coherent.”
“Mine is an exact science, or supposed to be. You can dally with the riddles,” Henley replied. “I’ll go ahead. You know enough of medicine and surgery to follow what I’m talking about. Now then.
“There were remarkable changes in the serous albumins and globulins. In Pelota’s case the serous fluid was almost all that was left. Yet his blood also had first coagulated—before it was pumped out, or sucked out of him. I found another wound, on his chest. The lips of the lesion were pallid and shrunken, but it was an orifice extending to his pulmonary circulation. The wound was sharply incised as if by a nipping action of sharp blades.”
“Steel, teeth, or even a beak?” suggested Manning.
Henley looked at him sharply and nodded.
“I have seen a similar effect made by a vampire bat,” he said, “but no bat could take that much blood.”
“Their stomachs are small, their bodies only a few inches long,” Manning agreed. “Besides, bats fly. This Thing sprang. It did not spread wings.”
Henley grunted. The talk of Things was not in his province. He continued:
“The heart of Mrs. Power was clogged with viscous blood, both auricles and ventricles. This must have occurred between diastolic and systolic rhythms, in the space of half a heartbeat.
“The poison was extremely swift in action. Those vertical incisions, on her breast, and beneath Pelota’s collar bone, penetrated for almost five inches. They were hard to trace in her case because of the breakdown of tissues and blood vessels, but I found them. They were made by some instrument, by duplicate hollow tubes charged with the virus, thrust with violence.
“You know well enough that there are certain poisons, like gelsemin, like the opium alkaloids, that are absorbed swiftly and completely after death and may not be traced, save by the effects they leave behind. This poison had
that attribute. I can get no reactions, though, as I said, I’m not quite through. But I might as well be. I’m afraid chemistry isn’t going to help you out this time, Manning. Not my branch of it. You’ll have to work it out your own way. You know what I have done. What have you got, if it isn’t a deep secret?”
Manning chuckled. He knew Henley, realized he was tired, baffled and chagrined.
“It’s pretty secret, even to me,” he answered. “I’ve got a glimmer of light, but it’s far from brilliant. As to your poison. I don’t think it was any vegetable toxin. More likely an active organic secretion. I may know more about it this time to-morrow. I was rather hoping you might have got some trace of formic acid, though I wasn’t counting on it.”
“Formic acid?” Henley stared at him.
Manning produced the little brass image and set it on the medical examiner’s desk.
“I’ve got this,” said Manning. “I may see that you get it for a paperweight later on, Henley. This—and a smell of ants. Doherty is in on that tip.”
“You’re too mysterious for me,” said Henley. I see the connection between ants and formic acid, of course, but….”
“Mysterious because I have to be,” said Manning. “I’m like some one who’s picked up two scraps of a jigsaw puzzle. They don’t fit, but it’s odd they belong to the same answer. I must be going. I’ll call my office first, if you don’t mind. And I want to get a quantity of buhach, two or three pounds. Where’s the best place to get it? Write it down, will you? I’ll send out after it.”
He picked up the telephone. Henley looked at him, shook his head and wrote down the address of a wholesale supply house for drugs. Manning hung up. He had got the name of the insurance company, also an appointment with its president.
“That secretary of mine is a most efficient girl,” he said to Henley. “Homely, positively homely, but clever. If anything ever happens to me, Henley, you grab her, or get some friend of yours to grab her.”
Day of Doom: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 2 Page 7
