“Good heavens!” I ejaculated.
“Alice!” John Davisson’s low cry was freighted with stark horror and despairing recognition.
It was Alice; unquestionably it was she; but how completely metamorphosed! A diadem of beaten gold, thickset with flashing jewels, was clasped about her head. Above the circlet, where dark hair and white skin met at the temples, there grew a pair of horns! They grew, there was no doubt of it, for even at that distance I could see the skin fold forward round the bony base of the protuberances; no skilful make-up artist could have glued them to her flesh in such a way. Incredible—impossible—as I knew it was, it could not be denied. A pair of curving goat-horns grew from the girl’s head and reared upward exactly like the horns on carved or painted figures of the Devil!
A collar of gold workmanship, so wide its outer edges rested on her shoulders, was round her neck, and below the gleaming gorget her white flesh shone like ivory; for back, abdomen and bosom were unclothed and the nipples of her high-set, virgin breasts were stained a brilliant red with henna. About her waist was locked the silver marriage girdle of the Yezidees, the girdle she had worn so laughingly that winter evening long ago when we assembled at St. Chrysostom’s to rehearse her wedding to John Davisson. Below the girdle—possibly supported by it—hung a skirt of iridescent sequins, so long that it barely cleared her ankles, so tight that it gave her only four or five scant inches for each pace, so that she walked with slow, painstaking care lest the fetter of the garment’s hem should trip her as she stepped. The skirt trailed backward in a point a foot or so behind her, leaving a little track in the soft sand, as though a serpent had crawled there and, curiously, giving an oddly serpentine appearance from the rear.
Bizarre and sinister as her costume was, the transformation of her face was more so. The slow, half-scornful, half-mocking smile upon her painted mouth, the beckoning, alluring glance which looked out from between her kohl-stained eyelids, the whole provocative expression of her countenance was strange to Alice Hume. This was no woman we had ever known, this horned, barbaric figure from the painted walls of Asur; it was some wanton, cruel she-devil who held possession of the body we had known as hers.
And so she trod across the shining sand on naked, milk-white feet, the serpent-track left by her trailing gown winding behind her like an accusation. And as she walked she waved her jewel-encrusted hands before her, weaving fantastic arabesques in empty air as Eastern fakirs do when they would lay a charm on the beholder.
Hail, Bride of Night,
Hail, horned Bride of Mighty Lucifer;
Hail, thou who comest from the depths of far Abaddon;
Hail and thrice hail to her who passes over
blood and fire
That she may greet her Bridegroom! Hail, all hail!
cried the Red Priest, and as he finished speaking, from each side the altar rushed a line of red-veiled women, each bearing in her hands a pair of wooden pincers between the prongs of which there glowed and smoldered a small square of super-heated stone. That the rocks were red-hot could not be denied, for we could see the curling smoke and even little licking tongues of flame as the wooden tongs took fire from them.
The women laid their fiery burdens down upon the sand, making an incandescent path of glowing stepping-stones some ten feet long, leading directly to the altar’s lowest step.
And now the strange, barbaric figure with its horn-crowned head had reached the ruddy stain upon the sand where the dancing suicide had bled her life away, and now her snowy feet were stained a horrid scarlet, but never did she pause in her slithering step. Now she reached the path of burning stones, and now her tender feet were pressed against them, but she neither hastened or retreated in her march—to blood and fire alike she seemed indifferent.
Now she reached the altar’s bottom step and paused a moment, not in doubt or fear, but rather seeming to debate the easiest way to mount the step’s low lift and yet not trip against the binding hobble of her skirt’s tight hem.
At length, when one or two false trials had been made she managed to get up the step by turning side-wise and raising her nearer foot with slow care, transferring her weight to it, then mounting with a sudden hopping jump.
Three steps she had negotiated in this slow, awkward fashion, when:
“For God’s sake, aren’t you going to do anything?” John Davisson hissed in Ingraham’s ear. “She’s almost up—are you going to let ’em go through with—”
“Sergeant,” Ingraham turned to Bendigo, ignoring John completely, “are the guns in place?”
“Yas, sar, everything dam’ top-hole,” the sergeant answered with a grin.
“Very well, then, a hundred yards will be about the proper range. Ready—”
The order died upon his lips, and he and I and all of us sat forward, staring in hang-jawed amazement.
From the tunnel leading to the ancient dungeons at the back of the arena, a slender figure came, paused a moment at the altar steps, then mounted them in three quick strides.
It was Jules de Grandin.
He was in spotless khaki, immaculate from linen-covered sun-hat to freshly polished boots; his canvas jacket and abbreviated cotton shorts might just have left the laundress’ hands, and from the way he bore his slender silver-headed cane beneath his left elbow one might have thought that he was ready for a promenade instead of risking almost sure and dreadful death.
“Pardonnez moi. Messieurs—Mesdames” he bowed politely to the company of priests and women at the altar—“but this wedding, he can not go on. No, he must be stopped—right away; at once.”
The look upon the Red Priest’s face was almost comical. His big, sad eyes were opened till it seemed that they were lidless, and a corpse-gray pallor overspread his wrinkled countenance.
“Who dares forbid the banns?” he asked, recovering his aplomb with difficulty.
“Parbleu,” the little Frenchman answered with a smile, “the British Empire and the French Republic for two formidable objectors; and last, although by no means least, Monsieur, no less a one than Jules de Grandin.”
“Audacious fool!” the Red Priest almost howled.
“But certainly,” de Grandin bowed, as though acknowledging a compliment, “l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace; it is I.”
The Devil’s Bride had reached the topmost step while this colloquy was toward. Absorbed in working herself up to the altar, she had not realized the visitor’s identity. Now, standing at the altar, she recognized de Grandin, and her pose of evil provocation dropped from her as if it were a cast-off garment.
“Doctor—Doctor de Grandin!” she gasped unbelievingly, and with a futile, piteous gesture she clasped her hands across her naked bosom as though to draw a cloak around herself.
“Précisément, ma pauvre, and I am here to take you home,” the little Frenchman answered, and though he looked at her and smiled, his little sharp blue eyes were alert to note the smallest movement of the men about the altar.
The Red Priest’s voice broke in on them. “Wretched meddler, do you imagine that your God can save you now?” he asked.
“He has been known to work much greater miracles,” de Grandin answered mildly. “Meantime, if you will kindly stand aside—”
The Red Priest interrupted in a low-pitched, deadly voice: “Before tomorrow’s sun has risen we’ll crucify you on that altar, as—”
“As you did crucify the poor young woman in America?” de Grandin broke in coldly. “I do not think you will, my friend.”
“No? Dimitri, Kasimir—seize this cursed dog!”
The deacon and subdeacon, who had been edging closer all the while, leaped forward at their master’s bidding, but the deacon halted suddenly, as though colliding with an unseen barrier, and the savage snarl upon his gipsy features gave way to a puzzled look—a look of almost comic pained surprise. Then we saw spreading on his face a widening smear of red—red blood which ran into his eyes and dripped down on his parted lips
before he tumbled headlong to the crimson carpet spread before the altar.
The other man had raised his hands, intent on bringing them down on de Grandin’s shoulders with a crushing blow. Now, suddenly, the raised hands shook and quivered in the air, then clutched spasmodically at nothing, while a look of agony spread across his face. He hiccupped once and toppled forward, a spate of ruby blood pouring from his mouth and drowning out his death cry.
“And still you would deny me one poor miracle, Monsieur?” de Grandin asked the Red Priest in a level, almost toneless voice.
Indeed, it seemed miraculous. Two men had died—from gunshot wounds, by all appearances—yet we had heard no shot. But:
“Nice work, Frenchy!” Ingraham whispered approvingly. “They have some sharpshooters with silencers on their guns up there,” he told me. “I saw the flashes when those two coves got it in the neck. Slick work, eh, what? He’ll have those fellers groggy in a minute, and—”
The Red Priest launched himself directly at de Grandin with a roar of bestial fury. The little Frenchman sidestepped neatly, grasped the silver handle of his cane where it projected from his left elbow, and drew the gleaming sword blade from the stick.
“Ah-ha?” he chuckled, “Ah-ha-ha, Monsieur Diablotin, you did not bargain for this, hein?” he swung the needlelike rapier before him in a flashing circle, then, swiftly as a cobra strikes, thrust forward, “That one for the poor girl whom you crucified!” he cried, and the Red Priest staggered back a step, his hand raised to his face. The Frenchman’s blade had pierced his left eyeball.
“And take this for the poor one whom you blinded!” de Grandin told him as he thrust a second time, driving the rapier point full in the other eye.
The Red Priest tottered drunkenly, his hands before his blinded eyes, but de Grandin knew no mercy. “And you may have this for the honest gendarme whom you shot,” he added, lashing the blind man’s wrinkled cheeks with the flat of his blade, “and last of all, take this for those so helpless little lads who died upon your cursed altar!” He sank backward on one foot, then straightened suddenly forward, stiffening his sword-arm and plunging his point directly in the Red Priest’s opened mouth.
A scream of agonizing pain rang out with almost deafening shrillness, and the blind man partly turned, as though upon an unseen pivot, clawed with horrid impotence at the wire-fine blade of the little Frenchman’s rapier, then sank slowly to the altar, his death-scream stifled to a sickening gurgle as his throat filled up with blood.
“Fini!” de Grandin cried, then:
“If you are ready, Mademoiselle, we shall depart,” he bowed to Alice, and:
“Holè—la corde!” he cried abruptly, raising his hand in signal to some one overhead.
Like a great serpent, a thick hemp hawser twisted down against the amphitheater’s wall, and in the fading light shed from the burning trees we saw the gleam of blue coats and red fezzes where the native gendarmes stood above the excavation, their rifles at the “ready.”
De Grandin flung an arm around Alice, took a quick turn of the rope around his other arm, and nodded vigorously. Like the flying fairies in a pantomime they rose up in the air, past the high altar, past the horned and pinioned image of the Devil, past the stone wall of the colosseum, upward, to the excavation’s lip, where ready hands stretched out to drag them back to safety.
Now the red congregation was in tumult. While de Grandin parleyed with the Red Priest, even while he slew him with his sword, they had sat fixed in stupor, but as they saw the Frenchman and the girl hauled up to safety, a howl like the war-cry of the gathered demons of the pit rose from their throats—a cry of burning rage and thwarted lust and bitter, mordant disappointment. “Kill him!—after him!—crucify him!—burn him!” came the shouted admonition, and more than one cowled member of the mob drew out a pistol and fired it at the light patch, which de Grandin’s spotless costume made against the shadow.
“Fire!” roared Ingraham to his soldiers, and the crashing detonation of a rifle volley echoed through the night, and after it came the deadly clack-clack-clatter of the Lewis guns.
And from the farther side of the arena the French troops opened fire, their rifles blazing death, their Maxims spraying steady streams of bullets at the massed forms on the benches.
Suddenly there came a fearful detonation, accompanied by a blinding flare of flame. From somewhere on the French side a bombe de main—a hand grenade—was thrown, and like a bolt of lightning it burst against the stone wall shoring up the terraced seats about the colosseum.
The result was cataclysmic. The Roman architects who designed the place had built for permanency, but close upon two thousand years had passed since they had laid those stones, and centuries of pressing earth and trickling subsoil waters had crumbled the cement. When the Satanists turned back the earth they had not stopped to reinforce the masonry or shore up the raw edges of their cutting. Accordingly, the fierce explosion of the bursting bomb precipitated broken stone and sand and rubble into the ancient hippodrome, and instantly a landslide followed. Like sand that trickles in an open pit the broken stone and earth rushed down, engulfing the arena.
“Back—go back!” Ingraham cried, and we raced to safety with the earth falling from beneath our very feet.
It was over in a moment. Only a thin, expiring wisp of smoke emerging through a cleft in the slowly settling earth told where the palm-trees had been blazing furiously a few minutes before. Beneath a hundred thousand tons of sand and crumbling clay and broken stone was buried once again the ancient Roman ruin, and with it every one of those who traveled round the world to see a mortal woman wedded to the Devil.
“By gosh, I think that little Frog was right when he said ‘fini,’” Ingraham exclaimed as he lined his Houssas up.
“Hamdullah, trouble comes, O Hiji!” Sergeant Bendigo announced. “Leopard fellers heard our shooting and come to see about it, Allah curse their noseless fathers!”
“By Jove, you’re right!” Ingraham cried. “Form square—machine-guns to the front. At two hundred yards—fire!” The volley blazed and crackled from the line of leveled rifles and the shrewish chatter of the Lewis guns mingled with the wild, inhuman screams of the attackers.
On they came, their naked, ebon bodies one shade darker than the moonless tropic night, their belts and caps of leopard skin showing golden in the gloom. Man after man went down before the hail of lead, but on they came; closer, closer, closer!
Now something whistled through the air with a wicked, whirring sound, and the man beside me stumbled back, a five-foot killing spear protruding from his breast. “All things are with Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate!” he choked, and the blood from his punctured lung made a horrid gurgling noise, like water running down a partly occluded drain.
Now they were upon us, and we could see the camwood stains upon their faces and the markings on their wicker shields and the gleaming strings of human toe and finger bones which hung around their necks. We were outnumbered ten to one, and though the Houssas held their line with perfect discipline, we knew that it was but a matter of a quarter-hour at most before the last of us went down beneath the avalanche of pressing bodies and stabbing spears.
“Basonette au cannon—Chargez!” the order rang out sharply on our left, followed by the shrilling of a whistle from the right, and a half a hundred blue-clothed Senegalese gendarmes hurled themselves upon the left flank of our enemies, while as many more crashed upon the foemen from the right, bayonets flashing in the gun-fire, black faces mad with killing-lust and shining with the sweat of fierce exertion.
Now there was a different timbre in the Human Leopards’ cries. Turned from hunters into quarry, like their bestial prototypes they stood at bay; but the lean, implacable Senegalese were at their backs, their eighteen-inch bayonets stabbing mercilessly, and Ingraham’s Houssas barred their path in front.
At last a Leopard Man threw down his spear, and in a moment all were empty-handed. “Faire halte!” Renouard commanded
, jamming his pistol back into its holster and shouldering his way between the ranks of cringing-captives.
“Monsieur le Capitaine,” he saluted Ingraham with due formality, “I greatly deprecate the circumstances which have forced us to invade your territory, and herewith tender our apologies, but—”
“Apology’s accepted, sweet old soul!” the Englishman cut in, clapping an arm about the Frenchman’s shoulders and shaking him affectionately. “But I’d like to have your counsel in an important matter.”
“Mais certainement,” Renouard returned politely. “The matter for discussion is—” he paused expectantly.
“Do we hang or shoot these blighters?” Ingraham rejoined, nodding toward the group of prisoners.
25. The Summing Up
RENOUARD AND INGRAHAM STAYED behind to gather up loose ends—the “loose ends” being such members of the Leopard Men as had escaped the wholesale execution—for they were determined to exterminate the frightful cult. De Grandin and I, accompanied by a dozen Senegalese gendarmes, took Alice overland to Dakar, and Renouard dispatched a messenger before us to advise the hospital that we would need a private room for several days.
Since the night de Grandin rescued her, the girl had lain in a half-stupor, and when she showed signs of returning consciousness the little Frenchman promptly gave her opiates. “It is better that she wake when all is finished and regard the whole occurrence as a naughty dream,” he told me.
“But how the deuce did they graft those devilish horns on her?” I wondered. “There is no doubt about it; the things are growing, but—”
“All in good time,” he soothed. “When we arrive at Dakar we shall see, my friend.”
We did. The morning after our arrival we took her to the operating room, and while she lay in anesthesia, de Grandin deftly laid the temporal skin aside, making a perfect star-shaped incision.
“Name of a little blue man, behold my friend!” he ordered, bending across the operating table and pointing at the open wound with his scapel tip. “They were clever, those ones, n’est-ce-pas?”
The Dark Angel Page 38
