The lower ends of the small horns had been skilfully riveted to thin disks of gold and these had been inserted underneath the skin, which had then been sewn in place, so that the golden disks, held firmly between skin and tissue, had acted as anchors for the horns, which thus appeared to grow upon the young girl’s head.
“Clever?” I echoed. “It’s diabolical.”
“Eh bien, they are frequently the same, my friend.”
He sewed the slit skin daintily with an invisible subcutaneous stitch, matching the cut edges so perfectly that only the thinnest hair-line of red showed where he worked.
“Voilà,” he announced. “This fellow Jules de Grandin puzzles me, my friend. When he acts the physician I am sure he is a better doctor than policeman, but when he is pursuing evil-doers I think he is better gendarme than physician. The devil take the fellow; I shall never make him out!”
THE LITTLE FREIGHTER WALLOWED in the rising swells, her twin propellers churning the blue water into buttermilk. Far astern the coast of Africa lay like the faintest wisp of smoke against the sky. Ahead lay France. De Grandin lit another cigarette and turned his quick, bird-like look from Renouard to me, then to the deck chairs where Davisson and Alice lay side by side, their fingers clasped, the light that never was on land or sea within their eyes.
“Non, my friends,” he told us, “it is most simple when you understand it. How could the evil fellow leave his cell at the poste de police, invade Friend Trowbridge’s house and all but murder Mademoiselle? How could he be lodged all safely in his cell, yet be abroad to kill poor Hornsby and all but kill the good Costello? How could he die in the electric chair, and lie all dead within his coffin, yet send his wolves to kidnap Mademoiselle Alice? You ask me?
“Ah-ha, the answer is he did not! What do you think from that, hein?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop talking rot and tell us how it was—if you really know,” I shot back crossly.
He grinned delightedly. “Perfectly, my friend. Écoutez-moi, s’il vous plaite. When these so trying questions first began to puzzle me I drew my bow at venture. ‘If la Sûreté can not tell me of him I am shipwrecked—no, how do you call him? sunk?’—I tell me. But I have great faith. A man so wicked as Bazarov, and an European as well, has surely run afoul of the law in France, I think, and if he has done so the Sûreté most certainly has his dossier. And so I get his photograph and fingerprints from the governor of the prison and forward them to Paris. My answer waited for me at police headquarters at Dakar. It is this:
“Some five and forty years ago there lived in Mohilef a family named Bazarov. They had twin sons, Grigor and Vladimir. They were Roman Catholics.
“To be a Roman Catholic in Imperial Russia was much like being a Negro in the least enlightened of your Southern states today, my friends. Their political disabilities were burdensome, even in that land of dreadful despotism, and they walked in daily fear of molestation by the police, as well, since by the very fact of their adherence to the Church of Rome they were more than suspected of sympathy with Poland’s aspirations for independence. The Poles, you will recall, are predominantly Roman Catholic in religion.
“Very well. The brothers Bazarov grew up, and in accordance with their parents’ fondest wish, were sent to Italy to study for the church. In time they came back to their native land, duly ordained as fathers in the Roman Church, and sent to minister to their co-religionists in Russia. The good God knows there was a need of fathers in that land of orphans.
“Now in Russia they had a law which made the person having knowledge—even, indirect—of conspiracy to change the form of government, with or without violence, punishable by penal sentence for six years if he failed to transmit information to the police. A harmless literary club was formed in Mohilef and the brothers Bazarov attended several meetings, as a number of the members were of the Roman faith.
“When the police learned of this club, they pounced upon the members and though there was not evidence enough to convict a weasel of chicken-killing, the poor wretches were found guilty, just the same, and sentenced to Siberia. The two young priests were caught in the police net, too, and charged with treasonably withholding information—because it was assumed they must have heard some treasonable news when they sat to hear confessions! Enfin, they were confined within the fortress-prison of St. Peter and St. Paul.
“They were immured in dungeons far below the level of the river, dungeons into which the water poured in time of inundation, so that the rats crawled on their shoulders to save themselves from drowning. What horrid tortures they were subject to within that earthly hell we can not surely say; but this we know: When they emerged from four years’ suffering inside those prison walls, they came forth old and wrinkled men; moreover, they, who had received the rites of holy ordination, were atheists, haters of God and all his works, and sworn to sow the seed of atheism wherever they might go.
“We find them, then, as members of a group of anarchists in Paris, and there they were arrested, and much of their sad story written in the archives of the Sûreté.
“Another thing: As not infrequently happens among Russians, these brethren were possessed of an uncanny power over animals. Wild, savage dogs would fawn on them, the very lions and tigers in the zoo would follow them as far as the limits of their cages would permit, and seemed to greet them with all signs of friendship.
“You comprehend?”
“Why—you mean that while Grigor was under arrest his brother Vladimir impersonated him and broke into my house, then went out gunning for Costello—” I began, but he interrupted with a laugh.
“Oh, Trowbridge, great philosopher, how readily you see the light when someone sets the lamp aglow!” he cried. “Yes, you are right. It was no supernatural ability which enabled him to leave his prison cell at will—even to make a mock of Death’s imprisonment. Grigor was locked in prison—executed—but Vladimir, his twin and double, remained at large to carry on their work. But now he, too, is dead. I killed him when we rescued Mademoiselle Alice.”
“One other thing, my Jules,” Renouard demanded. “When they prepared to wed Mademoiselle to Satan, they made her walk all barefoot upon those burning stones. Was not that magic of a sort?”
De Grandin tweaked the needle-points of his mustache. “A juggler’s trick,” he answered. “That fire-walking, he is widely practised in some places, and always most successfully. The stones they use are porous as a sponge. They heat to incandescence quickly, but just as quickly they give off their heat. When they were laid upon the moistened sand these stones were cool enough to hold within your ungloved hand in thirty seconds. Some time was spent in mummery before they bade Mademoiselle to walk on them. By the time she stepped upon them they were cold as any money-lender’s heart.”
THE SHIP’S BELL BEAT out eight quick strokes. De Grandin dropped down from his seat upon the rail and tweaked the waxed tips of his mustache until they stood out like twin needles from each side of his small and thin-lipped mouth. “Come, if you please,” he ordered us.
“Where?” asked Alice.
“To the chart room, of course. The land has disappeared”—he waved his hand toward the horizon where rolling blue water met a calm blue sea—“and we are now upon the high sea.”
“Well?” demanded John.
“Well? Name of a little green pig with most deplorably bad manners! I shall say it is well. Do not you know that masters of ships on the high seas are empowered by the law to solemnize the rite of marriage?”
Something of the old Alice we had known in other days looked from the tired and careworn face above the collar of her traveling-coat as she replied: “I’m game.” Then, eyes dropped demurely, and a slight flush in her cheeks, she added softly: “If John still wants me.”
“DEARLY BELOVED, WE ARE gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony,” read the captain from the Book of Common Prayer … “If any man can s
how just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else forever after hold his peace.”
“Yes, pardieu, let him speak—and meet his death at Jules de Grandin’s hands!” the little Frenchman murmured, thrusting one hand beneath his jacket where his automatic pistol rested in its shoulder holster.
“AND NOW, WITH DUE solemnity, let us consign this sacré thing unto the ocean, and may the sea never give up its dead!” de Grandin announced when John and Alice Davisson, Renouard and I came from the captain’s sanctum, the tang of champagne still upon our lips. He raised his hand and a silvery object glittered in the last rays of the setting sun, flashed briefly through the air, then sank without a trace beneath the blue sea water. It was the marriage girdle of the Yezidees.
“Oh,” Alice cried, “you’ve thrown away ‘the luck of the Humes’!”
“Precisely so, cherie,” he answered with a smile. “There are no longer any Humes, only Davissons. Le bon Dieu grant there may be many of them.”
WE HAVE JUST RETURNED from the christening of Alice’s twin boys, Renouard de Grandin and Trowbridge Ingraham Davisson. The little villains howled right lustily when Doctor Bentley put the water on their heads, and:
“Grand Dieu des porcs, the Evil One dies hard in those small sinners!” said Jules de Grandin.
Ingraham, engrossed with ministerial duties in West Africa, was unable to be present, but the silver mugs he sent the youngsters are big enough to hold their milk for years to come.
As I write this, Renouard, de Grandin and Costello are very drunk in my consulting-room. I can hear Costello and Renouard laugh with that high-pitched cachinnation which only those far gone in liquor use at some droll anecdote which Jules de Grandin tells.
I think that I shall join them. Surely, there is one more drink left in the bottle.
The Dark Angel
1
“TIENS, MY FRIEND,” JULES de Grandin selected an Hoyo de Monterey from the humidor and set it alight with gusto, “say what you will, there is no combination more satisfying to the soul and body than that of the processes of digestion and slow poisoning by nicotine. No.” He regarded the gleaming tip of his diminutive patent-leather evening pump with marked satisfaction, and wafted a smoke-wreath slowly toward the ceiling. “To make our happiness complete,” he added, “needs only the presence of—”
“Detective Sergeant Costello, if ye please, sor,” interrupted Nora McGinnis, my household factotum, appearing at the drawing-room door with the unexpected suddenness of a specter taking shape from nothingness.
“Eh, do you say so, petite?” the little Frenchman answered with a chuckle. “Bid him enter, by all means.”
The big, red-headed plainclothes man advanced in Nora’s wake, a smile of real affection for the Frenchman on his face. Behind him marched an equally big man, ruddy-faced, white-haired, with that look of handsome distinction so many commonplace Irishmen acquire at middle life.
“Shake hands wid me friend, Chief O’Toole, o’ th’ Norfolk Downs force, gentlemen,” Costello bade with a nod toward his companion. “Timmie, this is Doctor de Grandin I’ve been tellin’ ye about, an’ Doctor Trowbridge.”
“Pleased to meet yez, gentlemen,” Chief O’Toole acknowledged with a smile and bone-crushing grip for each of us. “Jerry’s been tellin’ me ye might be willin’ to give me a lift wid th’ damndest—beg pardon—th’ most puzzlin’ case I’ve ever had th’ evil luck to run agin.”
De Grandin transferred his cigar to his left hand and tweaked the needle points of his tightly waxed blond mustache with his right. “If the good Sergeant Costello vouches for the case, mon chef, I make no doubt that it will intrigue me,” he answered. “Tell us of it, if you please.”
“Well, sor,” Chief O’Toole lowered himself ponderously into a chair and regarded the gray uniform cap be had removed with a stare which seemed to indicate he sought inspiration from its silklined depths, “well, sor, it’s this way. Over to Norfolk Downs we’ve been havin’ one hell o’—one most distressful time o’ it, an’ none o’ us seems able to say what it’s all about.” He paused, twisting the cap between his large, white hands and examining its peaked visor as though he’d never seen the thing before.
“U’m?” de Grandin shot a quick glance at the visitor. “This is of interest, but not instructive. If you will amplify your statement—”
“Beg pardon, sor, maybe I could help,” Costello interrupted. “Timmie—Chief O’Toole—an’ me’s been friends for twenty year an’ more. We wuz harness bulls together an’ got our detectives’ badges at th’ same time. When they started that swell real estate development over to Norfolk Downs, they put in a paid police force, an’ offered th’ job o’ chief to Timmie. He’s a good officer, sor, as none knows better than I, but keepin’ burglars in their place an’ nabbin’ speeders is more in his line than handlin’ this sort o’ trouble. There’s been some mighty queer doin’s at Norfolk Downs o’ late, an’ th’ whole community’s terrified. Not only that; they’re sayin’ Timmie’s not competent, an’ one more killin’ like they’ve had an’ he’ll be warmin’ some employment office bench. He wuz over to me house this evenin’ to talk things over, an’ th’ minute I heard about it I says to meself, ‘Here’s a case fer Doctor de Grandin, or I’m a Dutchman.’ So here we are, sor.”
O’Toole took up the explanation. “If ye’re askin’ me about it, I’ll say th’ Divil’s in it, sor,” he told de Grandin solemnly.
“The Devil?” de Grandin eyed him narrowly. “You mean that Satan has a hand in it, or do you use an idiom?”
“No, sor, I mean exactly what I said,” the chief replied. “’Twas a matter o’ three months or so ago—th’ night afther Christmas—when Mike Scarsci got his’n. Everybody in th’ Downs knew Mike, and no one knew much good o’ him. Some said he wuz a bootlegger, and some a runner fer a joint down Windsor way—th’ kind o’ place where ye git what ye pay fer an’ no questions asked, an’ if ye feel th’ want o’ womanly sympathy, there’s a young an’ pretty hostess to give ye what ye crave. However that might be, sor, we used to see Mike sliding round th’ place, whispering to th’ respectable folks who might not be so good when they thought no one wuz lookin’, an’ I’d ’a’ run him out o’ town, only I didn’t dast offend his customers. So I wuz content to keep a eye on him, just until he pulled off sumpin I could rightly pinch him fer.
“Well, that night we heard him drive up th’ Edgemere Road in that big, expensive roadster o’ his, an’ seen him turn th’ corner like he wuz headed fer one o’ th’ big houses on th’ hill. I didn’t see it meself, sor, but one o’ me men, name o’ Gibbons, wuz near by when it happened. He seen th’ car go round th’ bend an’ disappear behind some rhododendron bushes, an’ all of a sudden he heard somebody give a yell as if th’ Divil’s self wuz on ’im, an’ then two shots come close together. Next moment wuz a flash o’ fire so bright it blinded him, an’—that wuz all.
“But when he came a-runnin’ to th’ place where Scarsci’s car wuz stalled, he found Mike wid his gun still in his hand, an’ th’ front mashed out o’ his head—leastwise, most of it wuz gone, but enough remained to show th’ footprint of a monster goat stamped on ’im, sor. Furthermore, there wuz th’ smell o’ brimstone in th’ air.”
De Grandin raised the narrow black brows which showed such marked contrast to his wheat-blond hair. “Eh bien, mon chef,” he murmured. “This devil of yours would seem to be a most discriminating demon; at least in Monsieur Scarsci’s case. Am I to understand that you give credence to the story?”
A tinge of red showed in O’Toole’s broad face. “Ye are, sor,” he returned. “I wuz brought up amongst goats, sor; I’d know their tracks when I seen ’em, even if me eyes were tight shut; an’ I recognized th’ print on Scarsci’s forehead. Besides—” he paused a moment, swallowing uneasily, and a dogged, stubborn look came in his eyes. “Besides, I seen th’ thing meself, sor.” O’Toole breathed quickly, pantingly, as one who shifts a burden from
his chest.
“We all thought it mighty queer how Mike got kilt,” he went on, “but th’ coroner said he must ’a’ run into a tree or sumpin—though th’ saints knows there wuz no tree there—so we had to let it pass. But widin another week, sor, Old Man Withers wuz found layin’ dead furninst th’ gate o’ his house, an’ he died th’ same way Mike did—wid th’ top mashed out o’ his head an’ th’ mark o’ th’ beast on his brow. There warn’t no possibility o’ his runnin’ into no tree—not even a tree as wuzn’t there, sor—for there he wuz, spread-eagled on th’ sidewalk wid his mouth wide open, an’ his eyes a-starin’ at th’ sky, an’ there wuz blood an’ brains oozin’ from a hole in his head big enough to put yer fist into.
“There wuz plenty said th’ old man wuz a bad lot; it’s certain he never let a nickel get away once he got his hands on it, an’ many a one as borrowed money from him lived to regret it; but that’s not here nor there. Th’ fact is he wuz dead, an’ th’ jury had to bring it in a homicide, though, o’ course, they couldn’ blame no one specifically.
“Then, last o’ all, wuz Mr. Roscoe. A harmless, inoffensive sort o’ cuss he wuz, sor; quiet-spoken an’ gentleman-like as any that ye’d meet. He had some money an’ didn’t need to work, but he wuz a sort o’ nut on atheism, an’ ran some kind o’ paper pokin’ fun at th’ churches fer his own amusement.
“’Twas about midnight ten days ago, when th’ thing got him. I’d finished up me work at th’ Borough Hall, an’ wuz headin’ fer home when I passed th’ bus station. Mr. Roscoe gits off’n th’ last bus from Bloomfield, an’ we walks along together. As we wuz walkin’ past St. Michael’s church we seen th’ light which burns before th’ altar, an’, ‘O’Toole,’ says Mr. Roscoe, ‘’tis a shame that they should waste th’ price o’ oil to keep that thing a-goin’ when there’s so much misery an’ sufferin’ in th’ world. If I could have me way,’ says he, ‘I’d raise th’ divil wid—’
The Dark Angel Page 39
