The Dark Angel

by Seabury Quinn

  An awkward pause ensued. De Grandin tweaked the points of his mustache and seemed meditating a reply, and knowing him as I did, my teeth were on edge with apprehension, but Wilcox saved the situation. “I was telling Doctor de Grandin your theory of the strange deaths—how the breaking of the fetter in St. Michael’s hand might be responsible,” he told the clergyman.

  Young Rabbi Silverstein looked puzzled. “Surely, you’re not serious, Mr. Folloilott?” he asked. “You can’t mean you believe there’s some connection between a graven image and these murders. Why, it’s—”

  Folloilott rose, his face drawn and working with half-suppressed emotion. “To one of your religion, sir,” he answered cuttingly, “the statue of the Archangel Michael may be a ‘graven image’; to us it is a holy thing, endued with heavenly powers. As for these ‘murders,’ as you call them, I am convinced no earthly agency has anything to do with them; no human hand struck the blows which rid the world of those moral lepers. They are unquestionably the visitations of an outraged Heaven upon contemners of Divine authority. The call to repentance has gone forth, even as it did in the days of the Patriarch Noah. Heaven is outraged at the iniquity of man, and the Dark Angel of Death is abroad; you may almost hear the beating of his dreadful sable wings. There is no one as when the first-born was slain of old, to sprinkle blood upon the lintels of our doors that he may spare us and pass on. Repentance is the only way to safety. No mortal man can stay his flight, no mortal date impede him in his awful errand!”

  “Tiens, there you do make the great mistake, Monsieur,” de Grandin answered with one of his quick, elfin grins. “I dare do so. The law forbids such killings, and be he angel or devil, he who has committed them must answer to the law. Furthermore, which is of more immediate importance, he must answer to Jules de Grandin. Certainly; of course.”

  “You?” the tall cleric looked down at the little Frenchman incredulously.

  “Even as you say, Monsieur l’Abbé.”

  For a moment they faced each other across the table, Folloilott’s piercing gaze seeking to beat down de Grandin’s level stare, and failing as the wind may fail to move a firmly planted rock. At length:

  “You take grave risks lightly, sir,” the clergyman admonished.

  “It is a habit of long standing, Monsieur,” de Grandin answered in a toneless, level voice, his little, round blue eyes set in a fixed, unwinking stare against the other’s burning gaze.

  THE CLERGYMAN EXCUSED HIMSELF a short while afterward, and we were left alone before the fire.

  “I think your rector needs a rest,” I told the mayor. “His nerves are all unstrung from overwork, I’d say. Once or twice I fancied he was on the verge of a breakdown this evening.”

  “He did look rather seedy,” Wilcox admitted. “Guess we’ll have to send him off to Switzerland again this summer. He’s a great mountain-climber, you know; quite a hunter, too. Some years ago he went exploring in the Andes and brought back some rare specimens. They say he’s one of the few men who ever succeeded in bringing down a condor in full flight.”

  De Grandin glanced up sharply. “A condor, did you say, Monsieur—one of those great Andean vultures?” he demanded.

  “Yes,” Wilcox answered. “He risked his life to do it; but he shot one down from an eminence of several thousand feet. Got two of ’em, in fact, but one was lost. The other’s stuffed and mounted in the museum at Harrisonville.”

  “A condor?” murmured Jules de Grandin musingly. “He shot a condor, this one, and—”

  Furious knocking at the door, followed by the tread of heavy boots in the tiled passage cut him short. “Doctor de Grandin, sor,” Chief O’Toole burst into the dining-room, amazement and something strangely like terror in his florid face, “there’s another one been kilt. We just got th’ word!”

  “Mille tonnerres—another? Beneath our very noses?” The Frenchman leaped from his seat as a bounced ball rises in the air, and fairly rushed toward the coat closet where his outdoor wraps were hung. “Come, Friend Trowbridge, rush, hasten; fly!” he bade me. To O’Toole:

  “Lead on, mon chef, we follow close behind!”

  “’Tis Misther Bostwick, this time, sor,” the chief confided as we walked along the frosty street. “Not five minutes ago I took a call at headquarters, an’, ‘Is this th’ chief o’ police?’ a lady asks, all scared and trembly-like.

  “‘It is,’ says I, ‘an’ what can I be doin’ fer ye, Miss?’

  “‘Come over to Misther Bostwick’s, if yez please,’ she tells me. ‘Sumpin terrible has happened!’

  “So over to Misther Bostwick’s house I goes, an’ she warn’t exaggeratin’ none, sor, I’ll say that fer her. Th’ place is a holy wreck, an’ pore Bostwick’s a-settin’ there in his livin’-room wid th’ back mashed out o’ his head an’ th’ mark o’ th’ Divil on his brow.”

  De Grandin took a few steps in thoughtful silence; then: “And what was Monsieur Bostwick’s besetting sin, mon chef?” he asked.

  “Eh?”

  “What was it this one did which might offend a straight-laced moralist?”

  O’Toole returned a short, hard laugh. “How’d ye guess it, sor?” he asked.

  “Name of an old and thoroughly decaying cheese—I ask you, not you me!” the Frenchman almost shouted.

  “Well, sor, Norfolk Downs ain’t like some places; we don’t go pokin’ too much into th’ private life o’ th’ citizens as pays our salaries, an’—”

  “À bas the explanations and apologies! What was it this one did, I ask to know!”

  “Well, sor, if ye must know, they do say as how he wuz uncommon fond o’ th’ ladies. Time afther time I seen th’ pretty ladies shteppin’ out o’ their cars before his door, an’ late o’ nights th’ light wuz goin’ in his house. Yet he were a bachelor, sor, an’ his bootlegger’s bill must ’a’ been tremenjous, judgin’ be th’ empty bottles that wuz carted from his place. I’ve heard tell as how some o’ his little playmates had husbands o’ their own, too, but as ’twas all done quiet an’ orderly-like, I never interfered, an’—”

  “No matter, one understands,” de Grandin cut him short. “Are we arrived?”

  4

  WE WERE. ABLAZE WITH lights, the big, brick house in which Theodore Bostwick had lived his gay and not particularly righteous life stood before us, a uniformed policeman at the door, another waiting in the hall. Crouched on a settle by the fire, shaking with sobs and plainly in an agony of fear, a very pretty little lady in a very pretty pajama ensemble raised a tear-stained face to us.

  “Oh, don’t—please don’t let them give my name to the papers!” she besought as de Grandin paused before her.

  “Softly, Mademoiselle,” he soothed, tactfully ignoring the platinum-and-diamond band encircling the third finger of her left hand. “We do but seek the facts. Where were you when it happened, if you please?”

  “I—I’d come downstairs to get some ice,” the little woman answered, dabbing at her eyes with a wisp of rose-colored cambric. “Ted—Mr. Bostwick, wanted some ice for the cocktails, and I said I’d come down and get it from the Frigidaire, and—” She paused and shivered as though a chill had laid its icy finger on her, despite the superheated room.

  “Yes, Mademoiselle, and—” de Grandin prompted softly.

  “I heard Ted call out once—I couldn’t understand him, and called back, ‘What?’ and then there was a dreadful clatter in the big room upstairs, as if everything were being smashed, and I was frightened.

  “I waited for a moment, then went upstairs, and—oh, it was dreadful!”

  “Précisément, one understands as much; but what was it you saw?”

  “You’ll see it for yourself, when you go up. Ted was sitting there—looking straight at me—and everything around him was all broken. I took one look at him and turned to run, but on the steps I must have fainted, for I fell, and when I came to I was lying at the bottom of the stairs, and—”

  “What did you do next?” he asked as she p
aused again.

  “I—I fainted.”

  “Morbleu, again?”

  “Yes, again!” something half stubborn, half hysterical was in her answer. “I was going to the telephone to call the officers when I chanced to glance up, and there—” Once more her voice trailed off to nothingness, and the color drained from her pink cheeks, leaving them ghastly-white beneath the rouge.

  The little Frenchman looked at her, compassion in his gaze. “What was it that you saw, ma pauvre?” he asked gently.

  “A—a face, sir. It looked at me through the window for just an instant, but I’ll not forget it if I live to be a hundred. There was nothing above it, nothing below it—it seemed to hang there, like the head of a decapitated man suspended in the air—and it glared at me. It was long—twice as big as any face I’ve ever seen—and a sort of awful grayish color—like the underside of a toad!—and great tusks protruded from its mouth. The eyes were green and glowing with some dreadful light, and there were horns growing from the forehead. I tell you there were!” She paused a moment while she fought for breath; then, very softly: “It was the Devil!”

  “Eh bien, Mademoiselle, this is of interest, certainly. And then, if you please—”

  “Then I fainted again. I don’t know how long I lay on the floor, but as soon as I came to I called police headquarters.”

  De Grandin turned to Chief O’Toole. “You came at once?” he asked.

  “Yes, sor.”

  “Who came with you?”

  “Kelley an’ Shea, sor.”

  “Très bien. You searched the place inside and out? What of the doors and windows?”

  “Locked, sor; locked tight as wax. Th’ little lady here let us in, afther askin’ who we wuz, an’ we heard her throw th’ lock an’ draw th’ inside bolt an’ chain-fastener. Th’ back door wuz tight locked, an’ every windy in th’ place but one wuz closed an’ latched. Th’ big windy in th’ livin’-roorn upstairs wuz shut, but not latched, sor.”

  “Very good. And that window there—the one through which Mademoiselle declares she saw the face—what of it?”

  “It’s more’n ten foot from th’ ground, sor, an’ fixed—th’ frame’s set fast in th’ jamb, so’s it can’t be opened a-tall.”

  “Very good. Let us ascend and see what we shall see above.”

  THE UPSTAIRS LIVING-ROOM OF Bostwick’s house was a blaze of light, for Chief O’Toole and his aides had turned on every available bulb when they made their preliminary search.

  “Ah?” de Grandin murmured softly as we paused upon the threshold “A-ah?”

  Facing us through the doorway which gave upon the upper hall, his chin sunk on his breast, hands clenched into rigid fists upon the arms of his chair, a man sat staring endlessly at nothing with sightless, film-glazed eyes. He had been in early middle life—forty-five, perhaps, possibly fifty years old—with profuse hair and a vandyke beard in which the brown was thickly flecked with gray. In life his face must have been florid, but now it shone under the glowing electric bulbs with the ash-gray pallor which belongs only to death, his parted lips almost as blanched as his cheeks, little gouts of perspiration, glistening like beads of oil, dewing his high, white forehead.

  The room behind him was a welter of confusion. Chairs were overturned, even broken, the contents of the center table—bits of expensive bric-à-brac and objects of vertu—were strewn upon the rich Turkey carpet, the pieces of an almost priceless K’angshi vase lay scattered in one corner.

  De Grandin advanced and slowly surveyed the corpse, walking round it, observing it from every side. A little to the left and above the right ear a deep, wedge-shaped depression showed in the skull, blood, a little ruptured brain-substance and serous cerebrospinal fluid escaping from the wound. The Frenchman looked at me with elevated brows and nodded questioningly. I nodded back. Death must have been instantaneous.

  “D’ye see it, sor?” O’Toole demanded in an awed whisper, pointing to the dead man’s forehead.

  There was no denying it. Impressed upon the flesh, as though stamped there with almost crushing force, was the bifurcated imprint of a giant goat’s hoof.

  “They must ’a’ had th’ divil of a fight,” O’Toole opined as he surveyed the devastated room.

  De Grandin looked about him carefully. “It seems so,” he agreed, “but why the Evil One should vent his wrath upon the poor man’s chattels when he had killed the owner gives one to wonder, n’est-ce-pas?”

  “An’—an’ d’ye notice th’ shmell, sor?” O’Toole added diffidently.

  De Grandin’s narrow nostrils contracted and expanded nervously as he sniffed the air. I, too, inhaled, and down the back of my neck and through my checks ran tiny ripples of horror-chills. There was no mistaking it—trust one who’d served a term as city health officer to know! Faint, but clearly perceptible, there was the pungent, acrid scent of burning sulfur in the room.

  De Grandin’s small blue eyes were very round and almost totally expressionless as he looked from O’Toole to me and back again. At length: “Oui-da,” he agreed, “c’est le soufre, vraiment. No matter, we have other things to do than inhale silly scents.”

  “But, sor—” O’Toole began.

  “But be grilled upon the grates of hell, mon vieux. What make you of this?” he pointed to a splash of blood, roughly circular in shape, and some four or five inches in diameter, which disfigured the carpet almost underneath the window.

  “Huh? Why that’s where he bled, sor,” the Irishman replied, after a moment’s study of the ruddy spot.

  “Exactement, my friend—where he bled. Now, consider this—” Wheeling, he led us back to the seated body, and pointed in turn to the dead man’s collar and the back of the chair. Scarcely a bloodstain showed on them.

  “I don’t think I quite git ye, sor,” the chief admitted after a long scrutiny.

  “Ah hah, my friend, are you then blind?” the Frenchman asked him almost angrily. “Consider: One window was open, or unlatched, at least; and by that window we find blood. It is almost the only blood we find. But Monsieur Bostwick is seated in his chair, almost as though awaiting visitors. Is that the way a man would be if he had died in fight?”

  “Well, sor”—O’Toole put up a hand to scratch his head—“he might ’a’ staggered to that chair an’ died there, afther he’d been struck—”

  “Name of a blue rat, my friend, how can you say so?” de Grandin interrupted. “The blow which killed this poor one caused instant death. Doctor Trowbridge will bear me out in that. No human man could live three seconds following such a blow. Besides, if the man had staggered across the room, there would be blood upon the floor if he leant forward as he crawled toward the chair, or blood upon his collar if he stood upright; yet we see none save in this single spot. That is the spot where he bled, my friend. He was undoubtlessly struck dead close by the window, then carried to that chair and placed there with both feet flat upon the floor, and hands composed upon the arms, and then the one who killed him smashed the furniture to bits. The testimony of the room can be interpreted no other way.”

  The Irishman glanced round the room, then at the dead man. “Howly Mither,” he exclaimed at length, “I’m damned if I don’t think th’ dominie is right, sor. It were th’ Divil as done this thing. No mortal man could fly up to that windy an’ kill th’ pore felly in that way!” He paused to bless himself, then: “Let’s be goin’, sor. There’s no good comin’ from our stayin’ here!”

  De Grandin nodded in agreement. Then, as we reached the lower hall: “We shall not need the pretty lady’s testimony, Chief. I believe her story absolutely—she was too frightened to be lying—and nothing she can tell us will throw light upon the case. Meantime, if you will have a strict watch kept, and see that no one comes or goes, except the undertaker’s men when they come for the body, I shall be greatly in your debt.”

  To the trembling, half-hysterical girl he announced: “You are free to go at will, petite, and were I you, I should not long remain
here; one never knows who may come, and having come, depart and retail gossip.”

  “You mean I may go—now?” she asked in incredulous delight.

  “Perfectly, my little cabbage, to go and sin—with more discretion in the future.”

  5

  PALE DAYLIGHT HAD SCARCELY dawned when de Grandin nudged and kicked me into wakefulness. “Have you forgotten that we inspect Monsieur Bostwick’s house today?” he asked reproachfully. “Come, my friend, rush, hasten, make the hurry; we have much to do and I would be about it while there are not too many to observe our actions.”

  Our hasty toilets made and a call put through to ask O’Toole to meet us, we hurried to the house of death, and while we waited for the chief, de Grandin made a careful circuit of the place. “This is undoubtlessly the window where the little lady with the fragile morals saw the evil face look through,” he mused, pausing under the big chimney which reared itself along the southern wall.

  “Yes,” I agreed, “and it’s directly underneath the window of the room where Bostwick’s body was found, too; the window Chief O’Toole said was closed but unlocked.”

  “Excellent,” he clapped his hands, as though applauding at a play. “I shall make something of you yet, Friend Trowbridge. You have right, now—ah? Que diable?”

  He broke off sharply, crouched suddenly upon the frozen lawn and crept forward quickly, as though intent upon taking something by surprise. “You see?” he asked in a tense whisper.

  A tiny coppice of dwarf spruce was planted in the angle of the chimney and the house-wall, and as he pointed I saw that one or two small branches were freshly broken, the tender wood showing white and pallid through the ruptured bark.