Following him, I saw him part the lower boughs, examine the frosty ground with his nose almost thrust into it, then saw him straighten like a coiled spring suddenly released from tension. “Behold!” he bade me, seizing my wrist and dragging me forward. Upon the hard earth showed a tiny stain, a dull, brown-colored stain, no larger than a split bean, but unmistakable. Blood!
“How—” I began, but:
“And look at this—ten thousand small blue devils!—look at this, my friend, and tell me what it is you see!” he ordered sharply. Nearer the house, where the chimney’s warmth had kept the frost from hardening the earth to any great extent, there showed two prints—footprints—but such footprints!
One was obviously human, a long and slimly aristocratic foot, shod with a moccasin or some sort of soft shoe, for there was no well-defined impression of a built-up heel. But close beside it, so placed it must have been left by the same person, was the clear-cut, unmistakable impression of a hoof—a cloven hoof—as though an ox or giant goat had stamped there.
“Well!” I exclaimed, then paused for very want of words in which to frame my reeling thoughts.
“Non,” he denied emphatically. “It is most unwell, Friend Trowbridge. It is diabolical, no less. Tout la même”—he raised his narrow shoulders in a shrug—“I shall not be dissuaded. Though Satan’s self has done these things, I’ll not desist until I have him clapped in jail, my friend. Consider, has not the mayor of Norfolk Downs retained me for that purpose? Come, let us go. I see the good O’Toole approaching, and he will surely be made ill if he should see this thing.”
Once more we searched the house as carefully as a jeweler might search a gem for hidden flaws, but nowhere was there any clue to help us. At length: “We must look at the roof,” de Grandin said. “It may be we shall find some little, so small thing to aid us there; the good God knows we have not found it here.”
“Arra, Doctor de Grandin, sor, ’tain’t Christmastime fer nigh another year,” O’Toole objected.
“Eh, what is it that you tell me—noël?” the Frenchman answered sharply.
“Why, sor, ye must be afther thinkin’ it wuz Santy Claus as did in Misther Bostwick, instead o’—instead o’ Satan.” He looked quickly round, as though he feared some hidden listener, then signed himself furtively with the cross.
De Grandin grinned acknowledgment of the sally, but led the way uncompromisingly to the attic from which a trapdoor let upon the steep, tiled roof. Pausing for a moment to survey the serrated rows of semi-cylindrical tiles with which the housetop was covered, he threw a leg over the ridgepole and began slowly working his way toward the chimney. Early as it was, several small boys loitering in the street, the policeman on guard outside the house and a dog of highly doubtful ancestry were on hand to witness his aerial performance, and as he reached the chimney and clung to it, both arms encircling the tall terra-cotta pot with which the flue was capped, we caught a flash of black and saw the Reverend Basil Folloilott pause in a rapid walk and gaze up wonderingly.
De Grandin hugged the chimney some three minutes, crooked his knee across the angle of the roof and leant as far downward as was possible, examining the glazed, round tiles, then slowly hitched himself back to the trap-door where O’Toole and I were waiting.
“Find anythin’, sor?” the chief inquired good-humoredly.
“Enough to justify the risk of breaking the most valuable neck which I possess,” the Frenchman answered with a smile. “Parbleu, enough to give one food for speculation, too, I am inclined to think!”
“What wuz it?”
The Frenchman opened his hand, and in the palm of his gray glove we saw a slim, dark object resting, a little wisp of horsehair, I supposed.
“What—” O’Toole began, but:
“No whats, my friend, no whys, not even any wherefores, if you please,” the other cut him short. “Me, I shall cogitate upon this matter—this and some others. Anon I may announce the goal to which my thoughts have led. Meantime I am too well aware that it is villainously cold up here and I am most tremendously in need of food.”
BREAKFAST WAS LAID IN the pleasant room adjoining Wilcox’s kitchen when we returned, and de Grandin did full justice to the meal. He was commencing his fifth cup of well-creamed coffee when a maid announced the Reverend Basil Folloilott.
Despite the coldness of the day, the clergyman’s pale face was even paler than its usual wont as he came into the breakfast room, still a little short of breath from rapid walking. “Dreadful news of Mr. Bostwick,” he announced as he greeted us reservedly. “The poor unfortunate, cut off in deadly sin—if only he had seen the light in time—”
“Who says he was cut off in sin, Monsieur?” de Grandin broke in suddenly.
“I do,” the clergyman’s pale lips snapped shut upon the words. “I know he was. Time after time, night after night, I saw his paramours arriving at his door as I watched from my study window, and I went to him with messages of peace—redemption and release through hearty and unfeigned repentance. But he—”
“Eh bien, Monsieur, one can guess without great difficulty what he said to you,” the Frenchman answered with a laugh.
“One can,” the cleric answered hotly. “He told me to go to the devil—me, the messenger of holiness. There was no hope for such as he. He led a life of sin; in sin he died, and God can find no pity for a wretch like him. The Lord Himself—”
“It seems I have read somewhere of a lady whose behavior was not all a lady’s conduct ought to be, yet who was counted of some worth in later days,” de Grandin interrupted softly.
An ugly sneer gathered at the corners of Folloilott’s mouth. “Indeed?” he asked sarcastically. “She was a countrywoman of yours, no doubt, Monsieur de Grandin?”
“No-o,” the Frenchman answered slowly, while a malicious twinkle flickered in his eyes. “She was from Magdala—the Scriptures call her Mary Magdalene, and somewhere I have heard the Blessed Master did not bar her out of Paradise, although her life had been at least as bad as that of Monsieur Bostwick.”
“I say, de Grandin, you seem to take delight in getting a rise out of Folloilott,” Wilcox accused when the clergyman had taken a hasty and offended leave.
The almost boorish manner of the preacher puzzled me. “Perhaps the man’s a pious hypocrite,” I hazarded, but:
“Mais non,” denied the Frenchman. “Pious he is, I freely grant—but a hypocrite? No, it is not so. He is in deadly earnest, that one. How much his deadliness exceeds his earnestness I should not care to guess, but—” He lapsed into a moody silence.
“What d’ye mean?” I urged. “Are you implying that—”
“Ah bah, I did but let my wits go wool-gathering—there is a black dog running through my brain, Friend Trowbridge,” he apologized. “Forget what I have said; I was conversing through the hat, as you so drolly say.”
6
DE GRANDIN WAS BUSY all that day, making a hasty trip to the city, returning for luncheon, then dashing off to consult Chief O’Toole till nearly dinner time.
He kept the table in an uproar with his witty sallies throughout the meal, and when dessert was served young George Wilcox pulled a long face. “I’d rather sit right here and talk with you than go out tonight, Doctor de Grandin,” he declared, “but—”
“Ah-ha; ah-ha-ha—I see him!” laughed de Grandin. “I too was young upon a time, my friend. I know the ecstasy of the little hand’s soft pressure, the holy magic which can be found within the loved one’s glance. Go to her with speed, mon vieux; you were not half a man if you delayed your tryst to talk with such a silly one as Jules de Grandin. Hold her hand gently, mon brave, it is a fragile thing, I make no doubt.”
The boy retreated with a sheepish grin and heightened color.
“I wish George wouldn’t see her,” Mrs. Wilcox sighed plaintively. “They’re terribly in love, of course, but Mr. Folloilott won’t hear of it—he’s mapped the poor girl’s life for her, you know, and next May she starts on her novitiat
e at Carlinville. I suppose he knows best, he’s such a thoroughly good man, but—” She broke off with another sigh, as though she felt herself a heretic for questioning the rector’s wisdom.
We played bridge after dinner, but de Grandin’s mind was not upon the game. He lost consistently, and shortly after ten o’clock excused himself on the plea he had a busy day before him, paid his losses and furtively beckoned me to join him in our room.
“Friend Trowbridge,” he informed me earnestly, “we must do something for those children. It is an outrage two young hearts should thus be pried apart. You saw the look she gave him yesternight at table—a look in which her very heart beat for release against the fetters of her eyes. You saw the look on young Monsieur’s face this evening. Our business is to help them to each other.”
“Our business is to find out who’s perpetrating these murders—if it’s not the Devil himself, as O’Toole and Folloilott seem to think,” I broke in roughly. “This boy-and-girl affair’s just puppy love. They may think their hearts are broken, but—”
“Zut, who says it?” he cried sharply. “I tell you, good Friend Trowbridge, a man’s heart breaks but once, and then it is forever. Misère de Dieu, do I not know it? As for these killings, my friend, I am the wiser, though not sadder, man to-night. Attend me: At Harrisonville I had the tiny flecks of hard-dried liquid which we found outside Monsieur Bostwick’s window analyzed. They were, as I suspected, blood—human blood. Also, while he was absent on some parish duty, I did feloniously and most unlawfully insert myself into the reverend gentleman’s study, and made a careful search. Behold what I have found—” From the pocket of his dinner coat he took several small, twisted things, grayish, curved objects which looked for all the world like sections of a hard, gray doughnut.
“What the deuce—” I began, but he stopped me with a grin.
“Chains, my friend—chains of the devil, no less. The mystery of the holy Michael’s tether for the Devil is explained. I would not go so far as to declare that the good cleric broke that carven chain, then spread the story of impending doom about; but unquestionably he had possession of the missing links, even while he helped search for them in places where he knew that they were not. What do you make of that?”
“Why—” I looked at him in openmouthed amazement. “Why—”
“Exactly, precisely; quite so. It is our task to find out why, and unless I am more mistaken than I think I am, we shall know something ere we see another morning.”
Yawning, he stripped off his jacket and waistcoat, pulled his pajama coat on above his shirt, and proceeded to snap on every available bulb in the room. Once more he yawned prodigiously, went to the window and unbarred it, flinging wide the casement and spreading wide his arms in a tremendous stretch. I yawned in sympathy as he stood there with jaws agape, the personification of a man who can withstand the urge to sleep no longer.
A moment he stood thus, then, snapping off the light, leaped quickly in the bed and pulled the comforter about his neck.
“Good Lord, you’re not going to sleep that way, are you?” I asked, amazed.
“Pardieu, I shall not sleep at all, my friend!” he answered in a whisper. “And you will please have the goodness not to shout. Climb into bed if you desire, and pull the blankets over you, but do not sleep; we shall have need of wakefulness before the night is done, I damn think.”
Despite his admonition, I dropped off. The respite from the cares of my practise and the dull evening at cards combined to wear down my will to stay awake. How long I slept I do not know, but something—that odd sixth sense which rouses sleeping cats, dogs and physicians—brought me full-conscious from the fairyland of dreams. No time was needed to orient myself; my eyes turned unbidden to the window which de Grandin had left open.
The steady southwest wind had chased the clouds before it, and the moonlight fell as bright, almost, as midday on the planted lawn outside. Bars of the silvery luminance struck through the open casement and lay along the floor, as bright and unobscured as—stay, there was a shadow blotting out the moonlight, something was moving very slowly, soundlessly, outside the window.
I strained my eyes to pierce the intervening gloom, then sat bolt-upright, horror gripping at my throat, chill, grisly fear dragging at my scalp.
Across the eighteen-inch-wide sill it came, as quiet as a creeping snake; a great, black thing, the moonlight glinting evilly on the polished scales which overlaid its form. From its shoulders, right and left, spread great, black wings, gleaming with a sort of horrid, half-dulled luster, and as they grasped the window-sill I caught a glimpse of long, curved talons, pitiless as those of any vulture, but larger and more cruel by far than those of any bird.
But awful as the dread form was, the countenance was more so. A ghastly sort of white it was, not white as snow or polished bone is white, not white as death’s pale visage may be white, but a leprous, unclean white, the sort of pallor which can not be dissociated from disease, corruption and decay. Through the pale mask of horror looked two brilliant glaring eyes, like corpse-lights shining through the sockets of a fleshless skull and from the forehead reared a pair of curving, pointed horns. A dreadful memory rushed across the years, a memory of childish fear which had lain dormant but undead for nearly half a century. With my own eyes I saw in living form the figure of Apollyon out of Pilgrim’s Progress!
I tried to cry aloud, to warn de Grandin of the visitant’s approach, but only a dull, croaking sound, scarce louder than a sigh, escaped my palsied lips.
Low as the utterance was, it seemed to carry to the creeping horror. With a wild, demoniac laugh it launched itself upon the bed where my little friend lay sleeping, and in an instant I heard the sickening impact of a blow—another blow—and then a high, cracked voice crying: “Accursed of God, go now and tell your master who keeps watch and ward upon the earth!”
Weapon I had none, but at the bedside stood a table with a chromium carafe of chilled spring water, and this I hurled with all my might straight at the awful face.
A second marrow-freezing cry went up, and then a flash of blinding light—bright as a summer storm’s forked lightning on a dark night—flared in my eyes, and I choked and gasped as strangling fumes of burning sulfur filled my mouth and nostrils.
“De Grandin, oh, de Grandin!” I wailed, leaping from the bed and blundering against furniture as I sought the light. Too well I knew that Jules de Grandin could not hear my voice, already I had seen the effects of such flailing blows as I had heard; the little Frenchman lay upon his bed, his head crushed in, his gallant spirit gone for ever from his slender, gallant body.
“Tiens, my friend, you battled him right manfully. I dare assert his belly is most villainously sore where you hit it with the bottle,” de Grandin’s voice came to me from the farther end of the room, and as my light-burned eyes regained their sight, I saw him crawl forth from behind an overstuffed armchair.
My first impulse was to rush upon him and clasp him in my arms; then sudden hot resentment rose within me. “You were there all the time,” I accused. “Suppose it had struck me instead of—”
“Of the pillow which I so artistically arranged within the bed to simulate myself?” he interrupted with an impish grin. “In such a case I should have brought this into play.” He waved the heavy French army revolver which he held in his right hand. “I could have dropped him at any time, but I desired to see what he was about. It was a gallant show, n’est-ce-pas?”
“But—but was it really human?” I demanded, shuddering at the dreadful memory of the thing. “D’ye suppose a bullet could have reached it? I could have sworn—”
“Assuredly you could,” he acquiesced and chuckled. “So can the good O’Toole, and so can our most reverend friend, the abbé with the funny name, but—”
A thunderous knocking at the door broke through his words. “Doctor de Grandin, is everything all right?” Mayor Wilcox called anxiously. “I thought I heard a noise in your room, and—nothing’s happened, h
as it?”
“Not yet,” the Frenchman answered coolly. “Nothing of any consequence, Monsieur le Maire; but something of importance happens shortly, or Jules de Grandin will eat turnips for next Christmas dinner.”
“That’s good,” Mayor Wilcox answered. “At first I thought it might be George stumbling over something as he came in, but—”
“Ha? Petit Monsieur Georges—he is still out?” the Frenchman interrupted shrilly.
“Yes, but—”
“Grand Dieu des porcs, grand Dieu des coqs; grand Dieu des artichauts—come, Friend Trowbridge, for your life, for his life, for their lives; we must hasten, rush, fly to warn them of the horror which stalks by night! Oh, make haste, my friend; make haste, I beg of you!”
Wondering, I got into my hat and overcoat while de Grandin thrust the heavy pistol in his outer pocket and beat his hands together as he urged me feverishly to hurry.
“Tell me, Monsieur,” he asked the mayor, “where does Monsieur Georges make the assignation with his sweetheart? Not at the rectory, I hope?”
“That’s the worst of it,” Wilcox answered. “Folloilott’s forbidden him the house, so Janet slips out and meets him somewhere and they drive around; I shouldn’t be surprised if they were parked along the roadside somewhere; but only Heaven knows where. With all this reckless driving and bootlegging and hijacking going on, I’m in a perfect jitter every night till he gets home, and—”
“Name of a mannerless small blue pig, our task is ten times harder!” the Frenchman interrupted. “Come, Friend Trowbridge, we must search the secret paths, seek out the cars secluded by the roadside and warn them of their peril. Pardieu, I should have warned him of it ere he left the house!”
7
THERE WAS SOMETHING VAGUELY sinister in the night as we set out; a chill not wholly due to the shrewd wind which blew in from the meadows was biting at my nerves as we walked quickly down the winding, darkened road. Some half a dozen blocks beyond the house we came on a parked car, but when de Grandin flashed his searchlight toward it the angry question of a strange young man informed us we had failed to find the pair we sought. Nevertheless:
The Dark Angel Page 42
