Crossing the room, I drew aside the casement curtain, staining my eyes against the murky darkness. Almost level with my own, two eyes of glowing green looked through the pane, and another pleading miaul implored my charity.
“All right, Pussy, come in,” I invited, drawing back the sash to permit an entrance for the little waif, and through the opening jumped a plump, soft-haired angora cat, black as Erebus, jade-eyed, velvet-pawed. For a moment it stood at gaze, as though doubtful of the worthiness of my abode to house one of its distinction; then, with a satisfied little cat-chuckle, it crossed the room, furry tail waving jauntily, came to halt before the fire and curled up on the hearth rug, where, with paws tucked demurely in and tail curled about its body, it lay blinking contentedly at the leaping flames and purring softly. A saucer of warm milk further cemented cordial relations, and another member was added to our household personnel.
The little cat, on which we had bestowed the name of Eric Brighteyes, at once attached himself to Diane Wickwire, and could hardly be separated from her. Toward de Grandin and me it showed disdainful tolerance. For Nora McGinnis it had supreme contempt.
IT WAS THE TWENTY-NINTH of April, a raw, wet night when the thermometer gave the lie to the calendars assertion that spring had come. Three of us, de Grandin, Diane and I sat in the drawing-room. The girl seemed vaguely nervous and distraught, toying with her coffee cup, puffing at her cigarette, grinding out its fire against the ash-tray, then lighting another almost instantly. Finally she went to the piano and began to play. For a time she improvised softly, white fingers straying at random over the white keys; then, as though led by some subconscious urge for the solace of ecclesiastical music, she began the opening bars of Gounod’s Sanctus:
Holy, Holy, Holy,
Lord God of Hosts,
Heaven and earth are full of Thy Glory …
The music ended on a sharply dissonant note and a gasp of horrified surprise broke the echoing silence as the player lifted startled fingers from the keys. We turned toward the piano, and:
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed de Grandin. “Hell is unchained against us!”
The cat, which had been contentedly curled up on the piano’s polished top, had risen and stood with arched back, bristling tail and gaping, blood-red mouth, gazing from blazing ice-green eyes at Diane with such a look of murderous hate as made the chills of sudden blind, unreasoning fear run rippling down my spine.
“Eric—Eric Brighteyes!” Diane extended a shaking hand to soothe the menacing beast, and in a moment it was its natural, gentle self again, its back still arched, but arched in seeming playfulness, rubbing its fluffy head against her fingers and purring softly with contented friendliness. “And did the horrid music hurt its eardrums? Well, Diane won’t play it any more,” the girl promised, taking the jet-black ball of fur into her arms and nursing it against her shoulder. Shortly afterward she said goodnight, and, the cat still cuddled in her arms, went up to bed.
“I hardly like the idea of her taking that brute up with her,” I told de Grandin. “It’s always seemed so kind and gentle, but—well”—I laughed uneasily—“when I saw it snarling at her just now I was heartily glad it wasn’t any bigger.”
“U’m,” returned the Frenchman, looking up from his silent study of the fire, “one wonders.”
“Wonders what?”
“Much, by blue. Come, let us go.”
“Where?”
“Upstairs, cordieu, and let us step softly while we are about it.”
De Grandin in the lead, we tiptoed to the upper floor and paused before the entrance to Diane’s chamber. From behind the white-enameled panels came the sound of something like a sob; then, in a halting, faltering voice:
“Amen. Evil from us deliver but temptation into not us lead, and us against trespass who those forgive we as …”
“Grand Dieu—la prière renversée!” de Grandin cried, snatching savagely at the knob and dashing back the door.
Diane Wickwire knelt beside her bed, purple-ringed hands clasped before her, tears streaming down her cheeks, while slowly, haltingly, like one wrestling with the vocables of an unfamiliar tongue, she painfully repeated the Lord’s Prayer backward.
And on the counterpane, it’s black muzzle almost forced against her face, crouched the black cat. But now its eyes were not the cool jade-green which we had known; they were red as embers of a dying fire when blown to life by some swift draft of air, and on its feline face, in hellish parody of humanity, there was a grin, a smile as cold and menacing, yet wicked and triumphant as any mediæval artist ever painted on the lips of Satan!
We stood immovable a moment, taking in the tableau with a quickening gaze of horror, then:
“Say it, Mademoiselle, say it after me—properly!” commanded Jules de Grandin, raising his right hand to sign the cross above the girl’s bowed head and beginning slowly and distinctly: “Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name …”
A terrifying screech, a scream of unsupportable agony, as though it had been plunged into a blazing fire, broke from the cowering cat-thing on the bed. Its reddened eyes flashed savagely, and its gaping mouth showed gleaming, knife-sharp teeth as it turned its gaze from Diane Wickwire and fixed it on de Grandin. But the Frenchman paid no heed.
“… and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen,” he finished the petition.
And Diane prayed with him. Catching her cue from his slowly spoken syllables, she repeated the prayer word by painful word, and at the end collapsed, a whimpering, flaccid thing, against the bedstead.
But the cat? It was gone. As the girl and Frenchman reached “Amen” the beast snarled savagely, gave a final spiteful hiss, and whirled about and bolted through the open window, vanishing into the night from which it had come a week before, leaving but the echo of its menacing sibilation and the memory of its dreadful transformation as mementoes of its visit.
“In heaven’s name, what was it?” I asked breathlessly.
“A spy,” he answered. “It was a sending, my old one, an emissary from those evil ones to whom we stand opposed.”
“A—a sending?”
“Perfectly. Assist me with Mademoiselle Diane and I shall elucidate.”
The girl was sobbing bitterly, trembling like a wind-shaken reed, but not hysterical, and a mild sedative was sufficient to enable her to sleep. Then, as we once more took our seats before the fire, de Grandin offered:
“I did not have suspicion of the cat, my friend. He seemed a natural animal, and as I like cats, I was his friend from the first. Indeed, it was not until tonight when he showed aversion for the sacred music that I first began to realize what I should have known from the beginning. He was a sending.”
“Yes, you’ve said that before,” I reminded him, “but what the devil is a ‘sending’?”
“The crystallized, physicalized desires and passions of a sorcerer or wizard,” he returned. “Somewhat—as the medium builds a semi-physical, semi-spiritual body out of that impalpability which we call psychoplasm or ectoplasm, so the skilled adept in magic can evoke a physical-seeming entity out of his wicked thoughts and send it where he will, to do his bidding and work his evil purposes. These ones against whom we are pitted, these burglar-thieves who entered Monsieur Wickwire’s house with their accursed glory hand and stole away his unnamable stone of power are no good, my friend. No, certainly. On the contrary, they are all bad. They are drunk with lust for the power which they think will come into their hands when they have stripped the wrapping off that unmentionable stone. They know also, I should say, that Wickwire—may he eat turnips and drink water throughout eternity!—had ordained his daughter for the sacrifice, had chosen her for the rôle of envelope-stripper-off for that stone, and they accordingly desire to avail themselves of her services. To that end they evoke that seeming-cat and send it here, and it did work their will—conveyed their evil suggestions to the young girl’s mind. She, who is all innocent of any knowledge of witchery or magic-m
ongering, was to be perverted; and right well the work was done, for tonight when she knelt to say her prayers she could not frame to pronounce them aright, but, was obliged perforce to pray witch-fashion.”
“Witch-fashion?”
“But certainly. Of course. Those who have taken the vows of witchhood and signed their names in Satan’s book of blackness are unable to pray like Christians from that time forward; they must repeat the holy words in reverse. Mademoiselle Diane, she is no professed witch, but I greatly fear she is infected by the virus. Already she was unable to pray like others, though when I said the prayer aright, she was still able to repeat it after me. Now—”
“Is there any way we can find these scoundrels and free Diane?” I interrupted. Not for a moment did I grant his premises, but that the girl was suffering some delusion I was convinced; possibly it was long-distance hypnotic suggestion, but whatever its nature, I was determined to seek out the instigators and break the spell.
For a moment he was silent, pinching his little pointed chin between a thoughtful thumb and forefinger and gazing pensively into the fire. At length: “Yes,” he answered. “We can find the place where they lair, my friend; she will lead us to them.”
“She? How—”
“Exactement. Tomorrow is May Eve, Witch-Night—Walpurgis-Nacht. Of all the nights which go to make the year, they are most likely to try their deviltry then. It was not for nothing that they sent their spy into this house and established rapport with Mademoiselle Diane. Oh, no. They need her in their business, and I think that all unconsciously she will go to them some time tomorrow evening. Me, I shall make it my especial duty to keep in touch with her, and where she goes, there will I go also.”
“I, too,” I volunteered, and we struck hands upon it.
5. Walpurgis-Nacht
COVERTLY, BUT CAREFULLY, WE noted every movement the girl made next day. Shortly after luncheon de Grandin looked in at the consulting-room and nodded significantly. “She goes; so do I,” he whispered, and was off.
It was nearly time for the evening meal when Diane returned, and a moment after she had gone upstairs to change for dinner I heard de Grandin’s soft step in the hall.
“Name of a name,” he ejaculated, dropping into the desk-side chair and lighting a cigarette, “but it is a merry chase on which she has led me today, that one!”
I raised interrogative brows, and:
“From pharmacy to pharmacy she has gone, like a hypochondriac seeking for a cure. Consider what she bought”—he checked the items off upon his fanned-out fingers—“aconitum, belladonna, solanin, mandragora officinalis. Not in any one, or even any two places did she buy these things. No, she was shrewd, she was clever, by blue, but she was subtle! Here she bought a flaçon of perfume, there a box of powder, again, a cake of scented soap, but mingled with her usual purchases would be occasionally one of these strange things which no young lady can possibly be supposed to want or need. What think you of it, my friend?”
“H’m, it sounds like some prescription from the mediæval pharmacopœia,” I returned.
“Well said, my old astute one!” he answered. “You have hit the thumb upon the nail, my Trowbridge. That is exactly what it is, a prescription from the Pharmacopœia Maleficorum—the witches’ book of recipes. Every one of those ingredients is stipulated as a necessary part of the witch’s ointment—”
“The what?”
“The unguent with which those about to attend a sabbat, or meeting of a coven of witches, anointed themselves. If you will stop and think a moment, you will realize that nearly every one of those ingredients is a hypnotic or sedative. One thoroughly rubbed with a concoction of them would to a great degree lose consciousness, or, at the least, a sense of true responsibility.”
“Yes? And—”
“Quite yes. Today foolish people think of witches as rather amiable, sadly misunderstood and badly persecuted old females. That is quite as silly as the vapid modern belief that fairies, elves and goblins are a set of well-intentioned folk. The truth is that a witch or wizard was—and is—one who by compact with the powers of darkness attains to power not given to the ordinary man, and uses that power for malevolent purposes; for a part of the compact is that he shall love evil and hate good. Very well. Et puis? Just as your modern gunmen of America and the apaches of Paris drug themselves with cocaine in order to stifle any flickering remnant of morality and remorse before committing some crime of monstrous ruthlessness, so did—and do—the witch and wizard drug themselves with this accursed ointment that they might utterly forget the still small voice of conscience urging them to hold their hands from evil unalloyed. It was not merely magic which called for this anointing, it was practical psychology and physic which prescribed it, my friend.”
“Yes, well—”
“By damn,” he hurried on, heedless of my interruption, “I think that we have congratulated ourselves all too soon. Mademoiselle Diane is not free from the wicked influence of those so evil men; she is very far from free, and tonight, unconsciously and unwillingly, perhaps, but nevertheless surely, she will anoint herself with this witch prescription, and, her body shining like something long dead and decomposing, will go to them.”
“But what are we to do? Is there anything—”
“But yes; of course. You will please remain here, as close as may be to her door, and if she leaves the house, you follow her. Me, I have important duties to perform, and I shall do them quickly. Anon I shall return, and if she has not gone by then, I shall join you in your watch. If—”
“Yes, that’s just it. Suppose she leaves while you’re away,” I broke in. “How am I to get in touch with you? How will you know where to come?”
“Call this number on the ’phone,” he answered, scratching a memorandum on a card. “Say but ‘She is gone and I go with her,’ and I shall come at once. For safety’s sake I would suggest that you take a double pocketful of rice, and scatter it along your way. I shall see the small white grains and follow hard upon your trail as though you were a hare and I a hound.”
OBEDIENT TO HIS ORDERS, I mounted to the second floor and took my station where I could see the door of Diane’s room. Half an hour or more I waited in silence, feeling decidedly foolish, yet fearing to ignore his urgent request. At length the soft creaking of hinges brought me alert as a fine pencil of light cut through the darkened hall. Walking so softly that her steps were scarcely audible, Diane Wickwire came from her room. From throat to insteps she was muffled in a purple cloak, while a veil or scarf of some dark-colored stuff was bound about her head, concealing the bright beacon of her glowing golden hair. Hoping desperately that I should not lose her in the delay, I dialed the number which de Grandin had given me and as a man’s voice challenged “Hello?” repeated the formula he had stipulated:
“She goes, and I go with her.”
Then, without waiting for reply, I clashed the monophone back into its hooks, snatched up my hat and topcoat, seized a heavy blackthorn cane and crept as silently as possible down the stairs behind the girl.
She was fumbling at the front door lock as I reached the stairway’s turn, and I flattened myself against the wall, lest she descry me; then, as she let herself through the portal, I dashed down the stairs, stepped soft-footedly across the porch, and took up the pursuit.
She hastened onward through the thickening dusk, her muffled figure but a faint shade darker than the surrounding gloom, led me through one side street to another, gradually bending her way toward the old East End of town where ramshackle huts of squatters, abandoned factories, unofficial dumping-grounds and occasional tumbledown and long-vacated dwellings of the better sort disputed for possession of the neighborhood with weed-choked fields of yellow clay and partly inundated swamp land—the desolate backwash of the tide of urban growth which every city has as a memento of its early settlers’ bad judgment of the path of progress.
Where field and swamp and desolate tin-can-and-ash-strewn dumping-ground met in dreary confluenc
e, there stood the ruins of a long-abandoned church. Immediately after the Civil War, when rising Irish immigration had populated an extensive shantytown down on the flats, a young priest, more ambitious than practical, had planted a Catholic parish, built a brick chapel with funds advanced by sympathetic co-religionists from the richer part of town, and attempted to minister to the spiritual needs of the newcomers. But prosperity had depopulated the mean dwellings of his flock who, offered jobs on the railway or police force, or employment in the mills then being built on the other side of town, had moved their humble household gods to new locations, leaving him a shepherd without sheep. Soon he, too, had gone and the church stood vacant for two-score years or more, time and weather and ruthless vandalism taking toll of it till now it stood amid the desolation which surrounded it like a lich amid a company of sprawling skeletons, its windows broken out, its doors unhinged, its roof decayed and fallen in, naught but its crumbling walls and topless spire remaining to bear witness that it once had been a house of prayer.
The final grains of rice were trickling through my fingers as I paused before the barren ruin, wondering what my next move was to be. Diane had entered through the doorless portal at the building’s front, and the darkness of the black interior had swallowed her completely. I had a box of matches in my pocket, but they, I knew, would scarcely give me light enough to find my way about the ruined building. The floors were broken in a dozen places, I was sure, and where they were not actually displaced they were certain to be so weakened with decay that to step on them would be courting swift disaster. I had no wish to break a leg and spend the night, and perhaps the next day and the next, in an abandoned ruin where the chances were that anyone responding to my cries for help would only come to knock me on the head and rob me.
But there was no way out but forward. I had promised Jules de Grandin that I’d keep Diane in sight, and so, with a sigh which was half a prayer to the God of Foolish Men, I grasped my stick more firmly and stepped across the threshold of the old, abandoned church.
The Dark Angel Page 69
