Sergeant Rosswell and Private Shoup were detailed to the case and started in pursuit of the abductors on their motorcycles, encountering no one along the road who would admit having seen the company of mysterious mounted gangsters. About two miles this side of the Cloisters, palatial country place of Tandy Van Riper, well-known New York financier, according to Trooper Shoup, he and his companion came upon the kidnapers, riding at almost incredible speed. Drawing their pistols, the state policemen, called on the fleeing men to halt, and receiving no reply, opened fire. Their bullets, though fired at almost point-blank range, seemed to take no effect, Trooper Shoup declares, and the leader of the criminal band turned about, and charged him and his companion, deliberately riding Sergeant Rosswell down. According to Shoup, a shot fired by Rosswell, directly at the horse which was about to trample him, took no effect, though the pistol was less than three feet from the beast’s breast. Shoup is suffering from a broken arm, three fractured ribs and a severe bruise on the head, which, he alleges, was dealt him when one of the thugs struck him with the flat of a sword.
Physicians at Mercy Hospital, believing Shoup’s description of the criminals and the fight to be colored by the beating he received, intimate that he is not wholly responsible for his statements, as he positively declares that every member of the band of criminals was fully arrayed in black armor and armed with a long sword.
Working on the theory that the kidnapers are a band of Italian desperadoes who assumed this fantastic disguise, strong posses of state police are scouring the neighborhood. It is thought the little Stebbens boy was abducted by mistake, as the family are known to be in very moderate circumstances and the chances of obtaining a ransom for the lad are slight.
“You see?” de Grandin asked as I put the paper down with an exclamation of dismay.
“No. I’m hanged if I do,” I shot back. “The whole gruesome business is beyond me. Is there any connection between what we saw at the Cloisters last night and—”
“Mort d’un rat noir, is there connection between the serpent and his venom—the Devil and the flames of hell?” he cried. “Yes, my friend, there is such a connection as will take all our skill and courage to break, I fear. Meantime, let us hasten, let us fly to the City Hospital. There is that there which shall prove more than a surprise to those vile miscreants, those forsworn servants of the Lord, when next we see them, mon vieux.”
“What in the world are you talking about?” I demanded. “Whom do you mean by ‘forsworn servants of the Lord’?”
“Ha, good friend,” he returned, his face working with emotion, “you will know in due time, if what I suspect is true. If not—” He raised his narrow shoulders in a fatalistic shrug as he snatched his overcoat.
For upward of half an hour I cooled my heels in the frosty winter air while de Grandin was closeted in conference with the superintendent of the City Hospital, but when he came out he was wearing such a smile of serene happiness that I had not the heart to berate him for leaving me outside so long.
“And now, kind friend, if you will take me, so far as the procathedral, I shall have done the last of my errands, and we may begin our journey to the Cloisters,” he announced as he leaped nimbly into the seat beside me.
The Right Reverend De Motte Gregory, suffragan bishop of our diocese, was seated at his desk in the synod house as de Grandin and I were announced, and graciously consented to see us at once. He had been a more than ordinarily successful railway executive, a licensed legal practitioner and a certified public accountant before he assumed the cloth, and his worldly training had taught him the value of time and words, both his own and others’, and rarely did he waste either.
“Monsieur l’Eveque,” de Grandin began after he had greeted the gray-haired cleric with a rigidly formal European bow, “in the garden of your beautiful church there grows a bush raised from a sprig of the Holy Thorn of Glastonbury—the tree which sprang from the staff of the blessed Joseph of Arimathea when he landed in Britain after his voyage and travail. Monseigneur, we are come to beg a so little spray of that shrub from you.”
The bishop’s eyes opened wide with surprise, but de Grandin gave him no time for reflection.
“Sir,” he hurried on, “it is not that we wish to adorn our own gardens, nor yet to put it to a shameful commercial use, but we need it—need it most urgently in a matter of great importance which is toward—”
Leaving his chair he leaned across the bishop’s wide rosewood desk and began whispering rapidly in the churchman’s ear.
The slightly annoyed frown which mounted to the bishop’s face as the little Frenchman took the liberty changed slowly to a look of incredulity, then to an expression of amazement, “You really believe this?” he asked at length.
“More, Monseigneur, I almost know it,” de Grandin assured him earnestly, “and if I am mistaken, as I hope I am but fear I am not, the holy thorn can do no harm, while it may—” He paused, waving his hand in an expressive gesture.
Bishop Gregory touched one of the row of call-buttons on his desk. “You shall have the cutting from the tree, and be very welcome,” he assured my friend, “but I join with you in the hope you are mistaken.”
“Grand merci, Monseigneur!” de Grandin acknowledged with another bow. “Mordieu, but your great heart is equaled only by your massive intellect! Half the clergy would have said I raved had I told them one small quarter of what I related to you.”
The bishop smiled a little wearily as he put the sprig of thorn-bush into de Grandin’s hand. “Half the clergy, like half the laity, know so much that they know next to nothing,” he replied.
“Name of a name,” de Grandin swore enthusiastically as we turned toward the Cloisters, “and they say he is a worldly man! Pardieu, when will the foolish ones learn that the man who dedicates worldly wisdom to heaven’s service is the most valuable servant of all?”
VI
DUNROE O’SHANE WAS ATTIRED in a long, brown-linen smock and hard at work on her drawing when we arrived at the Cloisters shortly before luncheon. She seemed none the worse for her fainting fit of the previous night, and the company were rather inclined to rally de Grandin on the serious diagnosis he had made before rushing away to secure medicine for her.
I was amazed at the good-natured manner in which he took their chaffing, but a hasty whisper in my ear explained his self-control. “Apes’ anger and fools’ laughter are alike to be treated with scorn, my friend,” he told me. “We—you and I—have work to do here, and we must not let the hum of pestilent gnats drive us from our purpose.”
Bridge and dancing filled the evening from dinner to midnight, and the party broke up shortly after twelve with the understanding that all were to be ready to attend Thanksgiving services in the near-by parish church at eleven o’clock next morning.
“Ts-s-st, Friend Trowbridge, do not disrobe,” de Grandin ordered as I was about to shed my dinner clothes and prepare for bed; “we must be ready for an instant sortie from now until cockcrow tomorrow, I fear.”
“What’s this all about, anyhow?” I demanded a little irritably, as I dropped on the bed and wrapped myself in a blanket. “There’s been more confounded mystery here than I ever saw in a harmless old house, what with Miss O’Shane making funny drawings, throwing fainting-fits, and bugles sounding in the courtyard, and—”
“Ha, harmless, did you say?” he cut in with a grim smile. “My friend, if this house be harmless, then prussic acid is a healthful drink. Attend me with care, if you please. Do you know what this place is?”
“Certainly I do,” I responded with some heat. “It’s an old Cypriote villa brought to America and—”
“It was once a chapter house of the Knights of the Temple,” he interrupted shortly, “and a Cyprian chapter house, at that. Does that mean nothing to you? Do you not know the Knights Templars my friend?”
“I ought to,” I replied. “I’ve been one for the last fifteen years.”
“Oh, la, la!” he laughed. “You will sure
ly slay me, my friend. You good, kind American gentlemen who dress in pretty uniforms and carry swords are no more like the old Knights of the Temple of Solomon than are these other good men who wear red tarbooshes and call themselves Nobles of the Mystic Shrine like the woman-stealing, pilgrim-murdering Arabs of the desert.
“Listen: The history of the Templars’ order is a long one, but we can touch its high spots in a few words. Formed originally for the purpose of fighting the Infidel in Palestine and aiding poor pilgrims to the Holy City, they did yeomen service in the cause of God; but when Europe forsook its crusades and the Saracens took Jerusalem, the knights, whose work was done, did not disband. Not they. Instead, they clung to their various houses in Europe, and grew fat, lazy and wicked in a life of leisure, supported by the vast wealth they had amassed from gifts from grateful pilgrims and the spoils of battle. In 1191 they bought the Isle of Cyprus from Richard I of England and established several chapter houses there, and it was in those houses that unspeakable things were done. Cyprus is one of the most ancient dwelling places of religion, and of her illegitimate sister, superstition. It was there that the worshipers of Cytherea, goddess of beauty and of love—and other things less pleasant—had their stronghold. Before the Romans held the land it was drenched with unspeakable orgies. The very name of the island has passed into an invidious adjective in your language—do you not say a thing is Cyprian when you would signify it is lascivious? Certainly.”
“But—”
“Hear me,” he persisted, waving aside my interruption. “This Cytherea was but another form of Aphrodite, and Aphrodite, in turn, was but another name for the Eastern Goddess Astarte or Istar. You begin to comprehend? Her rites were celebrated with obscene debaucheries, but her worshipers became such human swine that only the most revolting inversions of natural things would satisfy them. The flaunting and sacrifices of virtue were not enough; they must need sacrifice—literally—those things which impersonated virtue—little, innocent children and chaste young maidens. Their foul altars must run red with the blood of innocence. These things were traditions in Cyprus long before the Knights Templars took up their abode there, and, as one cannot sleep among dogs without acquiring fleas, so the knights, grown slothful and lazy, with nothing to do but think up ways of spending their time and wealth, became addicts to the evils of the earlier, heathen ways of their new home. Thoughts are things, my friend, and the evil thoughts of the old Cyprians took root, and flourished in the brains of those unfortunate old warrior-monks whose hands were no longer busy with the sword and whose lips no longer did service to the Most High God.
“You doubt it? Consider: Though Philip IV and Clement V undoubtedly did Jacques de Molay to death for no better reason than that they might cast lots for his raiment, the fact remains that many of the knights confessed to dreadful sacrileges committed in the chapter houses—to children slain on the altars once dedicated to God, all in the name of the heathen goddess Cytherea.
“This very house wherein we sit was once the scene of such terrible things as those. About its stones must linger the presence of the evil men, the renegade priests of God, who once did them. These discarnate intelligences have lain dormant since the fourteenth century, but for some reason, which we will not now discuss, I believe they have wakened into physical beings once more. It was their reincarnated spirits we saw flitting past the door last night while Mademoiselle Dunroe lay in a trance; it was they who took the little boy from his grandmother’s arms; it was they who slew the brave policeman; it is they who will soon attempt to perform the hideous inversion of the mass.”
“See here, de Grandin,” I expostulated, “there have been some deucedly queer goings-on here, I’ll admit, but when you try to tell me that a lot of old soldier-monks have come to life again and are traipsing around the countryside stealing children, you’re piling it on a bit too thick. Now, if there were any evidence to prove that—”
“Silence!” his sharp whisper brought me up with a start as he rose from his chair and crept, catlike, toward the door, opening it a crack and glancing down the darkened corridor outside. Then:
“Come, my friend,” he bade in a low breath, “come and see what I behold.”
As he swung the door back I glanced down the long, stone-paved gallery, dark as Erebus save as cancellated bars of moonlight shot obliquely down from the tiny mullioned windows piercing the dome, and made out a gliding, wraithlike figure in trailing white garments.
“Dunroe O’Shane!” I murmured dazedly, watching the retreating form slipping soundlessly down the dark balcony. The wavering light of the candle she bore in her upraised hand cast gigantic shadows against the carved balustrade and the sculptured uprights of the interlaced arches supporting the gallery above, and hobgoblin shades seemed to march along beside her like an escort of unclean genii from the legions of Eblis. I watched openmouthed with amazement as she slipped down the passage, her feet, obscured in a haze of trailing draperies, treading noiselessly, her free hand stretched outward toward the balcony rail. The next moment the gallery was deserted; abruptly as a motion picture fades from the screen when the projecting light winks out, Dunroe O’Shane and her flickering rushlight vanished from our sight.
“Quick, Friend Trowbridge,” the Frenchman whispered, “after her—it was through that further door she went!”
Quietly as possible we ran down the gallery, paused before the high, pointed-topped door and wrenched at its wrought-iron handle. The oaken panels held firm, for the door was latched on the farther side.
“Ten thousand little devils!” de Grandin cried in vexation. “We are stalemated!”
For a moment I thought he would hurl himself against the four-inch planks of the door in impotent fury, but he collected himself with an effort, and drawing a flashlight from his jacket pocket, handed it to me with the command, “Hold the light steady on the keyhole, my friend.” The next instant he sank to his knees, produced two short lengths of thin steel wire and began methodically picking the lock.
“Ha,” he exclaimed, as he rose and dusted the knees of his trousers, “those old ones built for strength, Friend Trowbridge, but they knew little of subtlety. Little did that ancient locksmith dream his handiwork would one day meet with Jules de Grandin.”
The unbarred door swung inward beneath his touch, and we stepped across the stone sill of a vast, dungeon-dark apartment.
“Mademoiselle?” he called softly. “Mademoiselle Dunroe—are you here?”
He shot the searching beam of his flashlight hither and yon about the big room, disclosing high walls of heavy carved oak, a great canopy bed, several cathedral chairs and one or two massive, iron-bound chests—but found no living thing.
“Mordieu, but this is strange!” he muttered, sinking to his knees to flash his light beneath the high-carved bed.
“Into this room she did most certainly come but a few little minutes ago, gliding like a spirit, and now, pouf, out of this same room she does vanish like a ghost!”
Though somewhat larger, the room was similar to most other bedchambers in the house, paneled with rather crudely carved, age-blackened wood for the entire height of its walls, ceiled with great beams which still bore the marks of the adz, and floored with octagonal marble tile of alternate black and white. We went over every inch of it, searching for some secret exit, for, save the one by which we had entered, there was no door in the place and the two great windows were of crude, semitransparent glass let into metal frames securely cemented to the surrounding stones. Plainly, nobody had left the room that way.
At the farther end of the apartment stood a stall wardrobe, elaborately decorated with carved scenes of chase and battle. Opening one of the double doors letting into the press, de Grandin inspected the interior, which, like the outside was carved in every available place. “Um?” he said, surveying the walls under his flashlight. “It may be that this is but the anteroom to—ha!”
He broke off, pointing dramatically to a carved group in the center of one
of the back panels. It represented a procession of hunters returning from their sport, deer, boar and other animals lashed to long poles which the huntsmen bore shoulder-high. The men were filing through the arched entrance to a castle, the great doors of which swung back to receive them. One of the doorleaves, apparently, had warped loose from the body of the plank from which it was carved.
“C’est très adroit, n’est-ce-pas?” my companion asked with a delighted grin. “Had I not seen such things before, it might have imposed on me. As it is—”
Reaching forward, he gave the loosened door a sharp, quick push, and the entire back of the wardrobe slipped upward revealing a narrow opening.
“And what have we here?” de Grandin asked, playing his spotlight through the secret doorway.
Straight ahead for three or four feet ran a flagstone sill, worn, smooth in the center, as though with the shuffling tread of many feet. Beyond that began a flight of narrow, stone stairs which spiraled steeply down a shaft like the flue of a monster chimney.
De Grandin turned to me, and his little, heart-shaped face was graver than I had ever seen it.
“Trowbridge, dear, kind friend,” he said in a voice so low and hoarse I could scarcely make out his words, “we have faced many perils together—perils of spirit and perils of flesh—and always we have triumphed. This time we may not. If I do not mistake rightly, there lies below these steps an evil more ancient and potent than any we have hitherto met. I have armed us against it with the weapons of religion and of science, but—I do not know that they will avail. Say, then, will you turn back now and go to your bed? I shall think no less of you, for no man should be compelled to face this thing unknowingly, and there is now no time to explain. If I survive, I shall return and tell you all. If I come not back with daylight, know that I have perished in my failure, and think kindly of me as one who loved you deeply. Will you not now say adieu, old friend?” He extended his hand and I saw the long, smooth-jointed fingers were trembling with suppressed nervousness.
The Horror on the Links Page 70
