The Best of Jules de Grandin

by Seabury Quinn

  “Don’t be talkin’, sor,” Costello warned. “There’s some one comin’!”

  The door across the lobby opened slowly, and through it, bearing a sacristan’s taper, came a cowled and surpliced figure, an ecclesiastical-looking figure which stepped with solemn pace to the foot of the staircase, sank low in genuflection, then mounted to the landing and lit the candles on the right, retreated, genuflected again, then lit companion candles at the left.

  As the wicks took fire and spread a little patch of flickering luminance amid the dark, my first impression was confirmed. The box-like object on the stairs was an altar, clothed and vested in accordance, with the rubric of the Orthodox Greek Church; at each end burned a trinity of sable candles which gave off an unpleasant smell, and in the center stood a gilt-framed ikon.

  Now the light fell full upon the sacristan’s face and with a start I recognized Dimitri, the burly Russian Renouard had felled the night we first met Konstantin and Sonia.

  The leering altar-wait retired, backed reverently from the parodied sanctuary, returned to the room whence he had entered, and in a moment we heard the sound of chanting mingled with the sharp, metallic clicking of a censer’s chains.

  Again Dimitri entered, this time swinging a smoking incense-pot, and close behind him, vested as a Russian priest, walked a tall, impressive figure. Above his sacerdotal garb his face stood out sharply in the candles’ lambent light, smooth-shaven, long-jawed, swarthy of complexion. His coal-black eyes were deep-set under curiously arched brows; his lusterless black hair was parted in the middle and brushed abruptly backward, leaving a down-pointing triangle in the center of his high and narrow forehead which indicated the commencement of a line which was continued in the prominent bowed nose and sharp, out-jutting chin. It was a striking face, a proud face, a face of great distinction, but a face so cruel and evil it reminded me at once of every pictured image of the devil which I had ever seen. Held high between his upraised hands the evil-looking man bore carefully a large chalice of silver-gilt with a paten fitted over it for cover.

  The floating cloud of incense stung my nostrils. I sniffed and fought away a strong impulse to sneeze. And all the while my memory sought to classify that strong and pungent odor. Suddenly I knew. On a vacation trip to Egypt I had spent an evening at an Arab camp out in the desert and watched them build their fires of camel-dung. That was it, the strong smell of ammonia, the faintly sickening odor of the carbonizing fumet!

  Chanting slowly in a deep, melodious voice, his attendant chiming in with the responses, the mock-priest marched to the altar and placed the sacred vessels on the fair cloth where the candle-rays struck answering gleams from their cheap gilding. Then with a deep obeisance he retreated, turned, and strode toward the doorway whence he came.

  Three paces from the portal he came to pause and struck his hands together in resounding claps, once, twice, three times; and though I had no intimation what I was about to see, I felt my heart beat faster and a curious weakness spread through all my limbs as I waited breathlessly.

  Into the faint light of the lobby, vague and nebulous as a phantom-form half seen, half apprehended, stepped Sonia. Slowly, with an almost regal dignity she moved. She was enfolded from white throat to insteps in a long and clinging cloak of heavily embroidered linen which one beautiful, slim hand clutched tight round her at the breast. Something familiar yet queerly strange about the garment struck me as she paused. I’d seen its like somewhere, but never on a woman—the candlelight struck full upon it, and I knew. It was a Greek priest’s white-linen over-vestment, an alb, for worked upon it in threads of gold and threads of silver and threads of iridescent color were double-barred Lorraine crosses and three mystic Grecian letters.

  “Are you prepared?” the pseudo-priest demanded as he bent his lusterless black eyes upon the girl’s pale face.

  “I am prepared,” she answered slowly. “Though this be damnation to my soul and everlasting corruption to my body, I am prepared, if only you will promise me that he shall go unharmed!”

  “Think well,” the man admonished, “this rite may be performed only with the aid of a woman pure in heart—a woman in whom there can be found no taint or stain of sin—who gives herself willingly and without reserve, to act the part I call on you to play. Are you such an one?”

  “I am such an one,” she answered steadily, though a ripple of heart-breaking horror ran across her blenching lips, even as they formed the words.

  “And you make the offer willingly, without reserve?” he taunted. “You know what it requires? What the consequences to your flesh and soul must be?” With a quick motion he fixed his fingers in her short, blond hair and bent her head back till he gazed directly down into her upturned eyes. “Willingly?” he grated. “Without reserve?”

  “Willingly,” she answered with a choking sob. “Yes, willingly, ten thousand times ten thousand times I offer up my soul and body without a single reservation, if you will promise—”

  “Then let us be about it!” he broke in with a low, almost soundless laugh.

  Dimitri, who had crouched before the altar, descended with his censer and bowed before the girl till his forehead touched the floor. Then he arose and wrapped the loose ends of his stole about him and passed the censer to the other man, while from a fold of his vestments he drew a strange metal plate shaped like an angel with five-fold outspread wings, and this he waved above her head while she moved slowly toward the altar and the other man walked backward, facing her and censing her with reeking fumes at every step.

  A gleam of golden slippers shone beneath her cloak as she approached the lowest of the altar steps, but as she halted for a moment she kicked them quickly off and mounted barefoot to the sanctuary, where she paused a breathless second and blessed herself, but in reverse, commencing at a point below her breast and making the sign of the cross upside-down.

  Then on her knees she fell, placing both hands upon the altar-edge and dropping her head between them, and groveled there in utter self-abasement while in a low but steady voice she repeated words which sent the chills of horror through me.

  I had not looked inside a Greek book for more than thirty years, but enough of early learning still remained for me to translate what she sang so softly in a firm, sweet voice:

  My soul doth magnify the Lord,

  And my spirit hath rejoiced

  In God my Savior,

  For He hath regarded the lowliness

  Of His handmaiden …

  The canticle was finished. She rose and dropped the linen cloak behind her and stretched her naked body on the altar, where she lay beneath the candles’ softly glowing light like some exquisite piece of carven Carrara marble, still, lifeless, cold.

  Chalice and paten were raised and placed upon the living altar-cloth, their hard, metallic weight denting the soft breasts and exquisite torso, their silver-gilt reflecting little halos of brightness on the milk-white skin. The vested man’s voice rose and fell in what seemed to me an endless chant, his kneeling deacon’s heavy guttural intoning the response. On, endlessly on, went the deep chant of celebration, pausing a breathless moment now and then as the order of the service directed that the celebrant should kiss the consecrated place of sacrifice, then hot and avid lips pressed shrinking, wincing flesh.

  Now the rite was ended. The priest raised high the chalice with its hallowed contents and turned his back upon the living altar with a scream of cachinnating laughter. “Lucifer, Lord of the World and Prince Supreme of all the Powers of the Air, I hold thy adversary in my hands!” he cried. “To Thee the Victory, Mighty Master, Puissant God of Hell—behold I sacrifice to Thee the Nazarene! His blood be on our heads and on our children’s—”

  “Eh bien, Monsieur, I know not of your offspring, but blood assuredly shall be on your head, and that right quickly!” said Jules de Grandin, appearing suddenly in the darkness at the altar-side. A stab of lurid flame, a sharp report, and Konstantin fell forward on his face, a growing smear of blood-stain
on his forehead.

  A second shot roared answer to the first, and the crouching man in deacon’s robes threw up both hands wildly, as though to hold himself by empty air, then leaned slowly to the left, slid down the altar steps and lay upon the floor, a blotch of moveless shadow in the candlelight.

  Inspector Renouard appeared from the altar’s farther side, his smoking service revolver in his hand, a smile of satisfaction on his face. “Tiens, my aim is true as yours, mon Jules,” he announced matter-of-factly. “Shall I give the woman one as well?”

  “By no means, no,” de Grandin answered quickly. “Give her rather the charity of covering for her all-charming nudity, my friend. Quick, spread the robe over her.”

  Renouard obeyed, and as he dropped the desecrated alb on the still body I saw a look of wonder come into his face. “She is unconscious,” he breathed. “She faints, my Jules; will you revive her?”

  “All in good time,” the other answered. “First let us look at this.” He stirred the prostrate Konstantin with the toe of his boot.

  How it happened I could not understand, for de Grandin’s bullet had surely pierced his frontal bone, inflicting an instantly-fatal wound, but the prone man stirred weakly and whimpered like a child in pain.

  “Have mercy!” he implored. “I suffer. Give me a second shot to end my misery. Quick, for pity’s sake; I am in agony!”

  De Grandin smiled unpleasantly. “So the lieutenant of the firing-party thought,” he answered. “So the corporal who administered le coup de grâce believed, my friend. Them you could fool; you can not make a monkey out of Jules de Grandin. No; by no means. Lie here and die, my excellent adorer of the Devil, but do not take too long in doing it, for we fire the building within the quarter-hour, and if you have not finished dying by that time, tiens”—he raised his shoulders in a shrug—“the fault is yours, not ours. No.”

  “Hi, there, Doctor de Grandin, sor; don’t be after settin’ fire to this bloody devils’ roost wid me an Doctor Trowbridge cooped up in here!” Costello roared.

  “Morbleu,” the little Frenchman laughed as he unlocked our prison, “upon occasion I have roasted both of you, my friends, but luckily I did not do it actually tonight. Come, let us hasten. We have work to do.”

  Within the suite which Konstantin had occupied in the deserted house we found sufficient blankets to wrap Sonia against the outside cold, and having thus prepared her for the homeward trip, we set fire to the ancient house in a dozen different spots and hastened toward my waiting car.

  Red, mounting flames illuminated our homeward way, but we made no halt to watch our handiwork, for Sonia was moaning in delirium, and her hands and face were hot and dry as though she suffered from typhoid.

  “To bed with her,” de Grandin ordered when we reached my house. “We shall administer hyoscine and later give her strychinia and brandy; meanwhile we must inform her husband that the missing one is found and safe. Yes; he will be pleased to hear us say so, I damn think.”

  8. The Tangled Skein Unraveled

  Jules de Grandin, smelling most agreeably of Giboulées de Mas toilet water and dusting-powder, extremely dapper-looking in his dinner clothes and matching black-pearl stud and cuff-links, decanted a fluid ounce or so of Napoleon brandy from the silver-mounted pinch bottle standing handily upon the tabouret beside his easy-chair, passed the wide-mouthed goblet beneath his nose, sniffing the ruby liquor’s aroma with obvious approval, then sipped a thimbleful with evident appreciation.

  “Attend me,” he commanded, fixing small bright eyes in turn on Donald Tanis and his wife, Detective Sergeant Costello, Renouard and me. “When dear Madame Sonia told us of her strange adventures with this Konstantin, I was amazed, no less. It is not given every woman to live through such excitement and retain her faculties, much less to sail at last into the harbor of a happy love, as she has done. Her father’s fate also intrigued me. I’d heard of his strange suicide and how he did denounce the Bolshevik spy, so I was well prepared to join with Monsieur Tanis and tell her that she was mistaken when she declared the man who kidnapped her was Konstantin. I knew the details of his apprehension and his trial; also I knew he fell before the firing-squad.

  “Ah, but Jules de Grandin has the open mind. To things which others call impossible he gives consideration. So when I heard the tale of Konstantin’s execution at Vincennes, and heard how he had been at pains to learn if they would give him the mercy-shot, and when I further heard how he did not die at once, although eight rifle-balls had pierced his breast; I thought, and thought right deeply. Here were the facts—” he checked them off upon his outspread fingers:

  “Konstantin was Russian; Konstantin had been shot by eight skilled riflemen—four rifles in the firing-squad of twelve were charged with blanks—he had not died at once, so a mercy-shot was given, and this seemed to kill him to death. So far, so ordinary. But ah, there were extraordinary factors in the case, as well. Oui-da. Of course. Before he suffered execution Konstantin had said some things which showed he might have hope of returning once again to wreak grave mischief on those he hated. Also, Madame Sonia had deposed it had been he who kidnapped her. She was unlikely to have been mistaken. Women do not make mistakes in matters of that kind. No. Assuredly not. Also, we must remember, Konstantin was Russian. That is of great importance.

  “Russia is a mixture, a potpourri of mutual conflicting elements. Neither European nor Asiatic, neither wholly civilized nor savage, modern on the surface, she is unchanging as the changeless East in which her taproots lie. Always she has harbored evil things which were incalculably old when the first deep stones of Egypt’s mighty pyramids were laid.

  “Now, together with the werewolf and the vampire, the warlock and the witch, the Russian knows another demon-thing called callicantzaros, who is a being neither wholly man nor devil, but an odd and horrifying mixture of the two. Some call them foster-children of the Devil, stepsons of Satan; some say they are the progeny of evil, sin-soaked women and the incubi who are their paramours. They are imbued with semi-immortality, also; for though they may be killed like other men, they must be slain with a single fatal blow; a second stroke, although it would at once kill ordinary humankind, restores their lives—and their power for wickedness.

  “So much for the means of killing a callicantzaros—and the means to be avoided. To continue:

  “Every so often, preferably once each year about the twenty-fifth of February, the olden feast of St. Walburga, or at the celebration of St. Peter’s Chains on August 1, he must perform the sacrilege known as the Black Mass or Mass to Lucifer, and hold thereby Satanic favor and renew his immortality.

  “Now this Black Mass must be performed with certain rules and ceremonies, and these must be adhered to to the letter. The altar is the body of an unclothed woman, and she must lend herself with willingness to the dreadful part she plays. If she be tricked or made to play the part by force, the rite is null and void. Moreover, she must be without a taint or spot of wickedness, a virtuous woman, pure in heart—to find a one like that for such a service is no small task, you will agree.

  “When we consider this we see why Konstantin desired Madame Sonia for wife. She was a Russian like himself, and Russian women are servient to their men. Also, by beatings and mistreatment he soon could break what little independence she possessed, and force her to his will. Thus he would be assured of the ‘altar’ for his Devil’s Mass.

  “But when he had procured the ‘altar’ the work was but begun. The one who celebrated this unclean rite must do so fully vested as a priest, and he must wear the sacred garments which have been duly consecrated. Furthermore he must use the consecrated elements at the service, and also the sacred vessels.

  “If the Host can be stolen from a Latin church or the presanctified elements from an altar of the Greek communion, it is necessary only that the ritual be fulfilled, the benediction said, and then defilement of the elements be made in insult of the powers of Heaven and to the satisfaction of the Evil One. But if the
Eucharist is unobtainable, then it is necessary to have a duly ordained priest, one who is qualified to cause the mystery of transubstantiation to take place, to say the office. If this form be resorted to, there is a further awful rite to be performed. A little baby, most usually a boy, who has not been baptized, but whose baby lips are too young and pure for speech and whose soft feet have never made a step, must be taken, and as the celebrant pronounces ‘Hoc est enim corpus meum,’ he cuts the helpless infant’s throat and drains the gushing lifeblood into the chalice, thus mingling it with the transmuted wine.

  “It was with knowledge of these facts that I heard Father Pophosepholos report his loss, and when he said the elements were stolen I did rejoice most greatly, for then I knew no helpless little one would have to die upon the altar of the Devil’s Mass.

  “And so, with Madame Sonia gone, with the elements and vestments stolen from St. Basil’s Church and with my dark suspicions of this Konstantin’s true character, I damn knew what was planned, but how to find this server of the Devil, this stepson of Satan, in time to stop the sacrilege? Ah, that was the question! Assuredly.

  “And then came Sun Ah Poy. A bad man he had been, a very damn-bad man, as Friend Renouard can testify; but China is an old, old land and her sons are steeped in ancient lore. For generations more than we can count they’ve known the demon Ch’ing Shih and his ghostly brethren, who approximate the vampires of the West, and greatly do they fear him. They hate and loathe him, too, and there lay our salvation; for wicked as he was, Doctor Sun would have no dealings with this cursed Konstantin, but came to warn us and to tell us where he might be found, although his coming cost his life.