Introductions over, Miss Leigh looked from one of us to the other with something like embarrassment in her eyes. “If—” she began, but de Grandin divined her purpose, and broke in:
“Mademoiselle, a short time since, we had the good fortune to rescue Monsieur your fiancé from a dog which I do not think was any dog at all. That same creature, I might add, destroyed a gentleman who had attended Monsieur Maxwell’s dinner within ten minutes of the time we drove it off. Furthermore, Monsieur Maxwell is under the impression that this dog-thing talked to him while it sought to slay him. From what we overheard of your message on the telephone, we think you hold the key to this mystery. You may speak freely in our presence, for I am Jules de Grandin, physician and occultist, and my friend, Doctor Trowbridge, has most commendable discretion.”
The young woman smiled, and the transformation in her taut, strained face was startling. “Thank you,” she replied; “if you’re an occultist you will understand, and neither doubt me nor demand explanations of things I can’t explain.”
She dropped cross-legged to the hearth rug, as naturally as though she were more used to sitting that way than reclining in a chair, and we caught the gleam of a great square garnet on her forefinger as she extended her hand to Maxwell.
“Hold my hand while I’m talking, John,” she bade. “It may be for the last time.” Then, as he made a gesture of dissent, abruptly:
“I can not marry you—or anyone,” she announced.
Maxwell opened his lips to protest, but no sound came. I stared at her in wonder, trying futilely to reconcile the agitation she had shown when telephoning with her present deadly, apathetic calm.
Jules de Grandin yielded to his curiosity. “Why not, Mademoiselle?” he asked. “Who has forbid the banns?”
She shook her head dejectedly and turned a sad-eyed look upon him as she answered: “It’s just the continuation of a story which I thought was a closed chapter in my life.” For a moment she bent forward, nestling her check against young Maxwell’s hand; then:
“It began when Father was attached to the consulate in Smyrna,” she continued. “France and Turkey were both playing for advantage, and Father had to find out what they planned, so he had to hire secret agents. The most successful of them was a young Greek named George Athanasakos, who came from Crete. Why he should have taken such employment was more than we could understand; for he was well educated, apparently a gentleman, and always well supplied with money. He told us he took the work because of his hatred of the Turks, and as he was always successful in getting information, Father didn’t ask questions.
“When his work was finished he continued to call at our house as a guest, and I—I really didn’t love him, I couldn’t have, it was just infatuation, meeting him so far from home, and the water and that wonderful Smyrna moonlight, and—”
“Perfectly, Mademoiselle, one fully understands,” de Grandin supplied softly as she paused, breathless; “and then—”
“Maybe you never succumbed to moonlight and water and strange, romantic poetry and music,” she half whispered, her eyes grown wider at the recollection, “but I was only seventeen, and he was very handsome, and—and he swept me off my feet. He had the softest, most musical voice I’ve ever heard, and the things he said sounded like something written by Byron at his best. One moonlit night when we’d been rowing, he begged me to say I loved him, and—and I did. He held me in his arms and kissed my eyes and lips and throat. It was like being hypnotized and conscious at the same time. Then, just before we said good-night he told me to meet him in an old garden on the outskirts of the city where we sometimes rested when we’d been out riding. The rendezvous was made for midnight, and though I thought it queer that he should want to meet me at that time in such a place—well, girls in love don’t ask questions, you know. At least, I didn’t.
“There was a full moon the next night, and I was fairly breathless with the beauty of it all when I kept the tryst. I thought I’d come too early, for George was nowhere to be seen when I rode up, but as I jumped down from my horse and looked around I saw something moving in the laurels. It was George, and he’d thrown a cape or cloak of some sort of fur across his shoulders. He startled me dreadfully at first; for he looked like some sort of prowling beast with the animal’s head hanging half down across his face, like the beaver of an ancient helmet. It seemed to me, too, that his eyes had taken on a sort of sinister greenish tinge, but when he took me in his arms and kissed me I was reassured.
“Then he told me he was the last of a very ancient clan which had been wiped out warring with the Turks, and that it was a tradition of their blood that the woman they married take a solemn oath before the nuptials could be celebrated. Again I didn’t ask questions. It all seemed so wonderfully romantic,” she added with a pathetic little smile.
“He had another skin cloak in readiness and dropped it over my shoulders, pulling the head well forward above my face, like a hood. Then he built a little fire of dry twigs and threw some incense on it. I knelt above the fire and inhaled the aromatic smoke while he chanted some sort of invocation in a tongue I didn’t recognize, but which sounded harsh and terrible—like the snarling of a savage dog.
“What happened next I don’t remember clearly, for that incense did things to me. The old garden where I knelt seemed to fade away, and in its place appeared a wild and rocky mountain scene where I seemed walking down a winding road. Other people were walking with me, some before, some behind, some beside me, and all were clothed in cloaks of hairy skin like mine. Suddenly, as we went down the mountainside, I began to notice that my companions were dropping to all-fours, like beasts. But somehow it didn’t seem strange to me; for, without realizing it, I was running on my hands and feet, too. Not crawling, you know, but actually running—like a dog. As we neared the mountain’s foot we ran faster and faster; by the time we reached a little clearing in the heavy woods which fringed the rocky hill we were going like the wind, and I felt myself panting, my tongue hanging from my mouth.
“In the clearing other beasts were waiting for us. One great, hairy creature came trotting up to me, and I was terribly frightened at first, for I recognized it as a mountain wolf, but it nuzzled me with its black snout and licked me, and somehow it seemed like a caress—I liked it. Then it started off across the unplowed field, and I ran after it, caught up with it, and ran alongside. We came to a pool and the beast stopped to drink, and I bent over the water too, lapping it up with my tongue. Then I saw our images in the still pond, and almost died of fright, for the thing beside me was a mountain wolf, and I was a she-wolf!
“My astonishment quickly passed, however, and somehow I didn’t seem to mind having been transformed into a beast; for something deep inside me kept urging me on, on to something—I didn’t quite know what.
“When we’d drunk we trotted through a little patch of woodland and suddenly my companion sank to the ground in the underbrush and lay there, red tongue lolling from its mouth, green eyes fixed intently on the narrow, winding path beside which we were resting. I wondered what we waited for, and half rose on my haunches to look, but a low, warning growl from the thing beside me warned that something was approaching. It was a pair of farm laborers, Greek peasants I knew them to be by their dress, and they were talking in low tones and looking fearfully about, as though they feared an ambush. When they came abreast of us the beast beside me sprang—so did I.
“I’ll never forget the squeaking scream the nearer man gave as I leaped upon him, or the hopeless, terrified expression in his eyes as he tried to fight me off. But I bore him down, sank my teeth into his throat and began slowly tearing at his flesh. I could feel the blood from his torn throat welling up in my mouth, and its hot saltiness was sweeter than the most delicious wine. The poor wretch’s struggles became weaker and weaker, and I felt a sort of fierce elation. Then he ceased to fight, and I shook him several times, as a terrier shakes a rat, and when he didn’t move or struggle, I tore at his face and throat and ches
t till my hairy muzzle was one great smear of blood.
“Then, all at once, it seemed as though a sort of thick, white fog were spreading through the forest, blinding me and shutting out the trees and undergrowth and my companion beasts, even the poor boy whom I had killed, and—there I was kneeling over the embers of the dying fire in the old Smyrna garden, with the clouds of incense dying down to little curly spirals.
“George was standing across the fire from me, laughing, and the first thing I noticed was that his lips were smeared with blood.
“Something hot and salty stung my mouth, and I put my hand up to it. When I brought it down the fingers were red with a thick, sticky liquid.
“I think I must have started to scream; for George jumped over the fire and clapped his hand upon my mouth—ugh, I could taste the blood more than ever, then!—and whispered, ‘Now you are truly mine, Star of the Morning. Together we have ranged the woods in spirit as we shall one day in body, O true mate of a true vrykolakas!’
“Vrykolakas is a Greek word hard to translate into English. Literally it means ‘the restless dead’, but it also means a vampire or a werewolf, and the vrykolakas are the most dreaded of all the host of demons with which Greek peasant-legends swarm.
“I shook myself free from him. ‘Let me go; don’t touch me; I never want to see you again!’ I cried.
“‘Nevertheless, you shall see me again—and again and again—Star of the Sea!’ he answered with a mocking laugh. ‘You belong to me, now, and no one shall take you from me. When I want you I will call, and you will come to me, for’—he looked directly into my eyes, and his own seemed to merge and run together, like two pools of liquid, till they were one great disk of green fire—‘thou shalt have no other mate than me, and he who tries to come between us dies. See, I put my mark upon you!’
“He tore my riding-shirt open and pressed his lips against my side, and next instant I felt a biting sting as his teeth met in my flesh. See—”
With a frantic, wrenching gesture she snatched at the low collar of her red-silk lounging pajamas, tore the fabric asunder and exposed her ivory flesh. Three inches or so below her left axilla, in direct line with the gently swelling bulge of her firm, high breast, was a small whitened cicatrix, and from it grew a little tuft of long, grayish-brown hair, like hairs protruding from a mole, but unlike any body hairs which I had ever seen upon a human being.
“Grand Dieu,” exclaimed de Grandin softly. “Poil de loup!”
“Yes,” she agreed in a thin, hysterical whisper, “it’s wolf’s hair! I know. I cut it off and took it to a biochemist in London, and he assured me it was unquestionably the hair of a wolf. I’ve tried and tried to have the scar removed, but it’s useless. I’ve tried cautery, electrolysis, even surgery, but it disappears for only a little while, then comes again.”
For a moment it was still as death in the big dim-lighted room. The little French-gilt clock upon the mantelpiece ticked softly, quickly, like a heart that palpitates with terror, and the hissing of a burning resined log seemed loud and eery as night-wind whistling round a haunted tower. The girl folded the torn silk of her pajama jacket across her breast and pinned it into place; then, simply, desolately, as one who breaks the news of a dear friend’s death:
“So I can not marry you, you see, John, dear,” she said.
“Why?” asked the young man in a low, fierce voice. “Because that scoundrel drugged you with his devilish incense and made you think you’d turned into a wolf? Because—”
“Because I’d be your murderess if I did so,” she responded quiveringly. “Don’t you remember? He said he’d call me when he wanted me, and anyone who came between him and me would die. He’s come for me, he’s called me, John; it was he who attacked you in the fog tonight. Oh, my dear, my dear, I love you so; but I must give you up. It would be murder if I were to marry you!”
“Nonsense!” began John Maxwell bruskly. “If you think that man can—”
Outside the house, seemingly from underneath the library’s bow-window, there sounded in the rain-drenched night a wail, long-drawn, pulsating, doleful as the cry of an abandoned soul: “O-u-o—o-u-oo—o-u-o—o-u-oo!” it rose and fell, quavered and almost died away, then resurged with increased force. “O-u-o—o-u-o-o—o-u-o—o-u-oo!”
The woman on the hearth rug cowered like a beaten beast, clutching frantically with fear-numbed fingers at the drugget’s pile, half crawling, half writhing toward the brass bars where the cheerful fire burned brightly. “Oh,” she whimpered as the mournful ululation died away, “that’s he; he called me once before today; now he’s come again, and—”
“Mademoiselle, restrain yourself,” de Grandin’s sharp, whip-like order cut through her mounting terror and brought her back to something like normality. “You are with friends,” he added in a softer tone; “three of us are here, and we are a match for any sacré loup-garou that ever killed a sheep or made night hideous with his howling. Parbleu, but I shall say damn yes. Did I not, all single-handed, already put him to flight once tonight? But certainly. Very well, then, let us talk this matter over calmly, for—”
With the suddenness of a discharged pistol a wild, vibrating howl came through the window once again. “O-u-o—o-u-oo—o-u-o!” it rose against the stillness of the night, diminished to a moan, then suddenly crescendoed upward, from a moan to a wail, from a wail to a howl, despairing, pleading, longing as the cry of a damned spirit, fierce and wild as the rally-call of the fiends of hell.
“Sang du diable, must I suffer interruption when I wish to talk? Sang des tous les saints—it is not to be borne!” de Grandin cried furiously, and cleared the distance to the great bay-window in two agile, cat-like leaps.
“Allez!” he ordered sharply, as he flung the casement back and leaned far out into the rainy night. “Be off, before I come down to you. You know me, hein? A little while ago you dodged my steel, but—”
A snarling growl replied, and in the clump of rhododendron plants which fringed the garden we saw the baleful glimmer of a pair of fiery eyes.
“Parbleu, you dare defy me—me?” the little Frenchman cried, and vaulted nimbly from the window, landing sure-footed as a panther on the rain-soaked garden mold, then charging at the lurking horror as though it had been harmless as a kitten,
“Oh, he’ll be killed; no mortal man can stand against a vrykolakas!” cried Sarah Leigh, wringing her slim hands together in an agony of terror. “Oh, God in heaven, spare—”
A fusillade of crackling shots cut through her prayer, and we heard a short, sharp yelp of pain, then the voice of Jules de Grandin hurling imprecations in mingled French and English. A moment later:
“Give me a hand, Friend Trowbridge,” he called from underneath the window. “It was a simple matter to come down, but climbing back is something else again.
“Merci,” he acknowledged as he regained the library and turned his quick, elfin grin on each of us in turn. Dusting his hands against each other, to clear them of the dampness from the windowsill, he felt for his cigarette case, chose a Maryland and tapped it lightly on his finger-nail.
“Tiens, I damn think he will know his master’s voice in future, that one,” he informed us. “I did not quite succeed in killing him to death, unfortunately, but I think that it will be some time before he comes and cries beneath this lady’s window again. Yes. Had the sale poltron but had the courage to stand against me, I should certainly have killed him; but as it was”—he spread his hands and raised his shoulders eloquently—“it is difficult to hit a running shadow, and he offered little better mark in the darkness. I think I wounded him in the left hand, but I can not surely say.”
He paused a moment, then, seeming to remember, turned again to Sarah Leigh with a ceremonious bow. “Pardon, Mademoiselle,” he apologized, “you were saying, when we were so discourteously interrupted—” he smiled at her expectantly.
“Doctor de Grandin,” wondering incredulity was in the girl’s eyes and voice as she looked at him, “y
ou shot him—wounded him?”
“Perfectly, Mademoiselle,” he patted the waxed ends of his mustache with affectionate concern, “my marksmanship was execrable, but at least I hit him. That was something.”
“But in Greece they used to say—I’ve always heard that only silver bullets were effective against a vrykolakas; either silver bullets or a sword of finely tempered steel, so—”
“Ah bah!” he interrupted with a laugh. “What did they know of modern ordnance, those old-time ritualists? Silver bullets were decreed because silver is a harder metal than lead, and the olden guns they used in ancient days were not adapted to shoot balls of iron. The pistols of today shoot slugs encased in cupro-nickel, far harder than the best of iron, and with a striking-force undreamed of in the days when firearms were a new invention. Tiens, had the good Saint George possessed a modern military rifle he could have slain the dragon at his leisure while he stood a mile away. Had Saint Michel had a machine-gun, his victory over Lucifer could have been accomplished in thirty seconds by the watch.”
Having delivered himself of this scandalous opinion, he reseated himself on the divan and smiled at her, for all the world like the family cat which has just breakfasted on the household canary.
“And how was it that this so valiant runner-away-from-Jules-de-Grandin announced himself to you, Mademoiselle?” he asked.
“I was dressing to go out this morning,” she replied, “when the ’phone rang, and when I answered it no one replied to my ‘hello.’ Then, just as I began to think they’d given some one a wrong number, and was about to put the instrument down, there came one of those awful, wailing howls across the wire. No word at all, sir, just that long-drawn, quavering howl, like what you heard a little while ago.
“You can imagine how it frightened me. I’d almost managed to put George from my mind, telling myself that the vision of lycanthropy which I had in Smyrna was some sort of hypnotism, and that there really weren’t such things as werewolves, and even if there were, this was practical America, where I needn’t fear them—then came that dreadful howl, the sort of howl I’d heard—and given!—in my vision in the Smyrna garden, and I knew there are such things as werewolves, and that one of them possessed me, soul and body, and that I’d have to go to him if he demanded it.
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 43
