“In Malaya there exists a race of beings since the beginning of the ages, known variously as the people of Antu or Rakshasa. They are inferior fiends, possessing not much of potent magic, for they are heavily admixed with human half-breeds; but at their weakest they are terrible enough. They can in certain instances make themselves invisible, though only to some people. When visible, the Malays say they can be recognized because of their evil eyes, which are yellow-green and sharp as razors. It was such eyes I saw in the villainous faces of the ugly ones who frightened Madame Mutina at the club last night. Even so, I did not connect them with the wicked breed of Rakshasas until we had listened to young Starkweather’s story. When he told us of the evil-eyed creatures who persecuted his so lovely wife, and how the sentry at the palace gate declared he had seen no stranger leave, though the scoundrel had fled but a moment before, I remembered how Aristide, the waiter, assured us no one sat at the table where we saw the unlovely four with our own eyes even as he spoke.
“Also, had not the young Monsieur told us his lovely lady was anak gampang—without known father? But of course. What more reasonable then to suppose her mother had been imposed on by a fiend, even as Bertha of the legend married the foul incubus and was then left without husband at the birth of her daughter? Such things have been.
“Nature, as your American slang has it, is truly grand. She is exceedingly grand, my friends. For every plague with which mankind is visited, good, kind nature provides a remedy, can we but find it. The vampire can not cross running water, and is affrighted of wild garlic blooms. The holy leaves of the holly tree and the young shoots of the ash are terrible to the werewolf. So with the Rakshasa. The fruit and blossom of the lime is to him as molten lead is to us. If he makes an unclean feast of human flesh—of which he is most fond—and disguises it as curried chicken or rice, a drop of lime juice sprinkled on it unmasks it for what it is. A smear of the same juice on his flesh causes him intense anguish, and, while ordinary weapons avail not at all against him—remember how Friend Richard struck one with his saber, yet harmed him not?—a sword or bullet dipped in lime juice kills him to death. Yes.
“Last night, as I thought of these things, I determine on an experiment. Tiens, though it worked perfectly, I could have struck myself for that I caused pain to Madame Mutina when I spilled the lime juice on her.
“Now, here we are: Madame Mutina, beautiful as the moon as she lies on the breast of the sea, was part human, part demon. In Mohammed’s false religion they have no cure for such as she. ‘What to do?’ I ask me.
“‘Baptize her with water and the spirit,’ I answer. ‘So doing we shall save her soul alive and separate that which is diabolic from that which is good in her so lovely body.’
“You all beheld what happened when the holy water of sacrament fell upon her head last night. But, grâce à Dieu, we have won thus far. She are now all woman. The demon in her departed when her lovely hair turned white.
“Ah, but there was more to the mystery than this. ‘Why were those three poor ones done to death? Why did she leave her husband almost at the threshold of the lune de miel—how do you say it?—honeymoon?’ Those questions I also ask me. There is but one sure way to find out. This morning I talk seriously with her.
“It are needless for me to say she is beautiful—we are men, we have all the excellent eyesight in our eyes. But it is necessary that I report that the he-creatures of the Rakshasas had also found her exceedingly fair. When it was reported that she would be truly married to Friend Richard, not to be a wife in name only to a paralyzed old dodo of a sultan, they were furious. They sent an ambassador to her to say, ‘You shall not wed this man.’
“Greatly did she fear these devil-people, but greater than her fear was her love for the gallant gentleman who would take her to wife in the face of all the palace scandal.
“Now, sacred to these unclean Rakshasas is the coconut pearl, the pearl which is truly mother-of-pearl because it contains within an outer shell of lovely nacre an inner core of true pearl, as the coconut shell encloses the white meat. One of these—and they are very rare—our dear Madame Mutina stole from the Rakshasa temple to hold as hostage for the safety of her beloved. That is what she entrusted to me last night when she beheld the evil-eyed ones at the club.
“But though she held the talisman, she still feared the devil-people exceedingly, and when one of them followed her to Manila and threatened death to her beloved if she consorted with him, though it crushed her heart to do so, she fled from her husband, and hid herself securely.
“A woman’s love plumbs any depths, however, my friends. Just to be near her wedded lord brought ease to her mangled bosom, and so she followed him to America, and because she dances like a snowflake sporting with the wind and a moonbeam flitting on flowing water, she had no trouble in securing employment at La Pantoufle Dorée.
“The Rakshasas have also traveled overseas. Seeking their sacred token they traced Madame Mutina, and would, perchance, have slain her, even as they murdered her companions, had she not trusted us with the pearl and bidden us bear it away to her house. Knowing where she lived, suspecting, perhaps, that she hid the precious pearl there, the evil ones reached the house before us, slew her friends, and waited for us, but we—Friend Trowbridge and I—put one of them, at least, to flight, while the arrival of Sergeant Costello and his arrest of Madame Mutina prevented their working their will on her. Meantime, I hold the much-sought pearl.”
From his jacket pocket he took an object about the size and shape of a hen’s egg, a beautiful, opalescent thing which gave off myriad coruscating beams in the rays of the firelight.
“But where do the evil-eyed sons of Satan and his imps hide themselves? Can we find them?” he asked. “Perhaps yes; perhaps no. In any event, it will take much time, and we wish for speed. Therefore we shall resort to a ruse de guerre. This morning, after I talked with Madame Mutina I did rush to the office of le Journal with a celerity beautiful to behold, and, with the consent of the proprietor of La Pantoufle Dorée, who is an excellent fellow and sells most capital liquor, I inserted the advertisement which Friend Trowbridge has just read.
“Eh bien, but the devil-people will surely flock to that cabaret in force tomorrow night. Will they not place reliance in their devilish ability to defy ordinary weapons and attempt to seize the pearl from Madame Mutina as she dances? I shall say they will. But”—he twisted the ends of his mustache savagely—“but they reckon without an unknown host, my friends. You, cher sergent, will be there. You, Friend Richard, and you, also, Friend Trowbridge, will be there. As for Jules de Grandin, by the horns, blood and tail of the Devil, he will be there with both feet!
“Ha, Messieurs les Diables, tomorrow night we shall show you such a party as you wot not of. Your black blood, which has defied the weapons of men for generations untold, shall flow like springtime freshets when the mounting sun unlocks the icy fetters from the streams!
“And those we do not spoil entirely in the taking, you shall have the pleasure of seating in the electric chair, mon sergent,” he concluded with a bow to Costello.
6
EVERY TABLE AT LA Pontoufle Dorée was engaged for the supper show the following night. Here and there the bald head or closely-shaven face of some regular patron caught the soft lights from the central chandelier, but the vast majority of the tables were occupied by small, dark, sinister-looking foreigners, men with oblique eyes and an air of furtive evil which their stylishly cut dinner clothes and sleekly anointed hair could not disguise. Strategically placed, near every exit, were members of Sergeant Costello’s strong-arm squad, looking decidedly uncomfortable in their hired dinner clothes and consuming vast quantities of the free menu provided by Starkweather’s liberal arrangements with the management with an air of elaborate unconcern. Four patrolmen in plain clothes lounged near the checkroom counter, eyeing each incoming guest with shrewd, appraising glances.
Near the dancing-floor, facing each other across a small table, s
at de Grandin and Starkweather, while Costello and I made ourselves as inconspicuous as possible in our places near the swinging doors which screened the main entrance to the club.
Not many couples whirled and glided on the dancing floor, for the preponderance of men among the patrons was noticeable, and the usual air of well-bred hilarity which characterized the place was almost entirely lacking.
It was almost half-past eleven when de Grandin gave the signal.
“Now, customers,” announced the hostess, advancing to the center of the floor, “we’re in for a real treat. You all know Ma’mselle Mutina; she’s danced here before, but she never did anything like she’s going to show tonight. This is ab-so-lutely the cat’s meow, and I don’t mean perhaps, either. All set, boys and girls? Come on, then, give the little lady a big hand!”
Two attendants ran forward, spreading a rich Turkish carpet over the smoothly waxed boards of the dancing-floor, and as they retreated every light in the place winked out, leaving the great room in sudden absolute darkness. Then, like a thrusting sword-blade, a shaft of amethyst light stabbed through the gloom, centering on the purple velvet curtains beside the orchestra stand. No sound came from the musicians, and the place was so still I could hear Costello’s heavy breathing where he sat three feet away, and the faint flutter of a menu-card sounded like the scutter of a wind-blown leaf in a quiet forest clearing.
Gazing fascinated at the curtains, I saw them move ever so slightly, flutter a moment, then draw back. Mutina stood revealed.
One little hand on each curtain, she stood like a lovely picture in a frame, a priceless jewel against a background of opulent purple velvet.
Over her head, covering her snowy hair, was drawn a dark-blue veil, silver-fringed and studded with silver stars, and bound about her brows was a chaplet of gold coin which held the magically glowing, opalescent indong mutina against her forehead like the sacred asp on an Egyptian monarch’s crown. Her lovely shoulders and bosom were encased in a tight-fitting sleeveless zouave jacket of gold-embroidered cerise satin fringed with gilt hawk-bells. From hips to ankles hung a full, many-plaited skirt of sheerest white muslin which revealed the slim lines of her tapering legs with distracting frankness. About her wrists and ankles were garlands of cunningly fashioned metallic flowers, enameled in natural colors, which clashed their petals together like tiny cymbals, setting up a sweet, musical jingle-jangle each time she moved.
For a moment she poised on slim, henna-stained toes, bending her little head with its jewel of glowing pearl as if in response to an ovation; then, raising her arms full length, she laced her long, supple fingers above her head, pirouetted half-a-dozen times till the flower-bells on her ankles seemed to clap their petals for very joy and her sheer, diaphanous skirt stood stiffly out, whirling round her like a wheel of white. Next, with a quick, dodging motion, she advanced a step or two, retreated, and bent almost double in a profound salaam to the audience.
A second of tableau; then with a long, graceful bound she reached the center of the rug spread on the dance floor, turning to the orchestra and snapping her fingers imperatively. A flageolet burst into a strain of rippling, purling minors, a zither hummed and sang accompaniment, a tom-tom seconded with a hollow, thumping rhythm.
“Hai!” she cried in gipsy abandon. “Hai, hai, hai!”
With a slow, gliding movement she began her dance, hands and feet moving subtly, in perfect harmony. Now she leaned forward till her cerise bodice seemed barely to clear the floor, now she bent back till it seemed she could not retain her balance. Again her little naked feet were motionless on the dark carpet as twin stars reflected in a still pool while her body swayed and rippled from ankle to chin like a cobra rearing upright, and her arms, seemingly boneless, described sinuous, serpentine patterns in the air, her hands bent backward till the fingers almost touched the wrists.
Now pipe and zither were stilled and only the rhum, rhum, rhum,—rhum-rhum, of the tom-tom spoke, and her torso throbbed and rippled in the danse du ventre.
The music rose suddenly to a shrill crescendo and she began to whirl on her painted toes with a wild fandango movement, her arms straight out from her shoulders as though nailed to an invisible cross, her skirt flickering horizontally about her like some great, white-petaled flower, her little, soft feet making little, soft hissing sounds against the purple carpet as she spun round and round.
Slowly, slowly, her speed decreased. She was like a beautiful top spun at greatest speed, gradually losing its momentum. The music died to a thin, plaintive wail, the pipe whimpering softly, the zither crooning sleepily and the tom-tom’s rumble growing fainter and fainter like receding summer thunder.
For a moment she paused, dead-still, only her slim breasts moving as they fought flutteringly for breath. Then, in a high, sweet soprano, she began an old Eastern love song, a languorous, beguiling tune of a people who have made a fine art of lovemaking for uncounted generations.
For thou, beloved, art to me
As a garden;
Even as a garden of rare and beauteous flowers.
Roses bloom upon thy lips,
And the mountain myrtle
In thy eyes.
Thy breasts are even as the lily,
Even as the moonflower
Who unveils her pale face nightly
To the passionate caresses of the moon.
Thy hair is as the tendril of the grape …
With slow, gliding steps she retreated toward the archway through which she had come, paused a moment, and held her hands out to the audience, her henna-tipped fingers curled into little, flowerlike cups.
As she halted in her recessional a great shout went up from one of the slant-eyed men nearest the dancing-floor.
In a moment the place was like an unroofed ant-hill.
“Lights!” shouted de Grandin, springing from his seat. “Trowbridge—Costello, guard the door!”
In the sudden welter of bright illumination as every light in the place was snapped on, we saw a circle of the strange people forming and slowly closing on Mutina, more than one of the men stealthily drawing a wicked-looking Malay kris from beneath his coat.
Thrusting both hands beneath her star-sown veil the girl brought forth a pair of limes, broke their rinds with frantic haste and sprinkled a circle of the acid, amber juice about her on the floor.
An evil-eyed man who seemed to be the leader of the strangers started backward with a snarl of baffled rage as she completed the circle, and looked wonderingly about him.
“Ha, my ugly-faced friend, you did not expect that, hein?” asked Jules de Grandin in high good humor. “Me, I am responsible for it. As a half-breed of your cursed devil-tribe, Madame Mutina could no more have touched a lime than she could have handled a live coal, but with the aid of a Christian priest I have freed her from her curse, and now she does defy you. Meanwhile—”
He got no further. With a yell of fury like the scream of a blood-mad leopard, the razor-eyed creature leaped forward, and at his back pressed a half-score of others of his kind.
“Back to back, mon brave,” de Grandin commanded Starkweather as he thrust his hand inside his jacket and brought forth an eighteen-inch length of flexible, rubber-bound electric cable tipped with a ball of lead in which a dozen steel spikes had been embedded.
Similarly armed, young Starkweather whirled round, bracing his shoulders to the little Frenchman’s back.
Feet well apart, de Grandin and his ally swung their improvised maces, with the regularity of pendulums.
Screams and curses and cries of surprised dismay followed every down-stroke of the spiked clubs. The assailants, half their former number, drew back, mouthing obscenities at the pair, then rushed again to the attack.
Mutina was like a thing possessed. Gone was every vestige of Western culture she had picked up during her residence here. She was once more a woman of the never-changing East, an elemental female creature, stark bare of all conventions, glorying in the battle and the savage part her
man played in it. Safe inside her barrier of lime juice, she danced up and down in wild elation as de Grandin and Starkweather, slowly advancing across the dance floor, beat a path toward her, smashing arms and ribs and skulls with the merciless flailing of their spiked clubs.
“Bravely struck, O defender of the fatherless!” she screamed. “Billahi—by the breath of God, well struck, O peerless warrior!”
“Up an’ at ’em boys!” bellowed Costello, seeming to emerge suddenly from the trance of admiration with which he had watched de Grandin and Starkweather battle. “Give ’em th’ wor-rks!”
Like terriers leaping on a pitful of rats, Costello’s detectives boiled over the dancing-floor. Blackjacks, previously well soaked in lime juice, brass knuckles similarly treated, and here and there a big, raw fist, still wet with its baptism of acid liquid, struck and hammered against brown faces and dashed devastating blows into wicked, slanting yellow eyes.
“BE DAD, DR. DE Grandin, sor,” declared Costello twenty minutes later as he wrung the little Frenchman’s slender white hand, “’tis th’ broth of a boy ye are, an’ no mistake. Never in all me bor-rn days have I seen a better lad wid th’ old shillalah. Glory be to Gawd, but ye’d be th’ pride o’ all th’ colleens an’ th’ despair o’ all the boys if ye ever went ter Donnybrook Fair, so ye would, sir!”
“A vintage, Madame,” de Grandin cried to the stout hostess who hovered near, uncertain whether to bewail the fight which had emptied her establishment or add her congratulations to Costello’s, “a vintage of your rarest, and let it be not less than two quarts. Me, I have serious drinking to do, now that business is finished. Have no fear of the good Sergeant. Have I not heard him say more than once that legging of the boot is more a work of Christian charity than a crime? Certainly.
“To us, my friends,” he pronounced when the champagne was brought and our glasses filled with bubbling, pale-yellow liquid. “To stout young Monsieur Starkweather, who fights like a very du Guesclin; to Trowbridge and Costello, than whom no man ever had better friends or better comrades; but most of all, beautiful Mutina, to you. To you, who braved the sorrows of a broken heart and the wrath of the devil-people on earth and the tortures of the False Prophet’s everlasting hell hereafter for love of him who is your husband. Cordieu, never was toast drunk to a nobler, gentler lady—he who says otherwise is a foul liar!”
The Devil's Rosary Page 10
