The Devil's Rosary

by Seabury Quinn

  I might also add the Quimper arms were formally struck from the rolls two centuries or more ago because of failure of heirs in the house. Whether, as the old monk intimates, this was due to most of the men taking holy orders or remaining single in secular life, there is no way of telling. I favor the theory that one or more of the numerous plagues which swept England and the Continent in the old days, coupled with the hazards of war and the sea, may have wiped the family out.

  “Eh bien, my friend, would you not open wide those great pop-eyes of yours, could you but know what we do?” de Grandin exclaimed as he finished the letter. “Parbleu, those old friars, they were great hands at dressing the truth in strange garments, but this one, I damn think has recited no more than the barest of bare facts.”

  “All right,” I agreed, “suppose he did. While I think Dr. Jacoby is unquestionably right in his surmises, suppose we grant your premises for the sake of argument, where are we? If this mysterious goblin called Dewer actually pursues all male members of old Sir Guy’s family, no matter how distantly they are related to him and frightens them and their brides into fits, what are we to do about it? Is there any way we can prevent it?”

  “You ask me?” he demanded sharply. “Pains of a rheumatic bullfrog, I shall say there is! Does not the never-enough-to-be-blessed old nameless monk make plain the formula in his chronicle? Does he not tell us the proviso Old Dewer himself made, that if a bride accosted by him should look him in the face and bid him be off, off he will go, and nevermore return? Name of a little blue man, can anything be simpler?”

  “It certainly can,” I answered. “In the first place, Rosemary Whitney was frightened almost out of her mind by the specter, or whatever it was she saw on her wedding night. We’ve had a man-sized job pulling her through this illness, and a second shock like that—even the bare suggestion that she face the ordeal again—might do such serious injury to her nervous system that she’d never recover.

  “In the second place, if there is such a thing as this old goblin, and if it’s as horrible to look at as Rosemary and Walter say, she’d faint dead away the moment she saw it, and never be able to say her little piece. No, old man, I’m afraid things aren’t as simple as you seem to think.”

  “Ah bah,” he held his arm up for my inspection, “has Jules de Grandin nothing up his sleeve besides his elbow, my friend? I tell you in my bag I have a trick still left which shall make a sacré singe of this Monsieur Dewer and send him home a wiser and much sadder demon. Yes; I have said it.”

  “What do you propose doing?”

  “That, my friend, I shall show when the appointed time arrives. Meanwhile, let us labor with all our strength to restore Monsieur and Madame Whitney, that they may face their ordeal with calmness. Thus far their improvement has been most gratifying. Within a week we should be ready for the great experiment.”

  “Suppose they fail and have another relapse?” I queried. “Remember, de Grandin, this is the health and sanity of two people with which you’re gambling.”

  “Suppose you cease from croaking like a raven suffering with laryngitis,” he countered with a grin. “My throat is parched with answering your so pig-stupid objections. A glass of brandy—not too small—if you will be so kind.”

  7

  BEYOND THE ROW OF rustling poplars growing at the garden’s lower boundary the moon sailed serenely in the zenith, gilding hedge and path and formal flowerbed with argent. Still farther off, where the river ran between lush banks of woodland, a choir of little frogs—“peepers”—sang serenades to the green-skinned ladies of their choice, and in an ancient cherry tree, so old it bore no fruit, though it still put out its blossoms in the spring, a night-bird twittered sleepily.

  “Ah, you are brave, Madame,” de Grandin affirmed, “brave like the blessed Jeanne herself, and I do most solemnly declare that you shall conquer splendidly tonight.”

  Rosemary lifted starry eyes to his. Preceding us to the suite in Carteret Inn—the same rooms where she and Walter had lodged so happily a month before—she had doffed her traveling-dress and put on a robe de nuit of pale green crepe, drawing a kimono of oyster-white embroidered with gold over it. Her face was pallid as the silk of her robe, but lines of determination such as only a woman casting dice for love and happiness can know showed about her mouth as she faced Jules de Grandin. “I’m terribly afraid,” she confessed in a voice that shook with nervousness, “but I’m going to do everything you tell me to, just as you tell me, for it’s not only me I’m fighting for, it’s Walter and his happiness, and, Dr. de Grandin, I love him so!”

  “Précisément,” the little Frenchman took her hand in his and raised it to his lips, “exactly, Madame, quite so; and I believe that all I say is for the best. Now, if you please, compose yourself—so—that is excellent.” From underneath his jacket he slipped a small silver-framed photograph of Walter Whitney and set it upright on the bureau before the seated girl. “Regard it fixedly, Madame,” he bade; “gaze on the features of your beloved and think how much you love him—exclude all other thoughts from your mind.”

  It was as if he had ordered a starving man to eat, or commanded one rescued from the burning desert to drain a cup of cool water. The soft, adoring look which only women wholly slaves of love can give crept into the girl’s eyes as she stared intently at the picture.

  “Excellent,” he murmured, “très excellent!” For upward of a minute he stood there as if she had been his younger sister then, very softly, he commanded:

  “Madame, you are tired, you are fatigued, you much desire sleep. Sleep—sleep, Madame Whitney, I, Jules de Grandin, order it!

  “Sleep—sleep—” softly as a summer breeze, soothingly as a mother’s lullaby, his murmured admonition was repeated again and yet again.

  Rosemary took no seeming notice of his words; her shining, sweet blue eyes stayed fixed upon her husband’s photograph, but slowly, almost before I realized it, her white, blue-veined lids lowered, and she leaned back in her chair.

  For a minute or two de Grandin regarded her solicitously, then: “Madame Whitney!” he called softly.

  No answer.

  “Madame Whitney, can you hear me?”

  Still no response.

  “Tres bon; she has passed into unconsciousness,” he said, and, turning to the sleeping girl:

  “Anon, Madame, there will come one of fearful aspect, who will accost you—endeavor to do you violence. Be not afraid, ma chère; he can not harm you. I tell you this and you must believe. You do believe me, Madame?”

  “I believe you,” she answered sleepily.

  “Good; it is well. When this one comes you will know it, though you will not see him; nor will your conscious mind realize he is here. And when he comes you will open both your eyes and say—attend me carefully, for you must say these words—‘Dewer, enemy of my husband and of my husband’s blood, depart from hence, and come not near me any more; neither near me nor any woman whom my husband’s kinsmen take to wife. Dewer, go hence!’

  “When first he does approach you, you shall say this, and ever you will keep your widely opened eyes upon his foul face, yet see him you will not, for I command it. And if he goes not quickly from you, you shall repeat the words of power, nor shall you show him any sign of fear. You understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Tres bien. Into your bed then, and sleep and rest all peacefully until he comes.”

  Mechanically the girl arose, switched off the light and crossed to the bedstead, where she removed her slippers and kimono. In another moment her light even breathing sounded through the room.

  I turned to descend the stairs to join Walter where he waited in the garden, but de Grandin’s light touch upon my arm stayed me. “Not yet my friend,” he said; “come here, we should be near at hand in case our program goes awry.” He led me toward the bathroom adjoining the suite.

  It seemed an hour that we waited, though actually it must have been much less. The mournful music of the frogs,
the distant hooting of a motor horn, the nearer chirping of some troubled bird were all the sounds we heard except the girl’s soft breathing. Then, far away, but drawing nearer by the second, came the drumming of a horse’s hoofs.

  I looked out the bathroom’s single little window, then drew back with an involuntary cry. Across the moon’s pale face, like a drifting wisp of cloud, yet racing as no tempest-chased cloud could race, there rode the squat, sinister figure of a naked horseman upon a barebacked horse.

  A moment I held my breath in acute terror, and the short hairs at the back of my neck rose stiffly and bristled against my collar. Then, more dreadful than the moon-obscuring vision, there came the sound of slipping, shuffling feet upon the floor outside the room, the door swung inward, and a light, tittering laugh which seemed all malice and no mirth sounded in the quiet room. Another instant and a fetid, nauseating stench assailed my nostrils, and I turned my head away to get a breath of pure air from the open window.

  But Jules de Grandin seized my shoulder and fairly dragged me to the door. My heart stood still and all the breath in my body seemed concentrated in my throat as I looked into the moonlit chamber.

  Something unspeakably obscene stood sharply outlined in a ray of silver moonlight, like an actor in some music hall of hell basking in the spotlight lit from the infernal fires. Like a toad it was, but such a toad as only lives in nightmares for it was four or more feet high, entirely covered with gray-green skin which hung in wrinkles from its twisted form, save where it stretched drum-tight across a bulging, pot-like belly.

  The head was more like a lizard’s than a toad’s, and covered with pendulous, snake-like tentacles. A row of similar excrescences decorated its upper lip, and a fringe of dangling, worm-like things hung down beneath its chin. The goggle eyes, round and protuberant, seemed to glow with an inward light, and turned their terrifying, lidless stare in all directions at once.

  The monstrous thing paused tentatively in the moonlight a moment, and once again the wicked, lecherous titter came from it. “I’m here again, my sparrow,” it announced in a high, cracked voice. “Last time your booby husband—he, he!”—again that awful laugh!—“disturbed us at our tryst, but he’ll not hamper us tonight—the beaten dog avoids his master!”

  Again, seeming to struggle with some infirmity, the hideous thing lurched forward, but I had a feeling as I watched that those splayed, bandy legs could straighten instantly, and the whole flabby-looking body galvanize into frightful activity if need for action came.

  Rosemary slept calmly, her head pillowed on one bent arm, and I heard de Grandin muttering mixed prayers and curses in mingled French and English as we waited her waking.

  The visitant was almost at the bedside when Rosemary awakened. Rising as though in nowise terrified at the awful thing bending over her, she stared it boldly, calmly, in the face, no tremor of eyelid or twitch of lip betraying either fear or surprise.

  “Dewer, enemy of my husband and of my husband’s blood, depart from hence and come not near me any more; neither near me nor any woman whom my husband’s kinsmen take to wife. Dewer, go hence!” she said.

  The monster’s webbed, clawed hands, already stretched forth to seize her, stopped short as if they had encountered an invisible wall of steel, and if such a thing were possible, its hideous face turned still more hideous. When pleased anticipation lit up its fearsome features they were terrible as the horror of a grisly dream, but when rage and unbelieving fury set on them the sight was too awful to look on. I hid my eyes behind my upraised hands.

  But I did not stop my ears, so I heard it cry in a raging, squawking voice:

  “Nay, nay, ye’re feared o’ me; ye dare not bid me hence! Look, ye soft, pink thing, ’tis Dewer stands beside ye; Old Dewer o’ the North, at sight of whom men creep upon their bellies and women lose their senses. Ye dare not stare me in the face and bid me hence! Look ye, and be afraid!”

  “Dewer,” the soft calm words might have been addressed to a servant dismissed for pilfering from the pantry. “Dewer, enemy of my husband and of my husband’s blood, depart from hence and come not near me any morel”

  A skirling shriek like half-a-dozen bagpipes played out of tune at once came from the monster’s mouth, and with a stamp of its wide, webbed foot, it turned and left the room. A moment later I heard the muffled beating of a horse’s hoofs, and peering through the window saw a shade flit through past the moon.

  “And now, my friend, let us, too, depart,” de Grandin ordered as he tiptoed from the bathroom.

  By Rosemary’s bed he paused a moment while he whispered: “One comes soon, ma chère, who brings you happiness: happiness and love. Awake and greet him, and may the mellow beams of the honeymoon forever light you on your path to blissfulness. Adieu.”

  “She waits above, mon vieux,” he called to Walter as we passed through the garden. “Be good to her, mon fils, her happiness is in your hands: Guard well your trust.”

  He was oddly silent on the homeward drive. Once or twice he heaved a sentimental sigh: As we approached my house he frankly wiped his eyes.

  “What’s the matter, old chap?” I asked. “Aren’t you satisfied with your work?”

  He seemed to waken from a revery. “Satisfied?” he murmured almost dreamily. “Ha—yes. I wonder if she sometimes thinks of me within the quiet of her cloister, and of the days we wandered hand in hand beside the River Loire?”

  “Who—Rosemary?” I asked, amazed.

  “Who?—what?—pardieu, I do wander in my thoughts!” he cried. “I am asleep with both eyes open, Friend Trowbridge. Come, a quarter-pint of brandy will restore me!”

  Daughter of the Moonlight

  THE ANNUAL MIDSUMMER LADIES’ night at the Kobbskill Country Club proved a pretty party. The white walls of the clubhouse, reared in the severe style of architecture affected by the early Dutch settlers, shone like an illuminated monument in the dusky blue of the July night, lights blazed at every window, and colored bulbs decorated the overhanging roofs of the broad piazzas which stretched along the front and rear of the building. The artistically parked grounds near the house shone with Chinese lanterns which gleamed with rose, blue, violet, gold and jade, rivaling the brilliance of the summer stars. Jazz blared in the commodious ballroom and echoed from the big, yellow-and-red-striped marquee set up by the first green. Brilliant as the plumage of birds of paradise, the light silken dresses of the women made bright highlights in the night, while the somber black and white of their escorts’ costumes furnished a pleasing contrast and made the chiaroscuro of color the more vivid. Three of us—Jules de Grandin, our host, Colonel Patrick FitzPatrick, and I—sat on the front veranda and rocked comfortably in wide wicker chairs, the ice in our tall glasses tinkling pleasantly.

  “Mordieu, mes amis,” the little Frenchman exclaimed enthusiastically, sucking appreciatively from the twin straws in his long glass. “C’est une scène très charmante! It is so—how do you say?—so—ah, mort de ma vie, les belles créatures!” His gaze rested on a pair of girls who paused momentarily beneath the luminous drops of the crystal chandelier hanging from the porch roof at the head of the stairs.

  Limned in vivid silhouette against the background of smalt-blue sky and black-green evergreens, the girls were oddly alike, yet curiously unlike. Both were gowned in green, tall and slender with the modernly fleshless figure which simulates boyishness more than femininity; both had small, clear-carved features; both wore their hair cut close at the back, rather long and prettily waved at the front; both possessed complexions of milky whiteness, but one was yellow-haired and violet-eyed, while the short-shorn locks of the other were red as rose-gold alloyed with copper, and her eyes, long, black-fringed and obliquing slightly downward at their outer corners, were green as moss-agate.

  “Parbleu,” the Frenchman swore delightedly, “they are like a boutonnière—she of the golden hair is like an asphodèle—a slender daffodil that sways and dances in the evening breeze; while she of the ruddy tresses, morbleu
, she is a poppy, a glorious, glowing-red poppy to steal men’s senses away, no less!”

  “Humph,” Colonel FitzPatrick returned, “you’re nearer right than you think, old-timer. She’s all of that, and then some.”

  “Ah, you know her?” de Grandin asked with interest.

  “Ought to,” FitzPatrick laughed. “The yellow-haired one’s my daughter Josephine; the other’s my niece, Dolores. She’s lived with us since she was a kid of ten, and a queer lot she is, too.”

  “But certainly,” the Frenchman agreed with a vigorous nod, “one with hair and eyes like hers could be no ordinary mortal. She is a fée, a pixy out of some story-book, a—”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” the other interrupted with a chuckle. “Sometimes I’ve thought her an imp out of quite a different place. She’s been off to school—so has Josephine—for the past two years; but unless she’s changed a lot, some one’s in for a bad time before she goes back.”

  He paused a moment, drawing thoughtfully at his cigar, then: “They say Cleopatra and Helen of Troy, not to mention Helen of Tyre, had hair of that odd, metallic red; I’m inclined to credit the legends. Dolores is the sort who’d go to any lengths for a thrill. I can imagine her on the throne of an Eastern despot administering poison to her unsuspecting lovers just to see ’em squirm as they died, and having a few dozen assorted captives disemboweled to find out what made ’em tick. Pity, or even decent consideration for others’ feelings just don’t exist when her curiosity or convenience are concerned.”