The Devil's Rosary

by Seabury Quinn

  “I think she and Josephine had a pretty warm set-to later, for both of ’em seemed rather huffy when we drove home, and Dolores began acting queerly this morning.”

  “How, by example?” de Grandin asked.

  “Oh, she seemed unduly depressed, even for one of her moody temperament, wouldn’t eat anything, and seemed not to hear when anyone spoke to her. Just before dinner she was sitting on the porch, looking down the lawn, but not seeming to see anything, when all of a sudden I noticed her left foot was twitching and shaking like—” He paused for an adequate illustration, then: “As though a galvanic current had been applied to it.

  “I looked at her, wondering what the matter was, and within a moment the spasm seemed to spread all over her. She’d shake as though with a chill, then seem to relax, go limp as a damp cloth, then tremble more violently than ever. Before I could reach her she’d slipped from her chair to the floor and lay there, twitching and trembling like a mechanical figure when the clockwork is almost run down. Her eyes were partly opened, but the eyeballs were turned up under the upper lids so the pupils were invisible. She seemed wholly unconscious when I picked her up.”

  “Great heavens!” I exclaimed, “that has all the earmarks of an epilep—”

  “Zut!” de Grandin cut me short. “What happened further, if you please, Monsieur?”

  “That’s all. We put her to bed, and she seemed to lapse into a natural sleep. I hadn’t planned on calling you until tomorrow morning; but a few minutes ago when Josephine went in to see how she was, we found she’d gone. We’ve searched everywhere, but she seems to have evaporated. If we’d only thought to have somebody stay with her, we might—”

  “Pardon me, sir,” FitzPatrick’s chauffeur suggested, pausing respectfully by his employer’s elbow, “I’ve been thinking Bruno might be able to help us here; he’s a hunter, and his scent is keen, even if he hasn’t been trained to track people.”

  “Nonsense—” the colonel began, but:

  “Excellent, my old one, your idea is entirely sound,” de Grandin applauded. “Obtain from Mademoiselle’s wardrobe a pair of shoes, and let the dog smell them thoroughly. Then, by happy chance, if the others have not already obscured her tracks with their fruitless searchings, we may be led to her.”

  The dog, a long-legged, rangy hound, was brought from the stable, given the scent from a pair of Dolores’ bedroom mules, and led out by the chauffeur. Slowly the man and beast walked round the house in ever-widening circles. The hound’s nose was to the ground most of the time, but every now and then he would raise his muzzle and sniff the upper air as though to clear his nostrils of a confusing medley of scents. They had almost completed their twelfth circuit when the dog abruptly jerked forward against his leash, thrust his muzzle forward and gave a deep, belling bay. Next instant, dragging himself free, he set out toward a rise of ground behind FitzPatrick’s grove, his gray-and-brown body extended, shoulders and hind-quarters moving rhythmically as he galloped,

  “After him, Friend Trowbridge!” de Grandin cried. “He has the scent, he will assuredly take us to her.”

  Stumbling, scrambling over the uneven ground of the wood, we followed the dog, entered the deeper shadow of the grove, then paused irresolute, for all trace of our canine guide had vanished.

  “Sacré bleu,” de Grandin swore, “we are at fault. Here, mon brave, here, noble animal!” He put his fingers to his lips sounded a shrill whistle.

  Answer was almost immediate. From the farther side of the wood the hound came slinking, his ears and muzzle drooping, tail tucked pitifully between his legs. Like a frightened child the beast cowered by de Grandin’s legs and whimpered in abject terror.

  “Huh,” exclaimed the chauffeur, “th’ fool dawg’s lost th’ scent!”

  The little Frenchman slipped his finger under the animal’s collar and advanced slowly toward the clearing beyond. “What lies yonder?” he asked, turning to the chauffeur.

  “Th’ ol’ graveyard,” returned the other. “Colonel FitzPatrick tried to buy it when he took over th’ estate, but th’ heirs wouldn’t sell. Our land stops at th’ boundary o’ th’ woods, sir.”

  “Eh, do you tell me?” de Grandin answered absently, patting the whimpering hound’s back gently. “It may well be our good beast has found the trail only too well, and returned to us for reasons of prudence, mon ami. Look, what is that?” He pointed upward.

  Clear-cut against the faint luminosity of the summer sky, a great, black-winged bird went sailing on outstretched, almost motionless pinions, circled slowly a moment, then swooped downward to the fenced-in close of the old, dismantled burying-ground which lay before us. Almost at once another spectral shape, and still another, followed the first in ghostly single file.

  “H’m, they look like owls to me,” the chauffeur returned, “but they’re bigger than any owls I ever seen. Jiminy crickets, there’s three of ’em! Never seen nothin’ like it before.”

  “Let us hope you may not do so again,” the little Frenchman answered. “Come, let us go.”

  “Not quittin’, are yuh?” the chauffeur asked, half contemptuously.

  The Frenchman made no reply as, the hound’s collar still clutched in his hand, he strode toward the house.

  Once inside the lighted hall, he swept the circle of servants with an appraising eye. “Is there a Catholic present?” he demanded.

  “Sure, I’m one” volunteered the cook, on whose countenance appeared the map of County Kerry. “Wot ov it?”

  “Very good. Will you be good enough to lend me your rosary, and a flask of holy water, as well, if you happen to possess it?” he returned.

  “Sure, ye can have ’em, an’ welcome,” she answered, “but what ye’re afther wantin’ ov ’em is more’n I can see.”

  Two steps carried de Grandin to her side. “What is today, Madame?” he asked, staring her levelly in the eye.

  “Why, sure, an’ it’s July thirty-first—no, ’tis August first,” she answered wonderingly.

  “Précisément. In France we call this day la fête de Saint Pierre-ès-Liens. You know it as the feast of Saint Peter’s Chains, or—”

  “Glory be to God! ’Tis Lammas!” she cried, terrified understanding shining in her face. “Wuz it fer this th’ pore young gur-rl wuz stole away?”

  “I would not go so far,” de Grandin answered, “but a moment since the hound came whimpering and trembling to my knee after he had been to the ancient graveyard which lies beyond Monsieur le Colonel’s woodland, and we did see three monster owls, with yellow, sulfurous eyes, fly past the moon. May I have the blessèd articles?”

  “Indade ye shall!” she told him heartily. “An’ it’s th’ brave lad ye are to venture in that haunted place. Faith, Bridget O’Flaherty wouldn’t do it if th’ Howly Father stood at her elbow, wid th’ whole College o’ Cardinals behint im! Ouch, God an’ th’ Howly Saints preserve this house tonight!” She signed herself reverently with the cross as she hastened to procure the rosary and blessèd water.

  ONCE MORE WE FORCED our way through FitzPatrick’s wood lot. Wrapped about his right wrist de Grandin wore the cook’s rosary like a bracelet, in his left hand he bore a half-pint flask adorned with a label assuring the beholder that it contained “Golden Wedding Rye, 50 Years Old, Bottled in Bond,” but which actually contained nothing more lawless than water from the font of St. Joseph’s church. At the Frenchman’s heels I marched, a double-barreled shotgun cocked and ready, that we might be prepared to meet the foe on ghostly or terrestrial planes.

  “Careful, Friend Trowbridge,” he warned, “we do approach.” Stepping cautiously from the shadow of the oak trees, he advanced stealthily toward the tumbledown wooden fence enclosing the disused cemetery.

  Almost as we emerged from the wood there came a queer, high, piping sound, a sort of sustained whistle, so shrill as to be almost inaudible, yet so piercing in quality that it stabbed the ear as a dentist’s whirling drill bites the tortured tooth. Up, wheeling blindly in ever-
widening circles, then pouncing forward like birds of prey came a trio of great, sable bats, squeaking viciously as they swooped at our faces.

  “Ha, evil ones, you find us not unprepared!” the little Frenchman whispered between drawn lips. “Behold this sign, ye minions of the dark—look, and be afraid!” He raised his bead-bound wrist, displaying the miniature crucifix which swung from the rosary, and at the same time thrust his left hand forward, sending a shower of holy water toward the flying things.

  The bats were larger than any creatures of the kind I had ever seen; in my excitement it seemed to me they were as big as full-grown rats, with wing-spread of a yard or more, and their little, evil eyes glinted with a red and fiery malevolence as they swooped. I raised the gun and loosed both barrels at them, then broke the lock and jammed fresh cartridges feverishly into the smoking breech.

  “Holà,” de Grandin cried exultingly, “you or I, or both of us, have put them to rout, Friend Trowbridge; see they are gone!”

  They were. Look as I would, I could espy no sign of the uncouth things.

  “Why, I must have literally blown them to pieces,” I exclaimed.

  “U’m, perhaps,” he conceded. “Let us see what further we may see.”

  Dolores FitzPatrick lay supine upon a sunken grave, her head pressed tight against the weather-gnawed tombstone, her feet toward the lower end of the sepulcher. Stretched to utmost length from her shoulders, her arms extended up and outward, while her nether limbs were thrust out stiffly at acute angles from her hips, making the design of a white St. Andrew’s cross upon the mossy graveyard turf. Briars and clutching undergrowth had ripped her flimsy silken nightrobe to tatters so that scarce a shred remained to clothe her, her slippers had been shed somewhere in her flight, and stones and brambles had bruised and torn her tender feet; more than one thorn-gash scarred her slim white body, and a wisp of short, ruddy hair lay across her forehead like a bleeding wound.

  “Good heavens!” I cried, dropping to my knees and taking her wrists between my fingers. “She’s”—I paused, put my ear to her still breast, then looked up at the Frenchman with dawning horror in my eyes—“she’s gone, de Grandin; we’re too late. The poor child must have wandered here in her delirium and fallen on this grave in a fresh seizure. See her thumbs!”

  There was no mistaking the diagnostic sign; her thumbs were bent transversely her palms and the fingers clutched them with all the avid tensity of rigor mortis.

  “Epilepsy, no doubt of it,” I diagnosed. “The history of her case as detailed by FitzPatrick is absolutely unmistakable. The poor girl’s lived beneath this shadow for years without suspecting it—that was the reason for her ‘queerness and perversity’ that made her hardly tolerable. She was at the dangerous age, and when the blow fell it crushed her, absolutely.”

  The Frenchman knelt beside her, felt her wrist and temples, and listened at her breast, then rose with what seemed to me a strangely callous indifference. “Give me the gun,” he ordered as he shed his jacket and draped it over Dolores’ all but nude remains. “Do you take her up and bear her to the house, my friend.

  “Have you read your Bible much of late?” he asked apropos of nothing as I trudged in his wake with the lovely body in my arms.

  “My Bible?”

  “Précisément. That portion which deals with those possessed of devils?”

  “No—why d’ye ask?”

  “I hardly know myself,” he answered almost absently, holding back a branch from my path; “it was but a thought which came to me; perhaps it is of little value, perhaps, again, it my have application here. If so, I shall explain when the time has come.”

  THE FIRST FAINT SIGN came as I strode up the graveled walk toward FitzPatrick’s house. Just as I was about to mount the lower step of the veranda I felt a slight stirring, the faintest suggestion of fluttering motion in my burden. I took the short flight in two giant leaps, and bent to examine her countenance in the porch light’s glare. There was no doubt about it. She had relaxed her clutching hold upon her thumbs, and her lower jaw, which had fallen, had once more raised itself, closing the mouth and giving to the thin, pale face a look of natural sleep. Even as I gazed incredulously into her countenance her bosom trembled and a faint sigh escaped her.

  “De Grandin!” I cried. “De Grandin, she’s alive!”

  He nodded shortly. “I thought as much,” he said; then, his manner as professionally impersonal as though he were visiting physician at a charity hospital: “See that the blankets on her bed are well warmed, and that no disturbing noises are permitted near her room. I would suggest we administer the Brown-Séquard prescription; it is often efficacious.”

  HOWEVER MUCH IT LACKED in sympathy, his advice was medically sound. Within a week Dolores FitzPatrick appeared quite normal. In ten days more, against my protests, she had renewed her febrile social life, driving at breakneck speed along the country roads, attending all-night dances, scattering a trail of badly damaged masculine hearts behind her, and, worst of all, indulging in the villainous poison which passed for whisky among the younger set.

  The Frenchman’s lack of interest in the case amazed me. Curious as a child, he was ordinarily wont to give my cases as close attention as though they were his own, and his weakness for a pretty face was a standing joke between us, yet in Dolores FitzPatrick, beautiful, heartless and fascinating as Circe’s own seductive self, he seemed to take no interest.

  “Well,” I announced as I entered the study one scorching night some three weeks later, “perhaps you’ll be interested now. She’s gone. She died an hour ago with cardiac hypertrophy; I knew she’d burn herself out.”

  For the first time his mask of indifference slipped. “Who will have the funeral—Monsieur Martin?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’ve already made out the death certificate for him.”

  He reached for the ’phone and called the coroner’s number. “It is a most strange request I have to make, Monsieur,” he confessed when the connection had been made, “but you and I have been associated before. You will understand I do not act from idle curiosity. Will you permit that I be present while you embalm Mademoiselle FitzPatrick’s body? You may consider it impertinent, but—nom d’un chou-fleur, do you tell me? But you will not honor it, surely? Dieu de Dieu, you will?”

  “What now?” I asked as he put back the receiver and turned a blank face to me.

  “A so strange testament has been found in Mademoiselle Dolores’ room,” he answered. “In it she does expressly request that she be not embalmed. You attended her, my friend, you have authority; will you not prevail on Monsieur FitzPatrick to have an autopsy performed?”

  “I can’t,” I told him. “The cause of death was perfectly obvious; I’ve seen it coming for days, and warned FitzPatrick of it. He’d think me crazy.”

  “I shall think you worse, if you refuse.”

  “I’m sorry,” I returned. “There’s no earthly excuse for a post-mortem; I wouldn’t think of asking one.”

  And there the matter rested.

  THE LAST HUMMING ECHO of the final gong-stroke spent itself in the still summer air, and like the faintest whisper of a breeze among half-dried leaves came the subdued rustle which betokened turning heads and craning necks—that gesture which even well-bred people make at such a time.

  A momentary congestion at the church door while six frock-coated and perspiring gentlemen bent their backs to the unaccustomed task, then:

  “I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live… .”

  Dr. Bentley’s resonant voice sounded as he marched slowly up the aisle before the flower-decked casket. “I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth …”

  The afternoon sun shone softly through the stained glass windows and glinted on the polished mahogany of the pews. Here and there it picked out spots of color, a flower, a woman’s hat or a man’s tie. Through a memorial panel to the r
ight of the chancel a single beam of tinted light gleamed dully on the silver mountings of the casket. The majestic office for the burial of the dead proceeded to benediction, the choir’s voices rose in “Lead, Kindly Light,” drowning out the muffled boom of the traffic in the street beyond.

  As the organ’s final diminuendo vibrated to silence, the pallbearers rose to their appointed task and once more the solemn procession passed through the center aisle. A momentary lull came in the outside traffic as the suave mortician appeared on the church steps; then a motor purred to the curb, the hearse moved forward, and the procession was on its way.

  Jules de Grandin tossed his burned-out cigarette from the window of Coroner Martin’s limousine and gazed in undisguised admiration at the mortician. “You are marvelous, no less, Monsieur,” he assured him. “In my own country, and anywhere in Europe, Mademoiselle FitzPatrick would have been consigned to the grave in four-and-twenty hours. We do not embalm there. Here, under similar conditions, you present her at the church three hot summer days after death as though she lay in natural sleep. Tell me,” he leaned forward eagerly, “is it perhaps that you ignored the injunctions of her testament and embalmed her body after all?”

  Martin shook his head. “Did you notice the casket?” he asked.

  “It was a most beautiful piece of furniture,” the Frenchman answered with non-committal politeness.

  “I wasn’t referring to its appearance, but to its construction,” the other returned. “The outside case is mahogany, carefully glued and jointed, practically a water- and air-tight box. Inside is a shell technically known as an ‘inner sealer,’ a separate copper case with an hermetically sealed full-length top of plate glass. This, in turn, is lined with satin upholstery. Before we laid the young lady in this inner casket we put upward of a hundred briquettes of carbon dioxide snow—the ‘dry ice’ used by confectioners to keep ice cream hard for long periods—under the satin trimmings. Then we fastened down the glass top and made it airtight with rubber gaskets and liquid cement. The air space between the inner and outer caskets, and the hermetic seating of the inner case insured the carbon dioxide against rapid evaporation, the result being that the temperature in the inner casket is, and will continue for a long time to be, several degrees below freezing. You see?”