The Devil's Rosary

by Seabury Quinn

  “She told me she was going to die—apparently,” young Millington returned, as though the words were wrung from his unwilling lips. “She said she had an illness which only seeming death could cure, but that she wouldn’t really die, and if I’d come to her grave and take her from it, and lay her where the first rays of the new moon could shine on her, she’d rise again, in perfect health, and we could go away—”

  “Ah, poor besotted one!” de Grandin cried compassionately. “Truly, you would go away, for your chances of remaining in the world when once life had returned to those cruel jaws and force was once again behind those tiny, sharp teeth would have been less than that of the lamb attending a convention of famished wolves! No matter; go on. You believed her; like a silly fish you gobbled up her bait and did become her tool in this night’s work. I see; I understand. Say no more, my poor foolish one. You may go, and we shall keep your secret securely in our breasts.

  “Only”—he laid his hand kindly on the boy’s shoulder at the door—“if you possess one single shred of gratitude, when next you go to church, thank God upon your knees that your scheme failed tonight.”

  “Thank God?” the boy retorted. “For what?”

  “Tiens, for Jules de Grandin, if for nothing else,” he answered. “Good night and much good luck to you, petit Monsieur.”

  “NOW, PERHAPS, YOU’LL CONDESCEND to tell me something?” I asked sarcastically as the echo of young Millington’s footsteps died away.

  “Exactement,” he agreed, selecting a cigar from the humidor and snipping off its end with painstaking care. “To begin: I flout my citizenship of France like a banner proudly displayed before the enemy; but I am a citizen of the world, as well, my friend. The seven seas and five continents are no strangers to me. No, I have traveled, I have seen; I have observed. In the lazarets of a hundred places I have plied this gruesome trade of patching broken bodies which we follow, good friend, and the notebooks of my memory are full of entries. By example: In a stinking trading town of Java I was once called to treat a human wreck who had loved not wisely but altogether too well. The object of his passion was a savage she-tiger, a beast-cruel Sadist. She bit his lips away in the moment of embrace. He was a most unpleasant sight, one not to be forgotten, I do assure you.

  “Very good. The other evening at the country club I did behold another poor one similarly maimed. Once seen, such injuries as that are not forgotten, and I needed no second glance at the poor young Faber’s lips to tell me he was even as that other one in Java.

  “‘Now,’ I asked me, ‘who have so ruthlessly destroyed this young man’s looks, and for what reason?’

  “Reason there was none, but very lack of reason is often the best reason of all. This Mademoiselle Dolores, she has the history of taking all which is most precious to her cousin, not because it has a value of its own, but because her cousin prizes it. Therefore, I reason, she who once broke her cousin’s dolls have now ravished away her fiancé and broken him, too. She did it from pure wantonness.

  “And I am right, as usual. Next day, as I prepare to recondition the poor young Faber’s lips I ask him certain questions, and he replied in writing. What does he tell me? Parbleu, you would be astonished!

  “He says he accompanied Mademoiselle Dolores to the clearing where the moon shone, for she had said she wished to tell him something. Once there she tells him of her love and begs that he will desert her cousin Josephine and go away with her. But no, he is a young man of good principle. He will not do it; he repulses her. Ha, he spoke truly who first said hell has no fury like a scorned woman! Dolores asks that young Martin will give her one little kiss in token of farewell, and all men are weak where lovely women plead thus humbly. She lifts her face to his, and all suddenly he sees the flesh melt from off her bones, and it is in the bare-skulled face of a skeleton he looks as he is about to kiss her!

  “He cries out and struggles to be free, but it are useless. Her slender arms are strong as steel, and her teeth—mon Dieu—her teeth are like shears of white-hot metal. They fasten on his yielding lips and clip them clear away! Voilà, it is done, and sick with pain and horror he staggers blindly through the trees until we find him.

  “So much I learn, and I think deeply. ‘Who, or what, are this so strange being called Dolores?’ I ask me.

  “The nighttime comes, I go to bed and anon there comes a great and dreadful bird which claws at my window and makes dire threats against me if I divulge what I have learned that day. You say it are an owl. Perhaps. But does an owl talk with human words, my friend? Not ordinarily, you will concede.

  “All quickly comes the call from Monsieur FitzPatrick, and to his house we go to seek the lost Dolores. The dog leads us well, but he scents something—something evil which we can not see—and turns to run away. Long since I have learned to trust the animal instinct which warns of evil and unseen things, and so I take us back to the house and ask for spiritual ammunition with which to fight the danger which awaits us in the cemetery.”

  “Yes, I wanted to ask you about that,” I interrupted. “Wouldn’t anything except a rosary and bottle of holy water serve as protection that night?”

  “Many things,” he agreed, “but they were handiest. The Church of Rome has no exclusive patent on fighting with and conquering the evil ones, but her methods are always efficacious—she has waged the battle so long, and so successfully.”

  “But why should a cross, just because it is a cross, be valuable in such a case?” I persisted.

  He paused in thought a moment; then: “Words much repeated, with a special significance, in time acquire power,” he replied. “Witchcraft is one of the world’s oldest curses. Before Egypt was, the witch-cult flourished, and Babylonia and Assyria both understood the witch’s awful power. Both had their charms against her, but they are gone, and their charms are gone with them. Then arose Christianity, and took up the battle with the witch-brood. Now, when a rosary is blessed and when holy water is dedicated, the priest says certain words—always the same, and always with the same intent. The formula has become invincible through centuries of repetition. Consider: You can not hear the music of your national anthem without a sudden tingling in your cheeks, a sudden contraction of the throat, a quick feeling of exaltation. Words, my friend, the power of words to conjure into sudden being a certain train of thought and a definite physical reaction. So it is with prayers oft repeated. Yes.

  “Very well. With these spiritual weapons we returned to the old cemetery, and there we encounter and subdue three evil creatures which posed as bats. Perhaps they were such; perhaps, again, they were something else. At any rate, we routed them, and then we found Dolores apparently lying lifeless on a long-forgotten grave. Morbleu, the whole thing stank of witchery, my friend.

  “Bethink you: It was the night of August first, the feast of St. Peter’s Chains, or Lammas, as the English-speakers call it. That was one of the great gathering days of the witches of olden times, the others being Candlemas in February, Roodmass, or May Eve, and All Hallow Eve, or Halloween. And, my friend, in spite of all the learned fools tell us to the contrary, witchcraft still lives!

  “Through the years and centuries it has given ground before the new religion, but in remote places it still survives. In Italy, despite repressive measures, ‘the old religion’ as they call it, la vecchia religione, still numbers many followers.

  “And in other lands—in every land—who are better fitted to keep alive the old, unholy fires of witchcraft than the Gipsies? They are a race apart, they neither mingle nor intermarry with the people among whom they live. Their men may be thieves, but their women are open practisers of the black art. Do they not boast of second sight and ‘dukkering’ and charms to injure enemies or break the spells laid on by others? But yes.

  “Nor have actual proven instances of acts more sinister been lacking. In Estremadura four Gipsy women were taken by the Spanish government and made to own they had killed and eaten a friar, a pilgrim and a woman of their own tribe
. And remember, Dolores’ mother was a woman of the Spanish Gipsies. That has much bearing on the cast.

  “You will recall I asked you if you’d read your Bible lately concerning those possessed of devils? For why? Because the learned numskulls who write the ‘higher criticism’ have been at pains to tell us demoniacal possession was but epilepsy. Perhaps, but will the rule not work both ways? If epilepsy may simulate possession by fiends, why should not such possession mimic epilepsy?

  “‘Nonsense,’ you say? Ah bah, I damn think my hypothesis was proved when her you did think dead of epilepsy came suddenly to life in your very arms that night.

  “I did foresee her second death. Yes. Her body was the dwelling-place of evil, and had been racked by its tenants. The sleep and rest of death was needed, and to it she resorted. Such cases are not unknown.

  “And so, when she had apparently died a ‘natural’ death, I besought that she be embalmed, or that you have her subjected to an autopsy, so that she might he forever rendered incapable of functioning as a living being again.

  “But she was clever—almost as clever as I. She had outguessed modern mortuary science by leaving a testament expressly forbidding embalming, and you refused an autopsy.

  “By Monsieur FitzPatrick’s permission I went through all her correspondence. There she had been lax—she had not thought of Jules de Grandin, for he had simulated indifference in her case and had not called upon her once while his good friend Trowbridge was treating her to prevent the death she had already decided on.

  “Among her papers I found but little that would guide me, but finally I came on that which I did seek, a little note from the young Millington in answer to one of hers, and in it he did renew his promise to take her from the grave, ‘if she should die’ (how well she had rehearsed him for his rôle!) and lay her body where the first faint rays of the new moon might rest upon it!

  “That was the key, my friend. In Greece, where warlocks still make sport of science and religion, when members of the witch-cult desire to shift their scene of operations, or when discovery hovers close behind them, they take refuge in the tomb. They ‘die’ as this one did. But always their ‘deaths’ are due to some cause which leaves no outward wound upon their bodies—no injury which would prevent their future functioning. Then, if they be exhumed and placed beneath the new moon’s rays, soon after burial, they rise again, as though refreshed by the nap taken in the grave—and woe betide the poor unfortunate who catches their first waking glance! With teeth and nails, like maddened brute beasts, they tear his throat away, and rip his heart from out his breast and eat it. It is their custom so to do; a most unpleasant one, I think.

  “Accordingly, we watched beside her grave tonight; we saw the poor, infatuated Millington exhume her; we saw him bear her to the hilltop and lay her where the moon could shine upon her; we even saw the beginning of her return to life and wickedness. But Jules de Grandin nipped her resurrection in the bud by shooting her, and now her lovely body lies in the grave with shattered brain, and never more may evil spirits use it for their evil ends. No, she has said at last to the grave, ‘Thou art my father and my mother,’ and to corruption, ‘Thou art my lover and my bridegroom.’ Her business in this world is finished.”

  “But,” I began, “in the philosophy of witchcraft—”

  “Ho, you do remind me of another philosophy,” he interrupted with a grin:

  “Who loves not woman, wine and song

  Remains a fool his whole life long.

  “I sing most execrably; the love of woman is a gift denied me; but thanks be to kindly heaven my taste for wine is unabated. Come, let us drink and go to bed!”

  The Druid’s Shadow

  “TEN THOUSAND LITTLE SMALL blue devils! It is annoying. I am vexed, I am harassed, I am exasperated!” Jules de Grandin felt successively in the pockets of his blue-flannel jacket, his oyster-white linen waistcoat and his pin-striped trousers, then turned such a woebegone face to me that I burst out laughing.

  “Ha, sale bête, you laugh at my distress?” he demanded fiercely. “So. Parbleu, you shall pay dearly for your levity. I give you choice of three alternatives: Hand me a cigarette forthwith, convey me instantly where more can be purchased, or die by my hand within the moment. Choose!” He tweaked the tightly waxed ends of his diminutive wheat-blond mustache after the manner of the swashbuckling hero in a costume melodrama.

  “I never smoked a cigarette in my life, so my first chance is gone,” I grinned, “and I’m too busy to have you kill me this afternoon, so I suppose I’ll have to cart you to a cigar store. There’s the railway station, shall we get them at the news stand?”

  I maneuvered the car across the busy street and parked beside the station entrance. “Wait a minute,” I called as he leaped nimbly to the platform, “you’ve put bad ideas in my head. I think I’ll get a cigar here. I don’t usually smoke while driving, but—”

  “Perfectly,” he interrupted with an impish grin, “and you shall buy me a packet of cigarettes when you purchase your cigar. I impose the penalty for laughing at my misfortune a moment since.”

  The customary exsurgence which heralded the arrival of a train from the West was beginning as I paused beside the cigar counter. Red Caps moved leisurely toward the landing-platform, a baggage agent opened his book and drew the pencil from his cap band, one or two hotel runners showed signs of returning animation as they rose from the bench where they lounged.

  I pocketed my change and turned to light my cigar as the locomotive snorted to a halt and passengers began alighting from the Pullmans, but a cheery hail brought me about as I was in the act of rejoining de Grandin. “Hullo there, Doctor Trowbridge—imagine running into you at the station—you’re a sight for tired eyes! Now it does seem like getting home!” Burned to a crisp by the Arizona sun, lean, but by no means emaciated, and showing no trace of the decline which had driven him from our damp Eastern climate three years before, young Ransome Bartrow shouldered his way through the crowd and took my hand in a bone-crushing grip. “By George, I’m glad to see you again, sir!” he assured me, grinding my knuckles till I was ready to roar with pain.

  “And I’m glad to see you, Rance,” I answered. “It’s hardly necessary to ask how you feel, but—”

  “No buts about it,” he returned with a laugh. “The doctors looked me over with a microscope—if I’d had anything from dandruff to flat feet they’d have found it—and pronounced me cured. I can live here the rest of my life, and needn’t get nervous prostration every time I’m caught in a rain storm, either. Ain’t that great?”

  “It surely is,” I congratulated. “Got your baggage? Come on, then, I want you to meet—”

  “Holy smoke, that reminds me!” he burst out. “I want you to meet—” He turned, dragging me after him to a modishly dressed young woman who mounted guard above an imposing pile of hand-luggage. “Sylvia, dear,” he announced, “this is Doctor Trowbridge. He’s had the honor of knowing your lord and master since he was one second old. Doctor Trowbridge, this is my wife.”

  As I took the girl’s hand in mine I was forced to admit Ransome had made an excellent choice, if externals were to be trusted, for she was pretty in an appealing way, with large gray eyes, soft ash-blond hair and a rather sad mouth, and from the look she gave her husband there was no need to ask whether theirs had been a love match.

  “And now to meet the stern parent,” young Bartrow proclaimed. “I wrote Dad I was bringing him a surprise, but I didn’t tell him what it was, and I didn’t tell what train I was coming on. Wanted to take him unawares, you know. I—oh, I say, Doctor Trowbridge, won’t you come up to the house with us? Maybe the pater will have a stroke or something when he meets Sylvia, and it’s only Christian for us to have a physician along to administer first aid and take his dying statement. Even if he doesn’t go into convulsions, it’ll be worth your trip to see his face when I say, ‘Meet the wife.’ What d’ye say?”

  My commonplace reply was foreign to my thoughts, f
or there was more than a possibility the boy’s jesting prediction might be realized.

  Ransome Bartrow was his father’s idol. He was his parents’ first and only child, born when both were well past forty, and his advent had led to complications which took his mother’s life within a year. His father had married relatively late in life, and with the passing of his adored wife had lavished all the affection of his lonely life upon his son. There was money in abundance, and nothing which could be bought had ever been denied the boy. Copybook maxims to the contrary notwithstanding, young Ransome had developed into a fine young man. He stood well in all his classes at school and excelled in most forms of athletics, rowing stroke on his varsity crew. Entering business with his father after graduation, he showed an aptitude for work which seemed to guarantee success to the newly formed firm of James Bartrow & Son, but before a year had passed the malady which strikes so many former oarsmen fastened on him, and only a hurried trip to Arizona saved his life. From the day his son departed to the West the father had counted the minutes of their separation like a rosary of sorrow, and now when his boy returned only to present a strange young woman who by the law of God and man had first claim on his affections—there might be need for digitalis when the bride was introduced.

  JULES DE GRANDIN GREETED the youngsters with all the gay enthusiasm he always showed for lovers. Before we had traversed a dozen blocks toward the Bartrow mansion he was sitting with an arm about the shoulders of each, rattling off anecdote after droll anecdote, and Ransome Bartrow’s deep, booming laughter mingled with the silvery laugh of his bride as they listened to the witty little Frenchman’s sallies.

  James Bartrow stood in the broad drawing-room of his big house, straining thoughtfully at the fireless hearth behind its fencing of polished brass fender. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, with a big head crowned with a mane of iron-gray hair and a trimly cut white beard. Something in the bigness and obvious power—physical and mental—of the man seemed to strike his son with awe, and as he tiptoed into the apartment, his bride’s hand in his, de Grandin and I at his elbow, his buoyant self-assurance deserted him for the first time.