The Devil's Rosary

by Seabury Quinn

  “Madame Sylvia, you hear me?” he asked softly.

  “Yes,” the reply was hardly audible as the girl breathed it lightly.

  “Very good. Attend me carefully. It is the night of your arrival here. You have gone to bed. You are asleep. What transpires?”

  No answer.

  “Très bon; all is yet quiet. It is two hours later. Do you see, do you hear anything?”

  Still silence.

  “Bien. It is the moment at which the intruder entered your chamber. What is it? Who is it? Whom do you see?” His final question came with sharp, sudden emphasis.

  For a moment the girl reclined quietly in her easy-chair; then a light, moaning sound escaped her. She rolled her head restlessly from side to side, like a sleeper suffering a disagreeable dream, and her breathing came more quickly.

  “Speak! I demand to know what you see—whom you see!” he ordered harshly.

  A quick, convulsive shudder ran through her, and with a sudden, writhing movement she slipped from her chair and lay supine on the floor. Her eyelids were slightly parted, but the eyeballs were so far rolled back that only a tiny glistening crescent of white showed between her lashes. Again she moaned softly; then the whole expression of her features changed. She thrust her head a little forward, her pale cheeks flushed red, her mouth half opened and a desirous smile lay upon her lips. She raised her hands, making little downward passes before her face, as though she stroked the cheeks of one who bent above her, and a gentle tremor ran through her as her slim bosom expanded slightly and her mouth opened and closed in a pantomime of kissing. A deep sigh of ardent ecstasy issued from between her white teeth.

  “Grand Dieu, what have we here?” de Grandin muttered nervously. “C’est un incube! Behold, Friend Trowbridge, from feet to head she is a vessel that fills itself with the sweet pains of love! What does it mean?”

  But even as he spoke the tableau changed. With a sudden wrench she moved to free herself from the bonds of an amorous embrace, and on her countenance, but lately beatified with passionate love, there came a look of stark and abject terror. One arm was thrown across her face, as if to ward away a blow, and her breast rose and fell in labored respiration. Her cheeks again were pale, as if every vestige of blood had left them, even her lips were grayish-blue.

  She struggled to her knees, and crept writhingly away till the wall cut off her retreat, and then she groveled on the floor, her forehead lowered, hands clasped protectively upon the upturned nape of her neck, and all the while she shook and trembled like a palsied thing.

  From her blenched lips came a spate of words, but strange, foreign words they were, seemingly all consonants, and in a language I could not identify.

  Then, at de Grandin’s sharp command she turned to English, crying: “Mercy, my Lord! Is it sin that a woman young and fair should love? Look on this form, this body and these limbs—” She rose and faced an invisible accuser, her head thrown back, her hands outspread, as one who would display her charms to best advantage. “Was not I formed for loving and for love?” she asked. “How can I ever be the cold and stony-hearted servant of your order? ’Tis love that I was made for and love which I did crave. Can a woman’s soul be forfeit if she does listen to the prompting of her woman’s heart?

  “O-o-h!” her shrill scream rent the quiet of the room. “Not that; not that, my Lord—anything but that! See”—she sank upon her knees and looked up pleadingly while with eloquent, outflung hands she made a gesture of supreme surrender—“see me as I kneel before thee! See this body, so soft, so tender, so full of delight; it is thine—all, all thine, if only thou wilt spare me—o-o-oh—o-o-o-oh—ai-ee!” Again her frantic scream set my nerves a-tingle, and I thanked the heavenly powers that cries of pain would cause less public comment coming from a doctor’s house than any other place.

  She balled her fingers into diminutive fists and wrestled back and forth as though her wrists were in the vise-like grip of some grim, relentless captor.

  Her eyes were open now, wide open, and filmed with horror indescribable. Her face was deathly pale, her whole body vibrant with an agony of desperate fear. In silence now she struggled, but how! She was like a madwoman, clawing, twisting, writhing. She turned her head and spat into an invisible face; she dug her feet into the rug, tried to fling herself prostrate, twined herself about her captor; once she bent swiftly and I heard the snap of her small, sharp teeth as she went through the dumb show of fleshing them in a man’s arm. Her face was livid, scarcely like a living thing.

  Now her struggles lessened. Her shrieks subsided to weak whimpers, and she followed pitifully, though reluctantly, in the wake of her unseen conductor like a little broken-spirited child led out for punishment. Her arms were stretched before her, hands drooping, as though her wrists were held fast in a powerful grip. Her head bent listlessly, rolled and lolled from side to side, as if extremity of terror had sapped her last shred of vitality, leaving her scarcely strong enough to stand erect.

  But once again she galvanized to action. Apparently they were come to their destination, for she halted, struggled backward a moment, then held one hand out from her side as though it were being made fast to something.

  And I swear I could see the marks of the invisible ligature as the cord was tightly drawn about her wrist!

  Now the other hand was pinioned and now her slender ankles were crossed one upon another, and one after another we saw the furrows form, saw the silk-meshed stockings sink in on the shrinking flesh as invisible bonds were cruelly tightened.

  She half leaned, half lay across a chair-arm, her body taut and rigid as a drawn bow, white and still as a lovely Andromeda carven in marble, and in her misty, tear-gemmed eyes was such a look of tragic, mute appeal as nearly broke my heart. She held her fixed, unnatural pose until my muscles ached in sympathy. “Good heavens,” I exclaimed, “de Grandin, this is terrible, we must—”

  “Observe, my friend, he comes, he is arrived, he is here!” the Frenchman’s shout drowned out my protest as he seized me by the elbow and swung me round.

  My heart all but ceased to beat as I turned. Framed in the window of the study, like a portrait of incarnate evil and malevolence executed by a master craftsman, was the face of James Bartrow.

  But such a face! Gone was every vestige of the urbane man of the world I knew, and in its place there was the very distillation of savagery, wild, insane rage and lust for killing. His matted hair lay on his forehead, his beard was fairly bristling with ferocity, and on his tight-drawn lips there sat a sneering smile of mingled hate and murderous blood-lustfulness.

  “So,” he cried, and his voice was thin and cracked with madness, “so, I find ye, do I? Too long ye’ve robbed me of my vengeance, ye filth-filled vessel of pollution. The Gods cry out for sacrifice, and here am I, their servant and their priest, prepared to render them their due!”

  With one gigantic heave he tore the copper screen from out the window and drew himself up to the sill. A moment he crouched there, like a great, savage cat about to spring; then with a leap he cleared the intervening space and towered over Sylvia. I started as I saw the gleam of something white in his right hand. It was a long and slender blade chipped from flint, the sort of weapon I’d seen in museums.

  “I all but slew ye in the grove of Cambria,” he roared, “and by the heart I would have plucked from your breast I would have made my divinations; but ye did escape me then. This time I have ye fairly. Look on me, Cwerfa, and know your hour is come, for by the stone of Cromlech’s ring I brought across the seas, and by the holy mistletoe that grows upon the sacred oak, and by the mystic gem of serpents’ spew, I’m here to cut the heart from out your breast as I would have long ago!

  “They thought they’d packed me off and gotten rid of me—ha, ha!—but I came back, and when I found ye’d fled the house wherein I kept the Cromlech stone, I knew ye must have sought protection from the Frankish outlander as once before ye found it with the Romans, and here I am to claim your forfeit life, a
nd none shall say me nay!” With a wild, maniacal roar he leaned across the girl and wrenched the flimsy silken drapery from her bosom.

  “Your pardon, Monsieur, but Jules de Grandin is here, and he does most emphatically say nay!” the Frenchman interrupted and struck the towering madman a stunning blow upon the head with the carafe of chilled water which stood beside the decanter of brandy on the study table.

  The bludgeoned maniac fell crashing to the floor, and almost as he fell de Grandin was on him, wrenching the stone knife from his grasp, tearing a pongee curtain from its rods and twisting it into a rope with which he pinioned Bartrow’s wrists behind him and made them fast with double knots.

  “And now, my friend, I would that you accompany me at once to this one’s residence,” he ordered, snatching down another curtain and fastening the prisoner’s feet together, then dragging him to the entrance of the study and tethering him securely to one of the white pillars which flanked the doorway. “Come, it is of the greatest import!” he urged. “We have no little moment to stand here stupidly and stare.”

  Dazed, but goaded by his constant pleas for haste, I drove him to the Bartrow home, and waited while he clamored at the door. He had a brief parley with the servant who responded to his summons, disappeared within the house and emerged a moment later bearing a frame of ancient weathered oak in which was set an oblong of dull, grayish stone. In his left hand he swung a canvas sack like those used by banks for holding minor coins, and in it something clinked and jingled musically.

  “I think I have them all,” he told me. “Rush hasten, fly back to your house, my friend. There is work ahead of us!”

  He led me to the cellar as soon as we returned, and in the furnace we built a roaring fire of newspapers and stray bits of wood, and when we had it blazing we heaped a few shovelfuls of coal upon it. As soon as all was glowing he tossed the oak-framed stone and the collection of flint arrowheads into the fiery crater. Last of all he flung in the stone knife he had taken from Bartrow when he struck him down.

  The oak frame of the stone burned furiously, and to my great surprise the stone itself and the arrowheads and knife seemed to offer small resistance to the fire, but turned into a sort of brittle and crumbling lime. We waited fifteen minutes or so, while the fire completed its work of destruction; then the Frenchman seized the heavy iron poker and mashed the burned stone relics into powder, dumped the clinkers into the ashpit and stirred them all together till none could tell which had been Pennsylvania coal and which the old stone curios which Bartrow prized so highly. “Come, let us see what passes up above,” he ordered when he had finished with the poker, and led the way to the study.

  Sylvia had fallen to the floor, and de Grandin raised her and placed her comfortably in a chair, then, having rearranged the mutilated corsage of her dress, turned his attention to the still unconscious Bartrow. “I think we may release him, now,” he commented, and together we undid the knots and tugged and pulled until we had him in a chair.

  “Revive him, if you please,” de Grandin ordered, and set the motors of his whirling mirrors going.

  I dashed some water into Bartrow’s’ face and held a vial of ammoniated salts to his nostrils, and as his eyelids quivered de Grandin struck him lightly on the cheek. “Observe—look—see here!” he ordered.

  Bartrow struggled half-way from his chair, gazed at the spinning mirrors a moment, then sat forward, his gaze riveted to the bright concentric circles they described.

  Softly, carefully, forcefully, de Grandin ordered him to sleep, repeating his command until it was obeyed; then, when he had stopped the motor, he moved to the center of the room, and:

  “My friends, I bid you listen to me carefully,” he ordered. “You, Monsieur Ransome, know nothing of that which has transpired. It is good. Very good. Continue in your ignorance. You, Madame Sylvia, have quite forgotten every fear of olden days, and of the present; to you your father-in-law is but a kindly old gentleman who loves you and whom you love in turn.

  “And you, Monsieur Bartrow the elder,” he turned his piercing gaze on the older man, “whatever it was which did possess you is gone away. I have destroyed it utterly. No longer will the impulse to murder Madame Sylvia be with you. You hear me? You will—you must obey. She is to you the much-loved wife of your much-loved son; no more, no less, and as such you will give her your affection and make her welcome to your heart and home.”

  He paused a moment, then continued: “You will rise up, go to the street, and in two minutes reappear at the front door of this house, nor will you know that you have called before or why you came. Go. En avant; allez-vous-en!

  “Awake, my friends; wake Monsieur Ransome, wake Madame Sylvia; the experiment is done and you are sleeping long!” he cried gayly, snapping his fingers at Ransome and Sylvia in turn. “Parbleu, I did think these little dancing mirrors would have made you sleep the clock around!” he added as they opened heavy eyes.

  “Did we really fall asleep? How stupid!” Sylvia exclaimed. “I don’t think it very nice of you to invite us to dinner, then put us to sleep with your horrid apparatus, Doctor de Grandin.”

  “Ah, Madame, I am desolated that it should have happened thus,” he answered, “but you are doubtless rested by the nap; come, let us go upon the porch once more and smoke a cigarette.”

  “Good evening, everyone,” James Bartrow sauntered out on the veranda, “hope I’m not intruding. I couldn’t stand it out at the lake any longer, so I hopped a train and came back to town. They told me you children had gone over here, so I came along to see you were all right. Did they give you a good dinner?”

  “Why, Daddy Jim, how nice of you to come!” Sylvia jumped from her chair, threw her arms about her father-in-law’s neck and kissed him on both bearded cheeks. “I’ve been wishing you’d come back,” she added.

  He patted her shoulder affectionately. “Great girl, eh, Trowbridge?” he asked pridefully as he sank into a chair beside me and lighted a cigar.

  We chatted inconsequentially for an hour or so; then the Bartrows, on the best of terms with us and with each other, bade us good-night.

  “NOW,” I THREATENED AS the echo of their laughing voices died away, “will you explain all this craziness I’ve seen tonight, or must I choke an explanation from you?”

  He raised his shoulders in a shrug. “Le bon Dieu knows,” he confessed. “I hardly dare to venture an opinion.

  “When first we entered Monsieur Bartrow’s house and saw the look of savage exultation on his face when he beheld the little bride, and the expression of stark terror with which she looked at him, I said to me, ‘Parbleu, Jules de Grandin, what are the meaning of this?’ And I replied:

  “‘Jules de Grandin, I do not know.’

  “Your West; he is like our Foreign Legion, the port of men who would be forgotten, and that young Madame Bartrow came from there I knew. Was it that in his younger days the elder Bartrow had sojourned in that country and there had formed a feud with some member of her family? And did he recognize her as a foeman’s child the moment he put eyes on her? Perhaps. I could not be sure of anything, and so I waited and wondered.

  “A little light came to us when he called here to consult you. He wished to kill her, he declared he had an impulse almost irresistible to do her injury, and yet he knew not why it was. Ah, but his dream—you do recall? He dreamed he trailed her through a deep, dark grove of oak trees, and there he found her, all bound and helpless, and robed in white. And white, my friend, has almost always been the color of the robe of sacrifice. What could this mean? I asked me. The holy angels only know.

  “No, there was another one who knew, at least, in part, and Madame Sylvia was she. Held fast within the secret chamber of her mind there was a recollection of her father-in-law’s visit. Undoubtlessly he spoke when he accosted her; his words would surely give some clue to why he wished her injury. ‘Very well, then,’ I say to me. ‘If Madame Sylvia holds the answer, she shall tell us.’

  “And so we did. With di
nner I did bait my trap, and when she came I was prepared to make invasion of the secret kingdom of her mind. But first I asked a few small questions of her husband.

  “While we were at his house I had noticed certain things concerning it. Within the lovely little park which stands about his home, I had seen nothing but oak trees, little oaks, great oaks, and oaks which were neither large nor small. That was unusual. Also I noticed much oaken furniture within the house, and the fine Tudor wainscot in the drawing-room.

  “And so I asked about the wood, leading young Monsieur Ransome to correct what he thought my mistake, that he might speak more freely, and thus I learned of his father’s so strange passion for oak. Also he told me of the foolish whim which made his father import and keep a Druid stone from Wales. Ah, that also was important, but just why I could not say at that time. No, I needed further information.

  “So I interrogated Madame Sylvia. Tiens, there I was like Monsieur Robin the tailor in your so droll nursery rime, he who …

  … bent his bow,

  Shot at a sparrow

  And killed a crow.

  For where I sought only to unlatch the darkened window and let in light upon her little fear, behold, I opened wide the door upon a fearsome memory so dreadful that almost countless generations had not been long enough to bury it beneath their years. Yes.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, bewildered.

  He gazed at me a moment, then: “What is instinct?” he demanded.

  “Why, I suppose you might call it an innate quality, apart from reason or experience, which prompts animals of the same species to react to certain definite stimuli in the same manner.”

  “Very good,” he complimented. “The day-old chick needs no example to teach it to pick up grains of corn, the newborn infant needs not to be told to take the breast—Madame Sylvia’s little kitten required none to tell him that the serpent was his deadly foe. No.

  “But why is instinct? What makes it? It is mass memory, transmitted from our earliest forebears, and stored up in our subconscious minds for use in emergency. Nothing less.