The Devil's Rosary

by Seabury Quinn

  It started with a choking, rasping moan, as if one of the sitters at the table gasped for breath, then, as though torn from tortured flesh by torment too great to be sustained, it rose in answer to the distant cry: “Ow-o-o-o-O-O-O!” swelling with increasing stress, then sinking in a hopeless, mourning diminuendo: “OW-O-O-O-O-o-o-oo!”

  Strangely, too, the half-reluctant, half-exultant cry was so quickly voiced that it was impossible to place its origin, save to say it emanated from the dining room.

  “Nom d’un chat noir, who makes this business of the ape?” de Grandin challenged sharply. “I will not have it!” He burst into the dining room, eyes blazing, small mustache bristling. “Fools, bêtes, dupes, you know not what you do! To mock at them is to invite destruction of—”

  He paused, choking with savage anger, and as if to punctuate his tirade the electric current came on again, flooding the big house with sudden brilliance, limning the scene in the dining room like a tableau vivant on the stage. Fleetwood and eight others sat with hands still pressed upon the table, startled, rather foolish expressions on their faces as they blinked owlishly in the sudden deluge of light. Hildegarde, his six-months’ bride for whom Twelvetrees had been built, lay cheek-down on the table, her face as pale as carven ivory, her lush red lips slightly parted, as in sleep.

  “Good Lord,” our host exclaimed, “she’s fainted! This fool joke’s gone far enough.” He glared about the circle at the table. “Who let out that God-awful howl?”

  The little Frenchman cast an appraising look at the unconscious girl and a venomous glance at Mazie Noyer. “See to her, Friend Trowbridge, if you please,” he ordered with a nod toward Hildegarde, then, to Mazie, “This is your work, Mademoiselle. I trust you are proud of it.”

  “I?” Miss Noyer was scandalized. “Why, I never dreamed of doing such a thing. I was as surprised as anyone when that inhuman howl started. I think you forget yourself, Dr. de Grandin. You owe me an apology.”

  “Mille pardons, Mademoiselle,” he answered acidly, “whatever my debt is, this is no time for payment. Me, I think an evening of ennui would have been far preferable to your stupid invocation of forces of which you know nothing. We can but pray that no great harm is done.” Turning on his heel he left the room without a single backward glance at Mazie, or any offer of apology for his accusation.

  Am bringing Hildegarde to town for consultation.

  Please see me tomorrow.

  Fleetwood.

  I passed the telegram to Jules de Grandin and grinned despite myself at his sober expression. “Why so serious?” I asked, helping myself to a fresh serving of griddle cakes and honey. “That sort of thing’s been going on since Adam and Eve left the Garden to set up housekeeping. Norval and Hildegarde are excited, of course, but it’s only a biological function, after all, and—”

  “Ah bah!” he cut in “You annoy me, you vex me, you harass me, Friend Trowbridge. You say it is the coming of an heir to Twelvetrees that brings Monsieur and Madame Fleetwood to town. I hope that you are right, but fear you are in error. Would he telegraph if that were all? Would they have to see you right away, immediately, at once about a matter which cannot in the course of nature or respectability be nearer than three months away? I greatly doubt it.”

  “You’re absurd,” I told him.

  “I hope so sincerely; but we shall eventually see who laughs in whose face, my friend.”

  In deference to Fleetwood’s message I stayed indoors most of the following day, but dinner time came and went without further word from him. “Confound it,” I grumbled, glancing irritably at my watch, “I wish they’d come. King Lear’s playing at the Academy tonight, and I’d like to see it. If they’ll only hurry we can get there before the middle of the first act, and—

  “Eh bein, be patient, my old one,” de Grandin counseled. “Unless I am much more mistaken than I think, we shall soon see a tragedy the like of which Monsieur Shakespeare never dreamed. Indeed, I think the curtain is already rising—” He glanced at the consulting room door expectantly, and as if evoked by his words Norval Fleetwood entered.

  “Hildegarde’s up at the Passaic Boulevard house,” he answered my inquiry as we shook hands. “It’s such a wretched night I thought I’d better leave her home, and—” he paused as though the words somehow stuck in his throat, “I thought I’d better see you before you see her, sir.”

  “Ah?” de Grandin’s barely whispered comment had a ring of triumph in it, and I favored him with a black look.

  Fleetwood nodded shortly. “I’m almost wild with anxiety about her, Doctor. You remember that fool séance Mazie Noyer got up Sunday night two weeks ago—the night when the lights went out at Twelvetrees? It started right after that.”

  “A-a-ah?” de Grandin commented.

  “What seems to be the trouble?” I asked, casting another withering glance at the small Frenchman.

  “I—I’m damned if I know, sir. Hildegarde was restless as a child with fever all that night, and dull and listless as a convalescent all next day. I had to come to town and was delayed considerably getting back, and dinner should have been over an hour when I returned, but she hadn’t eaten and said she had no appetite. That’s strange for her, she’s always been so well and healthy, you know. But”—he looked at me with the sort of serio-comic expression every man uses in such circumstances—“well, you know how they are, sir.”

  This time it was my turn to gloat, but I forbore to glance at de Grandin, waiting Fleetwood’s next word.

  “It must have been a little after eleven,” he went on, “when out across the cleared land I heard the baying of a hound. Someone in the neighborhood must have a pack of the brutes and let ’em run at night, for I’d heard ’em once or twice earlier in the evening, but not so near or loud. Dr. Trowbridge—” He halted, swallowed once or twice convulsively, and drummed nervously on the edge of the desk, averting his gaze like a shamefaced schoolboy about to make a confession.

  “Yes?” I prompted as the silence lengthened embarrassingly.

  “You remember that horrible, inhuman howl someone let out in the dining room that Sunday night?”

  I nodded.

  “It was Hildegarde, sir.”

  “Nonsense,” I objected. “Hildegarde had fainted. She couldn’t—”

  “Yes, it was she, sir. I know it, because next night when that devilish baying sounded almost under our window she began to roll and toss restlessly, then—then she drew back the bedclothes, rose to her knees and answered it!”

  “A-a-ah?” de Grandin placed his fingers tip to tip, crossed his knees and regarded the toe of his patent leather evening shoe as though it were a novel sight. “And then, Monsieur, what next, if you please?”

  “That was only the beginning, sir! I shook her and she seemed to wake, but for an hour or more she lay there fingering the bedclothes, rolling her head on the pillow and moaning piteously in her sleep. Once or twice while she lay in that odd, semiconscious state, that devilish howling sounded again, and each time she shook and trembled as if—”

  “Of course,” I assented. “It frightened her.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. It was as if she were all eagerness to get outside—fairly trembling to go, sir.”

  I stared at him incredulously, but his next words left me fairly breathless. “Next night she went!”

  “What?” I almost shouted.

  Again he nodded. “The howling started during dinner next evening, and Hildegarde dropped her knife and fork and almost went into hysterics. I got a gun from the den to give the beast a dose of birdshot, but when I opened the door there was nothing to be seen. I went clear round the house, and once I thought I caught a glimpse of it—a big, white shaggy brute—but it was so far out of range I didn’t even try a shot.

  “A little after midnight I woke up with a queer feeling of malaise, and when I looked at her bed she wasn’t there. I waited nearly half an hour, then went to look for her. While I was going through the library I heard that
damn dog howling again, and when I went to the window I’m hanged if I didn’t see her out on the lawn—and a great white fuzzy-looking beast was fawning on her and leaping at her and licking her face! Yes, sir, there she stood in a temperature of thirty degrees with nothing but her nightdress on, fondling and playing with the beast as if it were a pet she’d known all her life!”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Went out after her,” he answered simply. “The ground was pretty hard and hurt my feet, even through my slipper-soles—and she was barefooted!—and I must have looked away once or twice as I picked my way across the lawn, though I tried to keep my eyes on her, for when I reached her the dog was gone and she was standing there with her teeth chattering with chill. I called to her, and she looked— at—me—” the words came slowly, finally halted altogether.

  I patted his shoulder gently. “What is it, boy?” I asked.

  “She looked at me and snarled. You’ve seen the way a vicious cur curls back its lips when you approach it? That’s the way my wife looked at me, Dr. Trowbridge. And down in her throat she made a sort of savage growling noise. I was frightened, I don’t mind admitting it, but I kept on, and when I got to her she seemed all right, except for the cold.

  “‘Dear, what’re you doing here?’ I asked, and she just looked at me and shook her head, as if she didn’t understand a word I said. I picked her up and carried her back to the house, and she fell asleep almost the moment I put her in bed. Next morning she had no recollection of her sleep-walking, and I didn’t press her. I didn’t hear the dog again that night, either, though I sat up waiting for it with a shotgun till daylight.”

  “Later?” asked de Grandin softly.

  “Yes, sir. Next night, and the next, and every night since then it’s howled around the house like a banshee, but though Hildegarde tossed in her sleep and rose to answer it once or twice, she hasn’t attempted to go out—not to my knowledge, at any rate.”

  “Now, Norval,” I soothed, “this is all very distressing, but I don’t think there’s anything to be really alarmed about. The other night when Hildegarde fainted and I was tending her I made a discovery—has she told you?”

  “You mean—”

  “Just so, boy. Perhaps she isn’t aware of it herself, yet, but you’ve a right to expect someone to be occupying a crib at Twelvetrees before next June. I’m violating no confidences when I tell you more than one patient I’ve had in similar conditions has been as erratic in behavior as Hildegarde. One lady could not abide the smell of fish, or even their sight. Merely seeing a bowl of goldfish made her violently sick. Another had an inordinate craving for dried herring, the saltier and smellier the better, and in several cases conditions were so bad they simulated real insanity, yet all came out right in the end, bore normal, healthy children and became normal, healthy women again. Zoöphilia—an abnormal love of animals—isn’t so rare in such circumstances as you might suppose. I’m sure Hildegarde will be all right, son.”

  The young husband beamed on me, and to my astonishment de Grandin concurred in my opinion. “Yes, it is so,” he assured Norval. “I, too, have seen strange things at times like this. No woman is accountable for anything, however strange it be, which she may do while bearing another life beneath her heart. Friend Trowbridge is undoubtedly correct. At present you have little to fear, but both of us will assist you in every manner possible. You have but to call on us, and I entreat you to do so if anything untoward appears.”

  “IT WAS DECENT OF you to back me up that way,” I thanked him as the door closed on Fleetwood. “I was in a perfect sweat for fear you’d spring some sort of occult hocus-pocus on him and scare the poor lad so we’d have two of ’em to treat instead of one.”

  He regarded me solemnly, tapping the corner of the desk with his forefinger for emphasis. “I played the utterly unmentionable hypocrite,” he answered. “No word of what I said did I believe, my friend, for I am more than sure a very evil thing has been let into the world, and that much tears—blood, too, perhaps—must be shed before we drive it back to its appointed place. All you said concerning manic-depressive insanity being present in pregnancy is true, of course, but the history of this case differentiates it from the ordinary. Normal young women may develop morbid love of animals—I have seen them derive keenest pleasure from running their fingers over the smooth backs of pussy-cats or the rugged coats of sheep dogs—but do they respond to wandering beasts’ howling in kind, I ask to know? Do they run barefoot into winter weather to fondle wandering brutes; do they greet their husbands with dog-snarls? Such things make a difference, Friend Trowbridge, and as yet I fear we have but seen the prologue to the play—”

  The shrilling of the office telephone cut through his disquisition.

  “Dr. Trowbridge?” the tortured voice across the wire asked tremulously. “This is Norval—Norval Fleetwood. I just got home. Hildegarde’s gone. Nancy, the maid, tells me a dog began to howl outside the house almost as soon as I left to see you, and Hildegarde seemed to go absolutely wild—hysterical—laughing and crying, and shouting some sort of answer to the beast. Then she let out an answering bay and rushed out into the yard. She’s not come back, and Nancy’s frightened almost into fits. What shall we do?”

  “Mordieu, so soon?” de Grandin exclaimed as I retailed Norval’s message to him. “Bid him wait on us, mon vieux, we come at once, right away, immediately!”

  “TIENS, MY FRIEND, THEY fish in troubled waters who dabble in spiritualism,” he remarked as we drove toward Fleetwood’s. “Have I not said so before? But yes.”

  “Bosh!” I answered testily. “What’s spiritism got to do with Hildegarde’s disappearance? I suppose you’re referring to the séance at Twelvetrees? When some smart Alec answered that dog’s bay that night it gave the poor girl a terrific shock. That was all that was needed to set her unbalanced nervous system running wild—she probably wasn’t aware of her condition and hadn’t taken care of herself, so recurrent depressive insanity had resulted.”

  “Oh?” he asked sarcastically. “And since when has sanity or any recognized state of aberration connected with pregnancy made the patient sit up in bed and howl like a damned dog—”

  “Of course,” I interrupted triumphantly. “Norval gave us a typical symptom when he said she snarled at him. You know as well as I that aversion for the husband is one of the commonest incidents of this form of derangement. She’s fought it hard as she could, poor child, but it’s overmastered her. Now she’s ran away. We may have to keep Norval out of her sight till—”

  “What of the dog—as we persist in calling it—that follows her and whose howls she responds to? Do you find it convenient to ignore him, or has he slipped from your memory?”

  “Rats!” I scoffed. “The country’s full of night-prowling dogs, and—”

  “And the city also? Dogs that howl beneath ladies’ windows the moment their husbands backs are turned?”

  “See here,” I turned on him, “just what’re you driving at? What has the dog to do with the case?”

  “Little or nothing—if it is a dog,” he answered slowly. “We might dismiss it as a case of Zoöphilia, as you suggested to the young Fleetwood, but—”

  “But what? Out with it. What’s your idea?”

  “Very well. Here is my opinion: The ‘dog,’ as we have called it, is no dog at all, but a wolf, or rather loup-garou, a werewolf who has availed himself of the opportunity given by that sacré séance to return—”

  I burst out laughing. “You are fantastic!”

  “Let us hope so. Jules de Grandin fancies himself most excellently, but in this case nothing would please him more than to be proved a superstitious booby.”

  “YES, SUH,” NANCY REPLIED to our questions, “Mis’ Hildegarde done scairt me—out o’ seven years’ growth, a’most. Mistu Norval hadn’t hardly turned his back when th’ a’mightiest howlin’ yuh ever did hear started right underneath th’ winder, an’ I like to fainted in mah tracks.”

>   “What were you doing at the time?” de Grandin asked.

  “Well, suh, it was this-away: We’d come in from th’ country, an’ Mis’ Hildegarde an’ me was ’most perished with th’ cold. I done git me sumpin hot to drink—jes’ a little gin an’ lemon, suh—but she didn’t want none, though she was shiverin’ like a little dog that’s been flung in th’ river an’ ain’t dry yet. They—Mis’ Hildegarde an’ Mistu Norval—had dinner ’bout seven, an’ Ah had mine at th’ same time, on account o’ Mis’ Hildegarde wantin’ me directly. Pore thing, she ain’t been feelin’ so pert lately. So, soon’s they’re finished, Ah gits up to her room an’ waits there fo’ her. Ah’d helped her out’n her dress and got a black-crepe neglyjay on her when all sudden-like Ah hears th’ most awful hollerin’ an’ yellin’, right under th’ winder.

  “‘Does yuh hear that, Nancy?’ Mis’ Hildegarde asks me.

  “‘Course, Ah hears it, honey,’ Ah tells her. ‘Does yuh think Ah’s deef?’

  “Then she kinder walls up her eyes, like th’ pictures of th’ saints ’bout to get kilt by th’ lions yuh sees, an’ starts talkin’ real fast-like, ‘No, no; Ah won’t; Ah won’t, Ah tell yuh; Ah won’t!’ An’ then she kinder breaks down an’ shivers like she’s taken a chill or sumpin, an’ sorter turns around to me an’ says, ‘It’s no use, Nancy. He’s got me. Tell Mistu Norval Ah love—’ an’ with that she stops talkin’ an’ her lips curls back from her teeth an’ her eyes goes all glassy, an’ she sorter growls in her throat, an’ stretches out her fingers like she was fixin’ to scratch somebody, an’—jest about that time Ah gits down behind th’ sofy, ’cause Ah was powerful scairt she’s goin’ to jump on me.”

  “And then?” de Grandin pressed.

  “Lawd-a-massy, suh. Then th’ trouble did start. She run over to th’ winder an’ yelled at sumpin out in th’ yard, then she took out an’ ran downstairs, howlin’ an’ carryin’ on like she was a dawg her own self. ‘Deed she did!”