The Devil's Rosary
Page 73
“Tenez, we meet on something like even ground, Monsieur le Loup-garou!” de Grandin announced in a tone of satisfaction, seized one of the little sharp-pointed daggers from the floor and impaled the tiny monstrosity on its keen blade.
The minute, savage thing died slowly, writhing horribly. With teeth and claws it fought against the steel that pinned it to the floor, squealing dwarfish parodies of wolf-howls. At last its struggles ceased, it quivered and lay still.
“Oh, you cruel little wretch,” Miss Noyer raged at him, “you killed that poor little animal as heartlessly as—”
“As I shall now kill you, parbleu!” he finished, grabbing up another dagger from the floor and advancing toward her. “Sorcière, witch-woman, ally of hell’s dark powers—”
“Ee-eek!” Mazie went as white as tallow under her rouge as she rushed pell-mell from the room, and he turned grinning to me.
“I think that I am glad she fled, Friend Trowbridge,” he confided. “To kill a man-wolf is a work of merit; there is neither profit nor entertainment in the killing of a woman-pig.”
“Would you actually have stabbed her?” I asked aghast.
He raised his shoulders in a shrug. “Who can say? She would have been no great loss, and the temptation was strong.”
“OF COURSE,” HE TOLD me in my study some two hours later, “we could neglect no precautions. The pentagram has in all times been esteemed as a guard against the powers of evil; wicked spirits, even the most powerful, are balked by it. In addition I placed in each of its angles a blessèd candle from the church, a crucifix and also a dagger which had been dipped in eau bénite. Evil spirits of an elemental nature—those which have never been housed in human flesh—cannot face pointed steel, probably because it concentrates radiations of psychic force from the human body which are destructive to them. In addition I secured from Monsieur le Curé who let me have the candles the censers filled with consecrated incense. He was hard to convince, that one, but once I had convinced him that the blessèd articles were needed to combat a dread invader from the other world he went the entire pig, as your droll saying has it. Yes. Incense, you must know, is highly objectionable to wicked spirits, whether they be ghosts of long-dead evil men or ill-disposed neutrarians bent on doing mischief to mankind, whom they hate.
“Tiens, I thought the grease was in the fire when that never-enough-to-be-abominated Noyer woman came into the room and overset the guardian candle. Her natural viciousness and anger made a sad disturbance, she gave the one tiny remaining bit of psychoplasm as yet not reabsorbed the very nourishment it needed to become a ravening, preying, full-sized wolf-thing once more. Had not I killed it to death with the consecrated dagger when I did it might have grown once more to its full stature—and it was already inside the protecting pentagram! Corbleu, I do not like to speculate on what might have happened.”
“What was in those silver dishes?” I asked.
“Bait,” he answered with a grin. “Blood and wine; wine and blood. The mixture of those elements is especially pleasing to the hosts of evil. In the celebration of le messe noir—the black Mass where Satan is invoked—the chalice is filled with mingled wine and blood from the cut throat of a sacrificed babe. Therefore, I procured fresh blood from the hospital and fresh wine from the vintner, and set my bait. The werewolf came to drink, but I would not let him lap his fill. No. When he had drank one bowlful I moved the others beyond his reach within the angles of the pentagram, lest he become too powerful for us. One does not nourish one’s enemy before the encounter. Oh, no.”
He looked at me expectantly, and I responded to the cue. “How’d you like a sip of wine—without blood in it?” I asked.
“Friend Trowbridge,” he assured me earnestly, “the suggestion, she is superb!”
The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin by Seabury Quinn
is collected by Night Shade Books in the following volumes:
The Horror on the Links
The Devil’s Rosary
The Dark Angel
A Rival from the Grave
Black Moon