The Dark Angel Read online

  Father Pophosepholos resumed his seat and the sudden fire which animated him died down. Once more he was a tired old man, the threadbare shepherd of a half-starved flock. “I saw you smile when I mentioned a treasure being stolen from me,” he told de Grandin gently. “You were justified, my son, for St. Basil’s is a poor church, and I am poorer still. Only the faith which is in me sustains me through the struggle. We ask no help from the public, and receive none; the rich Latins look on us with pity, the Anglicans sometimes give us slight assistance; the Protestant heretics scarcely know that we exist. We are a joke to them, and, because we’re poor, they sometimes play mischievous pranks on us—their boys stone our windows, and once or twice when parties of their young people have come slumming they have disturbed our services with their thoughtless laughter or ill-bred talking during service. Our liturgy is only meaningless mummery to them, you see.

  “But this was no childish mischief, not even the vandalism of irreverent young hoodlums!” his face flushed above its frame of gray beard. “This was deliberately planned and maliciously executed blasphemy and sacrilege!

  “Our rubric makes no provision for low mass, like the Latins’,” he explained, “and daily celebration of the Eucharist is not enjoined; so, since our ceremony of consecration is a lengthy one, we customarily celebrate only once or twice a week, and the pre-sanctified elements are reserved in a tabernacle on the altar.

  “This morning as I entered the sanctuary I found everything in disorder. The veils had been torn from the table, thrown upon the floor and fouled with filth, the ikon of the Virgin had been ripped from the reredos and the tabernacle violated. They had carried off the elements together with the chalice and paten, and in their place had thrust into the tabernacle the putrefying carcass of a cat!” Tears welled in the old man’s eyes as he told of the sacrilege.

  Costello’s face went brick-red with an angry flush, for the insult put upon the consecrated elements stung every fiber of his nature. “Bad cess to ’em!” he muttered. “May they have th’ curse o’ Cromwell!”

  “They took my chasuble and cope, my alb, my miter and my stole,” the priest continued, “and from the sacristy they took the deacon’s vestments—”

  “Grand Dieu, I damn perceive their game!” the little Frenchman almost shouted. “At first I thought this might be but an act of wantonness performed by wicked boys. I have seen such things. Also, the chalice and the paten might have some little value to a thief; but this is no mere case of thievery mixed with sacrilege. Non. The stealing of the vestments is conclusive proof.

  “Tell me, mon père,” he interrupted himself with seeming irrelevance, “it is true, is it not, that only the celebrant and the deacon are necessary for the office of consecration? No subdeacon is required?”

  The old priest nodded wonderingly.

  “And these elements were already consecrated?”

  “They were already consecrated,” the clergyman returned. “Presanctified, we call it when they are reserved for future services.”

  “Thank God, no little one then stands in peril,” de Grandin answered.

  “Mon père, it gives me greatest joy to say I’ll aid in tracking down these miscreants. Monsieur Tanis, unless I am more greatly mistaken than I think, there is direct connection between your lady’s disappearance and this act of sacrilege. Yes, I am sure of it!” He nodded several times with increasing vigor.

  “But, my dear fellow,” I expostulated, “what possible connection can there be between—”

  “Chut!” he cut me short. “This is the doing of that villain Konstantin! Assuredly. The wife he has again abducted, though he has not attempted to go near the husband. For why? Pardieu, because by leaving Monsieur Donald free he still permits the wife one little, tiny, ray of hope. With vilest subtlety he holds her back from the black brink of despair and suicide that he may force her to compliance to his will by threats against the man she loves. Sacré nom d’un artichaut, I shall say yes! Certainly; of course.”

  “You—you mean he’ll make Sonia go with him—leave me—by threats against my life?” young Tanis faltered.

  “Précisément. That and more, I fear, Monsieur,” de Grandin answered somberly.

  “But what worse can he do than that? You—you don’t think he’ll kill her, do you?” the husband cried.

  The little Frenchman rose and paced the study a moment in thoughtful silence. At last: “Courage, mon brave,” he bade, putting a kindly hand on Tanis’ shoulder. “You and Madame Sonia have faced perils—even the perils of the grave—before. Take heart! I shall not hide from you that your present case is as desperate as any you have faced before; but if my guess is right, as heaven knows I hope it is not, your lady stands in no immediate bodily peril. If that were all we had to fear we might afford to rest more easily; as it is—”

  “As it is,” Renouard cut in, “let us go with all celerity to St. Basil’s church and look to see what we can find. The trail grows cold, mon Jules, but—”

  “But we shall find and follow it,” de Grandin interrupted. “Parbleu, we’ll follow it though it may lead to the fire-doors of hell’s own furnaces, and then—”

  The sharp, insistent ringing of the telephone broke through his fervid prophecy.

  “This is Miss Wilkinson, supervisor at Casualty Hospital, Doctor Trowbridge,” a professionally precise feminine voice informed me. “If Detective Sergeant Costello is at your office, we’ve a message for him. Officer Hornsby is here, about to go on the table, and insists we put a message through to Sergeant Costello at once. We’ve already called him at headquarters, and they told us—”

  “Just a minute,” I bade. “It’s for you, Sergeant,” I told Costello, handing him the instrument.

  “Yes,” Costello called into the mouthpiece. “Yes; uh-huh. What? Glory be to God!”

  He swung on us with flushing face and blazing eyes. “’Twas Hornsby,” he announced. “He wuz doin’ relief traffic duty out at Auburndale an’ Gloucester Streets, an’ a car run ’im down half an hour ago. There wuz no witnesses to th’ accident, an’ Hornsby couldn’t git th’ license number, but just before they struck ’im he seen a felly ridin’ in th’ car.

  “You’ll be rememberin’ Hornsby wuz in th’ raidin’ party that captured this here Doctor Sun?” he asked de Grandin.

  The Frenchman nodded.

  “Well, sor, Hornsby’s got th’ camera eye. He don’t forget a face once he’s seen it, even for a second, an’ he tells me Doctor Sun wuz ridin’ in th’ car that bowled ’im over. They run ’im down deliberate, sor, an’ Sun Ah Poy was ridin’ wid a long, tall, black-faced felly wid slantin’ eyebrows an’ a pan like th’ pictures ye see o’ Satan in th’ chur-rches, sor!”

  “And what was this one doing with his pan?” Renouard demanded. “Is it that—”

  “Pan,” Costello shouted, raising his voice as many people do when seeking to make clear their meaning to a foreigner, “’twas his pan I’m speaking of. Not a pan; his pan—his mush—his map—his puss, ye know.

  “Pas possible! The miscreant held a pan of mush for his cat to eat, and a map, also, while his motor car ran down the gendarme?”

  “Oh, go sit in a tree—no!” Costello roared. “It’s his face I’m afther tellin’ ye of. Hornsby said he had a face—a face, git me; a face is a pan an’ a pan’s a face—like th’ divil’s, an’ he wuz ridin’ in th’ same car wid this here now Doctor Sun Ah Poy that’s made his getaway from th’ asylum! Savvy?”

  “Oh, mais oui,” the Frenchman grinned. “I apprehend. It is another of the so droll American idioms which you employ. Oui-da; I perceive him.”

  “’Tis plain as anny pikestaff they meant to do ’im in deliberately,” Costello went on, “an’ they like to made good, too. Th’ pore felly’s collarbone is broke, an’ so is several ribs; but glory be to heaven, they wuz goin’ so fast they bumped ’im clean out o’ th’ road an’ onto th’ sidewalk, an’ they kep’ on goin’ like th’ hammers o’ hell widout waitin’
to see how much they’d hurt ’im.”

  “You hear, my friends?” de Grandin cried, leaping to his feet, eyes flashing, diminutive, wheat-blond mustache twitching with excitement like the whiskers of an angry tomcat. “You heard the message of this gloriously devoted officer of the law who sends intelligence to Costello even as he waits to go upon the operating-table? What does it mean? I ask. No, I demand what does it mean?

  “Sun Ah Poy rides in a car which maims and injures the police, and with him rides another with a face like Satan’s. Mordieu, mes amis, we shall have hunting worthy of our utmost skill, I think.

  “Sun Ah Poy and Konstantin have met and combined against us! Come, my friends, let us take their challenge.

  “Come, Renouard, my old one, this is more than mere police work. The enemy laughs at our face, he makes the thumb-nose at us and at all for which we stand. Forward to the battle, brave comrade. Pour la France!”

  6. Allies Unawares

  FOUR OF US—DE GRANDIN, Renouard, Donald Tanis and I—sat before my study fire and stared gloomily into the flames. All day the other three, accompanied by Costello, had combed the city and environs, but neither sign nor clue, trail nor trace of the missing woman could they find.

  “By heaven,” Tanis cried, striking his forehead with his hand in impotent fury, “it looks as if the fellow were the devil himself!”

  “Not so bad a guess, mon brave,” de Grandin nodded gloomily. “Certain it is he is on friendly terms with the dark powers, and, as usual, Satan is most kindly to his own.”

  “Ah bah, mon Jules,” Renouard rejoined, “you do but make a bad matter so much worse with your mumblings of Satan and his cohorts. Is it not sufficient that two poor ladies of this town are placed in deadly peril without your prating of diabolical opponents and—”

  “Two ladies?” Tanis interrupted wonderingly. “Why, has he abducted some one else—”

  “Bien non,” Renouard’s quick explanation came. “It is of another that I speak, Monsieur. This Konstantin, who has in some way met with Sun Ah Poy and made a treaty of alliance with him, has taken your poor lady for revenge, even as he sought to do when first we met him, but Sun Ah Poy has also reasons to desire similar vengeance of his own, and all too well we know how far his insane jealousy and lust will lead him. Regard me, if you please: As I have previously told you, I came across the world in search of Sun Ah Poy, and took him bloody-handed in commission of a crime of violence. Clear from Cambodia I trailed him, for there he met, and having met, desired a white girl-dancer in the mighty temple shrine at Angkor. Just who she was we do not know for certain, but strongly circumstantial evidence would indicate she was the daughter of a missionary gentleman named Crownshield, an American, who had been murdered by the natives at the instigation of the heathen priests and whose widowed mother had been spirited away and lodged within the temple until she knew the time of woman and her child was born. Then, we suppose, the mother, too, was done to death, and the little white girl reared as a bayadère, or temple-dancer.

  “The years went on, and to Cambodia came a young countryman of yours, a citizen of Harrisonville, who met and loved this nameless mystery of a temple coryphée, known only as Thi-bah, the dancing-woman of the temple, and she returned his passion, for in Cambodia as elsewhere, like cries aloud to like, and this milk-skinned, violet-eyed inmate of a heathen shrine knew herself not akin to her brown-faced fellow members of the temple’s corps du ballet.

  “Enfin, they did elope and hasten to the young man’s home in this city, and on their trail, blood-lustful as a tiger in the hunt, there followed Sun Ah Poy, determined to retake the girl whom he had purchased from the priests; if possible to slay the man on whom her favor rested, also. Parbleu, and as the shadow follows the body when the sun is low, Renouard did dog the footsteps of this Sun Ah Poy. Yes.

  “Tiens, almost the wicked one succeeded in his plans for vengeance, but with the aid of Jules de Grandin, who is a clever fellow, for all his stupid looks and silly ways, I captured him and saved the little lady, now a happy wife and an American citizeness by marriage and adoption.

  “How I then fared, how this miscreant of a Sun Ah Poy made apes and monkeys of the law and lodged himself all safely in a madhouse, I have already related. How he escaped and all but gave me my quietus you know from personal, first-hand experience. Certainly.

  “Now, consider: Somewhere in the vicinage there lurk these two near-mad men with twin maggots of jealousy and vengeance gnawing at their brains. Your so unfortunate lady is already in their power—Konstantin has scored a point in his game of passion and revenge. But I know Sun Ah Poy. A merchant prince he was in former days, the son of generations of merchant princes, and Chinese merchant princes in the bargain.

  “Such being so, I know all well that Sun Ah Poy has not united forces with this Konstantin unless he is assured of compensation. My death? Pouf, a bagatelle! Me he can kill—at least, he can attempt my life—whenever he desires, and do it all unaided. Last night we saw how great his resource is and how casually he tossed a stink-bomb through the window by way of telling me he was at liberty once more. No, no, my friend; he has not joined with Konstantin merely to he assured that Renouard goes home in one of those elaborate containers for the dead your undertakers sell. On the contrary. He seeks to regain the custody of her who flouted his advances and ran off with another man. Thus far his purpose coincides with Konstantin’s. They both desire women whom other men have won. One has succeeded in his quest, at least for the time being; the other still must make his purpose good. Already they have run down a gendarme who stood in their way—thus far they work in concert. Beyond a doubt they will continue to be allies till their plans are consummated. Yes.”

  The clatter of the front-door knocker silenced him, and I rose to answer the alarm, knowing Nora McGinnis had long since gone to bed.

  “Is there a feller named Renyard here?” demanded a hoarse voice as I swung back the door and beheld a most untidy taximan in the act of assaulting the knocker again.

  “There’s a gentleman named Renouard stopping here,” I answered coldly. “What—”

  “A’right, tell ’im to come out an’ git his friend, then. He’s out in me cab, drunk as a hard-boiled owl, an’ won’t stir a foot till this here Renyard feller comes fer ’im. Tell ’im to make it snappy, will yuh, buddy. This here Chinaman’s so potted I’m scared he’s goin’ to—”

  “A Chinaman?” I cut in sharply. “What sort of Chinaman?”

  “A dam’ skinny one, an’ a mean one, too. Orderin’ me about like I wuz a servant or sumpin’, an’—”

  “Renouard—de Grandin!” I called over my shoulder. “Come here, quickly, please! There’s a Chinaman out there in that cab—‘a skinny Chinaman,’ the driver calls him—and he wants Renouard to come out to him. D’ye suppose—”

  “Sacré nom d’un porc, I damn do!” de Grandin answered. To the taximan he ordered:

  “Bring in your passenger at once, my friend. We can not come out to him; but—”

  “Say, feller, I ain’t takin’ no more orders from a Frog than I am from a Chink, git me?” the cabman interposed truculently. “You’ll come out an’ git this here drunk, an’ like it, or else—”

  “Précisément; or else?” de Grandin shot back sharply, and the porchlight’s rays gleamed on the wicked-looking barrel of his small but deadly automatic pistol. “Will you obey me, or must I shoot?”

  The taximan obeyed, though slowly, with many a backward, fearful glance, as though he did not know what instant the Frenchman’s pistol might spit death. From the cab he helped a delicate, bent form muffled to the ears in a dark overcoat, and assisted it slowly up the steps. “Here he is,” he muttered angrily, as he transferred his tottering charge to Renouard’s waiting hands.

  The shrouded form reeled weakly at each step as de Grandin and Renouard assisted it down the hall and guided it to an armchair by the fire. For a moment silence reigned within the study, the visitant crouching motionless in his se
at and wheezing asthmatically at intervals. At length de Grandin crossed the room, took the wide brim of the black-felt hat which obscured the man’s face in both his hands and wrenched the headgear off.

  “Ah?” he ejaculated as the light struck upon the caller’s face. “A-a-ah? I thought as much!”

  Renouard breathed quickly, almost with a snort, as he beheld the livid countenance turned toward him. “Sun Ah Poy, thou species of a stinking camel, what filthy joke is this you play?” he asked suspiciously.

  The Chinaman smiled with a sort of ghastly parody of mirth. His face seemed composed entirely of parchment-like skin stretched drum-tight above the bony processes; his little, deep-set eyes were terrible to look at as empty sockets in a skull; his lips, paper-thin and bloodless, were retracted from a set of broken and discolored teeth. The countenance was as lifeless and revolting as the mummy of Rameses in the British Museum, and differed from the dead man’s principally in that it was instinct with conscious evil and lacked the majesty and repose of death.

  “Does this look like a jest?” he asked in a low, faltering voice, and with a twisted, claw-like hand laid back a fold of his fur overcoat. The silken Chinese blouse within was stained with fresh, warm blood, and the gory spot grew larger with each pulsation of his heart.

  “Morbleu, it seems you have collided with just retribution!” de Grandin commented dryly. “Is it that you are come to us for treatment, by any happy chance?”

  “Partly,” the other answered as another horrifying counterfeit of mirth writhed across his livid mouth. “Doctor Jules de Grandin is a surgeon and a man of honor; the oath of Aesculapius and the obligation of his craft will not allow him to refuse aid to a wounded man who comes to him for succor, whoever that man may be.”

  “Eh bien, you have me there,” de Grandin countered, “but I am under no compulsion to keep your presence here a secret. While I am working on your wound the police will be coming with all haste to take you back in custody. You realize that, of course?”