The Dark Angel Page 20

  De Grandin bent a fixed, unwinking stare on her. “Madame,” he asked, “can you not give us some description of the stranger who desired that you let him see the wedding girdle of Madame David? Was he, according to your guess, a Levantin?”

  Mrs. Hume considered him a moment thoughtfully. Then: “No-o, I shouldn’t think so,” she replied. “He seemed more like a Spaniard, possibly Italian, though it’s hard to say more than that he was dark and very clean-looking and spoke English with that perfect lack of accent which showed it was not his mother tongue. You know—each word sharply defined, as though it might be the result of a mental translation.”

  “Perfectly,” de Grandin nodded. “I should say—”

  “Well, I should say it’s all a lot of nonsense,” I broke in. “It may be true old David Hume was sold as a slave to these Devil-Worshippers, and that he ran off with the high priest’s daughter—and all the money he could get his hands on. But you know how superstitious people were in those days. The chances are he was filled full of fantastic stories by the Yezidees, and believed everything he heard and more that he imagined. I’d say his conscience was troubling him toward the last; perhaps his mind was failing, too. Look how carefully he hid what he’d written in the cover of the family Bible. Is that the action of a normal man, especially if he seriously intended future generations to profit by his warning?”

  Arabella glanced at each of us in turn, finally gave vent to a sigh of relief and put her hand on mine. “Thank you, Samuel,” she said. “I knew there was some explanation for it all; but Alice’s strange disappearance and all this has so upset me that I’m hardly normal.” To de Grandin she added:

  “I’m sure Doctor Trowbridge’s explanation is the right one. Old David must have been weak-minded when he wrote that senseless warning. He was eighty-one when he died, and you know how old people are inclined to imagine things. Like children, really.”

  A stubborn, argumentative expression crossed de Grandin’s face, but gave place instantly to one of his quick elfin grins. “Perhaps I have put too much trust in the vaporings of a senile old man’s broken mind,” he admitted. “Nevertheless, the fact remains that Mademoiselle Alice is not here, and the task remains for us to find her. Come, Friend Trowbridge, there is little we can do here and much we can do elsewhere. Let us go, if we have Madame’s permission to retire.” He bowed with Continental grace to Arabella.

  “Oh, yes; and thank you so much for what you’ve done already,” Mrs. Hume returned. “I’m half inclined to think this is some madcap prank of Alice’s, but”—her expression of false confidence gave way a moment, unmasking the panic fear which gnawed at her heart—“if we hear nothing by morning, I think we’d better summon the police, don’t you?”

  “By all means,” he agreed, taking her hand in his and bending ceremoniously above it ere he turned to accompany me from the house.

  “THANK YOU, MY FRIEND,” he murmured as we began our homeward drive. “Your interruption was most timely and served to divert poor Madame’s mind from the awful horror I saw gathering round us.”

  “Eh?” I returned. “You don’t mean to tell me you actually believe that balderdash you read us?”

  He turned on me in blank amazement. “And was your avowal of disbelief in Monsieur David’s tale not simulated?” he asked.

  “Good Lord,” I answered in disgust, “d’ye mean to say you swallowed that old dotard’s story—all that nonsense about an hereditary priesthood of the Devil-Worshippers, and the possibility of—See here, don’t you remember he said if the Mir’s male line became extinct the eldest daughter had to serve, and that she must be married to the Devil? That might be possible—mystically speaking—but he specifically said she shall thereafter act as high priestess until a son is born. I know the legend of Robert the Devil, and it was probably implicitly believed in David Hume’s day, for the Devil was a very real person then, but we’ve rather graduated from that sort of mediaevalism nowadays. How can a woman be married to the Devil, and bear him a son?”

  There was more of sneer than smile in the mirthless grin he turned on me. “Have you been to India?” he demanded.

  “India? Of course not, but what’s that got to do with—”

  “Then perhaps it is that you do not know of the deva-dasis, or wives of Siva. In that benighted land a father thinks he does acquire merit by giving up his daughter to be wedded to the god, and wedded to him she truly is, with all the formal pomp accompanying the espousal of a princess. Thereafter she is accounted honorable as consort of the great God of Destruction—but though her wedded lord is but a thing of carven stone she does not lack for offspring. No, pardieu, she is more often than not a mother before her thirteenth birthday, and several times a mother when her twentieth year is reached—if she survives that long.

  “Consider the analogy here. From what I have beheld with my own two eyes—and my sight is very keen—and from what I have been told by witnesses who had no need to lie or even stretch the truth, I know that Monsieur David’s narrative is based on fact, and very ugly fact at that.”

  “But what about his hiding his ‘warning’ in the cover of the Bible?” I persisted. “Surely—”

  “Three centuries have passed since he penned those words,” de Grandin interrupted, “and in that time much may be forgotten. That David told his children where they might look for guidance if the need for guidance rose I make no doubt. But in the course of time his admonition was forgotten, or—”

  He broke off musingly, and I had to prompt him:

  “Yes? Or—”

  “Or the story of some secret warning has been handed down to each generation,” he replied. “Did not it strike you more than once that Madame Hume was not entirely honest—pardon, I should say frank—with us? The fear of something which she could or would not mention was plainly in her eyes when we came from the church, and earlier in the evening her efforts to direct the conversation from that obscure message which her daughter had from the ouija board were far more resolute than they would have been had she had nothing but a distaste for superstitious practice to excuse them. Also, when we did ask for information relative to Monsieur David she suddenly turned cold to us, and had I not persisted would undoubtlessly have turned us from examination of the family Bible. Moreover—”

  Again he paused and again I prompted him.

  “Jules de Grandin is experienced,” he assured me solemnly. “As a member of la Surêté he has had much to do with questioned documents. He knows ink, he knows paper, he can scent a forgery or an attempt at alteration as far as he can recognize the symptoms of coryza. Yes.”

  “Yes? What then?”

  “This, cordieu! I played the dolt, the simple, guileless fool, tonight, my friend, but this I say with half an eye as I made transcription of old David’s story: Someone—I know not who—some one has essayed to blot that writing out with acid ink eradicator. Had the writing been in modern metallic ink the effort would have been successful, but Monsieur l’Ancêtre wrote with the old vegetable ink of his time, and so the acid did not quite efface it. It is that to which I owed my ability to read the journal. But believe me, good friend, it was a man—or woman—and not time, which dimmed the writing on those pages and rendered illegible much which old David wrote to warn his descendants, and which would have greatly simplified our problems.”

  “But who could have done it—and why?” I asked.

  He raised his narrow shoulders in an irritable shrug. “Ask the good God—or perhaps the Devil—as to that,” he told me. “They know the answer; not I.”

  4. By Whose Hand?

  THREATENING LITTLE FLURRIES OF snow had been skirmishing down from the cloud-veiled sky all evening; before we were halfway to my house the storm attacked in force, great feathery flakes following each other in smothering profusion, obscuring traffic lights, clinging to the windshield; clogging our wheels. Midnight was well past as we stamped up my front steps, brushed our feet on the doormat and paused a moment at the vestibule
while I fumbled for my latch-key. As I swung back the door the office phone began a shrill, hysterical cachinnation which seemed to rise in terrified crescendo as I ran down the hall.

  “Hullo?” I challenged gruffly.

  “Doctor Trowbridge?” the high-pitched voice across the wire called.

  “Yes; what—”

  “This is Wilbur, sir, Mrs. Hume’s butler, you know.”

  “Oh? Well, what’s—”

  “It’s the missis, sir; she’s—I’m afraid you’ll be too late, sir; but please hurry. I just found her, an’ she’s—” His voice trailed off in a wheeze of asthmatic excitement, and I could hear him gasping in a futile effort to regain his speech.

  “Oh, all right; do what you can for her till we get there; we’ll be right over,” I called back. Attempting to ascertain the nature of the illness by questioning the inarticulate domestic would be only a waste of time, I saw, and obviously time was precious.

  “Come on,” I bade de Grandin. “Something’s happened to Arabella Hume; Wilbur is so frightened he’s gasping like a newly landed fish and can’t give any information; so it may be anything from a broken arm to a stroke of apoplexy, but—”

  “But certainly, by all means, of course,” the Frenchman agreed enthusiastically. Next to solving a perplexing bit of crime he dearly loved a medical emergency. With deftness which combined uncanny speed with almost super-human accuracy of selection he bundled bandages and styptics, stimulants and sedatives, a sphygmomanometer and a kit of first-aid instruments into a bag, then: “Let us go,” he urged. “All is ready.”

  Wilbur was pacing back and forth on the veranda when we arrived some half an hour later. His face was blue with cold, and his teeth chattered so he could scarcely form the hurried greeting which he gave us.

  “Gawd, gentlemen,” he told us tremblingly. “I thought you’d never get here!”

  “Eh bien, so did we,” de Grandin answered. “Madame your mistress, where is she, if you please?”

  “Upstairs, sir, in her dressing-room. I found her like she is just before I called you. I’d finished lockin’ up the house an’ was going to my room by way of the back stairs when I heard the sound o’ something heavy falling up the hall toward the front o’ the house, an’ ran to see if I was wanted. She didn’t answer when I knocked—indeed, it seemed so hawful quiet in ’er room that it fair gave me the creeps, sir. So I made bold to knock again; then, when she didn’t hanswer, to look in, an’—”

  “Lead on, mon vieux,” de Grandin interrupted. “The circumstances of your discovery can wait, at present. It is Madame Hume that we would see.”

  The butler was a step or two ahead of us as we climbed the stairs, but as we approached Mrs. Hume’s door his footsteps lagged. By the time we stood before the portal he had dropped back to de Grandin’s elbow, and made no motion either to rap upon the panels or to turn the knob for us.

  “Lead on,” de Grandin repeated. “We would see her at once, if you please.”

  “There’s nothing you can do, of course,” the servant answered, “but in a case like this it’s best to have a doctor, so—”

  The little Frenchman’s temper broke beneath the strain. “Damn yes!” he snapped, “but save your conversation till a later time, my friend. I do not care for it at present.”

  Without more ado he turned the latch and swung the door back, stepping quickly past the butler into Arabella’s boudoir, but coming to a halt on the threshold.

  Close behind him, I stepped forward, but stopped with a gasp at what I saw.

  Suspended by a heavy silken curtain cord looped twice about her neck, Arabella Hume hung from the iron curtain rod bridging the archway between her chamber and her dressing-room. A satin-upholstered boudoir-chair lay overturned on its back beneath her and a little to one side, her flaccid feet in their satin evening slippers swung a scant four inches from the floor, her hands draped limply at her sides, and her head was sharply bent forward to the left. Her lips were slightly parted and between them showed a quarter-inch of tongue, like the pale-pink pistil of a blossom protruding from the leaves. Her eyes were partly opened, and already covered with the shining gelatin-film of death, but not at all protuberant.

  “Good heavens!” I exclaimed.

  “My Gawd, sir, ain’t it hawful?” whispered Wilbur.

  “Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu; c’est une affaire du diable!” said Jules de Grandin.

  To Wilbur: “You say you first discovered her thus when you called Doctor Trowbridge?” he demanded.

  “Ye-es, sir.”

  “Then why in the name of ten million small blue devils did you not cut her down? The chances are she was already dead, but—”

  “You daren’t cut a ’angin’ person down till the coroner’s looked at ’im, dast you, sir?” the servant replied.

  “Ohé; sacré nom d’un petit bomhomme!” De Grandin wrenched savagely at the ends of his mustache. “This chimney-corner law; this smug wisdom of ignorance—it will drive me mad. Had you cut the cord by which she hung when you first saw her, it is possible there would have been no need to call the coroner at all, great stupid-head!” he stormed.

  Abruptly he put his anger by as one might lay off a garment. “No matter,” he resumed, “the mischief is now done. We must to work. Wilbur, bring me a decanter full—full, remember—of brandy.”

  “Yes, sir,” the servant answered. “Thank you, sir.”

  “And, Wilbur—”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Take a drink—or two—yourself before you serve me.”

  “Thank you, sir!” The butler departed on his errand with alacrity.

  “Quick, my friend,” the Frenchman ordered, “we must examine her before he returns.”

  Snipping through the silken strangling cord with a pair of surgeon’s scissors he eased the body down in his arms and bore it to the couch, then with infinite care loosened the ligature about the throat and slipped the noose over her head. “Morbleu,” he murmured as he laid the cord upon the table, “who taught her to form a hangman’s knot, one wonders?”

  I took the curtain cord in my hand and looked at it. He was right. The loop which had been round Arabella’s neck was no ordinary slipknot, but a carefully fashioned hangman’s halter, several turns of end being taken round the cord above the noose, thus insuring greater freedom for the loop to tighten around the throat.

  “It may be so,” I heard him whisper to himself, “but I damn doubt it.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  He bent above the body, examining the throat first with his naked eye, then through a small but powerful lens which he drew from his waistcoat pocket.

  “Consider,” he replied, rising from his task to regard me with a fixed, unwinking stare. “Wilbur tells us that he heard a piece of furniture overturned. That would be the chair on which this poor one stood. Immediately afterward he ran to her room and knocked. Receiving no response, he knocked again; then, when no answer was forthcoming, he entered. With due allowance made for everything, not more than five minutes could have elapsed. Yet she was dead. I do not like it.”

  “She might not have been dead when he first saw her,” I returned. “You know how quickly unconsciousness follows strangulation. She might have been unconscious and Wilbur assumed she was dead; then because of his fool notion that it was unlawful to cut a hanging body down, he left her strangling here while he ran to ’phone us and waited for us on the porch.”

  The little Frenchman nodded shortly. “How is death caused in hanging?” he demanded.

  “Why—er—by strangulation—asphyxia—or fracture of the cervical vertebrae and rupture of the spinal cord.”

  “Précisément. If Madame Hume had choked to death from yonder bar is it not nearly certain that not only her poor tongue, but her eyes, as well, would have been forced forward by pressure on the constricted blood vessels?”

  “I suppose so, but—”

  “The devil take all buts. See here—”

  D
rawing me forward he thrust his lens into my hand and pointed to the dead woman’s throat. “Look carefully,” he ordered. “You will observe the double track made by the wide silk noose with which poor Madame Hume was hanged.”

  “Yes,” I nodded as my eye followed the parallel anemic band marked by the curtain cord. “I see it.”

  “Very good. Now look more closely—see, hold the glass so—and tell me if you see a third—a so narrow and deeper mark, a spiral track traced in slightly purple bruise beneath the wide, white marks made by the curtain cord?”

  “By heaven!” I started as his slender finger pointed to the darker, deeper depression. “It’s pretty faint, but still perceptible. I wonder what that means?”

  “Murder, pardieu!” he spat the accusation viciously. “Hanged poor Madame Arabella undoubtlessly was, but hanged after she was dead.

  “This so narrow, purple mark, I know him. Ha, do I not, cordieu? In the native states of India I have seen him more than once, and never can it be mistaken for other than itself. No. It is the mark of the roomal of the Thags, the strangling-cord of those who serve Bhowanee the Black Goddess. Scarcely thicker than a harp-string it is, yet deadly as a serpent’s fang. See, those evil ones loop it quickly round their victim’s neck, draw it tight with crossed ends, then with their knuckles knead sharply at the base of the skull where the atlas lies and, pouf! It is done. Yes. Certainly.

  “You want more proof?” He rose and faced me with flashing eyes, his little, milk-white teeth bare beneath the line of his mustache. “Then look—” Abruptly he took Arabella’s cheeks between his palms and drew her head forward, then rocked it sharply from side to side.

  The evidence was indisputable. Such limber, limp flaccidity meant but one thing. The woman’s neck was broken.

  “But the drop,” I persisted. “She might have broken her neck when she kicked the chair from under her, and—”