The Devil's Bride - Softcover

Quinn, Seabury

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044500424X ISBN 13: 9780445004245

Publisher: Warner Books, 1976

Synopsis

book has romance and adventure.

About this title

About the Author

Seabury Grandin Quinn (also known as Jerome Burke; December 1889 - 24 December 1969) was an American pulp magazine author, most famous for his stories of the occult detective Jules de Grandin, published in Weird Tales. Quinn was a contemporary of Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Hangings of dark-red stuff draped loosely from the ceiling of the hall, obscuring doors and windows, their folds undulating eerily, like fluttering cerements of unclean phantoms. Candles like votive lights flickered in cups of red glass at intervals round the walls, their tiny, lambent flames diluting rather than dispelling the darkness which hovered like vapor in the air. Only in one spot was there light. At the farther end of the draped room was an altar shaped in imitation of the Gothic sanctuary of a church, and round this blazed a mass of tall black candles which splashed a luminous pool on the deep red drugget covering the floor and altar-steps. Above the altar was set a crucifix, reversed, so that the thorn-crowned head was down, the nail-pierced feet above, and back of this a reredos of scarlet cloth was hung, the image of a strutting peacock appliqued on it in flashing sequins. On the table of the altar lay a long cushion of red velvet, tufted like a mattress. Two ranks of backless benches had been set transversely in the hail, a wide center aisle between them, smaller aisles to right and left, and on these the congregation sat in strained expectancy, each member muffled in a hooded gown so that it was impossible to distinguish the features, or even the sex, of a given individual. A faint odor of incense permeated the close atmosphere; not sweet incense, such as churches use, but something with a bitter, pungent tang to it, and - it seemed to me - more than a hint of the subtle, maddening aroma of burnt cannabis, the bhang with which fanatics of the East intoxicate themselves before they run amok. But through the odor of the incense was another smell, the heavy smell of paraffin, as though some careless person had let fall an open tank of it, soaking the thick floor-covering before the error could be rectified. Somewhere unseen to us, perhaps behind the faintly fluttering draperies on the walls, an organ was playing very softly as Renouard, de Grandin and I stole quickly through the curtained doorway of the ante-room and, unobserved, took places on the rearmost bench. Here and there a member of the congregation gave vent to a soft sigh of suppressed anticipation and excitement, once or twice peaked cowls were bent together as their wearers talked in breathless whispers; but for the most part the assemblage sat erect in stony silence, motionless, yet eager as a flock of hooded vultures waiting for the kill which is to furnish them their feast...

Edition details

• Publisher: Warner Books
• Publication date: 1976
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 044500424X
• ISBN 13: 9780445004245
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1