He followed Buckner to the tiny stoop, where the sheriff pushed open the leather-hinged door and strode in. Griswell blinked in the comparative dimness of the interior. A single small window let in a little daylight. An old Negro crouched beside the hearth, watching a pot stew over the open fire. He looked up as they entered, but did not rise. He seemed incredibly old. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and his eyes, dark and vital, were filmed momentarily at times as if his mind wandered.
Buckner motioned Griswell to sit down in a string-bottomed chair, and himself took a rudely-made bench near the hearth, facing the old man.
"Jacob," he said bluntly, "the time's come for you to talk. I know you know the secret of Blassenville Manor. I've never questioned you about it, because it wasn't in my line. But a man was murdered there last night, and this man here may hang for it, unless you tell me what haunts that old house of the Blassenvilles."
The old man's eyes gleamed, then grew misty as if clouds of extreme age drifted across his brittle mind.
"The Blassenvilles," he murmured, and his voice was mellow and rich, his speech not the patois of the piny woods darky. "They were proud people, sirs —proud and cruel. Some died in the war, some were killed in duels —the menfolks, sirs. Some died in the Manor—the old Manor—" His voice trailed off into unintelligible mumblings.
"What of the Manor?" asked Buckner patiently.
"Miss Celia was the proudest of them all," the old man muttered. "The proudest and the cruelest. The black people hated her; Joan most of all. Joan had white blood in her, and she was proud, too. Miss Celia whipped her like a slave."
"What is the secret of Blassenville Manor?" persisted Buckner.
The film faded from the old man's eyes; they were dark as moonlit wells.
"What secret, sir? I do not understand."
"Yes, you do. For years that old house has stood there with its mystery. You know the key to its riddle."
The old man stirred the stew. He seemed perfectly rational now.
"Sir, life is sweet, even to an old black man."
"You mean somebody would kill you if you told me?"
But the old man was mumbling again, his eyes clouded.
"Not somebody. No human. No human being. The black gods of the swamps. My secret is inviolate, guarded by the Big Serpent, the god above all gods. He would send a little brother to kiss me with his cold lips—a little brother with a white crescent moon on his head. I sold my soul to the Big Serpent when he made me maker of zuvembies —"
Buckner stiffened.
"I heard that word once before," he said softly, "from the lips of a dying black man, when I was a child. What does it mean?"
Fear filled the eyes of old Jacob.
"What have I said? No—no! I said nothing."
"Zuvembies," prompted Buckner.
"Zuvembies," mechanically repeated the old man, his eyes vacant. "A zuvembie was once a woman—on the Slave Coast they know of them. The drums that whisper by night in the hills of Haiti tell of them. The makers of zuvembies are honored of the people of Damballah. It is death to speak of it to a white man—it is one of the Snake God's forbidden secrets."
"You speak of the zuvembies," said Buckner softly.
"I must not speak of it," mumbled the old man, and Griswell realized that he was thinking aloud, too far gone in his dotage to be aware that he was speaking at all. "No white man must know that I danced in the Black Ceremony of the voodoo, and was made a maker of zombies and zuvembies. The Big Snake punishes loose tongues with death."
"A zuvembie is a woman?" prompted Buckner.
"Was a woman," the old Negro muttered. "She knew I was a maker of zuvembies—she came and stood in my hut and asked for the awful brew —the brew of ground snake-bones, and the blood of vampire bats, and the dew from a nighthawk's wings, and other elements unnamable. She had danced in the Black Ceremony—she was ripe to become a zuvembie—the Black Brew was all that was needed—the other was beautiful—I could not refuse her."
"Who?" demanded Buckner tensely, but the old man's head was sunk on his withered breast, and he did not reply. He seemed to slumber as he sat. Buckner shook him. "You gave a brew to make a woman a zuvembie—what is a zuvembie?"
The old man stirred resentfully and muttered drowsily.
